Be Diligent and Win the Prize!!

What a week! This was a great one. sorry i dont have a lot of time today. we are going to the zoo.

elder payne and i are working hard finding the people that will build up the kingdom of God here in Finland. It all started with pizza hut last pday! i was very excited for it. but we got there and it turns out that pizza hut here in Finland is a sit down restaurant and fine dining. They were so expensive too! 31 euros! it tasted good, but i will never be going there again here in finland. That is an outrageous sum of money. 

I was able to give a talk this sunday! it was my first in this ward...so it has been like 5 months since i have given a talk. I gave a ton in my first area..seinäjoki. but the ward there has like 15 people on a good sunday so it isnt that scary..even in Finnish. But here is like the size of my home ward...the good old satellite beach ward. But it went way good! I spoke about diligence and how important it is in missionary work and ministering and everything that we do! I love Mosiah 4:27 And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order. 

I feel that sometimes people use this verse as an excuse...they ask "it says that a man should not run faster than he has strength doesn't it?" yeah, well i feel like God will provide us the strength to do all things that he has commanded. he wont give us an assignment that he knows we cannot fulfill. It is important that we put forth 100% of the effort that we can give. As president uchtodorf says "lift where we stand" I have seen this so much during my mission. Being diligent gets you that prize.

I must go now, but we found these two really cool finnish investigators this week. Risto, an old man and ekku and young dad. We shall see how it goes this week! quite hard to teach in finnish but we are doing good so far.

love elder christensen

....tearing fabric...

Good morning all! 

What a blast this transfer has been so far! We are really having a good time here in Vantaa. It was pretty rainy these past few days...last night it was storming out! And pretty cold. The sun no longer is up by the time we go to bed. We are fearful that summer may be coming to a close.

This week was a busy one. One great thing was that we had zone conference this week. that is always a great meeting. the europe area has created this new program or whatever it is called. "Read the Book of Mormon for 21 days" I am really excited to share that with our investigators and less active members. We dont read the entire thing in 21 days, but each day there are certain verses that we can read and by the end of the program it should hopefully become a habit. we tried this with ourselves 4 months ago to try and make it a habit to do a role play everyday. at the end of the 21 days, it really was a habit. Zone conference is always fun because we get to meet everyone and chat. my trainer was there and my third companion. We had a fun time catching up on old times.  

After zone conference a member asked us to help him move a couch from our old apartment in tikkurila. they are selling it now. that was the only thing left. So of course we said yes. we get up there...we live on the 4th floor, and take off our suit coats and get right into the work. I bend over (making sure i am bending with my knees) and lift with my might...and i guess my leg muscles were flexing but seconds later we hear something that sounds like tearing fabric. At first we just paused...but then i said "oh no...these are my good pants" the rip is so huge!! probably like 8 inches in length right on the seam on my backside and maybe like 5 inches wide. We continued to work and i couldn't change my pants for about 5 hours. I can say that the see through stairs at the train station were a struggle. 

But there were a ton of great things this week! We taught this guy named matt...he is the guy we played basketball with a couple times. he asked us to teach him a little about what we believe as mormons. it was great. we shared the Book of Mormon with him and he said he would read it. He also wants to meet again and play basketball. He is my number one target for this transfer. just a normal guy, like 25 years old, trying to figure out life!

I had the opportunity this week to teach gospel principles on sunday. The weeks lesson was on prayer. I learned SO much about prayer. One thing that occurred to me as i studied for it was, "is a prayer really a prayer if it is not sincere" this question really made me think about my prayers and what i can do to make them more sincere. OF course heavenly father already knows what we need, and what we want...but he wants to hear it from us. There is a definition of prayer that i saw, and it is: heartfelt and sincere speech with God...i like heartfelt and sincere communication with god a lot better. When we communicate with someone, that is what leads to understanding. in sports, if someone messes up or makes a bad play..some might say that there was a lack of communication among the players...someone might have said something or given an order..but there was lacking understanding...when we communicate with each other...and especially with God, instead of just speaking to him, then that is when we will see a difference. I am going to work on that these next couple weeks and see if i cant create a habit of communicating with my father in heaven. And also a little side note, dont we know that communication takes two to work? allow God his chance to communicate back.

