may 2011

Hello again everyone! I hope things are going great for you this week! Things are going pretty good here. I can't believe it's already been almost 4 weeks :O

So we had another storm this week, and it was pretty close to as bad as the first one. But some more interesting things; the tornadoes weren't so far away this time. We had driven back from an appointment way out in this area called Arrowhead beach, and on our way back the rain really started to fall. Just below the point where I couldn't see anything out our window. We finally made it back and started cooking up some dinner. So while my companions were doing that, I watched the storm out the window, and then something very interesting started happening as the trees were bending and swaying all around from the wind; all the trees outside started bending inward toward our house. It was so weird and then the wind was so bad that the rain got all churned up and turned into a mist. So I turn to the elders cooking dinner and I'm like, "Uh...we might have to go hide in the bathroom real soon elders..." and then we just joke about it and go on with our dinner. So it kind of mellows out and the sun starts to shine so we think, ah ok. It's fine to travel. So we had a baptismal interview to make it too for one of our investigators so we just hop in the car and start driving. It was across the Albemarle sound, which we have to travel over a three mile bridge to get too. So we get to the members house that the interview was going to be at and they don't answer the door. So we think, man that's really weird. So we call them and we find out they are in the members house across the street because there is a tornadoe warning (watch is there is a possibility for a tornado, warning means there is one on the ground) for the county we are in. So they run us inside and show us where the safe spot is (the bathroom) in case the tornado comes through. We sit for a while and watch the tv and endure all kinds of chastisment for having driven in the middle of the storm. But how were we supposed to know! haha. We then found out something even crazier; when i had seen the trees bending inward toward our house, at that same time we had had a funnel cloud forming behind us, which is what caused the trees to bend that way. But thankfully, the tornado never touched down. They actually had pictures of the funnel cloud. Craziness.

Well enough of the storm stories; we had a baptism this week! Our friend from cuba got baptized on sunday. it was great. He is like, the funniest guy in the world. Makes for some fun memories.

I also realized the Edenton is absolutely an old person town. Usually when towns have little "parties in the park" things or concerts, they have plenty of young people out dancing and having fun. Well this last week Edenton had it's "Boogie-on-broad" event (broad st. is the main street through Edenton) and when we walked down there hoping to talk to some people it was a bunch of old people swing dancing to like, 50's music. haha. It was great. retirement village usa!

Well we don't have much else to tell ya...I hope this will at least keep you entertained for a little while. Enjoy the week, remember the worth of a soul in God's eyes, and look out for one another. Love y'all.

- Elder H. Christensen

MAY 10TH

Hey y'all! I hope you're doing great! Things have been crazy lately, and to those who have written me letters in the past three weeks, I'm sorry I promise to write a reply on this coming monday. Sorry.

So let's see...what has happened since last tuesday. Well let's just say last week was a very stinky week. Just had alot of appointments fall through. Not really much going on. Thankfully no more stormy days, but we'll see.

We got to go and see our investigator that was confined to the hospital a few weeks ago. She was up in VA beach, and so we called and got permission to ride up there with a member. We brought her some little gifts and whatnot. She still has a long road ahead of her, but she is doing better. She has a trach in her throat, but hopefully will have that out soon. And as long as she has that in her throat she can't speak. So she was very frustrated when we came in because we weren't understanding her. But we stay in contact with her family and we do the best we can to help them.

Friday we went up to Suffolk for our Zone Meeting and that went very well. Those meetings have the potential to be either amazing or very boring. It really depends not so much on the preperation of the zone leaders, but on your own personal prep. And that's basically my philosophy on learning...although you do have more exciting teachers than others, when it comes to learning it's about what you put in, not what you are expecting them to hand out. alright and that's philosophy 101 with Elder C. :P

But afterwards we went to this place called Sal's pizza, and oh man. I don't know if y'all know what a strombolli is but they are basically like a calzone but more rolled up? I don't know. ha. but anyways they have these enormous strombolli's for 8 bucks there. So obvious choice for a bunch of hungry Elders. haha.

