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

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