Week 26: Zwick

Well, we had like a billion meetings since Friday; it was pretty intense.

Elder Zwick of the Quorum of the 70 came to Knoxville and did a bunch of meetings with us. We basically just got trained on how we can be better teachers and whatnot. It was really fun.  In the first meeting all of us got to go up and shake his hand. The missionary beside me decided he was going to do something funny.  He walked up and gave him a pass-along card and Elder Zwick took it and said, "Thanks! I could use another one of these." Then me being in line right after had to do something fun as well, so I turned on my best Canadian accent and said, "Thanks for coming here, eh!" He then laughed and asked what part of Canada I was from. Whoops, wasn't expecting him to talk to me and we had a short little conversation. My plan sorta backfired since I dropped my Canadian accent after the first line.  Elder Livingston and I also had the opportunity to participate in a priesthood blessing that Elder Zwick gave to one of our investigators; it was a pretty intense experience!

Well transfers is on Wednesday so I will have a new companion come that time and I will be staying in Rockwood.  Thankfully I wasn't called as a trainer. Out of the 5 missionaries that arrived here at the same time as me, 2 of us were called as trainers for this transfer and I dodged the bullet this time.

Anyways we took Christmas pictures so here you go! 

I seriously was really proud of my ugly sweater; it has freaking unicorns on it. 

Miss you guys! And expect a picture of my new companion for next week :D

Elder Christensen

Week 25: Soon!

Well, we're only 9 days from transfers! So that's pretty crazy. I've already been in Rockwood for almost a month and a half already!  It feels like I just got here a couple of days ago.

We climbed up a star.  And by that I mean there is this little tower for communications (I assume) that the town put a big light-up star on. It gets lit up every year around Thanksgiving time and goes til after Christmas. There are some really rickety steps and missing steps to get up there.  We finally arrived at the top and got to see a wonderful view of Rockwood since the tower itself is on a big hill right at the edge of the town.  It's always really fun to get up to high views and look down on the places you just were. I dunno, it was really fun, ok?

Elder Livingston gave a haircut to a less-active member in our ward who was in a nursing home. He loved the haircut so much that he gave us $10 to go get McDonalds. It was awesome.

I'm not too grand on time right now so I'm going to cut this one pretty short, but I promise you guys the most amazing email ever next week with pictures and everything!

Miss you guys!

Elder Christensen

Week 24: A Saviour is Born

So it was a pretty average week this week so I'm going to take some time to talk about the new video our church just came out with for Christmas: A savior is born.

It can be found on Christmas.Mormon.org or on YouTube.

It's a really good video for the Christmas season and I encourage you all to watch it. It's only a couple of minutes and it makes you feel good :D

Anyways, I would feel like I'm cheating everyone out if I didn't put more than that in my email, so I'll just mention that American Thanksgiving was pretty cool, although it wasn't as fun as Canadian Thanksgiving.  I learned how to play a game called Corn Hole and I slayed at it. Like seriously, I'll take on anyone in the world. I'll attach a few pictures of Thanksgiving, although my picture-taking game is as weak as ever, so I don't have many good ones.

Hope y'all had a good Thanksgiving, or whatever, and I think it's officially the start of Christmas season now. I've already broken 2 ornaments on different people's trees because I'm retarded, so keep me away from your Christmas decorations because I'm a monster that is uncontrollable, apparently.

Miss you all!

Elder Christensen

P.S I have no idea why Elder Udy is holding a random dog in that picture.

Week 23: Racoon Slayer

I have taken on a new nickname as I have hit my very first small animal with a car. I don't know if I mentioned it earlier, but I am currently the driver in the area so I am driving on the daily.  A couple of nights ago there were 2 racoons in the road just chillin, so I decided to do the only reasonable thing and hit it.  If it were a squirrel or something I might have felt bad, but racoons are straight mean, so I didn't feel too bad about it.  I've seen so much roadkill since I arrived in Tennessee and it's so rewarding to join the club that contributes to that roadkill. I feel like I'm getting more southern every day.

We haven't been going down to Farragut to hang out with other missionaries and play basketball recently so we have had a lot more time on P-days to hang out with just the 4 of us in Rockwood and shoot some hoops and stuff.