And Sunday was mother's day, which was great. I got to talk to my wonderful family, and see how they were doing and wish my mom a happy mother's day. It was great, I was counting down all day. haha. Another awesome thing I got to do that day was at church. Our recently-baptized cuban friend was getting confirmed that day and I got to do it. It was really cool. It's so awesomet o see those times, because these people have so much potential to do good. THey have the Holy Ghost constantly with them now and can go so far. But it's all about how they care for that gift. It's just like any living thing you are given in life; you have to constantly feed and nourish it. Without those constant nourishments, testimonies lessen, little by little, until you're worse off than you were before. And herein lies the challenge of being a disciple of Christ.

A great fun day was p-day; we got to go down to the Outer Banks. We travelled through Roanoke Island and Manteo and through Nag's Head, down through little rental villages like Waves and Salvo. It's crazy to see the narrowness of that part of North Carolina. Atlantic ocean on one side and the pamlico and albemarle sounds on the other. We also saw the Oregon Inlet which was really cool. one of the only breaks in the outer banks to get to the sounds. It's really cool. We got to see the Bodie (pronounce Body) lighthouse and were going to see the Cape Hatteras light house but didn't have time. Then we got to go back to the home of one of the daughters of the member who took us and were fed an awesome dinner of Soft shelled crabs, hush puppies, and slaw. Man. Three awesome foods :D haha.

and again I've talked way to much about food here.

But over all we had a great week. I hope y'all do the same. See ya next week!

- Elder C.

May 23rd 2011

So the parents are in big trouble! No email! HOW AWFUL.

:)

Anyways, yeah I am emailing from Ahoskie, NC today! My companions are both up at a leadership conference, and the district leader is in ahoskie, so they just sent me over there. It's kinda weird...but very similiar. I got to see first hand some of the left overs from the tornado mess that happened here. I definitely didn't see the half of it though, 'cause it's been a couple weeks since it happened. But even so, there is still tons of metal and debris wrapped around trees and things. It was pretty nuts. I definitely don't ever wanna be in a tornado.

Let's see what's been going on since last tuesday. We got our new companion in Albemarle, his name is Elder Capson. He and I definitely have differing personalities, but we make it work out. Working together with a companion is essential to having sucess out here...if there isn't any unity, it just doesn't work.

Our investigator who had a stroke is back in Edenton! She is doing very well. It is a huge miracle the way she has come back into it all. She had a left side stroke or whatever and usually that severly damages the speech abilities. But she is speaking very well now! She still has a ways to go before she can come home, but she is starting to be able to (just a tiny bit) move her right side (which was paralyzed from the stroke) so that is awesome!

Oh and aparently the world was supposed to end yesterday? I didn't even hear about this until after it was supposed to happen haha. Made me laugh. Shows how much missionaries hear/pay attention to. Things are just kinda crazy in the world from what I can tell in my limited sight. But you know how that goes more than I do.

Well all I'm sorry the email's short, but I hope life is treating y'all well, and I'll talk to you next week!

May 31, 2011

Hey everyone. Hope everyones week has been good. It's HOT here. 92 degrees at 10 in the morning. Woo.

Anyways, this week was pretty good. I was spending most of the week with the Ahoskie Elders while my companions were up in Richmond for a leadership conference. We had some fun adventures. Probably one of the funniest tracting stories I've experienced happened last week:

We were tracting some government housing, and walked up to this lady who was getting out of her car with a dog and a little girl. We asked her how her day was going and she said "terrible." we asked her if there was anything we could do to help it be better, and she just says "take the kid and the dog?" haha. Anyways so we start talking to her as she walks up to the door of her house and lets the girl and the dog into the house but stands in the doorway. we talk for a little while and she tells us how she "used to study with us (the mormons)" and she knew some about the book of mormon. Then all of a sudden she turns around and just shouts "OH NO HE'S GOT THE COOKIE!" and keeps yelling "YOU CAN'T EAT CHOCOLATE! YO GO'N DIE!" and then looks back at us and says real quick "Gotta go!" and runs inside but just closes the screen door. So as we are standing on the porch thoroughly confused, we just begin to laugh at how ridiculous the situtation was. We just hear her yelling in the house things like "YOU'RE GONNA SEND ME STRAIGHT TO HELL BEFORE I GET TO HEAVEN!" and (more at the little girl) "YOU GAVE IT TO HIM! I KNOW YOU DID!" So the Elder I was with just yells inside, "is there anything we can do to help ya?" and she comes back to the door. and the little girl comes too. She is just telling the little girl that SHE was the one who gave it to the dog and the little girl just had the funniest face of confusion on. Like, "what is going on?" hahaha. I love tracting for that reason :)

