Hello everyone!

This week has been a pretty busy one. Apparently there was supposed to be a huge snow storm early in the week that was supposed to dump 10 inches of snow on us. But that didn't happen... We got a very light dusting of snow. I think the weather people need to do more research, because we had a big storm last week when they thought that was a dusting. Guess they just switched the storms up.

We went on exchanges with the Sister Training leaders this week and I stayed in Littleton. But we had so much success! It was amazing. We went to a blood drive, to volunteer, at a Catholic church and talked to probably almost 40 people about the church! It was so cool! A cute old man came and sat right next to me and said "thank you for creating such a positive atmosphere here, you light up this room". It was so nice! There wasn't anyone who said "I'm all set" when we talked about the church. In fact, every single person asked us about our church and they all left smiling. It was such a neat experience. There was one lady who was another volunteer there and she lives closer to Boston so she is outside our area. But she was talking about how her husband died about 15 years ago and all of this other stuff. So Sister White and I are going to try and see her again sometime.

We also started to teach an English class this past week. So far we have two students. They are from Venezuela and have been in the US for just over a week now. They can barely speak any English. But we have a lot of fun trying to figure out how to help them learn and to understand what they are saying. I have learned a lot actually! They are learning quickly and even seem open to the church. We gave them a church tour and we always start with a prayer. We invited them to our dinner party we are having tomorrow night for all our investigators so they can meet more of the members. We have a TON of people coming, I am hoping and praying it works out.

At the beginning of the month President and Sister Packard committed us all to start reading the Book of Mormon over with a new copy, so we can mark everything about Christ in it. I just finished Jacob 5 today. We have to read 6 pages a day so we can finish it in two transfers. I absolutely love it. There are so many things about Christ in just 1 and 2 Nephi and Jacob! It is incredible. I have learned so much and have felt the spirit in more abundance every day. I love the Book of Mormon! What an incredible blessing we have to hold and read this book. I hope you all have the chance to read it every day. I know it will bless your life in ways you can't even imagine.

I love this gospel. I love being here in the Massachusetts Boston Mission! The work is Hastening and we are all apart of it! What a wonderful time to be a missionary and a member of the restored church!

Love you all and hope you have an amazing week!

Love, Sister Christensen

Our attempt to build a snowman!  

It is not Utah snow:)

Snow angels

Mormons have horns ( or at least Sister Grant does)

Hello everyone!

We have had an awesome week!! It is sad though because we are already in the third week of the transfer! It goes by so so fast. It feels like Sister Grant and I just got here in Littleton like a week ago. And we got here in October... weird.

We got a new investigator this week! Her name is K and she is friends with one of the girls in the ward. She is super cute and we taught her the Restoration and she is really interested! She doesn't have a ton of religious background but she has said before that she feels guilty that she isn't a Mormon. We are hopefully meeting with her again this week.

We had an amazing meeting with D this week! We weren't able to bring a member with us but we were able to actually stay on topic the whole time! We re-taught her the Restoration and helped her understand the basics. It was definitely one of the best lessons we have had, next to the one we had last week with A!

We had Zone meeting and Stake conference this week, which both were really good. In Zone meeting we talked a lot about using the Book of Mormon more in our teaching and in Stake Conference it was all about missionary work, President Packard spoke at it and shared a really cool story about a sister in the mission who is from Mozambique and was adopted in to a family who lives in Idaho. It was such a touching story.

The Saturday night session of Stake Conference was postponed because we got this random snow storm that no one knew about.. It snowed about 4 or 5 inches in 2 hours... it was crazy! It has been a pretty fun week, except Sister Grant got really sick the morning of Zone Meeting. It was so sad but she is all good now and I didn't get sick!

Well.. That pretty much sums up the week. I hope you all of a wonderful week and that you are staying warm and healthy!

Love Sister Christensen

ONE YEAR of SERVICE on THURSDAY!

It has been such a crazy week! We have been so busy. Probably the busiest we have been since arriving here in Littleton. We saw M this week, one of the many less actives we are working with, and we invited her to church. She was pretty open about it but has to take her son to his swim meet at Harvard University every Sunday morning, but he got his license recently so he will soon be able to drive by himself. Yea Massachusetts driving laws are weird.  She didn't end up coming this week but said to keep bugging her about coming. I don’t even know why she isn't active! She is super open and friendly to us when we come and wants to know about all the activities going on... She just needs to come to church. We are meeting with her again this week and hopefully we will get out of her why she isn't active.

