0% Chance...

Good morning,

Wow, we had a grand week. The work has been very energizing. I love it. one down side is that We have made poor food purchases the last two weeks, so we run out of everything very fast. my lunches and breakfasts have been lacking. but we always have a great dinner. But today we are smarter and will buy enough. 

The summer is ending here and fall is coming quick. We no longer have daylight all the time. It actually gets pretty dark before we even get inside now days. Also there have been a few rains recently. I think i might be gone before the first snow comes. We shall see...

Today we are going to Downtown Helsinki, we are going to go shopping for some souvenirs and explore the area. It is going to be way good. we are going to go check out the soccer stadium too, and maybe the hockey stadium.

Well, our week together has been full of miracles. We have been finding a lot of girls to teach. I think that we had like 7 first lessons with girls, so we need to call a lot of members this week for some help. It was good though, because now we are introduced to all of them. We are both new to the ward so there has not been that connection with the members already. We did have a Filipino member give us a whole sack of fried chicken on sunday, which was awesome. It was a big blessing because saturday was the day we ran out of food. We had another miracle too! We recently found this elderly lady named sara. She is a big golfer. We taught her the restoration and she was way into it. we have very high hopes for her. At the end of the lesson we invited her to come to church and she said, if it is bad weather and I cannot go golfing, then I will come to church. And I said, "ok, then I will pray for bad weather every single day this week." so we made a deal. I prayed and all week and there was sun shiny skies. So I checked the weather it says that sunday is supposed to be 0% chance of rain, and sunny. So i decided to give her a call on saturday night and I said "So, it does not look like it is going to rain tomorrow." and she says "nope, it is going to be a beautiful day to go golfing." and we laugh and then i try to convince her and ask if she could come to just the first hour at 10 AM and then go golfing...but she says no and that one day the weather will be bad and she will come. so we part ways. But then right before sacrament meeting starts I see a girl that looks just like her come in and sit down.....I am thinking there can be no way, she doesn't even know where the church is. so i put the thought away. After sacrament meeting she leaves pretty fast and we never get to talk to her. But the member that went on the lesson was the door man, and he saw her and it turns out it was our friend! He said "I talked to her really briefly before she left. she was in a hurry to play golf!" wow. what a miracle. she came! In the evening I gave her a call and she said "I felt like those talks were just for me. Thanks for inviting me!" Wow, a blessing from a loving Heavenly Father to someone who shows desire! We can all have that every single week! As we put aside things to do the more important things, we will be so grateful!

I hope that you all have a great week!

love Elder Christensen

Elders on Film!

Hello!

Wow, the start of the last transfer! My mission has gone by so fast. I cannot believe it is already this time. This past sunday I saw a missionary give his homecoming talk. He served in Sweden and was in the MTC when I was there. I still remember seeing him on my very first day. 

My new companion is named Elder Pauole. He is from Nephi Utah. It has been fun to train again. I forgot how much patience it requires. I have already learned somethings in our first week together. We are opening an area in South Espoo. There are two wards in Espoo and I was just in the north ward for the past 6 months. Now we are in the other one. I told the members that I liked this new one better and they loved it. On sunday there was a member that gave us two baguettes and another that invited us to dinner, and then one gave us some chocolate. We shall be taken care of here. 

I have really loved this new area so far. We dont have a car so we travel with bus and metro very often...or we walk. It has been good though. Always an opportunity to be talking to someone. A day ago while we were talking with this older fellow and his dog in the park. We had  nice chat about being people's friends and serving people and then we said bye and I turned away and his little weenie dog ran up and bit the back of my calf. That is the first time that has ever happened to me. It was bizarre. but the work continues onward. There is this really cool woman here from Estonia that we are teaching named Anneli. We gave her a baptismal date for mid september. And she is really excited, so hopefully it can move along forward. She has a 2 week old cat that is really cute. It ran around The floor during our entire lesson. 

One way crazy thing that is going on right now is that there is a company making a "district 4" type video/documentary thing of the missionaries in Finland. They selected 4 of the new missionaries and have been following them around before the mission and at the MTC and now here in the field. My trainee is one of the 4!! It is SO crazy! We had 16 people plus the camera crew to drive to and from the airport, so I stayed as an AP for an extra day and got to go pick all the missionaries up! I got to drive sister Aura's car home. It was awesome. None of the camera crew or people making the movie are members of the Church...at least not yet....they keep feeling the spirit really strongly and the camera man actually started crying during the filming and he could not see what his camera was pointing at. I think it is really cool. One thing I do not like though is when the camera gets like a foot away from your face and you are supposed to act like it is not there and just keeping talking normal. One of the trainees asked me for a funny story that happened to me in finland, and out of the corner of my eye come the camera man zooming in and this person holding the fluffy pillow thing on a stick. Wow, that was a high stress two minutes. The crew will be staying with us in a couple weeks again so we need to plan some antics to get on film. just kidding...

But we had a way cool spiritual experience. The day after we picked up the trainees we were going to go to the Temple with all of them and the crew was going to be there. But the bad part was that it was the WORST thunder and lightning storm I have seen in Finland. But we all got into the cars hoping that the rain would stop. I just kept praying and praying that the trainees would be able to see the temple and walk around. The camera crew then sends us a text saying that it is impossible for them to film in the weather and they must pull out. But we were 2 minutes away from the temple, so we kept driving (they were already there). Right when we pulled into the parking lot everything stopped. No rain. What a miracle! You could see the Camera crew run from the shelters and start the filming again. After 10 minutes and right after we took the final picture, the rain started falling again harder than before. Wow. Everyone was way stunned. I think especially the camera man and the crew chief. In the car on the way back home, me and President and sister Aura sent them a text saying "Your crew has a chief director who has the grander vision." Heavenly Father really wanted to have the missionaries at the temple and for that to be in the film. Soak that one in. But, that ended my 6 months as AP. now I am back to the streets. It is going to be an awesome transfer!

