Elder Christensen's 20th Birthday today!!!

Hey Everybody!

So it’s my birthday, so I’m trying to email quickly, so I can enjoy a little time at the beach before I get on a bus and head down to Tarlac for another meeting! SO Tuesday we were back at it, and when we were teaching Marivel we found out that we actually hadn’t taught her The Restoration, and that’s why she doesn’t know that this is the true church. We taught it to her sister, and then she started listening in during the following lessons. Whoops, THAT’S embarrassing. We had good work that day, and we were really glad to have found out our mistake! Wednesday the work was alright. We’ve started teaching this former investigator girl, who is super smart and is very receptive as well, her name is Queen! We taught the Centeno Family, whose progress is stalling…we found out actually they’re having family problems, so we’ll try to help there.

We all got in a van again and went down to Cabanatuan for another ZONE CONFERENCE, but this time is was meet the New Mission President! President and Sister Clark are way awesome, definitely different style than the Martinos, but still good! They’re from Illinois, and President Clark’s mom’s name is Coleen CHRISTENSEN Clark (relation???). It was nice to meet them, and I’m looking forward to having them here for the second half of my mission.

Elder C. with his new mission president, President Clark

We got some work done after we got back from Cabanatuan, and we went back to one of our contacts, Reah, and taught her lesson 1, and it went really well! She’s definitely got potential. 

Friday was an alright day, and we started teaching all of the people about the importance of staying the full three hours of church (you guys would seriously not believe it; it’s like a mass exodus after sacrament meeting every week. This last Sunday I stood by the exit and just asked everyone where they were going and why they weren’t going to class. I made them own it if they were going to leave. I even looked one sister in the eye and said, “Sister, you know you’re not following God’s commandment.” She said, “I know.” And I said, “Ok, your sin is not on me.” She said, “Ok,” and then walked out. What on earth??? Sorry, little rant). 

On Saturday we had good work, getting 11 lessons, and the highlight there was when we taught Reah again. After our lesson about the Book of Mormon, we got talking about missionaries and missionary life. And she could not believe it when I told her I’ve never been happier in my whole life than when I’ve been here in the Philippines sharing the gospel all day every day for no pay. But hey, I don’t really care if she doesn’t believe me there; I just hope she believes the message. Sunday was ok, we only had two investigators attend church, and there was the mass exodus again…I ended up teaching the third hour again, which was good, because the third hour almost just didn’t happen. We got super punted from tons of our investigators, and a lot hid from us. That’s discouraging. BUT we had a really good lesson with one of our less actives, who opened up to us about her problems, and the spirit was really strong there. AND afterwards, we went to the Habala family (Fevelyn, Marivel, and Tonton’s family) for a dinner appointment/birthday party! They sang Happy Birthday and made my favorite, chop suey,

Chop Suey- his favorite!

and wrote me little notes. It was super nice! Felt the love!

Birthday Dinner for Elder Christensen at the Habala home!

When we got home, I opened up my birthday package for real, thank you so much! Oh and thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Christensen for the “Over the Hump” day shirt! It’s pretty funny! And thanks to the best Mom in the world, who knows how to make her boy smile even halfway around the world! The package was seriously awesome!

Elder Christensen with some of his birthday package stuff!

And that brings us to now. I’ve now been riding this rock going around the sun for 20 years now…pretty crazy! I’m no longer a teenager…its ok though, I haven’t really felt like a teenager while I’ve been on the mission, and that’s a good thing.

Well, I love you all, love this gospel, and sure love the Savior. And our whole hope is to be pure like he is pure, and hopefully I can do better at that in the third decade of my life! Till next week!

--Elder Christensen

Brandon with Elder Antoni, who he trained, at zone conference

Brandon with members & missionaries of Tarlac 2nd Ward, who made them dinner for zone conference