Robert vs. White Mesa

Maik!!! 

New language?  Yep.  New everything?  Yep.  So my last companion went home last Friday, that was pretty rough but I agree that it was needed.  Sad to see someone go home.  He will be back out in 6 months hopefully though.  In the meantime we had interviews with President Batt last Tuesday and after he told me Elder Brown was going home he told me that he was probably going to keep me and the other Blanding elders together til the end of the transfer or move me to a rez area.....he asked me if I was alright with going back to the rez.....I couldn't hold myself back and I said HECK YA! YOU KIDDIN ME!?  I'm sure he doesn't get that response every time he asks that question.  I felt kinda stupid cause that was a little disrespectful the way I said it just blurted outta my mouth but he just laughed and gave me a hug and sent me out.  Well, Tuesday night I wasn't expecting a phone call but President told me that I was being moved tooooo......White Mesa!  That was completely unexpected.  White Mesa is like 10 miles south of Blanding on the UTE reservation.  There are a lot of Navajo's we teach as well.  Wednesday mornin I had a new area and a new companion.  Crazy.  

I am with the Ute now and its pretty fun so far, they are very funny people they love to laugh a lot and joke around.  Extremely idle though....a lot more then Hopi.  There are about 100-150 people in White mesa...so uber small and then we cover a huge amount of land that basically is just random little housing communities of 3 or 4 in the middle of nowhere and the rest of it is just random trailers on the sides of cliffs and whatnot.  Its pretty fun not gonna lie.  We have a 2013 Toyota Tacoma, its really nice.  I am driving and I think my off road skills have gotten way better over my mission I should be a rally car driver.  Don't worry though I'm not doing anything stupid, I am being safe.  We have like 2500 miles a month so we can go wherever we want and not runout basically.  My new companion is Elder Taylor Mclaren from Ketchikan, Alaska.  Go from Hawaii to Alaska..sweet.  I will take an Alaskan any day, respect.  He is a ton of fun and we get along great.   He just happened to get hooked on BSU during the 2005 fiesta bowl and he is basically a native Boisean when it comes to bronco football so we have a lot of good conversations.  He looks a lot like Llyr in a way its funny.  Yep, I am back to living in a dinky little camper again with no room to move around or put anything.  The church building can fit inside our gym at the Boise Stake Center, and I am back to defending myself from demon pitbulls and being the only people in the community that you can trust.   Sounds like home to me:)

The Branch Presidency is all marigadge (white) from Blanding.  We had a total of 20 people at church yesterday.  We also had a nationally known native flute player come do some songs for us in church it was awesome.  He lives like right by us so he said he will teach us how to make flutes and give us one.  I'm down!  But ya,  People will like you if here if you are lighthearted and are just yourself which I am all good with.  Natives can sniff out someone that is a "fake" so easy.  I love being back and able to testify of the Book of Mormon as a record of "YOUR" people and not "a record of the Native Americans" when talking to white people.  I guess kinda the fun story for the week was while Elder Mclaren was showing me the area we came up to this massive mini looking lake in the middle of our "road" and we didn't know what to do.  Couldn't go around it..can't go over..can't go under....so I got out and went and stuck a stick towards the edge to see how deep it was....a couple feet..no big deal.  We back up the truck about 100 feet and decided to go through it!  Aw man I love this mission thats all I gotta say.  Got some good speed and we went through that sucker...gosh I can just see you mom reading this and shaking your head in disapproval.  On the other side down the "road" and went into some cliff dwellings we found this super old shi'ma that let us in and Mclaren doesn't speak any Navajo really so I said what I could and she told us to sit down and she told us she wanted us to read to her.  She understood English fine but she can only respond in Navajo.  We handed her a Navajo Book of Mormon and asked her if she could read and she said no but you can!  and handed me the book...aw man..I got real nervous cause Navajo is so easy to say offensive things with just a slight change of a syllable.  I opened up to Moroni 10:3-5 and just went for it.  It was a little rough but I took my time and read to her and she was shaking her head in approval a lot and saying words over again that I said.  Then she told me that I read beautifully and she understood!  I was pretty pumped.  Never actually read Navajo to anyone before. I am sure I had a little help there a la Jacob Hamblin and Grandpas and uncle Nephi. She told us she was a member but hadn't been to church in over 10 years.  Hopefully she comes. Fun times!

Thats what she wrote for this week.  I'm sure more adventures to come.  Oh ya forgot to throw this in there.  Elder Mclaren just got his visa to Brazil a few weeks ago and he leaves September 9th.  Transfers are this week.  I have this week to learn my area, this week and then that's it!  It's going to be me and another guy that have no idea where we are driven around on the Rez in the dark...sketchy...very sketchy being in the dark out here.  But they I survived living on the hopi Rez for almost 8 months...pretty sure I got this, bring it on.