Thanksgiving is going to be so tough. We have like 2000 appointments we got invited to and narrowing it down to the ones you want to go to is pretty hard, especially with a limited amount of food you can fit in your stomach.

Well, that's about everything. I'm pretty sure Thanksgiving is this upcoming week or something. I really don't remember since the real Thanksgiving was like over a month ago and people don't tell us to come over on "X" day. They just say Thanksgiving.

Peace.

Love, 

Elder Christensen

Week 22: It's all good in the wood

Rockwood. 

That's where Elder J. Livingston and I serve. 

It's pretty cool. The members down here are pretty awesome and I'm in another "ward share".  By that I mean that there are 2 sets of missionaries in the same ward, so Elder Constantino and Elder Udy serve in the same area as me and they're pretty cool. 

We went and saw a member who was in a nursing home since he had to get his toe amputated. He had a bad fall and it got cut and infected and long story short he doesn't have a big toe anymore. He was awesome though. He loves having the missionaries come and share him a spiritual message and have a prayer.

We reshingled another roof. Right when I thought I would never have to do that again, I switch areas and one of the first things we did was another roofing job.  It wasn't too bad though. We were just throwing shingles down on already existing shingles, so it was a lot easier and quicker. The incline on the roof wasn't as bad either, so it was a cake walk compared to the last roof I had to do. I swear, I'll be a professional roofer by the end of my mission.

We had a pretty huge turnout on our last Monday at the stake center.  Every single companionship of elders in our zone was there to play basketball. We had some pretty solid games. I got tired out pretty quick since I'm so fat.  

I'm pretty alright at basketball I think, but we have quite a few stars in our mission who played some college ball before they came out and they sure are a force to be reckoned, One of them is my companion; he is really good at ball, like don't mess with this guy.

Well, I'm going to need to end the email here. I hear a cat meowing outside. It's stuck in a tree so I have to go save it.

Miss Y'all

Elder Christensen

Week 21: Rockwood

Alright, I'm writing this out on my iPad so expect poor writing.  I
got transferred from Maryville to a little place called Rockwood. It's
close to Knoxville like my last area and it's in the same zone, so I
already know everybody, which is cool. 

My companion is Elder J. Livingston.  I'm killing him. By that it means I'm his companion
during his last transfer, so he's going home after this. He was
actually companions with Elder Goldsberry at one time, so that's cool.

Rockwood had a way nice apartment than we had in Maryville. I really
like the members and the area in general, so I'm super excited to serve
here.

Well, like I said, I hate writing on an iPad so I'm going to cut this
email short. Peace out Girl Scout.

👾 Elder Christensen 👾

P.S. The picture with all the missionaries is my lineage: Goldsberry =
Dad; Shurtleff = grandpa; Castleberry = great grandpa; and the kid to
my right is elder Darrington, he's my cousin. (This is missionary
family not my real dads and cousins.)

Week 20: Farewell Hike

Well, transfer call was on Saturday and it looks like I'm getting transferred!  I haven't even started packing all of my stuff but I don't have THAT much stuff to pack, so I should be ready by Wednesday morning. We've been busy since transfer call since so many people from the ward want to say "bye" to me and stuff.  I'm going to miss Maryville so much!  

I have no idea where I'm going. You'll have to find out on next week's episode of Dragon Ba… Wait… I think I already used that joke.

In other news, the reason why this email is coming so late is because we went on a hike with a member today!  It was super awesome and fun.  Also, this was my favorite kind of hike. Instead of hiking on our feet, we drove through the trails. I think they should make more hikes like that.

I have some pretty sweet pics of the hike so stay tuned for those.

Anyways, busy day, so I have to cut this one short.  Expect a fire hose of information next week though.

Love you all!

Elder Christensen

Week 19: Scooter

Alright, so we didn't end up finishing the roof I talked about last week quite yet, so we ended up back there this Saturday to finish up some of the final stages.  One thing we found was a scooter and decided to make some cool pictures with them, although we are terrible at using scooters; the pictures make us look a lot better than we are.

I don't have a terribly high amount of stuff to talk about, so I'll leave you with a little spiritual thought:

ALWAYS REMEMBER THE SMALL AND SIMPLE THINGS!

