This past week and a half has been FULL of amazing experiences. One of the my favorites was when we met the sweetest family ever. About a week ago, we were trying to find a less active in the town of Fairfield. We went to her house and rang the door bell. A young mother came to the door and we asked if Vanessa was there, a 6 year old girl peeked around the door and said, "we don't know her". We found out this young family had moved in around May this year. We asked if we could do anything for them and gave them our number on a mormon.org card. The little girl, Natalie, asked us if we wanted to see her playground in the backyard and the mother invited us to go around back. Natalie's little brother, Alexander, came out to play as well. The mother was cooking dinner inside, so the father came out to watch the kids (with these two strange girls around). His name is Richard and he is originally from the U.K. But they just moved in from Atlanta and he works in Manhattan, NY. We talked to him for a while about religion. His boss was Mormon and he had gone with him to the Atlanta Temple open house. He talked to us a little bit about that experience. He told us that he thought Mormons were secretive and closed but then when he went to the open house he realized that is not true and he thought that the temple wasn't as strange as he thought it would be, he said it was quite normal with a few things that were kind of different. When we were on our way out, the little girl ran inside and grabbed the mormon.org card and asked if we could write down our names on it. She was so sweet! We think she will be such a key player in working with this family!

Their family is Catholic, but since they are so new to the area, we are hoping to get them quickly introduced with young families in our ward and help them feel welcomed and wanted here (before they get too settled in their church). There are so many people around here who are too deeply "involved" in their own churches that they dont even consider thinking about what others believe. But it was so cool talking to this guy. We have thought of the perfect family to introduce to them right away. We talked to the husband of this family and told him about them and he instantly got excited and let his wife know. We have made a plan with her to stop by the house and invite them to the Labor day picnic :) I am so excited! I think this is one reason why neither Sister Hinton nor I was transferred this time around. This will be the longest I have been with one companion so far!

That was basically the high light of this week, but it has been good. There is so much potential in this area. Working with two wards is hard and I think we are barely getting our feet on the ground so I think that is why we are both staying here. We are starting to build stronger relationships in the wards and I love the people so much. I cant wait to have even better relationships with them. But its going to be a lot harder than normal because we cant keep our full focus on one ward. but hopefully all goes well!

I hope everyone is doing better this week, sounds like last week was kind of crazy and scary. I hope you all know I love you and are so grateful for you. I pray for you everyday! Have a wonderful, safe week :)

 Love, Sister Christensen

This week has been a pretty great week. First of all. The Hartford Temple Groundbreaking was amazing! I wish I had the chance to go to the site but we had to be invited and none of the missionaries were. But it was still really great to watch. President Monson was so sweet. He wasn't doing very well but he still held himself high and gave a beautiful dedicatory prayer and talk. One thing he said that I really liked in the prayer was, "as we dedicate this temple ground may we rededicate our hearts to thee." It was pretty powerful.

Last night was the last Missionary Musical Fireside of the year. I played in it again and it was probably the best one I have been to. It was amazing. The spirit was so strong! I wish all of you could have had the chance to be there. 

We invited SO MANY non members to come but only one, that we invited that day, came. But it was pretty cool to have him there. His wife is a member but he is jewish. He comes to church with her once in a while, the Bishop said like once every few months, and when he comes they only stay for sacrament meeting. But we visited them a few weeks ago and then they went on vacation,  but since they have been back they have been to church every week! Though only for sacrament meeting still. So we invited him at church yesterday and he seemed like he was not interested so we made sure to invite his wife. They showed up, but then she told sister Hinton that she was taking a nap and he woke her up to drag her to the fireside!! And after the program he said, "wow. that was a really good program!" Made me so happy :). We are going to be instruments in his conversion now! well hopefully. That would be pretty neat.

So next week is transfers!! just be aware I will not email until Wednesday next week. Love you all! The work is great and such a blessing to be a part of. I feel the huge blessing and miracle it has been for me to be here, in this mission, serving a mission, and with the people I have met and interacted with. I love it!!

