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
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