Later that same day we saw L, a lady from Zimbabwe and a less active coming back. Her nephew, Ml, is staying with her and is not a member. He became an investigator last week. While talking to L we were trying to help her know what she can do to help M progress in the gospel. She told us that M is meeting with the "other missionaries" like we aren't all working together! AHH oh well. L is crazy.  She started testing us on the Book of Mormon and the Bible again.  But we got all the answers right apparently because she kept saying, "oh, you girls are good, a lot better than the other missionaries" She was talking about the missionaries who taught her. It was pretty funny.

We got a call from this cute Vietnamese lady in our ward, O, asking us to come to her house an hour later to meet her friend G (also from Vietnam). She ended up feeding us dinner too even though we told her we had a dinner appointment later that night... It was fine!. G is awesome though! O had invited her to church already and she came! She is really cute and has 2 cute little girls. At church yesterday she wanted to know more about what we believe so she can ask the right questions, so we are going to give her a gospel principles book to help her. I am so excited!! :) She will probably become a new investigator this week or next.

We had so many awesome experiences this week. Another one was with another less active, A.  She went up to Bishop a few weeks ago and asked what she can do to come back into activity. So we met with her for the second time. We planned on teaching her the Plan of Salvation but she sat in on the Elders lesson they taught for her son. So she asked if we could teach her the third lesson. We only had prepared for the Plan of Salvation and were really prepared for it. Sister Grant and I got really nervous but we went ahead and taught the lesson. It was probably one of the best lesson's we have had together. I know it was because we had been prepared, even though we had prepared for a different lesson; we were prepared to listen to the spirit. That experience has definitely strengthened my testimony on planning out everything, and being prepared. It was awesome!!

We got a new investigator this week!! Her name is S.  She is friends with R, the member who owns the Horse Farm. We met her a month or two ago but finally were able to meet with her! She called R before we came over and asked why we wanted to come by. R assured her that we like to do service so if she had anything for us to do that would be great, if not they just like to talk and get to know her. This was great because we had such a wonderful time talking to her! She asked us a whole lot of questions and when I pulled out my Book of Mormon to share a scripture with her she was really intrigued with the book. Luckily we had thought about it beforehand and had brought in a Book of Mormon for her. She was so excited that she was able to keep it and she marked the scriptures we shared with her on the spot. It was so cool! Pretty exciting things are happening in Littleton! :)

Yep, we have had a pretty awesome week, and I haven't even shared everything with ya'll! It would take too much time sadly. But I love being here. The work is hastening and what an amazing thing to see and be apart of!! I hope you all see the growth in the work. 

Love, Sister Christensen

Historic graveyard in Concord MA

North Bridge where The Revolutionary War began

Concord, MA

SNOWED IN

Dear Family,

It hasn't been that long since I last wrote but a lot has happened! First of all, I got pretty sick.. so did Sister Grant, it was no fun. But luckily there was a "big" blizzard here in New England and we got red-dotted for a day and a half so we were able to stay in and relax so we could get better more quickly. Though we got bored pretty quickly during the first red dot day. The next day we were more sick so we just wanted to sleep but then the Elders made us get up and go to district meeting. That was fine because it was really nice to get out and actually talk to other people.

We had a great day yesterday. Dad and Mom, you will be happy to here that I was asked to play in Sacrament meeting in a few weeks and Sister Grant is going to accompany me. We had dinner with two of our ward missionaries, the Greenfields. They got married about 1 1/2 years ago and haven't been in the ward that long. They teach the Gospel Principles class. Brother Greenfield converted from Judaism and used to teach Hebrew and a lot of Jewish classes. It's pretty cool. He also is Joseph in the Bible videos. We had a great visit with them and talked all about missionary work. They were so interested in how they can help us out in our missionary work and fulfill their callings, it was awesome!

