April 13, 2013

Hi Everyone,

We have a couple of investigators that are doing really well. We
actually have one sister that will probably be getting baptized next
weekend. We need to talk a little bit about that. Rosemonde (literal
translation of name "pink world") wants to get baptized and is totally
willing to respect the commandments, but hasn't entirely grasped all
of the implications of the apostasy and the restoration. Teaching her
has been a lot of fun though, she understands incredibly fast. We've
actually been teaching her with Elder Semken, which has been very
interesting (Elder Semken needs constant translation). I'm pretty sure
she'll pull everything together though. It would be nice to have a
baptism at least. I've gone a long time without having a baptism.
That's really been getting me down for a while. We have another sister
(Deborah) who has stated that she wants to get baptized, but she
really wants to understand everything before she does it, apparently
she's been baptized in 4 or 5 other churches, wants to be really sure.
Our newest investigator is named Gospel. He's from Nigeria, ran into
the church a little bit but never attended. Well, he just up and
decided to come to church with us on Sunday, and now he wants to come
every Sunday. Even though he only understands maybe a third of whats
going on. I'm honestly not sure how well he understands our accents
either. He was super happy to get a copy of the Book of Mormon though,
so that was nice.

Interviews with President Weed went pretty well. I think. This time it
was a LOT longer than usual. Probably because he only had to do five
the whole morning, so he actually had some time. As far as I can tell,
I'm staying in the office for a while. No reason to think I'll be
heading out at the end of the month (except for the irony of the MTC
elders showing up with my drivers license, and I wouldn't need it any
more. That would be funny). But I really expect to be here until at
least June, if not August or September. I get mixed feelings about
that sometimes.

I did talk to President about whether or not I would be able to come
home early for school. He recommended that I look into doing the
second block first, see if that would be possible. I'd honestly never
considered it, but it sounds not to bad. I'd get to be at home for
probably a month, so not to long nor short. The only problem is that I
don't know if I can do that with my scholarship. Could you look into
that mom? If it is possible, what kinds of classes are given second
block?

I did not burn a pair of pants and a tie at my year mark. I don't
recall really doing anything special. I think I got an ice cream cone.
I haven't been big on celebrating events out here. I don't like being
all "okay, now we're going to go do something I want to do" to my
companions.

My pictures were in a small format? I know that some of them were
bigger than others, but I don't remember if any were "small". I'll
look into it on my camera. I might have cropped certain photos. I'm
sorry I don't take "cityscape" pictures, but I reallllllly hate
looking like a tourist. Everyone already sees us a mile away because
we're white guys in ties, but to whip out a camera and start flashing
is really uncomfortable for me. Related, I'll get you that better
photo for the drivers license. I can't do it right now because I don't
have time (see below). Elder and Sister Semken will understand, they
want another driver too.

We might be getting our Conference Liahonas a little bit faster this
time. The April Liahona came about the 3rd of April. Is that because I
was assigned to write a complaint to Distribution Services in Accra,
and CC the Director of Temporal Affairs? Possibly. Six months without
English Liahonas was just not fair. In any case, I'm super excited to
read conference. It sounds like it was a really good one. Here's a
shocker for you though... One more conference until I come home. Wow,
it's weird to be able to say that.

No I haven't used all the jdawgs sauce yet. I've actually not used
hardly any since coming back to Benin, we've been meaning to go and
buy some real hotdogs or even sausages (instead of the chicken-dogs
everyone eats normally) and make us some really good jdawgs. We've
been talking about that for a month though, so we'll see if it
actually happens. We have actually started making more root beer
though. I hereby report that dumping milk powder into root beer
creates melted root beer float, and it is delicious.

So shortly after coming in to start writing, we noticed water flowing
down the hall.... The water heater in the kitchen broke somehow. So we
had to mop that all up. Yay! Hence why I can't do the pictures today.

Speaking of mechanics breaking, yesterday was a little nerve wracking.
Let's just say a moto wasn't paying attention until the last minute.
Threw himself off of his bike right before he hit us. Luckily, he
never did hit us. As our Elder Quorum president/Police Chief informed
us, in Africa the law is 'no contact, no fault'. The blessing is that
this all happened on the street where said EQP/PC lives. So he was
there in like 2 minutes. I think it wasn't our fault anyways, but I
wasn't really paying attention at the time so I'm not 100% sure. The
man calmed down pretty fast (his moto wasn't all too badly damaged),
and at the end of it we explained who we were and ended up taking his
contact info for other missionaries. I'm sure that will be a very
interesting first lesson.

In other news, my CD player now works again. Apparently letting it sit
still for 3 weeks fixed it. Go figure.