One really cool verse I found while reading the Old Testament this week was : 1 Samuel 15:22

"And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken is better than the fat of the rams." What an important lesson. There is no replacement for being obedient to the Lord! I know that is true!

love Elder Christensen

Bees, Mosquitos, and TICKS... Oh My!!

Wow, this has been a way good week. My very last here as an AP. 

We prayed about transfers this Friday,

and no matter how hard I tried, it was not the Lord's will for me to stay. So for my last transfer I will be opening an area in South Espoo. There are two Espoo wards. I am currently in Espoo 1, or north Espoo. So tomorrow I will be transferring to South Espoo and opening up the area, and I will be training too! I was pretty surprised that it actually happened. We talked about it a few weeks ago but I did not believe it would happen especially because I was going to open an area and there were only three elders coming in, and I have also already trained. But it did, and I am way excited. I will also be District leader and work on getting everyone pumped. I will be in the same district as the one I am in right now. So basically no change. haha. 

Also, there are 11 sisters coming from the MTC, because of that, I am going to stay an extra day as an AP and help transport all the missionaries from the Airport. I will also stay around that night at the mission home with all the trainees. That will be super fun. 

For most of this week we have been organizing stuff to do with transfers and spending money with righteous judgement. I love this time of the transfer. Putting the travel together is a real task but so cool how it comes together. Also, for exercise in the mornings elder Krause and I have been going to play some frisbee golf a couple times...but never again... at least not at the place we went to. At first it was really fun, but quite quickly the course became our enemy. So many times our frisbees would fly into the woods. and I swear, every plant in there is poisonous, and that even if your sock touches it you get hurt. Bees, mosquitos, spider bites, horse poop, thorns, rain, and worst of them all, Ticks. We were attacked by all of these things. While "resting" two days later I found a tick deeply burrowed into my skin. I believe that I was blessed greatly and was able to pull it out with some tweezers, and not have to have to go to a professional to have it removed. But any way, I have had a few bad flash backs to that moment since that day. but all is well now in Zion.

The mission had its best week of the year. We had like 44 people in church as a mission and 36 new friends found, and 3 people baptized. We are all in high spirits! 

This is veli rosenberg, he told me that I was an angel in his life and that he loved me. finns dont do that. One reason i served here was to bring him back! probably my best friend i have made in the mission.

I really love a quote that President Aura told us a couple days ago "You need to love change more than you want to stay the same." If you are so set on keeping everything, our grudges, our kindness, pride, etc...we will never gain anything. This life is not about what you are able to gain, but about what you are able to give up, because that is when we gain the most. I have noticed also how my desires have changed, or maybe the reason to why I do things as I have applied this during my mission. I have never been disobedient, but there was definitely a time when I changed from doing things just because I wanted to obey the rules, and to do them instead because I loved Jesus Christ and my Father in Heaven, and that I wanted to show my trust and love for them. That is when I began to understand why, that is when it became more meaningful to me. 

Love you all! Enjoy last couple days of summer if it is still there for you!

.....Come on in.

Hello!

Wow, we had a busy week. It was way fun though. We had a meeting called MLC. That stands for Missionary Leadership Council. We usually have that every month. We had a grand time discussing the needs of the mission. But it was good to see all the buddies and go to the Temple. I am definitely going to miss the Finland temple and also being able to listen to it all in Finnish. the next morning we all went on a run and wow, I almost did not make it. I surely have been in the office too long. We are finalizing transfers though tomorrow and transfer day will be on tuesday, so we shall see what happens. 

We had two splits this week with missionaries. The zone leaders from Tampere and then the ones from Helsinki. They were both really really good. We did lots of Returning Member work. We had three of our friends come to church from that and then even one of our investigators! A young man named Tuomas. He is way cool. speaks so quiet that sometimes his lips dont move and no sound comes out. But that is ok. The gift of Tongues is real! He is doing way good. We have a lot of really awesome people we are working with right now. It is really cool to see how the lives of our returning members have really turned around after finding the light of the Gospel again. Two of them have now set the goal to return to the Temple and to get back on the path. 

We had a really cool tracting contact yesterday. We were following up with some people and there was one here and another one over there. And president Aura recently reminded the mission to not just do follow up, but to also tract around a little bit by each door. maybe a couple doors or so. So this thought keeps running through my head. We were in this area of town were there are a lot of immigrants. I love immigrants but it is really hard to share the gospel with them because they dont know english or Finnish very well. So I was looking for a Finnish name and we walked down a couple flights of stairs, and there we saw it. We knocked this guys door and at three different times we asked him if we could come in and teach him about the Restoration, but he always said no. So we just decided to teach it right there at the door, and wow, the spirit was really strong. He had never heard any of it before and he was super excited. He had looked for God most of his life and right now he does not have a lot of Happiness. At the end of the Restoration I asked him if we could pray with him, he thought about it for a second, and then said, "come on in". 

WOW. 

Sometimes you really need to give it your all and push past the no's. 
This message is the truth and will change their lives! 

All is well here in Finland. I am loving it. 

Love, Elder Christensen