December 31, 2012

YOU GUYS SENT ME J-DAWGS SAUCE. YOU ARE AMAZING AND I LOVE YOU.

I'm totally going to take some photos of me in the shirt holding the
bottle with Africa in the background. They'll put it up on the J-dawgs
wall of awesome places that people have eaten J-dawgs sauce that they
will be making if they haven't done it already. We also went and got
some ice cream, which was good too.

The skyping didn't really make me homesick, don't worry. Although
right when I logged into it, I saw a little pop up thing that told me
my password was successfully changed. So you may want to look into
that and see if my account didn't get hacked. That'd be a little
dissapointing.

Here's probably the biggest reason why I didn't get too homesick from
the skype. I forgot all about it about an hour, hour and a half later.
My companion called his family once we got back to the apartment, and
found out that his dad had died that morning. I love Elder Gnahore, he
is way stronger than I think I would be in that situation. He was a
little hard hit that night, but we worked like normal for the rest of
the week. As much as that was possible in the week of Christmas.

Christmas day itself was interesting. We had an appointment in the
morning at a member's house. Turns out he invited some friends and
made some food. So we had to eat an early lunch. Then, we went to an
investigator family's house (more on them later) and we ate again. I
ate so much food that day..... Ooof. So much I got sick. My bad. In my
defense though, it was all extremely delicious, and I had to do it so
that our investigator didn't get upset about the fact that she had
prepared a lot and we weren't eating it. We all have to take hits for
the team sometimes.

Yes we got the faucet in our apartment fixed. So our apartment filter
is back up. No, I don't need a new filter for myself. We still have
low water pressure here, but I'm used to bucket showers by now.

Missionary work has been interesting this week. So many of our
investigators have left on vacation or have had to work to get money
for christmas or have had parties, we have had a lot of dropped
appointments. In a few ways, it has been rather frustrating, but I
also know that we've earned a lot of blessings because we haven't
given up. We do have a couple of investigators that are progressing
really well, like the family that fed us Christmas lunch. That's Anti
with her two sons Steve and Freeman. We haven't had the chance to talk
too much to Freeman, but Steve is really progressing. Sometimes their

mom doesn't understand everything we say because it's all just so

strange to her, but Steve totally understands it and helps us explain.

He even started telling us what strategy we approach when we start

teaching one of his friends. Steve has been my miracle that has kept

me going through these last few weeks, there's been a couple of things

there to get me done, but he's helped me pick myself back up.

This morning I had a new miracle happen. A lot of the missionaries
went to Tokoin to go play soccer. I wasn't too excited, but I knew my
companion loves it so off we went. Most of the Americans decided to
just sit it out and talk to each other, but I gave it a shot. I ended
up being picked last both times teams were picked. Despite all of
that, I still managed to have a good time and just enjoy playing. In
the past I would have felt really awkward about being probably one of
the most unskilled players, but I jsut had fun. And don't worry mom,
when I got tired, I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures.

Okay, I got to go, love you all and happy 2013!!
Elder Christensen