WEEK 3: Spanish?

Well dang, lots of stuff happened this week, like a ton.  We left early Tuesday morning from the MTC and I mean EARLY! It was 3:30 AM when we had to report to the travel office so we were up by 2:50 and ended up being late.  I was the travel leader of a group of 8, so I had to lead them to the travel office, then to the bus, then to to the train, then to the other train, then to the airport, and all the way through security until we made it to the gate.  At this point it was 7:40 and nobody had eaten anything.  The first thing everyone did was look for phone cards, which I was opposed to. I told everyone to find other Mormons and use their phones for free (I mean seriously in the Salt Lake City Utah airport there's gotta be a billion of them.) They ended up wasting like 10 minutes trying to find a store with phone cards but everywhere was sold out.  I'm starving hard at this point. I ran to a store and bought a bottle of cherry coke because that stuff is amazing, then ran everyone over to the food court.  Some people got McDonalds, but I waited in line extra long to get Cafe Rio, so worth it.  There's no Cafe Rio in Tennessee so I knew it would be my last opportunity to get some. We flew to the Atlanta airport then had to take a train to  the correct terminal.  We then flew to Knoxville (They pronounce it KNOX-VULL). When we arrived we found a couple of members of the church who were actually flying out so they took our picture and sent it to everyone's parents.  

We then ran to baggage and met the Mission President and His assistants and his wife.  Wow this is taking forever to write I'm gonna speed this up.  WE got back to presidents house and got our ipads set up (SWEET) then went to bed at like 9 pm (Which was really 7pm because of time difference change).

The next morning we got to meet a ton of missionaries.  We had our transfer meeting and I met my companion!  I was assigned to serve in Maryville, Tennessee. It's like 30-40 minutes or something like that outside of Knoxville.  My companion's name is Elder Goldsberry. He's a pretty cool dude. He's super chill like me, he's good at lacrosse, and he has a sense of humor.  We get along great.  

After getting back to the apartment on transfer day (Wednesday) we went and helped a not-active family load up a u-haul so they could move the next day.

Thursday came and a train derailed in Maryville and released toxic gases into the air. (Sweet second day eh?) We were stuck in the apartment all day, so I took it upon myself to clean the nastiest bathroom I've ever seen. Elder Goldsberry cleaned the shower and I cleaned the Sink and toilet, then we did our weekly planning and went out to some appointments, but all the appointments canceled so that was lame.  

Saturday was the 4th of july, it was pretty unexciting.

Sunday I learned how to stay awake in church.  There's these candies called "Fireballs" they're like a cinnamon heart, but it's a jawbreaker and they last forever.  They wake you right the heck up.

We went to a random Pentecostal church after we went to ours; it was crazy.  The first 45 minutes of church was like a concert. It was pretty cool (like legit rockband singing songs about jesus for 45 minutes).  The way they preach is a lot different but  all the members feel the spirit and they were super welcoming to us.

And now today is P-Day the day we get to write emails for an hour.

Story time:  We went out knocking on doors and we knocked the first door and realized we forgot pass-along cards, so we drove all the way back to the house to grab some.  After wasting 15 minutes doing all that we got some.  We knock on another door, lady answers and we say our thing ("Yo what up, we missionaries from the LDS church, wanna hear about Jesus?") She said no but we gave her a pass-along card.  Elder Goldsberry proceeds to show her the link on the back of it that you can watch a video on. Once the card flips his jaw drops and fear strikes his eyes.  He holds it together and just points to the link. Turns out, every single pass-along card we grabbed from the apartment was in Spanish.  

A few important things:

Address: Tennessee Knoxville mission

11320 station west dr. ste 101

Farragut, TN 37934

iPads, any time I get wifi I get all the emails that have arrived so far and I can read them; I'm just not allowed to send out emails til monday.  I can however write drafts of emails that I have recieved, so even though my P-Day is Monday you don't need to wait til Sunday to send me emails; sending them earlier gives me more of a chance to write drafts and it saves me a ton of time.  

MUSIC: PLEASE SEND ME MUSIC! Like seriously, I found out our music restrictions are basically "Listen to anything that doesn't take away from the spirit"  So that really only restricts like Death metal, pop songs, and lots of rock.  I can still listen to anything instrumental, or any songs that have good messages behind them.

Wow that was along entry, I'll try to keep them shorter from now on.

-Elder Christensen