My Second Finnish Christmas!

Wow! What a week! I had such a blast this week. Christmas was way fun! 

My new companion is Elder Kimball. We are still unsure if he is related to President Kimball, but we are working on finding the answer to that though. I picked him up from the mission home on Wednesday, and have had a way good start to our transfer. Every single train that we took was running late so we had to do lots of running to catch the trains, we even missed one and had to wait for an hour and a half for the next one to arrive. I was so close to catching it too. I ran and was pressing the button to open to the doors but the train had already locked and then it drove away into the dark. But the start to the transfer has been so good!

Elder Kimball is a great missionary! He has a lot of faith and he sets way high goals. He reminds me of when I was just getting started and I set way high goals. But I have seen how slowly and slowly I have started to set goals that are a lot lower and it all starts when someone says that we wont make that goal. And I want my trainee to keep his faith so I am not going to tell him to lower his goals but we will set high goals together! It is so easy to say, ah man, we have not found an investigator this whole transfer, lets just set a goal for one this week. But I think that shows little faith. one day during planning I asked my comp how many we could find that day and he said 3, and I was thinking in my head "slow down friend, we only got 3 hours of finding today that we can use" but i agreed. and we worked way hard that night and Heavnely Father lead us to the right doors and to meet with the right people, and We found 4 investigators! And one of them even fed us dinner too! and we also set up a lesson for this week. It is a testimony to me that God works according to the faith of his servants. I am so grateful that I have this opportunity to grow here in Finland and to see Heavenly Father's hand in my life!

Christmas was so fun! we have basically only eaten dinners the past three days because we are so full. We ate at our branch president's home Christmas eve. They gave us each a super soft blanket. The president's wife is filipino, so we ate a lot of Filipino food. Some was quite good, and some was very strange. The dessert was a sort of purple goop that came from a root that can only be bought in one store in Finland. Then on Christmas we got to eat with our relief society president. She fed us the traditional Finnish food. potato casserole, sweet potato casserole, carrot casserole and rhubarb and kidney. And lots of beats. Very good stuff. I actually liked it this year.

 And then yesterday, what a story, I have not eaten so much in my entire life. It just kept coming. It was very good food too. some meat that was flat like a tortilla that was rolled up and had some sort of purple thing in the middle. I am not sure if it was a chicken heart or a purple carrot but it tasted ok. But she is a 86 year old grandma and she loves to have the missionaries over. We had a great time with her. We laughed a lot and it hurt really bad to laugh. after the dinner it was getting hard to sit up straight because i was weighed over with much food. And she brings in the dessert. Smashed up prunes in a jelly form and some whipped cream. Very good stuff. I actually really liked it. but I just couldn't eat any more...just too full. So she went to the kitchen to grab some cookies so we looked around and found a baggy. so we took it and scraped our food into it and hid it in our backpacks. A Christmas miracle. 

I am so grateful to be serving here with these wonderful people! I love my mission! I am so grateful for this church and Jesus Christ!

I love you all! 

Mighty Miracles Coming Down the Pike!

Well, it was a short week, but a great one! We just got done with a 4 hour train ride from pori down here to my old area in Vantaa. I dont have much time so this will be a short one. My comps are going back home to america. They have completed valiant missions. I came down here for these next two days to drop them off and help people with transfers. Then I get my new comp! I am going to be training! Wow I am so excited. It is going to be way fun and we are going to work mighty miracles in Pori. This upcoming transfer is the one for sure!

We had some fun stuff this week. Our Branch Christmas Party! It was so fun! We got to sing the 12 days of christmas for the ward. I don't know why we keep singing for things. we are unbelievably bad. But I guess the ward likes it, so that is ok. At the party we ate rice pudding stuff which was so good. One of our investigators came an hour early so we met with him and talked about family history and he got way excited about it. This guy is named Bishal, from Nepal. Such a cool guy. He is super excited about the gospel. 

One of the things that I have actually noticed on my mission is how exciting the gospel of Jesus Christ really is! If you really think about it, how can you not get excited? and the best part about it is that it is all real!

I am so grateful to be a missionary!

love elder christensen

A CELEBRATION Burger!