Okay I got to go now, love you all (but especially you mom!)
Elder Christensen
 
 

April 6, 2013

Hello from Africa,

I am doing pretty good this week. I only had one big problem, which is
the following. JK ROWLING PUBLISHED HER NEW BOOK AND NO ONE TOLD ME. I
found it in a printshop/bookstore yesterday while we were looking for
ink and laminating pockets. That'll need to be sitting on my bed when
I come home.

I'm attaching the picture for the new international Driver's licence.
If for some reason that doesn't work, email Elder and Sister Semken.
Speaking of a senior couple, we seem to be getting a new couple
sometime soon. Elder and Sister....Christensen. Yup, there are
officially too many Christensens in the church, they aren't any
relation (from Nevada). I'm assuming they will be taking me out to eat
and buying me Christmas and birthday presents and such. Or at least, I
like thinking that.

Easter was pretty low key. All we really did was sing the two Easter
themed hymns in the French hymnal.

I didn't go to the member/missionary soccer match. We were told it was
going to last for a while, and we had some office responsibilities to
take care of. It ended a lot earlier though, so we probably could have
gone. Oh well. I don't really feel out of the loop with the other
missionaries because I have to call them all and we have had large
batches of them in for their residency cards. As far as I can tell,
the only missionary in this mission that I have never met is a little
Elder from Madagascar named Elder Rakotonirina. But everyone else I
know at least by their face, even if I haven't really talked to them.
Of course that'll change with time. Especially if I'm not in the
office in June, when we will be getting a rather large wave of
sisters.

Yes the rainy season has started a bit. It has rained a couple of
times at night, although for the daytime we still haven't really seen
anything. Oddly enough, we no longer have power outages. You would
think that that would be worse when it rains. I'll never really
understand Africa.

I don't know if the MTC really has more sisters than Elders, but I
know the number of missionaries is up about 8000 since October, and in
talking with our Area Secretary yesterday I was informed that we are
expecting about 94000 missionaries to be the high. That is just crazy.
Obviously that won't be permanent, but it is still very impressive.
The work will progress a lot.

You are the S2 cast team leaders again? That's crazy. You'll still be
there when Robin becomes YSA. Will you even change anything or just
pull out all the stuff from last year again?

We are doing a bit of missionary work here in my companionship too.
Usually all three of us are in on lessons, but yesterday Elder Semken
took me to go run some errands with him so I missed about a lesson and
a half. Luckily, both of them were taught here in the mission office
(yes we have permission to do that). One of them accepted a baptismal
date, so that was something. She's even come to church already so that
is a little more significant. Sometimes I get a little skeptical when
people accept a baptismal commitment and they haven't even been to
church yet. We have a couple of other investigators that look pretty
promising. Funnily though, only one of them is from Benin, one of them
is Congolaise and the other is from the Central African Republic. The
latter was wearing an LMFAO shirt during our last lesson, which made
me chuckle. We have had a couple of really good lessons over the last
week where I really think the Spirit was there. At least we are
starting to have investigators come to church.

We are going to have interviews again with President Weed this week.
I can't believe that it's that time again. The last 3 months have just
flown. I don't know how that will be now that I'm in the office and we
see each other most days of the week anyways.

This week I realized that I am not a good cook yet. I had not been
aware that it is in fact possible to burn spaghetti. Oops. Lessons
learned. On the other hand, I bought a giant bottle of mint syrup
recently and that has been a lot of fun. I have rediscovered the joy
that is mint hot chocolate. Mint Macaroni? Not a joy. Mint rice?????
I'm going to try tonight if Elder Burkhart will let me.

Yesterday we had a visit from the Area Secretary, Elder Fitzgerald. It
was a most insightful meeting. He was here to talk about the new
branches we are looking to create for the district. I now fully
understand how painfully obnoxious it is when missionaries "poach" and
baptize someone who lives in a different ward or branch. I also
learned a lot of other really cool stuff. Unfortunately President Weed
wasn't able to be there, so I took like 3 pages of notes.

Now for the list of cool things I saw this week.
A two ring binder
A baptismal form with a birth date of February 31st
A catholic church that looked like a candy cane

I was thinking this morning about communication. I never really
realized before my mission how important communication is, and
especially good communication. It is impossible to work for/with
someone if you don't communicate. Same thing with serving them. When I
attended those two weddings a few weeks ago, something that really
struck me is that all of the American couples talked about how crucial
being completely open with your spouse is. I also thought about the
communication that we have with our Heavenly Father. It is incredible
to me that that is a two way communication. He doesn't have to tell us
about what he is doing, he could just go ahead and do it. He tells us
because he loves us and he wants us to understand. Thinking about all
of this made me really grateful for general conference, even though I
won't get it for another month like normal. That really is such a
great way to listen to what God has to say. I hope everyone will take
the time to listen.

