Robert vs Walking To Be Seen

Maik!!!

Another week come and gone.  The weather here is being major bi-polar and its driving me crazy, I just want it to get cold and stay cold.  We had a decent week this week espceially with Book of Mormon success.  I am trying to train my "son" to be a Book of Mormon freak like me.  We passed out 20 I think this week.  We are running out of people to talk to super quick though.  The best news since I've been here has been within the last few hours.  Our recent convert family which is the most active family in the branch got their patriarchal blessings yesterday!  I am so pumped. That is bigger then baptism for us right now.  Also I got a text just a few minutes ago that the other son of that family just got approval to be baptized by the 1st presidency so now their whole family can be together now.  Good day.  If I went home today I would feel accomplished.  

Nothin to crazy goes on around in our area...except last night there was a big commotion and found out some people were beating the tar out of each other with shovels...pretty sad.  Nobody died luckily.  Mostly we have been taking one day a week to go waaaaayyy out in the middle of nowhere to find all the cliff dweller people and give them Book of Mormons and teach them hopefully.  We usually hang around White Mesa the rest of the week.  We walk a lot.  Which people really notice and tell us that it is nice to see us walking, cause all the other missionaries that have been there would just drive even if it was a few feet away.  So if we got nothin to do we just go for a walk so we can be seen.  I feel bad that we don't have an actual investigator that is interested to train Elder Dunn with.  I'm trying to help him stay busy and positive but its rough sometimes.  I just let him do most of the talking which is good for him.  Well that's all I got this week.  Love teaching my Lamanite/Nephite people.    

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs. Football Season

Maik!!! 

Well, another week of life in Southern Utah come and gone.  The heat is still dry as ever and I am still begging for the winter to come faster then usual.  Knocked on tons of doors this week...in fact all of them in our immediate area!  Fun times!  Had some good conversation with a hillbilly white guy about the Bible and Book of mormon that we do weekly....keeps me on my toes with what question is gonna come next out of that guys mouth and I just get to pound the truth of the Book of Mormon in his head.  Works out for both of us!  We had to do some mud boggin to get in and out of some of our roads this week so that was entertaining.  Training on the rez is quite the adventure for sure! 

Yesterday after church and the very well attended primary program (10 people and we did most of the singing), we were knockin on doors and finally got someone to talk to us outside for a minute.  It was awesome!  He just started asking questions about dreams that he was having and the interpretations and stuff it was great.  He feels like we were a sign to him from God.  I believe it.  As long as one person is helped out I'm happy.  That was really the missionary highlights of the week.  I am trying to let my trainee start talking at all of our lessons and door approaches.  He needs some help...like every single door he just runs out of what to say so fast and then he turns to me and gives me the biggest look of HELP....so funny I die every time.  Other then that its football season now....Saturdays, Sundays, and Monday nights are dedicated to worshiping the ruddy glow of the TV around here.  Hopefully we can pull someone away and get them to talk to us this week!  I'm keep on keepin onnin!   That is great English.  Thanks for everything.

   

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs. The Greenie

Robert with his new companion and President and Sister Batt

Maik!!!  

Wow, interesting week.  I haven't really decided how I like training...I would rather not train to be honest but it has its perks and fun times.  We get along pretty good and of course he copies like everything I do and asks me tons of questions which I am ok with.  He was in shock the first couple of days cause he thought that we would just be super busy all day every day teaching and just being busy little bees.  He is from Logan so he has had this "perfect mission super spiritual" mindset pounded into him since he was a kid.  He about fell over when we pulled into our parking lot with our HUUUGEEE 20ft. camper with a smashed up door and of course a MASSIVE Utah size chapel that can fit about 50 inside maybe.  Its pretty funny to see him so wide eyed and not haveing any idea what to do or say....I know we aren't supposed to call them greenies but...this boy is green as they can come.  Good kid though and I happy to be with him.  and yes mom, he likes monopoly and baseball...those were the first 2 questions I asked before he even knew my name.  Were good to go now. I am being nice to him and haven't done any pranks or anything...but I will give him a few more weeks of freedom before my fun begins.

