Going Well in Loncoche

Baptism in Loncoche

I hope all is well at home, I love you guys so much, you are amazing!

We had a really great baptism Saturday. It was these two little girls, K and another girl from the primary. I am so happy for them. I feel really good for K and her family because I think it really did bring them back to the Church and I have never seen her more happy than she was after the baptism. I had a great feeling of peace as she was baptized and it made me feel sooo good.  I can’t wait to help more people!  I spoke at the baptism and talked about how grateful I am for the little girl I got to baptize almost a year ago and showed a card that Grace had slipped into one of my books. This card means so much to me. I found it a couple months back, when I was struggling and it made my day. It has a picture of Grace and I right before I baptized her and on the back Grace wrote.  “Remember this was the happiest day of my life! I love you.” Thank you Grace!

Will at his sister Grace's Baptism 2013

Things are going well here in Loncoche. My new companion is a great guy and easy to get along with.  I really like him and appreciate him because he is willing to work. He appreciates my ideas and we work together to plan and stuff like that. We also pulled off a deep clean in the house, so that is good. We got all the mold out and now the house smells like clorox. We also fired up the wood-burning stove. I am really excited for this Cambio. Last week with Elder B we were planning and we cleaned one morning so we didn’t get too much teaching done but I am really excited to get to work and just teach. I am reading a great little book called, “Member Missionary Work, Finding the Elect of God”. It is interesting. It’s super short and only 100 pages long, so I just read it when I have a little time. It is written by a missionary named Marshall, who didn’t baptize his first 8 months in the mission field and then ended up setting a mission record for baptisms. It is interesting and has some great ideas that I am trying to apply. Basically it has helped me know not to be afraid, to be bold.

I am doing great, just hoping I am doing something right. I decided I really want to focus on my relationship with Christ and develop a relationship and testimony that will be super strong for the eternities. I have been listening to conference in the mornings and love it. I feel so good when I listen to the prophet and apostles and I know that they are called of God.

Love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Christensen

Family Nights

Hello everyone! 

We had a pretty good week, before I forget I wanted to ask what is going on in the Ukraine. I have seen a few messages and it looks like something is going on. How are Will, Madsen and Nolan? 

We found rats in the house last night. 

I am doing really well. We are working hard trying to get things rolling here in Lonchoche. My companion says, “hi” and wants to know how you are all doing. 

The work is really difficult here; but I have felt multiple times that I can really make a difference here. We just need to figure out how. Chile has a really interesting history with the church. There was a huge boom in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Even though the baptismal tally was high, there wasn´t much retention. I think largely to a lack of experienced priesthood leaders. This became very clear yesterday as I talked to a 3 time branch president who had apostatized. It was very interesting to hear his thoughts, because he claims to have a testimony of the Book of Mormon but saw some things differently with the administrative side. You can see that the adversary is working very hard here on all levels. There are not a lot of people who are married either. It is tough to change from a place like Utah where the Church and family structure are so strong, to a place where they are not. 

We are starting to have family nights and are having the members fellowship less-active members. We also want to re-teach the basic doctrines to the members so that they can have the Spirit more in their lives, and have desires to share the gospel. I am really beginning to learn what it means to work with members. 

A few weeks ago we were having a lot of success. We had church attendance up to 46 from the previous 28. Right when we were having this success, we faced some challenges. The attendance took a major blow and now we are working to re-build. I really think something big is going to happen here in Chile, but it is definitely challenging.

I love you guys tons! I hope Claire’s tests went well this week and the Leprechauns showed up this morning. Luckily, I wore me green sweater today! 

Happy!

I am so excited to tell you how happy I am! It has been a crazy six months since I last saw each of you. I am so excited to tell you that I am happier every day as I continue to apply the Atonement in my life. I love the Atonement and I love my Savior. I am Happy because over these last six months, I have had so many trials and now I know how to overcome them. I know that through the Atonement we can have joy! As I have struggled the best relief has come when I have really put my faith and trust in Christ and I know that is what I have been learning. As I continue to put my trust in Christ I am growing as a person and my confidence is growing as well. I love knowing that at the end of the day all that matters is what He thinks of me and He is happy when I am working hard to do my best. I am so grateful that He loves me and is patient with me and He is trying to build me. I have found so much joy as my testimony of Him continues to grow. I can’t tell you how many times He has shown me He is there. Sometimes we just have to look harder. I am so grateful for each of you and the way you have suppórted me and helped me face my challenges. 

Not much has changed with the work. We are trying to help strengthen the base here first. I think that is key. Some of my ideas are to have Family Home Evenings with two families at a time, because it creates a good environment. Also, to invite less active and investigators to these Family Home Evenings. Some of my other ideas are to extend more direct commitments to members to visit a less active or nonmember and invite them to church. Some of the basics that I think we can apply. Now that I know how to overcome my challenges and I feel more confident, I am excited to start being a little more bold. 

Missionary's I graduated with at Olympus Highschool 

I was so grateful for dad’s email last week and I think Heavenly Father was clearly trying to send me a message because earlier that day we were eating lunch in a restaurant and as I climbed the stairs to the bathroom I noticed an old “It’s a Wonderful Life” movie poster that I hadn’t noticed the week before and it was stuck in my mind all day as I thought about George Bailey, someone who went about doing good and changed the entire town, but also someone who went without great recognition or honors in life. Then when I read dads letter it was confirmation. I am so grateful for little miracles like this. I love this way to look at life. We never know, we may change someone’s life by just smiling at them. This was the same message President Martinez shared with us in the conference on Wednesday as well. We got to meet the two missionaries that taught him when he was a teenager. He talked about having an eternal perspective and seeing people for who they can become. These missionaries blessed his life so much, and now he is blessing hundreds of lives. 