Alright, I think that that might be it for this week.
Lots of love,
Elder Christensen

March 30, 2013

Hello Everyone,

I am super sorry that this is going to be a short email, sometimes
things just don't work out the way you want them to. On the other
hand, yesterday was my 1 year anivesary of arriving in Africa. The
time just flies by doesn't it?

YES the mission office is airconditioned. That was honestly one of the
only things that kept me going on during the rough start I had here.
Things are going a lot better now here though.

Elder Burkhart
I did not get the drivers licence yet, but we will be making another
Post office run on Monday. You can talk to the AAA people about what
happens if you re-renew it and then the other one shows up. Or if you
can think of some way to guarantee that that one will show up fast.
You can email Elder or Sister Semken to get through to me before next
saturday, I already talked to them about it. If it turns out just
redoing it is the best idea, I will probably send you the pictures on
Wednesday or Thursday, I already asked for approval on that.

To my knowledge, we are not doing anything for easter. Maybe we will
be doing a musical number in sacrement meeting, that's what we did
last year.

Yes I try to write in my journal a lot still. I'm not as good as I
used to be (every day for the first 7-8 months booyah), but I probably
have at least 10-11 months of entries.

My white shirts aren't really thinning, at least as far as I know.
They are a little less white, I will admit that. I'm going to dry
clean some of them this week to see if that will help. If it does
reach the point where I need new shirts, I'll just have some made
here. Everything else seems to be holding out pretty well, I can't
really think of any "needs' that I have.

The power has gotten a lot more stable here the last week, thankfully.
So yes, rice cooker is back in action. We don't cook too much american
stuff, except when I have the alfredo sauce mixes. I guess that's
Italian though.

Yes I have been getting the forwarded emails from Jacob, thank you
very much! That has been really fun to read them.

Let me share you an interesting story from the life of an office
missionary. So 2 weeks ago the country of Benin finally figured out
that we are actually a church (no joke, missionaries even heard it on
the radio). I don't know why it took so long, especially since we have
been legally recognised since like 2006. At any rate, they figured out
they shouldn't really charge us so much on our visas and residence
cards and such (we were paying something like 20% more than nuns or
something). So we decided to run a giant batch of missionaries through
for their residence cards. This is the one that requires the blood
test. So we called them all in on Friday and ran the blood test. There
were 19 missionaries that were in this group, and some of them had to
bring their companions. Acccording to my count, we had 2 doctors, a
government agent, 27 missionaries (4 of which were sisters), 2 senior
couple missionaries, and 2 brethren from Ghana (running an unrelated
audit with one of the aforementioned senior couple) all in the office
at the same time. It was chaos. Especially when they all of a sudden
asked us to have them all fill out extra forms we weren't
anticipating. I was on my feet from about 7:45 AM to probably 11:30AM,
trying to run through the crowd and get 20 different things done at
the same time. But the good news is that everyone survived, and I
never once broke down to cry like a baby. we decided we are going to
split them up into two groups to take them to immigration for the next
step this week. Hopefully that will go better.

Office Missionaries
How are the pageant preparations going? Are you cast team leaders again?

I love you all very much,

Elder Christensen

March 23, 2013

Hi Family and Friends,

Wow has it been one of those weeks that I could never totally explain
in a single email. Generally, it has been a better week, lots of
exciting stuff has been going on.

So this week has been a week of comings and goings. We've had a lot of
new missionaries come in, and right now there are 7 missionaries
sitting in the mission office having their departing interviews with
president. Both of those have been interesting. Let me sum up in a few
key points:
I've lost about 18 pounds since leaving the MTC (assuming a two pound
proselyting attire, I'm at 143 pounds, and this morning I realized I
could drop an inch off of my pants waist).

I met the incoming Americans, they all seem to be doing really well. 6
weeks appears to be a decent amount of time in the MTC. One of them
had all of his ties stolen the night before he left the MTC. I'm not
sure if stolen is right, my guess is someone thought he had already
left and had left them behind.

I met sister missionaries for the first time. They were short.
Apparently we have been paying a lot more for our visas than other
charitable/religious organisations do. This is being rectified.

It is impossible to look up the status of a flight from an African
airline company. You can call the agency, but they will tell you that
the plane is en route, and then the destination airport will tell you
that the airplane has already landed and taken back off. And at the
end of it all, you have no idea where your two sisters and elder are.
They are safe and sound now, we are glad to say.