By that I mean doing things that you may seem are so small that you don't need to do them, an example could be brushing your teeth, or reading from the Bible.  Basically if you can stop doing it once it's a lot easier to not do it the next time.

Anyways, I love you all!

Elder Christensen

Week 18: Powerade

So this week was pretty cool. Elder Hancock was sick for the first part of it but on Saturday we built a roof on a house.

Well, by "built a roof", we ripped off all of the shingles, repaired all of the nasty spots, put down some tar paper, and put some shingles on it.  We started at 8 am and went until dark, so it was a whole day thing.

Now getting back to the title of the email. Brother Miller, now he is a champion.  At first glance he doesn't look like the athletic type but boy was I wrong.  I put some bottles of Powerade (that a member brought) in the freezer of the house we were working on. After about 45 minutes I started to get worried that they would freeze, so I asked the Bishop who was on the ground to go grab them out of the freezer real quick.  He came back pretty quickly with 8 bottles of Powerade and asked who wanted one. I decided I would like a blue Powerade, so I asked him to toss one up onto the roof where I was working.  Now this was one of the worst throws in history.  It was several meters away from where I was standing and it wasn't even that far of a throw.  Anyways, the bottle smacked on the roof and started rolling down the slant straight towards one of the only 2 holes on the roof we hadn't fixed yet.  At this point it seemed everybody had decided that it was a lost cause and that the Powerade bottle would forever live inside the roof.  Not Brother Miller.  I swear he was the furthest one away from where it was going than anybody else on the roof. All I hear is: *Thump Thump*.  I look to my left and see Brother Miller soaring through the air completely diving for this Powerade bottle on a slanted roof.  He hits the roof sliding and plants one arm down at the edge of the hole so he doesn't fall all of the way in and his other arm went straight into the hole a split second after the Powerade bottle did.  He slowly stands up and there it is, the flipping Powerade bottle in his hands completely safe from harm. Nobody could believe what they had just seen.  This man risked his life for a Powerade bottle and then played it off like it was no big deal, it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life.

That;s my story of the week, and it was pretty dang awesome. Let's just say that Brother Miller has become a whole new person in my eyes.

I miss you all.

Elder Christensen

Week 17: Welcome to the Darkness

So... Still on bikes...

Since Elder Gannaway had his little injury, Elder Hancock and I have been on bikes for the past 2 weeks straight, plus we will be on bikes this upcoming week as well.  It's not too bad, to be completely honest, but our roads here aren't very biker friendly.  I've been getting in shape a little more though so I guess that's good.

Aside from that, Elder Hancock got pretty sick so we didn't really get around to doing too much this week.  Although I do have one fun story.  Elder Hancock's bike broke (he's currently borrowing Elder MacDonald's) and so we decided to walk to our appointment that we had.  Our appointment was at 7:30 PM and was 2.2 miles away.  We decided to walk there because we couldn't get a member to drive us so we left the house at around 6:40.  After a pretty treacherous walk with no sidewalks and it getting increasingly darker every minute we finally arrived at our appointment, only to find out that they had canceled on us. They wouldn't answer the door, but we heard the TV going on inside.  We then had to walk back the 2 miles in the pitch dark, so it was a pretty sketchy walk. (We weren't in a very good neighborhood).  Now basically what I'm getting at is even though we had to do that sketchy walk in the dark and not even get to teach the person who made the appointment, we still needed to go to it.  Even though we could have just stayed home and slept a few extra hours, we still had to go to that appointment.  We needed to give that person the opportunity to make the decision to let us in or keep us outside. If we were just to stay home, that would have been on us.  Every person deserves the opportunity to make the choice to accept or reject Jesus Christ and his gospel.

Alright that's about it from me this week. I miss you all and hope you all have a wonderful week.

Love,

Elder Christensen

Week 16: Whoops!

So this week was pretty cool (not really). We had a lot of sad news this week.

First off, on Tuesday night Elder Gannaway sprained his ankle pretty bad playing basketball, he came down on it sideways and it made a big popping sound that I heard from the other side of the gym.  Attached are some pictures of us in the hospital. The group picture was my idea. I decided we could brighten up the mood by taking a nice happy picture surrounded by a ton of sad people.  Anyways we had to drive them all around and we didn't end up back in our apartment until around 12:15 AM.