   

We had a good fast Sunday and for the 2nd time in my life I voluntarily got up and bore my testimony.  We only have about 15-20 people coming to church right now but hopefully we can get that to change.  I am pretty dang sick right now as well with some major throat soreness it really hurts to talk.  Speaking of talking....last Saturday September 6th we had ELDER JEFFREY R. HOLLAND and Elder Lynn Robins and Elder something katcher come and speak to the mission.....no big deal.  Let me start by saying that Elder Holland is hilarious!  He just loves to mess with people and he is not afraid to embarrass you if you say or do something goofy in front of everyone.  They are going to need a new pulpit as well because I lost count of how many times he basically punched that thing and almost tipped it over once.  He likes to yell.  But its in a good way.  The last 20 mins or so  he came down off the stand and walked around answering questions.  I didn't really have a intelligent question to ask him and plus I already knew the answer but I just wanted to ask an apostle something and see what it was like to have Elder Holland stand 6 feet in front of you staring at you in the face.  Intense..thats all I'm gonna say.  He is not as tall as I thought he would be..he's about 5'8...but his voice definitely covers his size.  A couple things he talked about were how we aren't expected to be perfect people...but we are supposed to try.  That a mission isnt supposed to make you into a perfect person and the Christlike attributes that we try to develop on a mission might not even happen during those 2 years...in fact he said that some of them actually flipped upside down for him by the time he got home from his mission. He gave a couple of awesome insights on Christ....."we are led by a wounded captain."  isn't it interesting and frankly ironic that Jesus Christ does NOT have a perfect body....just think about that.  He is baring the 7 marks of his crucifixion until it is ALL over so that he can fulfill prophecy and show during the 2nd coming that He is Jesus Christ, "who came unto His own, and His own received Him not."  He is the only person that will ever be resurrected without a complete, perfect body.  Crazy stuff.  Then he gave my favorite line of the whole meeting...."God is very easy to please....but extremely difficult to satisfy."  Meaning that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are going to continue to push us til we may feel like we want to give up but as long as we are progressing towards them they are happy.  

He talked about the Book of Mormon and how about every single "missionary moment" in the Book of Mormon you will find that somewhere in the text the teaching or baptizing or sometimes condemning was done with "power and authority."  The biggest contribution to power and authority is worthiness.  Good stuff good stuff.  GO BRONCOS

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs. The Trailer Door

Maik!!!

Okay I don't have a ton of time to write here but I will see how fast my fingers can fly.  We are lucky enough to email at a members house since everything else is closed.  I got some weird news for ya though.  I'm TRAINING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  What the heck...President Batt better know what he's doing.  He said I was the best teacher in the mission but I highly disagree with him and hopefully I can show my greenie how to survive on the rez.  Hopefully he knows how to talk to people and isn't a very "large" guy because where he will be sleeping will only leave you a few inches to move around and that's for me.  I leave tonight for Farmington and pick up my trainee tomorrow morning.  Here we go!  Should be fun!  I love White Mesa though, hopefully the Ute have gotten somewhat used to me.  Before you are able to anything with most natives you have to be their friend first and let them know they can trust you.  We do lots of service again which I am very ok with....feeding horses, lots of weeding and small mechanics works and whatnot.  Lots of fun.  The winter should bring some interesting challenges here. 

To make matters more exciting....just because we are on the Rez things have to go wrong it just comes with the area.  The last few days there has been a Bear Dance that the Utes hold every year...basically a big party but I will talk more about the detailed stuff when I get home.  We have spent a lot of time listening to pow wow music since it's just a couple hundred yards behind our camper so we get to stay up til like 2 am every night listening to Native songs....which as you know is just a lot of ahhhhh yaaaaaa ahhh yaaaa's and whatnot.  I actually have grown to really enjoy it and when I get home everything I own will Native decoration on it.  but ya we walk in our camper to end the night and then we try to go back out to lock the truck and the door is jammed.....wont budge...nothin....so we were locked inside last night with a broken door.  Elder Mclaren decided to put some muscle into it and rammed the door which is usually how we get it open anyways....nothin.  But the glass all broke and scattered everywhere! Mission accomplished right?  SOOOO....we had to go out the "emergency exit."  Which I am pretty sure that the people that designed this camper really didn't think anyone would ever use it because it is extremely inefficient and difficult to squeeze through a dinky little window thats about 9 feet off the ground.  I volunteered to pull some ninja moves and had Elder Mclaren hold my ankles as I "gracefully fell" out the window onto the nice hard rocks and goat heads.  It went well, really and didn't hurt that bad.  Felt kinda cool pulling some James Bond moves.  I busted Elder Mclaren out the front door and we are all good to go!  Who needs a working door right?  My trainee is gonna start for a wild ride:)  So we will be sleeping with no door for the next few days until it is fixed.  Welcome to the Rez :)  Well I got to go clean our camper up a bit and get ready to go to Farmington..at least I get top bunk now so I'm happy!  Thanks for everything! I heard about the BSU game....whatever....I say we will go 8-4 this year...anyways I will probably write some more tomorrow because my trainee will need to write home.  Toodles! 

Love Elder Christensen