Robert vs. The Last Transfer

Ya'aat'eeh!!!

Big changes are happening for my last full transfer as a missionary among the Lamanites.  I am going to Red Lake, Arizona.  I will be living in Tuba City but we cover the little town of Red Lake and Tuba City 2nd ward.  I was pretty dang pumped to go back in that area.  I will be in the best stake and with the best stake president in the mission.  I am in the same district as Hopi and I plan on going on exchanges for a couple of days back to hopiland!  I am very happy right now.  Back to the area I know the best and have already spent like 8 months so this is like going home.  I have tried to prep Elder Dunn for taking over White Mesa.  I think he will do just fine, that kid has a ton of energy and has been a pain sometimes to keep us busy without him going crazy.  I needed it though in white mesa or else I would have had some struggles.  

My companion is Elder Lake.  Elder Lake in Red lake...yep.  I will be living in a double wide trailer so I can actually move around again!!!  Frreedddoomm!!  And I can take a shower more then once a week again!  Victory!  So ya you can tell I am pretty excited.  I know this last full transfer will go by in a blur.  I have very bittersweet feelings on ending the mission to be honest but I think thats how your supposed to feel.  

My last night in White Mesa working in White Mesa we had dinner and a lesson with an investigator family.  I read with them one of m favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon and we just talked and compared traditional viewpoints with the church.  They are huge rodeo people and one of the girls is ranked 2nd in the world for barrel racing.  Pretty cool.  They all shed some tears and I know the Spirit touched their hearts so hopefully sometime they will all get dunked.  The baptism for the other guy we are teaching will be this friday so that sucks I won tbe there but I feel good that at least I helped him get ready a bit.

I will be riding the transfer van (shan'diin) -thats her name...all day.  Not to excited but whatever.  Well thats about all she wrote folks!  I will be loving my time back around my Hopi people. 

 

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs. December 18th

 Dog from sandlot..but bigger.  I had it jump on me and its head is like 6 inches taller then me...so nice though.  There are 2 of them and they protect us from the other dogs.

 Really creepy dog....there are 3 of em in white mesa i have like no idea what they are going to do.

 Then there is Simon...he hangs out with us in our camper...he's da bomb.

One perk of being in Utah....Free stuff.  This is my selection whenever I want :)

Maik!!!

Twas a dandy this week for the most part.  I think my favorite part of the week was I was able to go on exchanges with one of our zone leaders.  We have both been out a long time but have never seen each other, just heard stories about each other.  We had a blast together.  Sometimes it is super nice to just have a break from your normal companion and you can just air out a bit.  I WILL BE HOME ON DECEMBER 18th.  President called me last week and told me that the church put a blackout date for some reason when I was scheduled to come home on Dec. 3rd so he had to move me.  9 weeks left.  

We had quite a few lessons this week so that was nice for a change and we were able to start teaching some new people.  White Mesa is rough simply just because there is not much to do but I feel drawn to stay here because I really enjoy the people we DO work with.  I totally feel like I am fulfilling the scripture of "the gentiles shall be thy nursing mothers..."  cause I am.  Im gonna be pretty tired of telling people....YOU NEED TO COME TO CHURCH.......holy cow.  But whatever I guess I will be saying that to myself and others the rest of my life so bring it on.  Church is the place to be.  

We just walked around a ton this week and attempted to do service for the community.  Not much happened but we tried!  I am nearly done with the Book of Mormon again and ya...it spit the truth.  For real.  Love that book. 

 I am so dang excited to hear BYU lost again!  oh my gosh I am ready for the 2nd coming.  We have transfers this week so we will find out what happens.  I think I will be moved for some reason....dunno why.  Just my gut instinct.  I for sure will be moved by December though because I am positive I will be in Farmington for my last couple of weeks with the zone leaders or something.  Since Dec. 18th is in the middle of the transfer I will have to be close to the mission home for convenience purposes of not driving from 6 hours away.

Never thought I would be serving like 8 months of my mission in Utah...sure doesn't look or feel like Utah but nonetheless, tis Utah.  Its pretty good though and I enjoy it.  Well keep on truckin everyone!  Read your "Book of Norman!" -Thats what a thick navajo accent will do...iss da book of norman.  

  

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs. Hearing Jet Planes

 Our recent converts house that we are at a lot teaching wwaaaaayyyy down in the canyon.   The father of the recent convert family is a nationally known mud bogger...that lil truck beats out huge massive vehicles all the time.  It's pretty cool to see nitrus and all the fun stuff.