  

Elder Gannaway's foot is doing better now, he's still in the mission in the area, (although they get the car for the foreseeable future). So yeah, that happened.

We have been teaching quite a few people and it seemed we lost all of them at the same time,  One of our part-member families moved out of our area and are now in the hands of different missionaries.  Another set of investigators are quite young and their grandma is a member; we have been teaching them every once and a while but their parents decided they didn't want their kids to learn any more :( So now we're back to finding and trying to get some more people to teach.

On a good note, General Conference was this weekend and we got to listen to all the cool stuff that happens in General Conference.  On another good note, it was totally my birthday yesterday and I got cards and food from a bunch of different people. It was awesome!  

Anyways that's about all I got for the time being. I miss you all!

Love 

Elder Christensen

Week 15: Hancock

So Basically a lot of stuff happened this week. On Wednesday we went to our transfer meeting and I lost elder Goldsberry; he's moving to a ward in Chattanooga. I'mma miss him.

Elder Hancock is my new companion. He's super cool. We already get a long great.  One of the first things I said to him was, "So I'm retarded with directions and have no idea how to get home." He replied with, "Crap I'm retarded with directions too." So basically we got a tiny bit lost on our way home since we didn't have a GPS. But it was fun!  It's kind of my job to know the area since I've been here for 3 months so I've been taking it upon myself to learn my surroundings more.  I'm seeing some major improvement, although I still got lost quite easy. We have a GPS now that Elder Hancock had packed away in his suitcase but it isn't the greatest quality. [Side note:  I packed up my GPS for Dalan's b-day package for him to borrow.  It's making the rounds.  It was first purchased by my dad, who sold it to me, and now moving on to Tennessee.]

We both love Taco Bell, so that's awesome we've already eaten there a couple of times now.  

So Elder Hancock has been out for 13 months which is the same as Elder Goldsberry.  We went pretty ham this week on missionary work and we ended up getting some of the best numbers I've gotten since I started my mission, and we have plenty of appointments set up for this week already.

So I finally took some pictures. So that's cool I guess.  One of our investigators is a big nerd like me and has all types of cool gaming and Anime stuff. We've talked a little bit about it and I got to hold a sword from one of the shows (Elder Hancock didn't take the best picture of it though). 

They also have pet rats and I got to hold it. The tail is a little weird at first but you get used to it. They're nice and cuddly and soft.  

The picture of Goldsberry and I is the last photo we took together. It was right before he got in his car to go to Chattanooga.

Anyways that's about all I'm willing to write at the moment. Hope you all have a great week and I miss everyone!

Love 

Elder Christensen

Week 14: Crying Face :'(

Well, transfer call was on Saturday. Basically what it is, is a big conference call with everybody in the whole mission.  Everybody mutes their phone microphones (It would be crazy to have 100 phones on at once) and we listen to the President tell us what's happening.  We get to hear who is leaving their area and will need to pack up their things and come to a transfer meeting on Wednesday; we hear people who are entering leadership positions, training positions, and people who are coming down from leadership positions.  SO Elder Goldsberry is leaving :(

He's actually almost done packing all of his stuff. Most missionaries do it Wednesday morning, but he figured it's a good idea to be smart and pack everything beforehand.  I'm not sure where he is going, or who my new companion will be -- I won't find out until Wednesday -- so you'll have to stay tuned and find out on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z... I mean on the next installment of weekly emails from Elder Christensen. (Speaking of Dragon Ball, apparently they just started making them again... whaaaaaaaat????)

Well my picture game is still weak, lol. I PROMISE that I will take pictures this week, because I will be with my new companion and whatnot, so there will be tons of them. I'm not completely empty handed though, I do have a few, so here you go:

[Warning: If you have arachnophobia, ignore next photo.]

Random fun fact: Conference Sunday is my birthday!  Hahaha how cool is that?  (October 4th for those who were wondering). 

OH I almost forgot... The Maryville area is losing one of their cars... YAY!!! That means I get to bike around every other week, WOOHOO! (I'm not actually excited; I'm just trying to trick my brain into thinking I am.)  Conveniently enough, the other missionaries' car stopped working right as they announced that we were losing a car, so I guess that means our car will be staying.  There's like a giant hill right where our apartment is so I'm going to have to bike up that thing like every night. 

