4th Quarter

Hey Fam!

I am so glad to here you are all doing so well! You are such a grand support for me and I love you tons! I have missed you a lot more this week I don't know why. Hemana Bluth wanted to see photos of our families when we had interviews with President and I think that it kind of made me trunky looking at all of the pictures of you guys. I want you to know how deep my love for each one of you is. I can't think about you guys too much because I get all teary, but each of you are my heroes.

I appreciate your thoughts in your letters this morning. I was able to briefly read through your letters. It was great to hear about mom's experiences and I am grateful for the thoughts she shared with me. It was something that I needed. They were answers to my prayers. I was also very happy too hear about dad's back. I have been worried about him. I am grateful that he is doing well. I also want to thank him for his thoughts.

I can't believe that Grace got braces. That caught me completely off guard. As well as the idea that Emma will have her license this week! Speaking of braces, I think Charlie has the greatest smile in the family now after seeing the Christmas card. Hna Bluth was very grateful for the Christmas card by the way, I could tell it meant a lot to her.

As Dad said, I feel like my mission experience has been nothing like what I thought it would be. I feel like I am learning  some very important lessons and I am really learning to come to Christ. I feel like there is a very, very, very long way to go. I am trying to put more emphasis in my study of the attributes of Christ to help me. It has been a very humbling experience. Lots of ups and downs. I am grateful for dad's experience in the temple. There are times when I rely on that experience a lot. I feel like I am growing a lot. I think I have aged a lot on my mission, there is quite a difference between my first chilean ID and my second chilean ID.

I watched Ephraim's Rescue today, I love that movie so much. It inspires me a ton. I feel like I can really relate to Ephraim. In frustration for my imperfections, I hope that I can overcome them like he did.

We had two great experiences at the end of the week that really lifted me. We found two investigators that accepted baptismal dates. They are very nice people and I have a lot of hope for them. It was a really sweet blessing after a little bit of a frustrating week. Miracles do happen!

My focus for the fourth quarter is LOSE YOURSELF! 

Sorry this letter is a little choppy.

LOVE YOU TONS!

Elder William Christensen

Nice to See Some Fruits

Happy Valentines Day and Happy Birthdays!

Sounds like it has been a great week and I can't believe how old everybody is getting. I am still denying the fact that Emma will be driving. What ever happened with the driving test?

Dad is my hero. What a great example for me. I have always wanted to be just like him. He is amazing. I am astounded by everything that he pulls off each week. What a great example!

I love Emma for her quiet confidence and her awesome sense of humor! She always gets me laughing! I am so grateful for the great person she is and the good example she is for me. Way to hang in there for the sweet sixteen.

Charlie is my buddy. I love him for just being happy and always going for it. He is my favorite brother and will always be my best bud. We are going to have so much fun when I get back! Sorry sisters. GUYS ONLY! 

It has been kind of an interesting week. The good news is that J's family is showing a ton of interest in the church. His mom loves coming to church and showed up with one of his sisters yesterday, even though J was feeling sick and couldn't come. She felt bad because they walked in a little late and self committed to come early next week, as well as stay for the classes after. Nobody does that! We also had another great lesson with an 24 year old young man we were teaching yesterday. He told us he had received his answer that what we are teaching is true and would like to be baptized. We are not sure when it will happen because he might be moving to Santiago in a couple of weeks and is working through some stuff, but there was a really strong spirit when he told us about the answer he received. We also found a really great family that is full of energy this week.They have been really receptive. It is nice to see some fruits.

We had a lot of rule changes in the mission this last week and president has asked us to avoid swapping emails with the family. I feel like it is important to respect this rule. I love you guys tons and wish I could chat a little bit with you guys. Thanks for helping me out. Love you tons. 

You guys are so great! 

Elder Christensen

Help Others Come Unto Christ

Hey Family! 

I love you guys! Happy Birthday Charlie, Dad, and Emma!

I had a crazy week. We will start off with the good news. J got baptized! It was a really great week. We had some great experiences with him. At the end of one of our visits we were with the Bishop and we asked if J had any questions. His only question was, "What do I need to do to serve a mission?" The next day we met his family and they are awesome. He has three older sisters and a younger brother. They are all super nice. We started to teach them a little bit about the gospel. They came to both the baptism and church for the confirmation. The mom knew three of the sisters in church so that was really cool! She also told my companion that she felt something in both meetings. We are really excited to begin teaching them. They are good people. Another day we were teaching J about the responsibility everybody has to share the gospel. We showed him a video from The Work of Salvation about a young man named Hector who shared the gospel with family and friends after getting baptized. We asked him what he learned and he said that no matter who we are we have a responsibility to help others come unto Christ. We then commited him to share the gospel and he said he would and that he wanted to start with his family. The spirit was really strong in each visit we had with him this week. It is amazing how he is changed. A month or so ago he didn't believe in anything, but now he is ready to help others come to Christ! 

"Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life."

I loved this quote from the teachings of President Benson in Elder's Quorum yesterday. It brought me a lot of peace. I hope that I can turn  myself over to God. What an amazing promise!

The bad news of the week was that we have a rat problem. I will sent you a pick of the whopper we caught. Hopefully it is the only one.  So that was kind of depressing. 

That about sums up the week. I don't know if there is anything else you want to know?! 

I love you guys tons! 

Elder Will Christensen

Patterns of Light

From President and Sister Bluth, Elders in Angol

Hey Fam, 

I hope you are all doing well!

I have had a good week. We are working really hard. We found a couple new families that I am really excited about. It will be good to work with them.

It is good to be with good people. I enjoyed fasting yesterday and was able to feel peace and confidence as I fasted.

I enjoyed the Elders quorum lesson yesterday about light. We watched the patterns of light videos by Elder Bednar and I loved how he talked about how light always overcomes darkness, but darkness cannot overcome light. Light is also warm. Those videos are great and I invite you guys to watch them again.

Yesterday we talked to a nice man and his daughter. He was an older man and had reciently been diagnosed with cancer. He is an old history teacher and has an interesting perspective on things. His niece is the Stake Young Women's President here in Angol and his daughter was baptized when she was young, but later fell away because she felt it wasn't true. It was interesting hearing their perspective of God. They believed in the creation but it seemed to me that they felt like God just left us after that. We taught them a little bit about God's love and how it is like a fathers love for his children. As we taught I realized that we can learn so much about God's nature in our own families. It has been interesting to look at that and helped me understand a little bit better.

I am so grateful that our Loving Heavenly Father reaches out to us each day. That he has called prophets and leaders to help us. I am so grateful for the gospel and for revelation, that we are not left alone and I hope that I can look for more revelation in my own life.

I love you tons,

Elder Christensen

Patterns of Light: The Light of Christ, Elder Bednar

Patterns of Light: Discerning Light, Elder Bednar

Patterns of Light: Spirit of Revelation, Elder Bednar

Peace

Tiny Doors

Hey Everybody,

I hope you are all doing really well! I had a good week. We had cambios today and I will be staying here in Angol.

I am doing well. We had a great baptism this week. It was awesome to see P get baptized. It has been great teaching him and seeing him gradually change and open up to us. We are really striving to help him and his family focus on the temple now. Yesterday we had a fantastic Sacrament meeting and everything was about the Temple. There were two great talks and also a couple who were sealed last week that bore their testimonies about the temple.

We also had an interesting run in with some new investigators this week. They were members of another church and when we went back for the second visit they were very critical about some of the things we believe. They told us that the Book of Mormon is worthless to them because it doesn’t mention it in the Bible. That made me really sad. If only they knew.  But I learned some very key points. During the entire lesson I felt peace. Even though we didn’t get much of a chance to speak, I felt like the Spirit was testifying to me the entire time that I am good and that we have the truth. That was a sweet experience for me. I also learned that some people can be a little too stuck on exactly what the Bible says. These people wouldn’t accept Joseph Smith as a prophet or the Book of Mormon, because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. It was interesting that they were so closed to everything. I learned how important it is to be based in revelation because it is so easy to misunderstand the Bible.

Yesterday someone escorted us off of his property after we knocked on his door. We didn’t even say a word. That was pretty intense.

Anyways, missionary work isn’t always easy, but we just keep going.

Yesterday I was working with Elder Parkin all day in my sector. He is awesome! We had a really great time! Tell his parents that he is a great kid and they should be really proud of him for his great testimony! He has a great spirit about him! We found two families yesterday, it was awesome!

Love you tons,

Elder Christensen

Seek and Ye Shall Find

Family,

I have had a pretty good week. 

The young man we are teaching is doing great! There is a good group of returned missionaries in our ward and they have been taking good care of him.  I am really happy for him and was thrilled on Saturday because he came to a baptismal service and after told us that he felt really comfortable in church. 

