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