Look at that Nitro can....it will be gone in like 5 seconds of pedal to the floor.

A horse that we take care of quite often. A nationally ranked barrel horse.  We teach the family and the girl that rides.  They are related to the recent converts so hopefully someday they will all accept it.  

 This is my bed....and the stuff that is all over my bed that I read from....so I don't have to get out of bed to study sometimes:)  Cause there really is nowhere else...

 This is the view of our camper behind my bed...its a lot smaller then it looks.

 This is my shaving quarters...the church bathroom.

This is our chapel.....yep. 

This is our beautiful Tacoma....pretty nice trucks

Maik!!!

Pretty slow week as far as missionary work goes.  We had lots of meetings and really only had 3 days to do what we wanted.  General conference was awesome, I am pumped for GC now which is funny cause before I don't think I have ever listened to an entire talk before in my life before the mission.  We are going to be having a baptism soon and that will boost the spirits up a bit but since I will be home soon that will also a nice note to end on.  13 baptisms and 13 companions....13 is the lucky number so it works.  For some reason I feel that "the last push" for missionaries is dying down.  There were a couple talks that ended like "in the not to distant future, we will know brother Joesph again.." -Elder Andersen.  makes ya wonder! and I got a whole load of Indian backup and prophecy to support the scriptures and the words of the modern day prophets soooo yep...getting close.  Very close.  

I love the fact that the General Authorities are speaking in their own native tongues.  Really brings the spirit of a "united church" and this aint just some American Yankee folklore.  Speaking of Yankees I don't hear anything about them from nobody...so that's a good sign and keeps me happy.  

Other then that we gave many blessings this week and cast out some more spirits so it was a pretty routine week on the rez:)  Thats all she wrote folks!  I'm trying to fill you in but I'm not gonna hide that I am getting pretty excited to breathe Idaho air again and soon and lets just say I am hearing those jet planes get louder and louder... but I love serving my Lamanite/Nephite family and teaching them of the REAL traditions of their fathers.

GO BRONCOS and oh man that made my day to hear BYU got stamped.  My trainee is pure utard and I have to humble him often that the Lord doesn't care that BYU wins or not haha

  

Love Elder Christensen

Robert vs The Rain

Maik!!! 

Pretty slow week but we have had a lot of good news happen.  We will be having a baptism in October sometime just dont know when.  Our investigator has to get an interview with President Batt and then he is good to go.  It has rained a TON here this week.  Rain and the desert dont mix....cause when it rains...it destroys things.  Like roads to get to houses and our camper.  I thought at one point we were gonna get blown over in the night, we were tilting like 30 degrees and I almost fell out of my bed.  About 60 mph winds shovin this little camper.  At one point while I was driving I had to pull over and wait because I was getting pushed around and I couldnt see a thing in front of me.  Fun times!!  Knocked ona bunch of doors and handed out some BOMS.  Thats about what all we did this week.  Not to many lessons but whatever I am happy with the work we did.  

We were able to give a blessing yesterday to a nonmember relative of our recent convert family.  it was received well and we have to be very touchy with these situations because older navajos are VERRY stuck in the tradition so they think we are bringing evil on their household.  But that wasnt the case this time luckily.  I think we will be able to teach them soon.  I wish y'all could see and feel what its to be looked at as some type of Holy person to a bunch of superstitious native americans.  They have faith in the power thats for sure.  Probably a lot more then I do so its a humbling experience every time.  

Had a little scare with my trainee one night driving back home. Hopefully he hangs in there after I leave.  Thats really all I wanna say because I dont wanna scare mom.  I am just tired of weird evil spirit crap.  It doesnt even scare me anymore its just annoying.  Like I dont know if every mission has to deal with stuff like that but this mission is literally a playground for "things that go bump in the night."  Hahha Now Im just leaving a huge cliffhanger on that one.  Let your imagination go from there:)   Story time when I get home!  I heard BSU got wooped and I am not surprised to be honest but I am ok and still breathing.  The branch presidency here loves football so they give us all the updates every week.  I am almost done with the Book of Mormon and again and it is so funny how many details you miss very time you read it....I go through it so thoroughly and like every page I turn Im like...I swear that wasnt there before, that had to have been magically added in.  The scriptures are awesome.   GO BRONCOS

Love Elder Christensen

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

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