We also got to teach some really cool lessons. We taught this headquarter referral (someone who ordered a Book of Mormon or something over the internet/phone) about the restoration. He was built like a TANK. He used to play Linebacker for East Carolina University. But the lesson was awesome. It just seemed like every answer to his questions was in the scriptures we used. It's awesome to see the Spirit in action. For example, we started talking about the Apostasy, and he just asked "is that in the Bible?" and I had just turned to a scripture in 2 Thessolonians about the Apostasy. It just was an awesome spiritual lesson.

Oh, something else cool about Ahoskie; There chapel is a renovated sit-down restaraunt. Like they took this old place in Ahoskie, named bracey's and turned it into a chapel. It's probably one of the more interesting buildings I've seen on my mission. haha.

So anyways, things are good with me. Unfortunately, I haven't taken any new pictures this week! Sorry. I'll try for something cool next week.

Love y'all!

- Elder Christensen

June 7, 2011

Hello everyone! I hope y'all are doing well.

We've definitely started feeling some hot days. haha. Tuesday was the worst. It was around 100 degrees with 60-70% humidity. Fun stuff. We are also in a drought so that doesn't really help. But y'know. we make do out here in na' carolina.

Things have been pretty good this week. Tuesday we had a really cool lesson with a family who, although very active in their methodist faith, is very interested in learning more. So we are enjoying teaching them. Turned out, the member we took with us is kin to them. The father of their cousins wife or something like that. Everyone's kin out here. But the lesson was the best; we taught about the restoration and it just turned into her answering her own questions. That's the best way to teach! haha when the Spirit works within another person it's amazing to see the results.

Wednesday was great, especially because we got to teach our investigator who had the stroke again! she is doing great! Although she can't quite sit up on her own power, she is regaining some feeling her right side. But she can speak which is great. She's hard to understand sometimes, but I can understand her most of the time. It was funny because before too long, the we had acquired a little congregation of retirees in the retirement home she is staying in temporarily. haha. We even have a member who lives there come in and sit down with us. It was a pretty funny picture.

Thursday rolled around and we went up to chesapeake for zone meeting. It was a great meeting. We talked about obediance and focusing on our purpose. It kind of put in perspective for me why we live all these mission rules. It's not cause they are trying to make us miserable, it's to help us stay focused on what we are doing and remove distractions. That's pretty much it. We have the most important work to do and we can't afford to spend time doing anything worthless.

By the way, we've been taking our dinners at the church lately, so that Elder Bobo can practice a piano piece he's playing for the branch talent show tomorrow night. It will be great. It's a song called "Waterfall" by John Schmidt. It's a hard song, but he's almost got it down.

On saturday we drove out to columbia to see some of the people out there. We drove wayyyy out into the boonies. MIles and miles of fields. Full of cotton, tobacco, soy beans, and wheat. We also could see the smoke plume from the big forest fire over in dare county. We get smoke from that fire blowing into edenton probably every couple of days. It causes major problems for those with asthma. But I think it's gonna burn for a while because I hear it's burning peat moss and that stuff can burn underground for a long time. bad news!

church was great too, we had a little girl whose parents are members get baptized. Although we didn't have anything to do with it, it was still fun to be there and feel the spirit of a baptism.

and then yesterday we got to go up to Elizabeth City and that was fun. Just being near a big-ish city is fun. haha.

Things are going well down here. we are working hard and trying to help others come closer to their Father in heaven. I'm hoping the next week goes great. Thank you for all y'alls prayers and good wishes. I'll talk to ya next week!