We also have another investigator who is doing very well. He was going to get baptized this week, but his wife will be traveling, so he will get baptized next week. I am really excited for him because he has seemed really great these last two weeks. His wife and daughter got baptized a few months ago, so we are really excited to start helping them take steps towards the Temple. 

I have been doing well this week. I want to thank each of you for your letters last week they really meant a lot to me and helped me so much. I am so grateful for your love. 

I loved reading your letters this morning as well. I was really sorry to hear about Dad´s back. That made me feel really sad, but i am glad that it isn't worse. I cried when I heard about mom's experience at the grocery store. Mom is the best! She holds the family together. I want to thank her for all of the work that she does for us! Mom does all the dirty work and everybody is going to really miss it when they leave the house, I can promise you that! I am so grateful for all the work mom puts in to make our house a home. I also liked reading about dad's one on one time with Claire. That one on one time with mom and dad is the best. It is so special. I loved the time I spent with mom right before I left. 

I loved dad's challenge to read the New Testament with him this year and for my thought I would like to share Matthew 7:7 "Ask and it shall be given and seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened".  Right after this it talks about the scripture mom shared with me today as well.  What father will give his child a stone if he asks for bread? I like these scriptures because Christ is inviting us to ask, to seek, and to knock. I believe He wants us to ask so that we remember to be humble and to choose on our own to turn to God for help. I believe that He wants us to seek, so that we can learn and grow. I also enjoyed reading the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6: 9 through 13 and meditating upon the importance and significance of each phrase and how it covers our basic needs. I was touched as I read a while back in 3 Nephi about how Christ prayed for the Nephites and I feel like we should remember the way he prayed for them when we pray for others. I also learned that we come to understand others better when we pray for them. I feel like that is one of the primary reasons the Lord asks us to pray for our enemies. I also noticed in my personal prayers as I prayed specifically for others I felt a special spirit. Often, I become too focused on myself.

Anyways, kind of a mess, but I learned a lot in my studies this week and it is hard to type and express it all so fast. I hope you can make something of it. Thanks for the invitation dad. I am now in Matt 9!

I love you all more than I can express. Have a great week! 

Elder Christensen

New Year's - Everlasting Beginnings

Hey Family

I hope everybody is doing really well.

I had a pretty crazy week.

Last Monday we had an appointment with a reference from mormon.org. The appointment was with a 19 year old young man. He told us that he had been raised Catholic but during his teenage years he stopped believing in God. One day while he was on the Internet he made friends with girl from Utah either through facebook or mormon.org. She began telling him about the gospel and invited him to pray. He told us that he prayed and that when he prayed he felt really good. After hearing this story we invited him to be baptized and he accepted. Yesterday he came to church and stayed for all three hours and tonight we will have a Family Home Evening with him and a young couple in the ward. This was a big answer to my prayers and a very special experience for me. As were sitting with him in sacrament meeting yesterday. I was touched by the way the Lord works and how He answered this young man’s prayer.

That same day we also found an excellent family. We shared with the oldest son and his sister. They didn’t accept the baptismal invitation but said they would like to hear more. I felt the spirit really strongly in this visit and I feel like they will get baptized soon. At the end of the lesson the mom came in to listen and told us that she was an inactive member and that her brother had served a mission. She had great memories from the Church.

New Years was great, other than the fact that our neighbors partied until 7:30 in the morning. Chileans don’t do too much for New Years, other than drink and party. It is not like other South American countries that have crazy firework celebrations everywhere. Fireworks are prohibited except for official shows by the city. I was lucky and got to see the city show from our window.

It has been insanely hot. The temperature really doesn’t say it is that hot. But the sun is extremely intense. Yesterday my companion walked around with an umbrella even though there weren’t any clouds in the sky.

I am grateful for the New Year and a fresh start. This year I set some different goals that I am really excited about.

Some of my favorite Scriptures right now:

Philippians 3

 12 Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

 13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

 14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

I have been frustrated with all of the trash in this world the past few weeks but today as I was reading in the Book of Mormon I loved the counsel of Mormon to Moroni after describing all the trash they had to deal with.

Moroni 9

 25 My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever.

I loved this and it counseled me on how to deal with the trash.

There is also a great quote from President Uchtdorf about how there are no endings in the gospel, only Everlasting Beginnings. That is one of my favorites because I hate endings and love beginnings.

Grateful in Any Circumstances - President Uchtdorf

Anyways these are some of my thoughts. I love you tons. I thought of you guys skiing on Saturday while I was melting.

You are the best! LOVE YOU!

Elder Christensen