Well I don't want to keep complaining about having to ride a bike so I think I'm going to end this email right here.

Love 

Elder Christensen

Week 12: U-Haul

So we go to move one of our less-active members as she was moving all the way to Michigan or something like that.  We show up and she has this little 6x5 ft trailer.  There were like 8 of us, so we were thinking "Oh man, this is going to be an easy move, right?"  She had 4 couches, a fridge, 2 tables, a few dressers, and a bunch of boxes.  We were sceptical if we would even be able to fit half of it in there, but she insisted that it would all fit.  So we all went forward and managed to fit all 3 couches into it, and then we were out of room.  So that was fun, I guess.  Always be prepared if you want to move, is basically what I'm getting at here.

We've been going along as usual and a thought popped into my head. In about 2 weeks my trainer is going to be gone!  WHAT?  Has it been that long already?  I'm going to have a new companion soon. Hopefully he's a cool guy.

Since it's labour day we weren't able to access the library to fire off emails so we had to improvise which ended up with us barely finding computers by the end of P-day.

Anyways, I promise that I will take like a million pictures this week. I'm seriously the worst at taking pictures. I miss you all!

Love

Elder Christensen

Week 11: TiWi

Let's see... I got to drive a car this week! That's a good thing right? WRONG! We just got these new friends in our car called TiWi. It means "Teenage Eye Witness". It's essentially a black box device that is installed in our car and yells at us when we are speeding, braking too hard, taking turns too tight, hitting bumps in the road, practically everything you can think of.  It then takes all of your driver data and then ranks you as a red, yellow, or green driver.  If you get marked as red you lose driving privileges for the rest of your mission; yellow you lose them for a transfer, but being yellow multiple times will result in losing those privileges.  Apparently in all the missions it's been implemented, it has had a great success in lessening the accidents and maintenance on mission cars, so it's going to save like millions of dollars worldwide, so I guess it's a good thing to have. (I still hate it though!)

Other than that, this week has been pretty ordinary. I went on exchanges (I switched companions for a day) with Elder Hoff. He was in my area and it didn't last too long since I ended up being so busy the whole night he was here, but I've exchanged with him before and so we didn't need to do any meet/greet stuff.

My picture taking game is still weak, but I did manage to snag a picture of Elder Goldsberry posed in an awesome manner with one of our member's new puppies. His name is "Bobby" and he's like a month old or something.

Anyways I love you all and hope you have an awesome week!

-Elder Christensen

Week 10: Withdrawal

So all that soda we bought was mostly caffeinated, and let's just say there's none left.  And the last couple of days have been rough since we have significantly reduced our caffeine intake.  Although I'm pretty sure it will go away in the next couple days, for now we have caffeine headaches.

Other than that, things have been awesome!  We had a big event (that I didn't get to go to) at the Maryville college, and we got to set up a booth and give out copies of the Book of Mormon to all the freshman that wanted one.  Elder Goldsberry went with Elder MacDonald for that and I stayed with Elder Gannoway and went to church.  The other Elders showed up to church but they were late because of the event.

We've been going through a bunch of lists of members who are inactive and visiting them. It's created some pretty awkward encounters! Ask me about that when I get home.  

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures this week because my picture taking game is weak, but I'll make up for it next week hopefully!

Love 

Elder Christensen

Week 9: Nair

This week was pretty cool. It was the end of my first transfer in the mission field, which means we got new missionaries in this week. (That means I'm not the newest anymore... YAY!) Anyways one of the new missionaries is being trained by the other missionary in our ward that isn't me or Elder Goldsberry. Elder MacDonald is training Elder Gannaway. He's pretty cool I guess.  

For those of you that are curious of the title of this email, in Super Smash Bros there is terminology for naming aerial attacks. They all end in "air" (bair, dair, fair, uair, and nair.  Meaning back air, down air, forward air, up air, and neutral air.) However this is not the "nair" I'm referring to.  The nair I am referring to stands for "no hair".  It's that stuff you put on your hair and it removes it all in like 3 minutes.  Well me and Elder Goldsberry found some in the apartment and decided the only logical move to make was to rub it all over our legs.  Long story short, we don't have leg hair anymore.

