Second week Through

Relatives, associates, compadres, and other assorted personnel,

Well It seems like every single day goes by faster and faster. Two and a half weeks in and i think that I have finally stared to learn some important things.

First of all It turns out that the good Lord really does care about your little problems and answers your little prayers, even if it is just to be able to remember all of the words to a hymn in English. 

Second it is totally true that it is the spirit that carries the message more than the words of the speaker. Living in a place where most people speak a language that you really can't understand you learn that quickly, as long as you can get an idea of what somebody means or what a scripture is talking about then the spirit can work in your heart.

Third I finally figured out for myself what it means to have faith like a mustard seed. If you let a little bit of faith into your heart, water it, pull the weeds constantly and give it enough sunshine, then it will grow rapidly, and it is amazing. I have known about that parable for as long as I can remember and I have just begun to finally understand what it means.

Fourth you will be so much happier if you focus on love instead of negative feelings. Whether It be for the people around you, the schedule, the food, the climate, or the traffic noises at night it is of the utmost importance to love.

This week in the news. I decided that I really want to qualify for the gift of tongues, so I made a commitment to only speak Spanish except during certain special occasions. It has been quite a ride. I think that I have probably made up a lot of phrases that don't really exist in Spanish. My district was sufficiently inspired by me that they decided to go all of Thursday with out speaking English. The punishment for someone who spoke ten words was that they have to eat a cerrano chile on monday. Anyone who goes twenty or more has to eat a habañero, both to be provided by Hermano Suaste. I only spoke seven words, beaten by Elder Holdaway who spoke one, but three of my words were when I offered myself as a sacrifice to trick the Hermanas into speaking English. I am going to eat the peppers just for the manly experience.

We got to go to the temple again today. It is a nice experience and I feel grateful because these may be the last few times I get to go for a while.

Funny story, we haven't really had a problem with mosquitos getting into our casa, but I woke up really early one morning, only partially conscious, and I thought that I heard and felt a mosquito buzzing around my face, so i would slap myself really hard, in a delirious, half a sleep manner and then I would think that I got it, but then it would start again. This went on for quite a while. It might have just been a weird noise from outside.

Other than that we got two new, pretend investigators this week. They are a lot more difficult and have actual problems that we have to figure out how to work with. It is really interesting trying to discuss the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ with someone who is pretending to be a sixteen year old girl whose mother is making her listen to you and you can only understand one in five words on a good day. Still though, my language skills have already improved exponentially.

The days are going by faster and faster, Before I know it I am going to be in the field doing this for real. Here are some pictures.

a weird bird

A depiction of our Lord and savior in resurrected form

a guy on a roof

A positive vibrations shop

A nice tree

District Leader Fa'amausili typing emails

First Email Home!

Friends and Folks,

Hey every body so two weeks in I finally got to my first p-day!!! It has been an amaizing exerience. I got to the airport in Atlanta and the first Elder I met was Elder Hobbs who is going to my mission. There were nine of us on the plane to Mexico City, which is really spectacular from the air. It seems to stretch on forever with mountains jutting out of it all over the place. Amazingly customs let me through without a hitch except that one of the people at a checkpoint was confused at why I had declared my bag of jerky.

We got into the airport and shortly many hundereds of Elders and Hermanas began to arrive from Mormonland ( also known as Utah) and we all crowded onto buses to the CCM. Mexico city is just as cool from the ground as the air. When we got the the CCM the people gave me a tetanus shot ( great first impression) and then they fed us costco pizza and I got my comapnion Elder Cole, from somwhere in rural Washington. He is great because he is super excited about the gospel, and he can come up with a lesson plan in no time flat. It's like I open my notebook and I look up and he is already done with scripture references and everything.

My district is also really great. There are only seven of us but we are all really dedicated and already great friends. Our p-day is on friday but since we didn't get to use it our first week. I had one less pair of everything that I needed to make the time so I had to figure out how to stretch my resources. We have already finished teaching our first investigator, Francisco ( really Hermano Suaste) It was quite the learning experience trying to figure out how to talk about the gospel in spanish while working with someone else at the same time, but I already feel like I have learned and grown so much.

The best part of the week is the Sabath. Its like you work your heart out all week and then you get rewarded by an entire day of intense spirituality. My branch presidency is also really great and consists of Presidente Suaste (my teachers uncle) and Presidente Eggleston who works at some sort of embassy thing.

A few notes about Mexico: The birds here are all diferent than back home. There are a bunch of noisy green parrots that live in the date palms, and these cute little super social doves that give each other hugs with their wings( which is on the top of my list of most adorable things ever). The air is really thin here at seven thousand feet so it's hard to work out for very long without feeling like your lungs are going to disolve. They really like fruit flavored yogurt drinks here, and in fact all manner of fruit flavored things. The weather is perfect except that sometimes heavy rain comes out of nowhere, like right now.

A couple of other notes: Recently in my zone there was an Elder named Elder Meldrum, who is the son of Jeff Meldrum, the nations leading Bigfoot researcher. Unfortunately he left a couple of weeks ago. It was almost the most important coincidental meeting in the history of the world. Also my mom made a blog if everyone would rather just look at that. elderelichristensen.blogspot.com

Me and Elder Cole

The Temple

Some giant moths

A bad picture of a bunch of houses on a mountain

Elder Holdaway and Elder Hale eating skittles

And a super farmacia where super heroes get their meds

My district from left to right Elder Cole, me, District Leader Fa'amausili, Elder Holdaway, Elder Hale, Hermana Lethbridge, and Hermana Briggs.