I got to see one of my friends from 4 months ago. his name is hien ha. i taught him like 2 times a week for a while but then he moved to seinäjoki..my first area...but he was down here visiting for the day! 

There work is moving along here! Thanks for all that you do! love elder christensen

Airplane Museum

Take that LEAP!!

Wow, what a crazy past week. so many things happened! we spent all day Tuesday deep cleaning our apartment in tikkurila because we are going to be selling it. Everything had to go. Our train station is also where many missionaries switch trains, so we had to help like 8 people find their new trains...and let me tell you it gets pretty stressful...every single train was delayed that a missionary was on i think. It was crazy. but in the end it always works out. except last transfer we accidentally put an elder on the wrong train...but that worked out too. 

My new comp is elder Payne...he has been out on his mission for 2 months longer than me. he is a pretty cool guy. I have never been so pumped on my mission before to just go out an talk to people. We are going to have a great transfer...i know it. 

One funny thing that happened this week was that we had a meeting with the bishop and one of the things that we discussed before church in the meeting was getting a translator for at least the elders quorum president who is from the philippines. I am fine translating for people but that guy at least has to have all of the facts and not the half translation and half made up stuff that i sometimes give out while i am translating. And the bishopric agreed that he needs to have a translator that is better than us...but when we get to third hour priesthood, what happens?... well the stake president comes with his counselors and no one is willing to do the translation so i start doing it for the elder's quorum president and two minutes later i somehow have the a microphone and a headset and am translating for like 20 people. it is crazy stuff. but it always works out in the end...

We had a really awesome lesson with this investigator named hung. he is from vietnam and has been taught since January or so. He can be baptized anytime but does not want to commit. he has been to church like 20 sundays in a row or something like that. When i found out that i would be teaching him i prayed very hard that we would be able to teach him something that would help him make that final step. I felt like we needed to talk about the priesthood and to offer to give him a blessing. We decided to do those things and wow, i have not felt the spirit that strong before in a lesson. We gave him that blessing and he was so grateful. the spirit was so powerful in that little room for the next 20 minutes. he could feel is so strongly too...it actually got hard to talk. He said he would think about baptism again. It is so important that we follow the promptings of the holy ghost. He definitely knows a lot better than we do what the people around us need.

I also had another neat experience this week when we helped this young lady with her bags at the train station and then got her to her new train. she was way early so we chatted with her for like 40 minutes about life and it turns out that she lived with Mormons in California as a exchange student for a year! she really looked up to them and asked us all kinds of questions. her friend from that family just got called to serve in Denmark! she really wants to know more about it and wants to meet with us. unfortunately she lives out of our area, but she will meet with the sister missionaries. Heavenly father is sending prepared people our way..we just need to be the ones to talk to them!

Also, while teaching english class, someone asked me to define the word "Leap" and that got me thinking for the next couple hours what a leap was to me.  I would define a leap as a jump at first...but then after thinking about it i changed my mind. I think it is a jump where every possible muscle is used to its fullest...when you think of a leap...everything should be working towards that destination in you.  In the olympics if you see a long jumper, i am sure that everything that they do is helping them make that leap. A leap of faith is not just blindly following God but putting all that you have into following Him even when you don't know how it will all work out. I have a testimony of this.

thanks for all that you guys do! love elder christensen

Become the Companion I Want to Serve With

Wow! this was a fast week. I cannot really remember what happened this week so this might be a short letter. It is me and elder jones' last one together. we have transfers tomorrow! Elder jones is going back home to iowa. It has been a good one. thats for sure.

 My area got combined with the other missionaries in our ward. i will be staying next transfer here with one of them. we know each other pretty well because we have been in the same district the past 8 weeks...so We are pretty excited. His name is elder payne. he is one group above me so we are inexperienced...but that is a good thing...it will make us rely on faith more. Today we are just going to be packing and cleaning our apartment...the mission is going to sell it so we have to get everything out.