This past week I have, obviously, been thinking a lot about setting some new year goals. I have been thinking back on how well I am doing in my missionary work and I have a lot to improve on. Last night Sister Grant shared a neat story with me. It was about a girl who served her mission in Holland. She and her companion were talking to a man one day and he was against Mormons and religion in general but was very mean and nasty to the girls. She explains how he did not yell at them but made them feel so deeply horrible, and how he was pure evil. He made them feel like they were terrible missionaries. She and her companion went home and cried and prayed together. After they had prayed she went and prayed by herself. She was expecting to get an answer that she really wasn't that bad, but she didn't. The answer she received was that she was bad but the Lord doesn't love her because she is good, He loves her because He is good.

I loved this story because I could relate to her. I had a similar experience while serving in the Trumbull ward. Though, the man my companion and I talked to wasn't evil, he just did not understand how great our message was. As we talked to him I just wanted to scream at him and tell him how much this gospel would bless his life. Of course that wouldn't help in any way, but I still think of that man often. I always wish I could have showed him a few certain scriptures but I know I did all I could to help him. He was very blocked off and would not let his walls down to listen to us. We still left him a Book of Mormon, so I only hope and pray that he will sincerely pick it up and read it, and that he will find something from it that will change his mind. After I talked to him I felt the same way as the girl in the story. I just wanted to cry and give up. I felt like I had failed as a missionary. But I realized that yes, I am not the best missionary, but I am trying. I am working hard, and learning and growing from my experiences. I make plenty of mistakes everyday but that does not mean the Lord loves me less. He loves me because HE is good, not because I am the best missionary. He loves us the way we are, He made us that way for a reason. All He asks is that we learn from our experiences and try to become better and more like Him.

How wonderful is our Father in Heaven. He is cheering for us everyday. I hope you all know that and can feel it. I am cheering for you too! I hope you all have a wonderful week and that you feel really good about this New Year.

Love,

Sister Christensen

                                      

Dear Family and friends,

Happy New Year everyone!! I hope you all had a wonderful 2013 year! It sure was a great one here in the MBM!

It was wonderful talking to my dear family at home on Christmas. It felt way too short though.. But it was a nice refresher!

It has been such a long week! I don't know where to start.. Well, we saw Barbara on Christmas Eve, and she is doing so great! I really love reading the Book of Mormon with her, I learn so much. When we first met with her she brought up the idea of getting all the people together that are "like" her, who we visit and are working with, to have one big study session. We finally invited one of the other less active ladies and she was interested! So we are hoping to get that started. We have been trying to get Barbara to talk to the Bishop but she is afraid to. So we brought his daughter with us for the visit instead, and she loved her! So hopefully that will help Barbara feel a little bit better about talking to him.

I loved having Christmas here! It really felt like Christmas. I didn't really expect that but we had some wonderful members invite us for Christmas eve and day and it was such a wonderful experience.

We have had a lot of good success this week but also a lot of slow days. We got in with some people we have been trying for months, this past week! It was so great. New Englander's NEVER open their doors.. even when we can see or hear them. Sometimes we just stand on the porch for a very long time. Sometimes it works, but usually it doesn't.

We are teaching so many less actives! We have about 6 we are working with, and more we are soon to work with. Some we have to reteach them the missionary lessons. They are all basically our investigators, though we have quite a few investigators as well. One of the ladies we are reteaching the lessons to, we met for the first time this week. We brought two young women with us, they are sisters and one is leaving on her mission to Taiwan in February! It was such a perfect appointment to have them there. We taught her the Restoration and found out she definitely has a testimony--we just need to dig it out of her and help her remember it. She bore a very sweet testimony while we were there. It was such a neat experience. I think Sister Grant and I are here to help people come back to church. I love digging and finding that testimony that they once had, it is so cool and amazing to watch.

I am so excited for this New Year! I don't think I have ever been so excited to make new goals, but I have such a long list this year. I hope I can get it all done. I know that there are miracles happening here in this area and in the mission. I can really feel the spirit strengthening here. It might be because I am a missionary, but I really can feel a difference from when I first came out. I hope you all have goals you want to achieve this year. I feel like it is going to be an amazing year! I am so excited.

Well, I love you all so much. I hope you all are healthy and safe and are enjoying this wonderful New Year's Day!!

Love, Sister Christensen

 

Our Christmas

Sister Grants mess

My mess.  (Someone is more spoiled:)