I don't really have much more to report on this week other than the new missionary and the nair incident so I'll keep this one short. I miss you all!

love,

Elder Christensen

Week 8: How Much is Too Much?

So this week was way busy, but not really busy in the normal sense.  Usually busy would mean teaching lots of lessons and meeting new people, BUUUUT we did a ton of other stuff this week.

Monday we drove to Sevierville (where Dollywood is) to hang out with the elders and sisters up there for p-day. We went to a big knife store called Knife Works and I may have bought something, or maybe not.

Tuesday was honestly pretty slow. We didn't really meet too many people that day, but we play basketball at the church there every week at 7.

Wednesday was MLC, Missionary Leadership Council. My companion is the district leader so he had to go to that, but since I'm not a leader I didn't go to that so I switched with someone else for the day and I ended up in a bike area for a day with a different elder.

Thursday and Friday was really busy.  On Thursday we turned the church gym into a Doctor Who themed wedding.  On Friday it was the wedding. We had to stay for the whole thing so we could lock up.  The wedding was one of our investigators who was marrying a less active member in our ward. We were teaching them and they mentioned wanting to get married so we offered the building to use for their wedding.  They then told the Bishop they were going to have a Doctor Who theme. His face was priceless but he went with it and even wore a scarf from the show while marrying them.  I have a ton of pictures. It was a fun night but we were pretty busy being minionaries the whole time making sure nothing went wrong.  I've never actually seen the show but most of the people that came had, so it was pretty fun for them to see all the cool decorations.

ONE LAST STORY

On Tuesday the other elders in our area broke into our house and moved our mattresses from off our beds into the shower and hid our bedding throughout the apartment. We ended up finding it all pretty quick, but they totally started a war.  On Saturday it was transfer calls and we went over there so we could all hear who was leaving their areas.  After that they had to go out and do something, so we kind of just went back into their apartment and stole one of their mattresses.  It's like a memory foam mattress that he lugs around everywhere. We had it until today, so he had to sleep without it for 2 nights. (There was another mattress in their apartment since he had brought his own memory foam one so he wasn't on the ground or anything.)  It was pretty funny and he was pretty mad but totally worth it.

Also, how do you know if you have too much pop in your fridge?  We haven't decided if we need more or not, but essentially this is what our fridge looks like most of the time…

 (Although this is the most we've had at one time)

Anyways this is basically all that happened this week, I miss you all!

Love 

Elder Christensen

WEEK 7: Trampoline

Well this was a fun week I guess Our money cards got loaded up, so we could go out and buy more groceries. I found a new favorite called "Cap'n Crunches doughnut sprinkled crunch".  It is literally the best thing I have ever put in my mouth. It sounds like it would be kind of nasty but it is so delicious.  I can't get enough of it.

Regarding my email last week titled "Dr. Thunder" I went to wal-mart and it turns out Dr. Thunder is a real thing. Who would have guessed? I laughed out loud and then bought some. It's just a Dr. Pepper knock-off.  Interestingly enough, it's the Great Value brand. In Canada the Great Value brand Dr. Pepper was called "Dr Flave" so it's kind of cool to see how knock-off Dr. Pepper brands change names depending on what country they are from.

My companion has been trying to make paper clip tie clips a thing, so I support him and wear a paper clip tie clip. It actually works really well. You need to get the jump paper clips though, or else it won't work out too well.  We have a whole bunch of different colours, but my favorite is the silver one.

I don't know if I've mentioned this yet or not, but my companion actually knew the mission president before his mission; he was best friends with his son.  SO needless to say he gets a tiny bit of special treatment from the mission president. We got to go over there for dinner on Saturday because the mission president's family was in town so my companion got to see all of these people he knew before his mission.  WELL he went on the trampoline and started doing some backflips. The entire family was there. I went and did a backflip, and then he did a few more and eventually he landed one wrong.  He sort of landed with his face forward, and transferred all of his vertical momentum into horizontal momentum and flew straight sideways off the trampoline (it was hilarious).  He was still in regular missionary clothes so his name tag went flying, his pen, everything! He barely managed to land on his feet, but there was a little bit of a downward slope where he landed. He rolled forward after landing and got a nice dirty back from the grassy, muddy spot he rolled through.  Impressively, he came out of the roll back on his feet and then ended with another little hop.  It didn't hurt right away but after a few hours his knee started hurting really bad and swelling up. He took some drugs and iced it and it helped a bit but still quite a bit of pain.  We think he just pulled a bunch of muscles, nothing too serious, but he has to take it easy for a few days, so we won't be playing basketball today as we usually do.  