Love, Sister Christensen

Miracle of Temples

I love this place, I love this work, I love this gospel! I feel this love more and more each day as I try to do what the Lord has asked me to do that day. As I try to teach others about Christ and helping them find the joy in the gospel. I keep thinking about the Hartford Temple and how amazing and what a miracle it is that it is finally being built. I know I wrote about it last week, but it has been a major topic for this past week since the ground breaking is THIS Saturday! It was announced in 1992, 21 years ago. We had an amazing zone conference this past week. President Haight from the mission presidency talked about the miracle of the Temple and he said "when the ground breaks the bells of Hell will ring, and they will ring loud". Satan is going to work so hard to try and not let the miracles happen here that are meant to happen. He already is working hard, since the temple was announced 21 years ago! But of course it is all in the Lords timing. It is amazing what is happening here. Even in this area, specifically, miracle after miracle is happening. I cannot express my gratitude for being placed here at this time to witness all of these miracles! I love being here. 
I love the mission presidency, they are all so incredible. When President Haight was talking I was overwhelmed with the feeling of the spirit. It was so palpable in that room. Everywhere he goes he brings a strong spirit with him. It is incredible. He talked a little bit about his conversion story. Which was amazing. His mother (an inactive) was one of those people that yelled at members/ missionaries telling them she's going to call the police (you have no idea how many times I have heard that..). They had a neighbor, who I think was her visiting teacher or something, who would come and visit every month with the same response of yelling in her face and 
being threatened to call the police on her. And one day President Haights mother softened her heart and she is active and he and two of his brothers served full time missions. I wish I could tell it the same way as he did, but it was an incredible story.

President Packard talked about the love he has for his wife and family at the end of the conference. You could literally feel the love they had and it is a true, true love. They have created Zion in their family, no doubt. I could sit there all day listening and watching that family. Michael, his son, just turned 13 last week, and President had him share his testimony on the spot in front of the two zones present. He was so cute, he has a powerful testimony, stronger than I ever thought a 13 year old kid could have.

This week has been a very powerful week for me, I wish I could share all the experiences I have had, but that would take too long and I have probably started to bore you all :) But I just want to say how blessed I have been while serving this mission. I could not have asked for a better place to be.

Love, Sister Christensen

Painting of what the Hartford CT Temple will look like

Great Week, Great P-days, Great Potentials!

This week has been so crazy! We have found a million potentials this week, its kind of overwhelming because we don't really know how to start or get around to everyone! So many people are coming out of the wood work, it's amazing. The Bridgeport Elders put together a few lists of members (Less active or inactive) in certain areas that no one knows about and gave them to members in their area to find them. We got a few of the lists and did a lot of that this week. Most of them had moved out even a few years ago, but as we talked to the people that live there now a lot of them seemed interested and were pretty nice. Potentials! we had so many neat experiences this week :)

For example, We stopped by this one house, and the person we were looking for had moved out. But the lady that lives there now was outside working on her car with her father in law and apparently a member from the ward is their landlord! The father in law has been to the DC temple (just to walk around the grounds of course) and said if she has a chance to go that she should go.  He bore a testimony of the temple with out even knowing it! He said that it is the best place you could visit and has the best feeling about it :). She seemed interested after that for sure! It was awesome.

Another random story for this week; there is this inactive lady (who I am pretty sure I have talked about before), who the Spanish Elders found(well she found them) by walking down her street and her yelling at them saying she hadn't seen missionaries in a long time. We were able to visit her around that time which was over a month ago now. Her daughters went away to visit their dad in new Jersey for the past month. She told us she would like us to come and have dinner with her during that time but when we tried calling and stopping by she never would answer. so we tried again and this time she called back and said she hasnt been answering because she didnt want to be bothered. But we were able to stop by with a member and talk with her. She is so great. She asked if the reason we were there was to get her to come to church. She said she would come with her two daughters (who just returned from New Jersey, and are not members) to church yesterday. But we had to find a member to give them a ride. We did and then she called the member and said she couldnt find her house keys so she didnt come to church.. or to the inter faith musicale that we had last night.. BUT we are having dinner with her wednesday :) Hopefully she wont flake on us again. She really is such a neat lady. I think she will come back sometime. I dont want to give up on her. 

Anyway, crazy week, thats for sure. But it was good. We had the sister trainer leaders come do exchanges with ussaturday and that was really good, I learned a lot. and we had a fabulous Inter faith Musicale with lots of non members at our church for it! Lots of potentials there too :).

Love, Sister Christensen