BUSY BUSY BUSY…PLUS SNOW!

Hello again!

Well. I have so much to report on! The night after we emailed last week we had an appointment with the Bishop's family to do a "What's next" lesson with them. Their sons are awesome missionaries and are always bringing friends to church. The most recent friend is E. But when we got to their house, E was there! So we went with the lesson we had prepared except just leaving out the "what's next" part. We talked a lot about missionaries and what they do, and then shared a message on Mosiah 27 with the story of Alma the younger. We talked about how he was against the church but then was converted, so he became a faithful member, then member missionary, then full time missionary. The Bishop explained to E that we, as missionaries, teach people about the Book of Mormon, and she said, "like me?" and she also said that she would want to learn more and was really excited about it! So our bishop, at the end, said, "E, if you are serious about this, the sisters would love to teach you, will you meet with them?" And we set up an appointment for Sunday after church to start the discussions! But on Saturday she said she had an audition at the time we had set up, so she just came to church instead. Yeah I know, just came to church! All three hours too! Woo! I am so excited. She is a super cute girl.

We have actually had quite a few teaching appointments this week. It has been awesome. The work is progressing here in Littleton! There is a lady, J, in the ward who is active but has some word of wisdom issues still. She had a visit from her home teachers and told them that she wanted to renew her temple recommend and wanted to have the lessons over again. So they immediately called us when they left, and we called her to set up an appointment. We had lunch with her at the Valentines and talked about what she needed to do to quit smoking. We had such an amazing visit with her and the spirit was so strong! She will do amazing. We are actually going on splits tonight and one of the young women is coming with me to have dinner with her! I am super excited. She is such a sweet lady.

Yesterday was an awesome day! We had appointment after appointment! Every single one of them was a huge success. We stopped by E’s, a member referral that we have had forever but haven't gotten in to teach yet. We brought her flowers from a funeral we went to last week and cookies that a member gave us to give to someone else, which was awesome! E is super cute. We finally set up an appointment for this Saturday! So I will let you know how that goes! We talked to her 20 year old son out side for a bit with one of his friends. We invited them to an activity we are having this week but we will see if they actually come.

So on the spiritual side.. This past week Sister Calder and I have kind of started a theme. We have happened to use the same scripture or idea multiple times this week. It is from Luke 22:32 or something like that. I can't remember the exact verse. but it says, "when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." I have loved this verse so much because it is such a powerful, simple example of the work of salvation. When we are converted we are to share the gospel and help others have the joy of the gospel. We can't truly help someone in the best way until we have been through the same process and have a testimony of it. I love this work. I love strengthening my brethren and I love seeing the Lord's work and plan come into play and apply it to those around me. It is such a miracle to be here and serving these people. I learn from every one of them everyday.

Love you all!

Love sister Christensen 

Too Much Snow!

Our deck at the apartment

It has been such a crazy week! We had emergency transfer meeting last Wednesday night because of the snow storm that was coming the next day. So Sister Grant was off a day early. :( But we had an awesome last p-day together and transfer meeting was really good, and short. We were stuck inside all day Thursday and were supposed to be in Friday morning as well but luckily it cleared up and we had district meeting. So when I first got to the area there were 12 of us in our district; Littleton (4),Billerica (4), and Lowell (4). Then they split it up my second and third transfers, but they now have put them back together! Woo Hoo! I love having everyone together. It is so fun. And we have sisters in our district again! :)

We had a great weekend trying to get Sister Calder’s things all put away and helping her adjust to the ward and start getting to know everyone. We have had some pretty awesome appointments together so far. She is so awesome. She has been a sister training leader since basically our second transfer in the mission but she has been released so she can serve here in Littleton. She is so strong and has awesome ideas! It will definitely push me to work harder. The ward definitely needs the push as well, I think.

Me and Sister Calder

 Sunday we had ward conference and it was awesome! The Bishop announced the new ward mission plan: we will extend 2,000 invitations this year, every household will invite someone to take the missionary discussions, and then every member of the ward council and their presidencies will go out with the missionaries once a month. I think it is so awesome! I am so excited. Now our job is to help the members learn how to do it. The bishop gave the what and now we teach the how! It will be fun.

