Robert vs. Tourist Groups

 A member took us out last Pday drivin around lookin at the Valley of the Gods and whatnot..pretty cool....I call this my cowgirl pose.

 I was burning up hardcore when we were unloading the food truck....

 Me trying to eat a peach as weird as possible....

A wall of Calypso lemonade 

We were all doing service and not 30 seconds when we stepped put of the car Elder Maupin in the grey stepped on a huge rusty nail and so we had to go to the hospital so he could get a Tetnis shot

Howdy Howdy!!!

I will be in Blanding for another 6 weeks!  I wasn't and am not expecitng to be moved anytime soon....probably my 2nd to last transfer maybe.  Our Mission President had a big conference to go to and for some reason that made this transfer only a 5 week transfer, so it will go by in a blur.....and this is random but for some reason there is a young man behind me swearing up a storm while talking on the phone and I couldn't take it anymore so I told him to watch his mouth and oh boy....ya I'm just going to turn around and keep emailing.  Great day!:)  Pretty sure if all 4 of us just stood up and walked over there since we are all quite larger then he is he would have an accident in his pants.He is like the little chihuahua that will only charge you if your back is turned like a coward.  

Anyways Elder Provard is going to Toadelena!  Jealousy!  Its a little mountain town about 45 mins southwest of Shiprock.  He has never been on the rez and the other 3 of us have spent a lot of time there and we have loaded him up with stories so hopefully he feels uncomfortable haha.  I'm so mean.  My new companion is Elder Brown.  Never met the kid and he hasn't even been out 6 months yet.  I think he just barely finished training.  This will be interesting and I'm sure slightly intimidating for him living with 3 other elders that have all hit their 18 month mark.  Hopefully I can show him a good time in Blanding and we get along well.  I have to be in Farmington tomorrow morning at 830 so we have to leave at 6 am.  Lots of driving tomorrow.  Love it.  Sometimes.

Not to much happened this week unfortunately.  Lots of town gossip and annoying setbacks.  We did have one great lesson though with really our only investigator.  We read 1 nephi 1 with him and he wanted to know how he could know it was true after drilling me with all of these Bible and other random history questions...so of course I directed him to Moroni 10:3-5.  He said okay well lets pray then!  I though he meant like at the end of the lesson or something so I was about to keep talking and then he just leans forward on the couch and lets out a big softy sincere prayer.  It was really good and we didn't even have to ask him.  Right now though he is caught up with like how in the world could the Book of Mormon be written on metal plates and all this junk about the iron age and different metal ages....all I have to say is wait till he reads that Nephi had a steel bow! haha.  It was good though and I know the spirit was in the room and he felt it.  We will hit him up again this week. 

One of the high council members runs a catering business and he has wanted us to come to some meals the last few days with tourist people.  Boy have we been eatin good...no complaints here.  Also this Wednesday he wants us to come to a lunch that he is doing for a massive tourist group thats coming through......the kicker is this.....its a Lamborghini tourist group.  DId I spell that right??? yep Lamborghini's.  Like almost 100 of them.  In Blanding, Utah.  Elder Provard is pretty upset that he aint gonna be here.  Should be fun!  I will defintely take lots of pictures and hopefully hand out a few Book of Mormons. Dont mean to brag a bit here but...what the heck ya I do!  Elder Provard and I have handed out more Book of Mormons to people then almost the entire mission combined!  Nearly 100 in 2 months.  Awesome.  The goal is try and recontact everyone that we handed them out to and see what has happened.  Love the Book of Mormon.  Welp thats pretty much it!!  Thanks for everything! 

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs. Derek Jeter

Ya'aat'eeh!!!

 

Good to hear from y'all sounds like there has been A LOT happening without me but thats ok I have gotten used to missing out now.  The highlight of the week this week was I was able to back to Cortez for a zone conference.  I got to drive since nobody had any idea where it was or how to get there so I was a happy camper.  When we got back into my 1st area all these memories just overcame me and I may have gotten a little emotional it was so weird.  I love Cortez and I still remember where everything was so that was good.  I was able to see the Balfour family again and that made me really happy to back there.  Weird to think that I left Cortez 13 months ago.  Time flies by.  On our way back to Blanding I went to the loft I lived in and showed the other Elders what it was like.  Good times for sure.