We helped this family move this week...this is the third time in 8 weeks. They always take us out to eat after, so it is ok. It feels good to give service!

We have been playing basketball once a week with this guy named matt. All the finnish people challenge us to basketball because we are from america...we loose every time. But we have become good friends with this guy named matt. Slowly, we have been talking about our message, what we do as missionaries and what Mormons believe. Every time we see him i can see his interest level go up. on thursday, after he beat us, we were talking and he keeps asking us about what we do and what we believe...and then he asks us if we have church on sundays and if he can come!!! It was way awesome. He is just a normal guy that is seeking for the truth. It taught me a good lesson that there are so many ways that we can do missionary work. Even playing basketball with one of your potential's friends is a good thing to try! 

My goal for this upcoming transfer is to become the companion that I want to serve with. Everything that i want to have in a companion...i am going to start building in me. If you relate it to finding a spouse...if you want to marry this perfect person..then you should start building those same qualities in yourself. It reminds me of a quote by president uchtdorf a while ago in preitshood session when he said : if there ever was a prefect girl to marry..why on earth would she ever choose you? It is so much more important that we build up good qualities in our selves than just looking at others for their faults or weaknesses. 

I love you all! next email will be better.

"avoid it!"

Hello Hello!

we had a jolly good week here in Finland! We are staying busy for elder jones' last couple of days here. This transfer is already ending...crazy. but we get our new assignements on friday. They might be combining our area with another one because our mission is losing about 7 missionaries this transfer...so we will be shrinking a little. 

Elder Jones

We had some great activites this week. one of them was the ward soccer and frisbee activity that we have every saturday! it is so fun and investigators love it. I had a really cool experience also this saturday. we were walking up the path to go play, and this guy was walking towards us and i got the thought to ask him to come play with us and that he would say yes for sure. So I said :terve terve and i ask him what he is doing and he says he is exercising, and then i say we are about to go play soccer...and he says: can i come? we have become great friends now. He really loves the ward and all the people that came. he also said he wants to come to church someday. His name is AK. I feel like i get promptings like this all the time...usually they aren't : "ask him..he will say yes" but like "you should talk to him...that might be a good thing to do." the trick is to always follow the promptings. Nothing has ever gone wrong when i did. 

Another good thing this week has been teaching our friend MIKI about life goals and planning. It has been going really good and i have already seen a ton of improvement in him. he always comes to church now, and goes to sports day and he even helps us teach finnish to people. We have been talking alot with him about temptation and how he can resist it. His goal is to get to the temple by sep.29 and so in order to do that he needs to be worthy. There is this awesome talk called "avoid it!" by lynn g robbins. maybe one of the best talks i have ever heard. it says that temptation is so much easier to avoid, than it is to resist. I can walk down the meat aisle every week or the candy aisle and tell myself that i am not going to buy anything but just chekcing to see if they have enything that is 30% off...but once i get in that aisle you start getting hungry or your mouth starts to water and maybe every-time I have gotten some ribs here, some pork there, a chocolate bar here and two bags of gummies over there. I know from experience that i cannot go down those aisles without buying something. The only way to not buy it is to avoid it...to skip that aisle completely. I have done that a couple times, and it does work. When we put our selves in the position to be around temptation, then we are going to have a tough time holding strong...avoid it...run away and get out of there. Or you might have a sick stomach after you ate a whole bag of salty licorice in 15 minutes. 

Something weird that happened this week was that the train station started on fire or something. we were in the middle of teaching at the park and we look up and see that for about 15 minutes. hopefully nothing too bad happened. 

In my personal study i read the verse in Doctrine and Covenants 64:25 it says: 

25 Wherefore, if ye believe me, ye will labor while it is called today.

It is so important that we do it TODAY! dont wait for tomorrow. the time is now.

i love you all!

elder christensen