Monday we went to the temple and it was amazing! We saw the newest temple video which was pretty good. I like all these new videos! they are awesome. We then spent the day in Boston with about 50 other missionaries, it was so fun! And yesterday we were red dotted, again.. so we were unable to email home until today! 

Temple trip to Boston

We were able to go to a Relief Society activity yesterday because we had a member pick us up. She is so awesome. The activity went so well! We had one less active and one non member there with about 10 other sisters. It was great. So crazy story… When we were going home there was just a down pour of snow and the roads were icing up quickly! We were stopped on the road so we could turn into our apartment complex and a 17 year old kid couldn’t stop his car in time and ran into us. His car was totally crumpled but our member’s car just got a little ding in her bumper (she was in a big suburban). I felt so bad for the kid. He looked like he was in shock for a few minutes but he was fine. Sister Calder and I went to see if he was ok and offered him some cookies we got from the activity. Then while we waited for the police to show up we got him to sit in our car so he could stay warm. He seemed like a good kid, I felt so bad! We told him we were missionaries and then offered him a pass along card and he took it saying, "I really need God on my side today." Poor kid. But our member was super awesome and chill about the whole thing. They both handled it very well. That was definitely the most exciting part of our day. The rest of it we spent inside planning and preparing for the rest of the week. Fun!
Right now we are trying to help the members know how important the small acts truly are. Some of them get it, some of them think "Oh my friend would never be interested in the gospel; I could never invite them to come". But the truth is you can! You never know who is interested or not. Every little thing is so important. What we do in our weekly planning sessions is look at our investigators, find out who they are (what are their interests, how they learn, what they are like, religious background etc.), what they need, and how we can help them. I really think the members need to do this with their friends as well! If they do that they will definitely know that they can do the simple things and make a big difference. I just love the work of Salvation! It really is so simple.

Love Sister Christensen!

                                        

Martha's Vineyard...Lucky Sister Grant!

I am staying in Littleton! But my dear companion is leaving me to go to Martha's Vineyard! She is so lucky. Littleton will now be the longest area I have ever been in!! I am excited for the change, though I will miss my companion so much! She has been such an amazing companion!

This week has been crazy! We have had so many good things happen. We had a huge snow storm last Wednesday and were red dotted. That means we are not allowed out of our apartment. That was a boring day, I will admit. And sadly we are getting a snow storm tomorrow so we will probably be red dotted again. They had to move transfers to tonight because of it!

We have had so many great appointments this week. One of which was with Sister D and her nephew, M, who is one of our investigators. He is from Africa, I can't remember if I have mentioned him before, probably I have. Any way, we went to just visit with Sister D because the Elders do better with M. But Sister D told M to come and join us. It turned into us trying to answer his intense questions about the history of 600 BC in America. He has a lot of hard questions. But what it really boils down to is if he will listen to the spirit and reads the Book of Mormon. He knows and believes in the Bible he is just questionable about the Book of Mormon. But after we finished he said we are doing a good job. So that was nice.

We visited an inactive lady, S, who has been apart of the Unitarian Universalist church for quite along time now. But she loves it when we come by. She always seems so excited to see us. She is a music teacher in Littleton and so she always has music stuff all over her house. She had a violin out when we got there and Sister Grant told her I played. So Sue pulled out her OLD Mormon hymn book and her flute and made me play a duet with her. It was fun. We have been trying to get her to read the book of Mormon again, which she is not opposed to, but she hasn't started yet... hopefully we can get her to start it soon.

I played my violin in Church on Sunday! I played with one of the primary girls and her less active aunt played the piano for us. It turned out pretty good too!