This week went fairly well and we have a new investigator that is a Ute.  Its official!  I have taught my brothers from like 5 or 6 different tribes now, awesome.  My companion just sits and watches me teach natives its hilarious cause I start swinging my arms around and trying to paint pictures in their heads and whatnot...he probably thinks I'm psycho or something but hey it works.  One of the native men we were teaching was trying to use this tree analogy on me and try to confuse me like a pharisee and my companion had like no idea what to say so I tried my best to reverse his tree analogy and oh man long story, it was weird.  Thats how a lot of lessons go, using nature or animal analogies to explain the reasons why things are the way they are.

Our recent convert has been going through a really rough time....I mean rough.  His daughter has the exact same cancer that his wife had before she passed and apparently things went for the worse.  They weren't able to make it to church yesterday because they were in Salt Lake for emergency surgery it sounded like.  Rough.  That man has a lot of faith.  I really hope that his daughter can pull through, she is showing the exact symptoms as her mom.  

We were at a members home for dinner and they knew that I was obsessed with  baseball and they refused to turn theTV off for the all star game...I tried not to watch but I'm not gonna lie I saw  Derek Jeter hit and that was a tender moment.  I despise the yankees....but I gotta respect the 2.  I seriously had a tear well up nearly once I realized that like 20 years down the road if some kid asked me who Derek Jeter was....the only thing I could say would be, lets sit down for a minute and talk this may take awhile.  Over 20 years of shortstop for the Spankees...The MJ of baseball for sure.  I feel that was a tender mercy from the Lord to let me see that, definitely had some prayers of thanks that day:)

Oh ya and we had another less active come to church that hadn't been back in like 4 or 5 years so that made my week.  We are doing some good things here...may not be much but as long as someone is helped and their spirit is lifted then its a success.

Love Elder Christensen  

Robert vs. Primary

Ya'aat'eeh!!!

Alright well sorry for the late email, there was a county wide power outage yesterday for a long time so we didn't get to email.  Well this week wasn't very good as far as staying busy and whatnot but I know we did a lot of good.  As long as someone gets helped during the week then I consider it a successful week.  I got chased by a couple dogs this week and it brought back some fond memories of being chased by insanely huge pitbulls all over the reservation.  This mission is the best.  I only got bit once but it was fun while it lasted.  

The cool missionary story for the week I guess is on Friday we were heading back to our house for the night, then we decided to knock on a door that we didn't know who lived there, but we knew that it was a new family that moved in.  A guy came out and started talkin with us and its so funny how our conversations start here at the door.  After the hi how are ya's and whatnot we have to ask if they are a member or not and then try not to get to excited if they aren't.  Turns out he moved from my 1st area in Cortez and he was a member of the assembly of God church.  I immediately got pumped for some bible bashin or something derogatory..I honestly was hopin for it because I seriously miss being in the face of persecution all the time in Farmington or Hopiland.  Anywway, ya this guy is super nice and friendly and accepted a Book of Mormon and said he would love to meet with us and that he believes he's in Blanding for a reason that he doesn't know why yet.  Good stuff!  The nicest Protestant man I have ever met.  It will be a good experience to meet with him.  So ya that was it, I know it wasn't that cool but thats about as exciting as it gets round here most of the time.  

This little town is sure starting to grow on me.  There was a guy in my ward that came home form the Scotland/Ireland mission and he gave his homecoming talk in a kilt and long leggings.  It was the bomb, I wish I could do something like that.  I need an Eagle feather headdress or something....I have some moccasins maybe I will wear those.  Our recent convert is doing alright he gets a little overwhelmed at all the stuff there is to do to progress but we just say one step at a time..."just tap it in....just tap it in.."  Name that movie...only Llyr would probably get that one.  On Sunday we got asked at the end of sacrament to teach youth sunday school...and then we went to prepare for that and then we got asked to come teach sharing time for like 15 mins.  It was crazy and that type of on the spot junk happens to me all the time, I'm used to it though.  One thing for sure I know...I am not a primary teacher.  That was the longest 15 minutes of my life.  I am doing well here and enjoying the dry Blanding air and the nightly lightning storms with 0 rain.  Thanks for everything

Love Elder Chirstensen

  

Robert vs. The 4th of July

7 on 7 football tournament…awesome. 