Well this concludes my weekly email, I have now learned my lesson that if I try to name something cool, it's already been named before.

WEEK 6: Dr. Thunder

Well let's see. I've exchanged 2 times this week; the first time was with the Zone leaders, so I was with Elder Wright for a day.  The whole week Elder Goldsberry and I were prepping appointments for me when Elder Wright got here.  We ended up having a completely full schedule, with member team-ups and everything, and then as soon as we traded companions, like immediately, I get a text from one saying they have to cancel.  Great.  Then another one canceled.  Great.  Now all we had was a dinner appointment and a short 45-minute lesson for a total of a 6-hour period.  So we went out walking along the street after dinner and ran into some guy sweeping out a parking space in front of his house.  He started talking to us and he has a lot of the core beliefs that we do and wanted to learn more, so we have an appointment set up with him for tomorrow. Pretty cool how "coincidences" like that seem to always happen.

I made the mistake of eating fettuccine Alfredo without taking a Lactaid pill. I won't get into details but it was pretty bad.

I found someone else in this place that calls an ice pop a Freezy!  Everyone down here calls them Otter Pops. I guess that's the popular brand down in America.  Everyone would look at me weird when I called it a freezy.

 Me and my companion mixed red thunder (a Red Bull knock off) and Dr. Pepper this morning. We wanted to see how it tasted. It tasted pretty good, but we probably won't do that for a while.  I initially called it Red Pepper, but then I realized Dr. Thunder sounds like WAY cooler. (Energy drinks are only for days that we are super tired).

I found another sign, this one is pretty hilarious.  Like I have no idea why it even exists.

Some members ended up happening upon a TON of bread so they gave a ton to the other elders in our area, and gave some to us.  WE ended up getting like 3 packs of bagels, 2 loafs of bread, a bunch of cookies, and a big thing of garlic bread. So we threw the garlic bread in the oven to get it nice and soft and warm and ate a GIANT loaf of it for dinner one night.

Anyways, that's everything for this week. I miss everyone!

-Love Elder C

WEEK 5: YOSHI

WHAT A WEEK!

Let's see, Monday was the last time we got to see one of the senior missionary couples serving in the area; they went home so that was sad.  I got packages from my mom, which was awesome.  I bought Spiderman bedding, I'll attach a picture, it's awesome, coolest bedding in the mission.

On Thursday I went on an exchange with a missionary named Elder Beard; he's a cool dude.  He's super into like the really deep doctrine stuff, and he likes to bible bash with people as often as he can.  He serves in Sevierville which is where dollywood is.  I didn't get a picture but it was pretty cool.  We went to bed a little late (whoops) and then we woke up and played basketball outside for our morning exercise (their house has 2 floors and has a park right around the corner, jealoussssss). He gave me a Yoshi Amiibo that he found one day just laying around somewhere, so that's pretty cool that I'll have that with me for my whole mission.  

When we exchanged back we met on this random road between Sevierville and Maryville.  That's when I saw it: the sign.  My jaw dropped and I immediately demanded that we take a picture.  I think it's some of my best work.  Elder Beard isn't in the picture but his name is on the frisbee that I'm holding.  Elder Hoff is on the right (He's Elder Beard's regular companion) and Elder Goldsberry is wearing my glasses.

Another thing I've gotten myself into is Kendama. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically a ball and a string tied to a wood thing and you do tricks with it, kind of like a yoyo, except it's way hard, and looks way cool.

I found it at a bargain store for like $8 and it was regularly like $25 or something.  I'm getting pretty good at it. I didn't start actually playing with it til Friday, but I'm hoping by the end of my mission I'll be able to do some crazy stuff.

I'll keep this one short and just provide you guys some sweet pics.