For real this time.

 Hello everybody,

This is my actual last email from the CCM and I am not going to say a lot, I just wanted to put a few pictures on the record. It has been an emotional past few days, with everyone saying adios and such as that. It is just me and Elder Cole here in the computer lab, because everybody else left early in the morning. Our Bus leaves at four so that gives me five more hours to rest and prepare.

I have a request. There are two species of deer in Uruguay. One is known in english as the marsh deer, and the other is known in spanish as el venado del campo. If someone could find out for me the spanish name of the former and the english name of the latter, as well as their Latin names I would be greatly appreciative.

Reflecting back on my time here I have recieved a lot of spiritual food, which I am grateful for. I have also recieved a lot of physical food which I am also grateful for. I have not gained a lot of weight but I have lost a lot of muscle mass so you get the idea. Hopefully these will have prepared me for the rigors of the field. I will report later.

1: Us and Hemana Gutierrez, our morning teacher

2: An alright picture of a red and black bird

3: Us and Hermano Suaste, our afternoon teacher

4: A tree full of parrots stealing the branches for their nests

5: Me and Presidente Eggleston, who likes to recite poetry, and Presidente Suaste, who likes to speak English

Last Week

Dearest and most esteemed people who read my emails,

My travel came this week so it is getting real. I will be leaving Monday night at about 8:30 for an 8 hour flight to Santiago Chile. Then we have a three hour layover and a 2 and a half hour flight to Montevideo, after which we will be spending a night in the mission home. And then I have no Idea what to expect. We weighed our bags today to make sure they were under weight. I had about 24 pounds to spare, but Elder Cole was about 2 pounds over. I am going to see if we can cut out the lining of his suitcase, maybe the covers and non essential pages of all of his books, or the middle part of the soles of his shoes. It will work out somehow. There are nine of us going to Montevideo, and a bunch more going to Santiago, so the plane should be fun, but I probably won't sleep.

Yesterday President Bonnie Oscarson, the young womens general president visited. She gave a cool devotional about a number of things, like relying on the Lord's help, and accepting when He cuts you down to make you into what He needs you to be. It is nice to know that the people in Salt Lake havn't forgotten about us down here in Mexico.

I was talking with Elder Gray, the leader of one of the other districts in our zone, and he said something that really struck me. He said " I have found that you can learn as much as you want to here." He is right, and that is kind of the reason that we are here on the Earth, to see how much we will choose to learn. I haven't been able to stop thinking about that.

I have another spanish joke ¿ Cuantos estrellas hay en el cielo? ¡ Cincuenta! ¡ Ja Ja Ja Ja!

We had a really cool experince today that I would like to share. We were walking to the comedor for lunch, and decided last minute to take a shortcut. We passed a maintenance area and a work shouted at Elder Fa'amausili "Hey you the samoan!"( He is from Denver). He then told him that he had a coworker who wasn't a member and wanted to ask him about his beliefs. Elder Fa'amausili was able to share his testimont, and the man was very interested. That's not all folks. At lunch Elder Fa'amausili told us how he had been praying for a week that he would be able to share his testimony with one of the workers who wasn't a member, but that this morning he had decided that it wasn't going to happen and this would be the last time that he prayed for that. And then he was specifically singled out to share his testimony with someone who had only been working here at the CCM for three hours. It shows how the Lord awnsers our prayers, and how after the trial or your faith you recieve a witness. Pretty cool.

I Don't know if I will be able to email again before getting to the field, so I would just like to thank everyone who has been sending me emails. I am sorry that I don't have sufficient time to respond to everyone but I really apreciate your words of support and the opportunity to hear about what is going on back home.

With a sincere heart and truthful intention,

Elder Christensen

1: A blurry but otherwise cool picture of the moon

2: Antes

3: Despues

4: There is a bird in this picture

5 and 6: Some pictures that people in the district drew of me

Week Five.