Wayne is on the far right and Mitchell is in the middle.  Brother Harris, who baptized them, is on the left.

Ya'aat'eeh!!!

It was a good/hectic/spiritual week this week.  Didn't get that many teaching opportunities of course with 4th of July being like the world series/super bowl of Blanding.  We spent about 6 hours helping serve food at a gas station to whoever wanted to eat.  It was alright but both my legs fell asleep after about 4 hours of just standing there serving beans.  They had a huge parade but I didn't get to see any of it unfortunately.  I also didn't take any pictures because I forgot my camera all day.....I failed big time.  The town exploded to about 10,000 people it seemed like in one day it was insane!  We had like 300 people come up to us of course and take pictures and ask us all the where ya from's and how long you been out's….I'm pretty annoyed about answering those now.  I figure I got about 400 or 500 more times to answer that.  It was fun to feel like a celebrity though for a day.  We werent allowed to do any of the festivities which killed me....softball and football all day…I was dying to take a few swings.  Since we couldnt watch the fireworks with everyone at the park we just watched them from our house.  I am definitely coming back sometime soon for the 4th here.  It would be a blast!  Apparently there is like 100 guys spread out throughout the wards that served there missions in Blanding and eventually came back to live here.  I someday may become part of that group.  

The end of the week was great!  Wayne and Mitchell were both baptized.  Mitchell didn't NEED to be baptized but he insisted and so we got permission from everyone and it went well.  Mitchell just kinda sat down in the water after the prayer was said.  Brother Harris who was baptizing him had like no idea what to do.  But hey it works!!  Then Wayne had to be dunked twice cause his hand popped out of the water.  On the way up the 1st time he slipped and smacked his head against the wall....what a spiritual day:)  It was ok though and he wasn't too embarrassed so the 2nd time he went down worked out.  We did the confirmation in the chapel on Saturday as well and you could certainly feel that his wife was in the room watching it was an interesting experience. 

Everything went well overall this week and I plan on the rest of time in Blanding to be productive and help some people.  

Love Elder Christensen

 

Robert vs Big Dogs

Loloma!!!

Well not to much to report on this week again but there are some good things happening in the Blanding 1st and 8th wards.  The baptism for July 5th is still good to go and I am excited for the man we are teaching to FINALLY become a member after living in Blanding his whole life.  62 years.  We had a man come to church that hasn't been there in over 40 years!  I think he really enjoyed being back.  It's sad to see that something drastic has to happen in order for people to get their act together.  I am not exempt from that either.  But with a wife passing away and then deciding to be baptized, or finding out that someone did your wife's temple work along time ago and then deciding that it might be a good thing to get back to church is pretty dramatic.  Doesn't need to be that way.  

We did have a pretty good lesson with a Navajo family that I am excited to teach.  I get so giddy when I am teaching my Lamanite brothers and sisters.  I know back home I didn't go talk for long periods of time to often but I think thats changed for sure.  I might need someone to tell me to shut up.  Sometimes I get carried away and I don't let my companion teach as much as I should cause I am just so happy to be talking with Native Americans.  He's cool with it though.  

I met a purebred Mastiff could be classified as small horse.  It was a bigger than the dog from Sandlot but it looked a lot like it.  Knock on a door...WOOF!  Then the kid opens the door and this dog head the width of a football pushes through.  That is really the only time in my life that I can recall being afraid of a dog.  We went into the house and it just kinda backed me up into a corner and started barking and jumping on me.  It put its paws on my shoulders like nothing and stood taller than me.  When we tried to leave the dog would kinda mouth my forearm and pull me back in.  That was my life or death moment for the week.  I still love big dogs.  Maybe not that big.

We had a kid knock on our door at like 4am the other day.  He should be on a mission right now but he's had to deal with some pretty hard challenges.  He just needed someone to talk to and he asked for a blessing so we were all very proud of him for seeking out for the spiritual side of things.  We invite him to come over to our house a lot and just hangout with us and go to lessons and whatnot.  I am happy to know that he trusts us to be able to have the guts to knock on our door so early looking for help.  I love helping people, I don't care what time it is.  Anyways things are going well and I am pumped for the 4th.  

Love Elder Christensen