Well, It was a great week! I had lots of exciting things happen this week!

last night we had the special opportunity to give a young man a blessing! He is from a different ward, but his city didnt have a hospital, so they came to our city. half of his face was paralyzed, and they were going to do some kind of surgery on him, but before they went in they asked for a blessing. so we hurried over. And we had a wonderful meeting with him! He is the happiest kid ever! We were able to give him the blessing and then talk with his parents while he got the surgery. It is always awesome when you can do little things like this that mean huge things to other people. This morning while we were walking to come email, we saw them walking to Burger King! So we ran over and started talking to them, and it turns out that they were getting a burger in celebration. His face was all better and the surgery had gone really well. What a blessing it is to have the priesthood in these days!

We also found two great investigators this week! One is from Nepal, a student who is really cool and talks really fast english. and the other is from Finland. We met the Finnish guy because we showed up at an old investigators house to visit him who we had never met yet, and we had the wrong address...and this guy was sitting outside smoking. And he called us over and started talking to us. It turns out that he knows the guy we came to visit. and he showed us his door. but before we could knock it he says "but you can come visit me" so we go over there and teach him and he is actually really interested! 

The Finnish independence day was this week. Last year it was a big celebration. it was actually my first day in Finland. but that was because it was the 100th year. This year there didn't seem to be anything. but thats ok. We were not allowed to go tracting on that day so we walked around on the streets a lot trying to hunt people down.

 

For a spiritual thought this week, in the Book of Mormon right now i am reading in 2 Nephi:9 and there was a pretty cool verse. Verse 18 : But, behold, the righteous, the saints of the Holy One of Israel, they who have believe in the Holy One of Israel, they who have endured the crosses of the world, and despised the shame of it, they shall inherit the kingdom of God, which was prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and their joy shall be full forever.

I love how this verse says that the righteous will need to endure our own crosses. Of course we are not going to go through what Christ did, we are not expected to go through everything He did. If we did not have somewhat of the challenge that He had however, how could we fully appreciate what He did for us? We are all going to have our own challenges and trials, but that is what is going to help us prepare and become better. And through it all, we will experience joy!

I hope that you all have a wonderful week!

love elder christensen

It is About US!

We just had a great week! It was a busy one!

We had an awesome mission tour! One of the 70 members came to visit our mission. His name was elder engbjörn or something like that. He is from Denmark. Really really nice guy and has so much love. I learned a lot from him. He got to interview me too, and that was pretty fun! Mission tour was awesome because almost all of my MTC group was there! and my trainer elder Fielding was there too. He is going home this transfer. That will be a sad day!

We started the month of December off with a big day of service! We gave out chocolate cookies to people in the center of pori. It was way fun. I had a blast. It was pretty hard to get people to take the cookies. but we did give out a few. We made 128 in total. It was really cold that day, so the cookies began to get a little hard and frozen. There was this particular experience when a grandma was way grateful and tried to bite into the cookie but it wasn't breaking. So she tried a couple more times but soon just put it into her pocket and walked off. Another crazy thing that happened was that I tried to offer this other elder woman a free cookie and she said no and wasn't very nice and walked off, so i moved on to the next guy and he was super excited for the cookie. We got talking a little bit and he took a bite and let out a grunt, and i thought it was because the cookie was way hard but he starts running past me. It turns out that woman had fallen down and banged her head, so we ran over and helped her and called the ambulance. She ended up being really grateful for us and our kindness towards her. Hopefully she will remember this the next time she meets missionaries! God is preparing people here to receive this message and not everyone is ready right now, but some are getting ready!

We had a great night of tracting last night too! we had two let in lessons which was sweet! Tracting is always good. I have really come to love knocking doors. On a normal day we usually tract for around 6.5-7.5 hours a day. I have really come to enjoy it. We cannot teach if we cannot find. Joy really does come from trying your best and being anxiously engaged in the work.

Our investigators are doing great. we have a lesson with Färzad (the 16 year old we taught last week). We are going to invite him to be baptized! hopefully it all goes well! 

One scripture that I really liked this week is Deuteronomy 22:1-4

 1 Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother.2 And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again.3 In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment; and with all lost thing of thy brother’s, which he hath lost, and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise: thou mayest not hide thyself.4 ¶ Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again.

I think that one of the most important lessons that I have learned here in Finland is that it isn't about me. It is about us. We cannot afford to not serve one another. One quote that I really like is : "See a problem, Fix a problem" These verses remind me that when i serve others I serve my Father in Heaven! By not choosing to be in the service of others, I choose not to be in His service. We are his greatest creation, and his greatest Joy. I am so grateful for all those times that I have been served, and for every minute that I am given to serve here in Finland!

Thanks for all the support! I love you all!

Elder Christensen