A Crazy Week and a Happy New Year

Dear All,

I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE CERTAIN THAT IT CANNOT GET ANY CRAZIER THAN THIS! So yeah, last P-day we found out the Zone leaders, my housemates, were being emergency transferred! So that happened! And the new Zone Leaders didn’t arrive until Jan 3^rd, so it was just me and my companion in the apartment this week! It was good, as we grew closer than ever this week.

Brandon and comp watching fireworks from their roof on New Year's Eve!

We spent New Year’s Eve just the two of us in the apartment, but it was way cool when the fireworks started going off. We went up to our patio/roof thing and were just surrounded by 360 degrees of fireworks! 

Also on New Year’s Eve, we found out that just our most progressing investigator finally stopped smoking! And he hasn’t since!!!! 

YES! New Year’s Day was sweet as we had tons of great lessons with some of our favorite people, and everyone fed us! SO awesome! The next day was just a solid day of work, as we had great lessons pretty much everywhere we went! We started teaching this family, the Morales family, and the wife was an investigator back in high school, and she really loves the lessons. Her husband is very interested as well, and has many questions. They’re just a great little family; I hope good things happen there! 

On Friday the new Zone leaders arrived, Elders Blackham and Potestad, and they are awesome! I am looking forward to our time together in the house! So yeah, I sort of had an asthma attack on Friday night, which was super weird and a bit scary, but I got an inhaler now so that’s good! Saturday we had a Zone training meeting all about consecrating our efforts to the Lord, which made me want to be a better missionary! Later on that day though we worked hard, I felt like the day was slipping through our fingers, not enough time to share the gospel with everyone I want to! Oh well. We went with the Zone leader to the Gadaingan family to be interviewed for Baptism (the mom is a less active who has now returned to church, and now her 4 daughters will be baptized on the 11^th!). 

Sunday…well I took about three steps outside our gate then sprained my ankle on a rock and fell down right there in the middle of the street! An investigator gave me—get this—a walker to use at church! It was so funny! I strapped a brace on (thanks mom!) and hobbled around all day. But Church was so awesome, we had so many less actives come to church, and tons of investigators too! We saw miracles in church attendance yesterday, and it strengthened my faith for sure. Ah I loved it! This ward is so awesome, so helpful, so friendly, so loving. I never want to leave! I feel like a little kid again who never wants to grow up! But it’s good.

I made only one resolution this year, to make this the best year of my life by consecrating every second of 2014 to the Lord. I will give my whole soul (Omni 1:26), and I know I will see miracles.

 I love you all, welcome to 2014!!!

--Elder Christensen

Brother Michael (getting baptized this month!), Brandon's "sisters and mom" in San Jose, and Elder C. himself