Citizens of the Earth,

 

I have been here for over a month now and as of next Tuesday I will only have a week left. Pretty exciting. It is kind of funny becuase from day to day I am not sure that I could say a whole lot about what I have had learned, but looking back all the way we have really come a long way. One way that I know this for sure is that we are starting to have lessons where I can reallly feel the Holy Spirit guiding them. It is such a great feeling when you say something that you feel impressed to say and then your investigator responds in a way that shows that they really want to progress and come closer to Christ. I can only imagine what it is like in the field with real investigators. I guess I don't have to wait much longer to find out though. One of my favorite things about studying here at the CCM is group scripture discussions. That is where somebody in the district picks a chapter from the Book of Mormon or the Bible and we all sit in a circle reading it and discussing what think and feel. That is a really good way to bring the spirit and gain insights that you never would have other wise, and I would definately recommend it to anyone.

As for what happened this week: our Tuesday night devotional was broadcast live from Provo by Elder Bednar where he talked about what to do with your notes from general conference afer the fact. It was very informative. Elder Holdaway challenged me to a contest where we each have to memorize all of the wordds n our exteneded core dictionary, which is a missionary study tool, by next saturday and then battle each other to see who knows the most words. There are about 2,500 words and I have only gotten through about 450. We will see what happens. During Church this past sunday, Prsident Eggleston, the councilor to our branch president told a story about when he was serving his mission in Portugal a general authority came and had a conference where he told all of the Missionaries there to keep working realy hard "because for every door you knock on here in Portugal they have a baptism in Brazil". It was pretty funny. I laughed. The only other thing I can think of is that we were playing volleyball yesterday against another district in our zone. I was front and center, and the ball was right over the net. An enormous tall person jumped up to spike it down on me. I anticipating certain death, Ducked down like a total wimp and covered my face. He slammed the ball right down on the top of my head, which bounced right over the net and scored a point, leading my district to victory. It was without question the most spectacular athletic achievement of my life.

1: Elder Hale's new haircut

2: Our Casa which might be slightly haunted. We are not sure yet.

3: Elder Cole drinking root beer.

4: Hermana Lethbridge playing the Piano

5: An Extremely Red-Orange Bird

6: A very cheesy picture of my district in the group T- shirt that they forced me to buy.

Three and a half week email.

Fellow members of the human family,

Well I have made It past my halfway mark here at the CCM. The days and the weeks have just been going by faster and faster. I am a little worried that I won´t have much interesting to write about today because the days are mostly all the same, but they never get old or boring, which I think is one of the blessings of being here.

We had the opportunity to watch general conference this weekend on the big screen in the auditorium. It was really wonderful. All day long we just sat their and received spiritual ministration from the prophets and church leaders. Honestly one day would have been enough because by Sunday I was a little exhausted from all of it. It was interesting because for some reason I had had the feeling all week that Elder Hale would have something important to say to me and when he gave his talk he specifically addressed the question that I came into conference with. One of many small miracles. Also during conference I saw my friend Josh Hancock singing In the MTC choir, and I saw my great uncle playing the oboe before one of the sessions started. That was a cool treat.

I feel like my district and I have been improving a lot as far as teaching goes. I have really started to feel the spirit while I teach and when I listen to other companionships teach. We just might be adequately prepared to go into the field. Tomorrow we are going to teach a lesson to a real person from the community who may be a new convert less active member or something similar. I feel a little nervous to do that at this point, but I guess if God trusts us to do it then we are going to be just fine.

Other news this week: I ate my cerrano chile. It really wasn't that bad. I was expecting a bigger challenge. I just realized that I have been using accent marks instead of apostrophes because this keyboard is for spanish. My teacher told a funny joke that I would like to share with everyone. Here it is: ¿Qué es la diferencia entre de una pera (a pear) y la novia de un misionero? ¡ La novia de un misionero no espera! ¡ Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja! All of the districts in the zone that were older than us left tuesday, so now we are the senior district. It is really strange how fast that turn around happened. We welcomed a new district in yesterday and that was really cool. They are good kids.

And that is the news from Lake Wobegon, now for some pictures.

1: A poor picture of a parrot

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2: another poor picture of a parrot. They don't like to comply with the photographer.

3: Me and Elder Michels

4: Me and Elder Fonotisitele

5: A mural from back when the CCM was a church run highschool

 

6: A poor picture of a dove. I don't think wildlife photography is my calling.