I got my packages this week thank you so much! I also got Claire’s letter. Claire’s letter helped me so much and she continues to help me develop such great perspective! Claire, I love you. Thank you for lifting me like you lift everyone else, and I loved the cowboys!

It is starting to get cold pretty fast here. I switched over to my sleeping bag this week and I cannot tell you how much I love it!  

Love you all tons!

Catching Rides

Hey family,

I hope you are all doing well! I had a pretty good week. Last week we had to take Spencer’s advice and hitch-hike home from a zone activity. We ended up driving to Loncoche in a semi-truck as well. We got dropped off on the other side of town, but we made it out ok so that was good.

We have a new roommate from Provo, Utah. He is a really great guy with a really mello personality. It has been really good for me to have someone around that I connect to and can get along so easily with. It is possible we could be here together for several months.

I bore my testimony yesterday and I ended up talking about the relationships we make through the gospel. I was kind of surprised because it wasn’t what I had intentionally been thinking about, and I kind of got emotional. While I was talking about these types of relationships I was thinking about all of our family and all of our ward family, who I love so much. One of the problems we see is that people can get easily offended and it can shake the ward. Every ward or branch in Chile has at least 400 members but only 40 or 50 come to church. It is a tragedy and it can make the work pretty difficult sometimes. Anyway, I hope my testimony helped the members realize that they can enjoy and  build these relationships. Like I have said before, it is an amazing thing when someone really embraces the gospel. The people of Chile are great people!

Well, we got a call from President yesterday telling us to work more with members. I will try to write about the members next week, there are some really great stories. My favorite is this young family with one daughter and one more child on the way. They are so pure. For me, they are the Church here.

I am working on being bold and fearless.

I love you tons!

Elder Christensen

Please Help the Missionaries!

Our District in Loncoche

We attended a special priesthood session for the Church in the South America South Area. In this priesthood fireside, Elder Rasband and Elder Ballard spoke. I am so grateful for this fireside because it filled me with the Spirit.

 

Elder Rasband

Elder Rasband shared President Monson’s quote from the satellite broadcast about how now is the time to hasten the work and how the Lord has prepared man the means to do so. He focused on how we can do this through modern communication and technology. He talked about how out of the 70,000+ priesthood holders in this area of the world, only 40,000+ are active in the Church. He also talked about how with the thousands of new missionaries, they are concerned that these missionaries do not have enough to do and many are wasting time wandering around. He talked about how missionaries are called to teach. Then he taught how to do missionary work from your phone. He talked about how he can use Facebook to keep tabs on 700 of his missionaries from when he served as mission president. How he can post a little message when they post something not so great, or help reactivate those who have fallen away from the Church through Facebook. He said to think out of the box and asked each member to contact someone using technology and get appointments for the missionaries. He said no matter how busy you are, you can use technology to do missionary work. What I got out of this is that I need to think out of the box and get the members more involved. Elder Rasband also talked about how if we continue to do the same things, nothing will change and the work will not move faster. Over the last 6 weeks I have talked to about 700 people about the gospel and knocked a whole lot of doors. I am determined to work with members to find a more effective way to find people, to find people who are prepared. Some ideas are ward Facebook pages that connect with less active members and notify them of big events. Also a ward text, for big events. Elder Rasband promised that if we do these things the Lord will bless us with success.

Elder Ballard

Elder Ballard gave a very powerful talk. He talked a lot about the importance of the work. How our time in this world is brief, and when it ends, a lot of people are going to come to a terrible realization. He talked about focusing on developing eternal relationships because they will last, while things of the world will not. He talked about how strengthening the priesthood is the key to strengthening the Church. He talked about being fearless in sharing the gospel. He talked about the power of prayer, and how we need to pray for opportunities. We should pray for opportunities to help, serve, and bring others back. He also invited everyone to bring someone into the Church between now and Conference. The most powerful moment was when he bore his testimony about his grandchildren who were serving or going to serve missions. He said that he wants them to grow firm in the faith, how he wants them to come to know Christ as they TEACH the gospel. It was so powerful! He said that we are these missionaries’ opportunities to teach, opportunities to build their testimonies. PLEASE HELP THE MISSIONARIES!!! WE NEED PEOPLE TO HELP!!! It is so, so, so difficult to be a missionary with no one to teach. I cannot describe how hard it is to be a missionary without anybody to teach. PLEASE HELP THEM AND BUILD THEM UP ANY WAY YOU CAN!!! I know you are so busy, trying to raise families, but they should do all they can to move this work forward as well. He also said, WE ARE IN A HURRY! The time to act is now.

Our Zone 

My biggest take-aways from this meeting  were:

1) An infusion of missionary SPIRIT

2) I felt really stongly that I have the ability to make something happen here. I can change things and MAKE IT HAPPEN with the help of Heavenly Father.

Loncoche

We had transfers today and I will be staying here for another 6 weeks with my companion. There is one new elder who will be training that will joining us in our house. I am going to make sure to help the new missionary in any way that I can! 

This country is so beautiful! This picture was taken while I was on an exchange.

 Love you all tons!