Choose to Be Kind.

Hello everyone! Wow, this has been a wonderful week! There has been much good!

We had our first snow fall in Pori! It really was more like sleet. wet snow. It didnt stick a whole lot to the ground...but every night frost appears and yesterday it looked like it snowed because the moisture had just all frozen. we have to scrape our windows every morning on the car. One cool thing that happened this week was that we had to change our tires on the car to winter tires! We just took it onto the church parking alot and did the work in our suits. The funny thing about missionaries is that you get so used to doing everything in a suit that it just seems normal. We got kind of greasy though...which wasn't good. But it was really fun and out of the ordinary.

Our friend who has a baptismal date couldn't come to church this sunday because he was sick, but we had two lessons with him this week and he is really excited about being baptized. We made him a baptismal calendar last week to help him stop smoking and drinking coffee...but he is going faster than expected because he wants to be baptized before my two companions go home in December. he was supposed to be on 9 this week but he skipped down to 7 smokes a day. That is awesome! Me and a missionary who is in his second transfer named elder hale taught him this week about the law of chastity...which he really likes. 

The reason that i was with elder Hale was because my two companions were down in Helsinki for a meeting with all the other missionaries that are going home too this transfer....so that left me here in Pori. So I drove for like the first time in 1 year! Pretty scary stuff. People here in Finland just walk out into the streets...sometimes with out even looking and they have the right of way, so you always need to be watching. But everything went OK. We forgot where we parked once, but after like 20 minutes we found it. 

We did some nice service again this week. We went to that same family that we went to last week. the ones that live out in the woods. We stacked some more fire wood and did some yard work. They fed us blood sausage for dinner and then some pretty small fish called "moikku" it is like a full fried fish. They served it to us cold. the fish was quite odd...the bones were a little crunchy. but the sausage was actually pretty good. I actually really like most of the Finnish food that I have tried. Lots of meatballs and potatoes and sausage. And then there are some really weird desserts here, but they taste good. This one dessert that we ate with this family was this red slimey goo stuff. Kind of like a red loogie. But with whipped cream it is really good. 

Church was really good this week. I blessed the Sacrament for the first time. Our branch is the best. I really love all of the members here. It is amazing how quick my allegiance has changed. Pori is the best city. No matter where you serve, you just seem to love it if you choose to! I read the talk that president Oaks gave in the women's session of conference this morning...and i loved how he talked alot about kindness. We can choose to be kind. It was a good time for me to reflect on the moments that I wish I was more kind and also on the good moments when my kindness might have made a difference. One of my goals these past two transfers has been that I want to become the companion that I would want to serve with. And that includes always being kind! It surely is not in my nature to be mean, but as i have fine tuned my attributes, i have seen huge changes. I know that Heavenly Father wants us to be kind to each other! So let us do it. 

Last fun thing that we have been doing on P- day has been monopoly! We play this game a lot. I have not been close to winning yet, but it is a fun game. 

I love you all! Love elder Christensen

We are Not Required to Follow Blindly!

Wow! What an exciting week! I moved out of Vantaa! I have been there quite a while. 6 Months in that ward. I will surely miss all the members and investigators! I was pretty sad at first, but i guess there is something special about being a missionary. You just get to love whoever you are with. I have already developed a huge amount of love for the people here in Pori! Such a good place! pori is an old little town on the west coast of Finland. Like right on the coast, so thats pretty sweet. We are in a trio here, which is always fun. never a silent moment thats for sure. This is my second trio, i was in one in the MTC. We have a car here, so that helps us stay warm and get around easily! There is supposed to be  the first snow fall soon, this week actually sometime. I am going to have to pull out my furred jacket. 

My two companions are named elder Winder and elder Madsen. (very tall guys, i feel like a midget with them) They are both going home after this transfer. We have been working hard though and we are doing great in talking with people and tracting and teaching. There have been a lot of really cool people this week that we have talked to. Many were pretty interested! Our Book of Mormons are all being given away! But that is a good thing! We set a baptismal date too! this investigator is named Pekka. He is trying to get over smoking, and really wants to change, follow Christ and be baptized. We set the date for January 19th. Each week he will drop to one less cigarette until they are all done! We are super excited! and he came to church this sunday! yesterday we sat down with him and had a heart to heart and set some goals and made a plan.....he is ready to go!

The branch here in Pori is quite small. We had like 22 people attend sacrament meeting this week including us 3. elder madsen plays the piano and is in the branch presidency. But the members are super solid. Lots of older sisters and stuff.

One day this week we headed over to a part member family and did a ton of service! we raked leaves for a while, then we stacked firewood, and then helped them move these three giant book shelves to their new house. They were super heavy...good thing there was three of us. It is always good to give service...always leaves me with a good feeling. Their new house was way cool. they are really rich, and everything in the house is electric. all the doors just open and close with buttons. 

I have been continuing to read the Book of Mormon. I am always amazed by Nephi's example. Whenever we have our own questions, we can always look to the examples of living or past prophets of God! when Nephi has a question about something he goes to the Lord and receives revelation. We are not required to follow blindly, but to seek our own personal answers! There is so much more that our Heavenly Father wants to give us!

I love you all! Elder Christensen

Goodbye Vantaa....Hello CAR!!

Well, it was a grand last week of the transfer! This transfer was 10 weeks long, but it has gone by pretty fast! They just get better and better. I will unfortunately be leaving Vantaa. I have really enjoyed the past 6 months and have met the best people here! My favorite investigators too! My new area will be Pori, which is over on the west coast. I heard that they have a really nice beach there, and we get a car (just in time for the winter :) ) I will be in a trio with 2 elders going home. That is going to get intense. I already served with one elder that went home. It is an experience. that is all I can say. You kind of feel like you are going home to...it takes some recovery time to get back to normal haha but there is nothing like continuing the Lord's work here in Finland! I have loved every second of it! 