Thanks for everything 

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs. Temple Trip

Loloma!!!

Well sorry for the later email, we just got back from the Monticello temple and the yearly temple trip.  That is a dinky little temple but pretty sweet that it just sits in the middle of a neighborhood.  Not so good a week this week.  I will tell you about it some time in detail when I get home.  Which is in like 5 months....weird.  Im an "old man" in the mission now.  I taught zone training on Thursday on Talking to People and the Book of Mormon.  I try to make my trainings and whatnot as entertain-able as possible because some missionaries think they have to be super serious and whatnot all day all the time.  Really bugs me.  Lighten up a little people! Missions are fun!  But ya I got some good laughs so I think I brightened peoples day hopefully.  It went well and a couple of points that I really emphasized on is just looking at people in the face and especially if your trying to bare testimony.  SO many missionaries just stare at the ground or something.....I want to shake them for not talking to people like a man.  Then next was baring SIMPLE testimony.  I have had to many companions that go on 2 or 3 minute rants and the person just sits there with a blank face and no attention.  We worked on baring simple powerful testimony in about 10-20 seconds.  I hope some good came out of it.  

We did get one new investigator but we weren't able to meet with him last week, so hopefully this week.  It seems that the investigators we do have are just intellectually interested not spiritually.  I'm tired of explaining to people that want to know how someone can write on gold plates or that think they are stumping me by asking where the gold plates are and if they could see them they would believe.  ugh...If someone can believe that Moses just smacked a rock and water gushed out, or that Jesus told someone to go grab a fish with a coin in its mouth then why is it so absurd to say that an angel came to Joseph Smith with a record engraven on golden plates?  Just comes to show that physical evidence will never be able to please the critic.  Ever.  Other then that not to much has happened this week.  The Temple was great and I think I am getting a hint of what I want to do with my life in 5 months....maybe!  I am enjoying it while I can and helping people as much as possible.  Thank you for everything

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs Zone Training

Loloma!!!

Alrighty well this week went by in a blur.  We were able to have some good come out of this week with a less active family coming to church. They have an 8 year old girl they want to be baptized so we have been teaching them all.  The mother seems really desirous to live the gospel and do whats right but she has absolutely 0 support.  Pretty sure thats what keeps her mostly from being active.  The Father hasn't been active since he was 16 and he has some major word of wisdom problems that he doesn't seem to care to get rid of.  With that in mind, that is what we talked alot about with them this week.  Word of Wisdom.  It made me kinda sick to hear when we asked the father if he wanted to commit to live the word of wisdom he just said straight up he doesn't care.  I saw the mother out of the corner of my eye put her head down....I that hurt her pretty bad to hear that.  I felt obligated to basically rebuke him for that since he "didn't care."  I basically told him that when he came to the realization that he loved his family more then his addictions he would be able to stop.  He didn't have anything to say to that.  Then they all came to church!  Did my heart good to see that, we will see what happens this week.


Haven't been able to meet with our recent convert this week due to more health stuff with his daughter going to SLC a lot.  Hopefully everything will work out and he can progress.  The man that hadn't come to church for over 40 years has been active for about 2 months now so thats awesome to see. I broke the 110 copy mark for Book of Mormons handed out this week.  I don't have an exact count cause frankly I don't really care about the numbers but I know its somewhere around there.  I was asked to do a zone training on talking to people with the Book of Mormon, dangit....whatever it will be fun.  We are also speaking in 8th ward this week on "clean speech" so that should be interesting.  Got about 5 months left, going by quick...I suspect that I will be here til towards the end of October then I will move on to my last area.  Those last 12 weeks are going to go by so fast...especially if I get moved soon.  Oh ya mom, I remember one sunday at church you leaned over and told me that I had 23 weeks left til I came out....well I have like 22 weeks left til I come home.  Weird.  Well that's all she wrote folks!  Thanks for everything



Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs. Fancy Cars

Ya'aat'eeh!!!

I got my new companion from Hawaii this week.  Elder Brown.   Definitely a mix up from the usual Idaho/Utah companions.  I feel kinda dumb when people ask me where I'm from now when he tells them he is from Hawaii.  But hey whatever nothing can beat Boise.  We get along great and work well.  It was a bit rough the first couple of days but its all good now.  We have had a couple of great lessons this week and I am excited to actually have a companion that can talk to people.  Its weird we are extremely similar when it comes to likes and dislikes and whatnot, he's like my brother from Hawaii.  That tourist group I talked about last week was actually a pretty good car show and its awesome that they let us sit in all of those super fancy cars.  I think my favorite is that Chrome Lamborghini.  I don't have anything to report on really.  We've just been handing out a good number of Book of Mormons and doing services here and there.  I am enjoying Blanding and I am expecting to be here for another 3 months so I better just get as much out of it while I can. 

Love Elder Christensen