We said goodbye to some of the people we are working with, for Sister Grant, one was dear A M. She is such a cute old lady. She is the lady who is always cooking when we go by. She wasn't cooking this time because she fell about a week ago and is still trying to get around. She is so funny though. I swear that she just keeps on talking, so fast, so that we can't leave! She really hardly ever takes a breath. We always try and try to cut in and say we have to go but we can never do it unless we cut her off. It is so sad sometimes. Every time I say, "Ok A, we really have to go." She always says, "I know..." I always feel bad. She is so cute.

Yesterday we had the perfect last day for Sister Grant. All of our appointments went so well and none of them cancelled for once! It was such a wonderful day. We were kind of saying goodbye to all of them and some of them. We saw D S and she was really sad to see Sister Grant go. But we had such a great visit! Her daughter N usually just stands in the doorway at our appointments or just leaves and doesn't stay for the meeting. But yesterday she sat down with us and she got in the picture we took!! It was amazing! She did seem so much happier yesterday. She even got dressed up! She usually has just woken up and in her pajamas when we go over. So it was kind of weird to see her dressed up and her hair done! It was awesome.

It has been a good week. I am nervous but kind of excited for this new transfer. We will see how it goes! I love being here! I love being on a mission and dedicating my whole life to the Lord at this time. It is such an amazing experience to watch and help so many people change their lives.

Love, Sister Christensen

Eventful Week

Dear Family!

This has been a crazy week! We have had so many awesome experiences it is incredible. This area is seriously growing! I am so excited about it. Watch. I will get transferred this next week and not be able to see all the blooming of this area! AAHH haha just kidding, either way, it will be cool to hear the stories that come from it. :)

Last Tuesday was a pretty great day. We had our second (now monthly) dinner party/game night for investigators!! It was a huge success! We had 9 non members come including part member families, investigators and potentials! Wahoo! The purpose of this "party" is to help make friendships between the members and non members. And I might add... that it totally worked! It was fantastic! The only sad part about the night was that one of our investigators came and was so excited to be invited. But when one of our members went to pick her up she had smashed her finger in her garage door. She injured it pretty badly. But they still came by the church, before going to the hospital, so she could get a priesthood blessing from our bishop! It was so neat to see that! We talked to her the following day to see how she was doing and she had to get a few stitches but she mentioned how she was so grateful to get a blessing! It was awesome! She is being prepared to receive the gospel! Woo!

We had another awesome visit with B this week. We are almost done with 2 Nephi and we read a lot about how important preserving the records so that Nephi's posterity can learn about Christ and about their ancestors. After we had read she asked us why it is so important for us, personally, to do family history. So I told her why it was important to me. She then started talking about how she could do her husbands work and his side of the family's work. She doesn't believe that she could become worthy enough to go to the temple but now that she is thinking about family history work she will start thinking more about it!!! She just needs to believe in herself! We are still working on that with her. She really could, easily, make it to the temple within the next year if she really tried and believed in herself but we will see how that goes. She is amazing though, I just love her so much. She is a very special person.

We met with D again this week. She called us when we were on our way up to her house, which is 30 minutes away... and she said she didn't want us coming over because "the church has abandoned her in her time of need"... But we told her we were coming anyway because reading the scriptures will help her feel better. We read the book of Mormon with her and she felt better. See what the gospel can do for you!  I don't know how much more we can help her.

Saturday was our moving day! We helped 3 different people move it was crazy! We had only planned to help 2 people move but the middle person came out of the blue. One of our members went to the wrong house and started helping this lady move and then realized he was at the wrong place. So after we helped out at the other place we went over to help this lady, G. It was really sad because her ex husband was helping her and he was not very nice at all. It was a really good thing that we were there because he kind of abandoned her in the middle of it. If we weren't there she would be doing it by herself. She started crying when talking to me and sister grant. But we talked to her about our church and she came on Sunday! It was awesome! Hopefully we can start teaching her soon, I know it will bless her life immensely.

What a wonderful week!! I will let ya'll know about transfers next Wednesday.  I love you all! Hope you have a wonderful week.

Love, Sister Christensen

P.S. Congratulations Nathanael and Whitney on your engagement!! :)

Author's Ridge
Concord, MA