We had a great last lesson with our investigator Risto! My favorite guy ever. He will get baptized someday! Hopefully next transfer. We invited him to be baptized on December 8th, but he doesn't feel that he has enough faith yet. But he said "we'll see" and that he will pray about it and get back to us. 

This week I started to read the Book of Mormon again from the beginning. That is one of the answers that I got from General Conference! It has been such a blessing for me so far! I love the example of Nephi! I have also been studying a ton about the attribute: Knowledge. How can I get more knowledge? I really like what Nephi does, every time he is wanting something, he goes to the Lord, and actively seeks it, he is obedient. I am pretty sure that he didn't start with everything already being known. It came little by little as he searched for it. I know that as we do just like Nephi did, then we to can come to know all of the mysteries of God! 

We had a way awesome experience last night when we were street contacting. We stopped this girl, she was in a rush, but we really wanted to share the Book of Mormon with her. So we asked if we could share a really short message about the book with her. We talked about how reading the Book of Mormon has really helped us come to feel God's love and to know that he really is our Loving Heavenly Father. She took it and we read a little of the introduction with her. And when she left she seemed really happy. There is so much power in this Book! As missionaries we get to tell people about the things that have blessed our lives!

I hope that you all had a wonderful week! Love elder christensen

These are from picture night a while back.

ONE YEAR MARK!

Wow! conference was amazing! It is always so good to hear the words of the prophets! I have been looking forward to this time since last april! I havent heard yet the sunday evening session...but i will be watching that in like an hour! I am super excited! I really liked the tabernacle choir this time too! So good. We got to watch the conference here at the church in our area. There was a room for Finnish and then also a room for English translation. so luckily we got to go watch in my mother tongue. I dont know what my favorite talk was yet...too many good ones. I really liked sister cordon's talk. there is always so much more that we can be doing as members of Jesus Christ's church! Also, i will never be calling myself a mormon again...that is some pretty clear instruction. This is Jesus Christ's church not Mormon's. I have been struggling with how to respond for the past couple months when people ask if I am a mormon...I always hesitate and then finally say yes. But really, we should say YES I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! Also, two hour church on sunday...! wow. There are a lot of small branches here in finland that already have only 2 hour sessions...so not super crazy here...but the ward that I am in his a full 3 hours. There are some exciting times upon us. It is so important that we choose to follow Christ's servants. Doing that is going to get us to where we want to be. 

This week got to help a family here in our ward paint their daughters house...Boy it was tough work. I have not painted yet on my mission...and my arms got sore and my thumbs got blisters on them from using the roller for like 3 hours. We painted a white room white....with limited light...there was a lot of squinting to see..but it looked great in the end! Service really is one of the best things that we can do for everyone. No matter who you are, we all need a little service here and there...and more importantly, we all need to give a little service here and there. It does us more good to serve! I definitely have a testimony of this. 

One of the guidances that I received in conference, and the preparation leading up to it, was that i need to put a greater focus on the Book of Mormon. Study it every day. use it in contacts, and teach from the Book of Mormon. It is the tool that we have been given to gather all of God's children. I can surely put a greater effort into this.

 

Anyway, fall is here. All of the trees are turning red and orange. It is very pretty. Also really rainy. I have already lost two umbrellas here. I must go buy another today. One i left on a train, and the other got stolen while i was tracting. Bummer. I hit my one year as a missionary also this week!

Our investigators are doing good right now. Risto really loves the prophet!

I love you all

 

It's Baaaaaaack!!! Winter is knocking at the door!

It was an awesome week! We were so busy this week, lots of work to do here in vantaa!

 Also, it is starting to get quite cold now. We hit 0 degrees celsius on saturday. it was a chilly one. all the plants and cars had frost all over them.

 

That was also the day of our ward temple day! As missionaries we got to do tours around the temple grounds and show pictures of the inside to our investigators and less active members! It was really really fun! Our investigator Tina came with us and we had an awesome time showing her around the temple and explaining everything to her. She really liked the celestial room and said that if she could go in, she would cry! She really does have a strong desire to follow Jesus Christ! There were so many people there at the temple. there were also two other wards and i ate lunch with 5 russians. They gave me some of their salad..it tasted quite interesting, thats for sure. We get to see a lot of members from other countries here at the temple. It is home to finland, latvia, lithuania, estonia, part of russia, and belarus. It is lots of fun to see everyone!

We also did a ward picture day, there is a missionary here and he was a professional photographer when he was home. He took a ton of pictures. next week hopefully he will have sent them to us and i can send them in the email. They turned out really well.

I also had a fun time teaching English class this week! We started with some tongue twisters. my favorite one was "How can a clam cram in a clean cream can? so hard...i practiced for like 1 and a half hours though, and i can do it now. 

Something way cool that happened this week was, i was looking through our records and found this guy named emanuel that was contacted by the missionaries about a year ago...and hadn't been followed up with. So we called him and met with him yesterday. It turns out that he is one of the Cameroonian guys that we play soccer with on saturday mornings. Such a small world! We gave him the Book of Mormon and he is going to read it. hopefully we can meet again this week!

I read a new talk this week called "what lack i yet?" by elder lawrence. Such a good talk. I would encourage everyone to read it. There is always something that we can do to improve our lives or the lives of others. It talks about asking heavenly father to show us our weaknesses and to help us become better. In order for this to happen, we need to ask for it. I love the quote from president nelson : There is so much more that your heavenly father wants you to know!  What more can I do to get more out of the gospel/life/family/work/etc? I will be applying this the rest of my life hopefully!

Also we did some face masks this week, i got some black goo on my white shirt though.......

I love you all, and i am so excited for General conference! Couldnt be happier!

love, elder christensen