Not Sister Weed's Meatloaf



Sometimes you can get the leftovers from the incoming dinner the new
missionaries get. Sister Weed makes pretty good good sweet and sour
meatloaf.

This morning I went to another wedding. Again a fun experience. This
one took a lot longer though. The mayor found it necessary to read all
59 points enunciated in the marriage process or something. I stopped
paying attention. All I know is that one of the kids is a really good
Michael Jackson imitator. Yes I took a lot of photos. Yes I am sending
my memory card home with Elder Cline.

Missionary work is picking a bit back up too. We have a couple of
investigators that look like they could progress. One investigator
that is definitely progressing. I wouldn't be surprised if she has
read half of the book of Mormon by tomorrow. Okay, that actually would
be a little surprising, but I could imagine that happening.

I think I've more or less got the hang of driving in Africa now.
Definitely haven't mastered it, but I can get by.

According to one investigator that meets with other missionaries, I
have a super small mouth. There you go. Elder Burkhart confirmed that
even for white people, my mouth is apparently a little small. I never
knew. The way I was told this story was super funny though.

We all bought ties off the street a few nights ago. Super cheap. My
companions actually got really good deals for their ties. I however
finally looked at my tie in a well light area and found out that I
pretty much got what I paid for. Oh well, it was only a dollar.

This week I had some really good personal study time. I had a really
cool day where I really didn't do any other study than read chapters
in the book of Mormon that prophecy of Christ, and then that evening
we had a lesson with a young Muslim man where I got to use verses from
pretty much every chapter I had read that morning.

I thought a bit this week about motivation for service. What it really
seems to come down to is love for the other person. That is the reason
that will continually motivate service especially service to the point
where it really becomes a sacrifice. I know that I have improved my
capacity to love since I came on my mission, but I've been looking
into what I can do to increase that still. Ironically, it has made me
come back to one of my top missionary scriptures. Alma 38:12. Also
Mosiah 4:11-12 have been insightful. I'm still working my head around
this. Christlike attributes rarely seem to be acquirable if the main
goal of an exercise is to gain them. They usually seem to be really
nice side effects of living life. So I guess that means that I need to
"live life" more often. That's going to take a long time.

I finally figured out that the stretchy exercise band they give you
in the MTC actually can be pretty handy for exercising. Go figure.

Alright, I love you all,




Elder Christensen

March 15, 2013

Hi Everyone,

Things are going a lot better this week. I figured out that some of my
unhappiness problems was actually coming from some rather poor dietary
choices I was making. Fixed those, doing a bit better now.

In continued health news, I DID take my first immodium pill this last
week (anti-diarrhea medicine). Only 489 pills left before I run out.
It actually worked pretty well, go figure. Luckily I never have
diarrhea anyways.

The mission office got a bit better. I am expanding my vocabulary a
little bit. I've had to learn a bit of bank vocabulary this last week.
We've had a couple of problems with the bank lately, they have some
organizational problems. We have to translate everything for the
office couple, they don't speak any French. There's an interesting
line between an exact translation and a useful translation. I usually
just cut to the chase and tell Elder Semken what he needs to know.

I didn't go to the zoo on monday. I was going to, but right after I
emailed you I realized that Elder Tshizanga was completely out of the
loop about it, we hadn't even asked him if he would like to go. I've
already done some cool stuff in Benin, so he went instead. I've heard
it isn't a terribly exciting zoo anyways, so I can wait. I did get to
go on another kind of field trip this morning though. There is an
Elder from France that finished his mission about a year ago (I never
knew him infield), who came back and this morning he married one of
the local members. So we got to attend that, he was Elder Tshizanga's
trainer. Very interesting experience. Just a civil marriage, the
governments here don't recognize religious marriages so you have to
have a civil ceremony before going to the temple. The best part though
is that the Southams are back! They are the couple that lived across
the street when I was in Gbedjromede. The girl that got married had
been their translator while they were here, so they flew out to see
the wedding. It was super cool to see them again, they were even all
dressed up in the traditional clothes they bought last time. BTW, tell
Tyler Calder that I got his letter, even though I'm not entirely sure
how he got it to the Southams in the first place.

Driving is going better, I've gotten a lot better handle on it. Now I
just have to get used to things like getting passed on the right hand
side by motos and driving all crazy and stuff. I might need to learn
how to parallel park too. I failed that part of my drivers test, and I
never tried again after that. I have not yet received the
international drivers licence though, I assume it would come this
week. It just has to come before the first of April.

Way to go Cameron! Oboe is a challenging instrument, but it is fun.
Nice build up into the saxophone too if he wants to do marching band.
I've never been to a lacrosse game, I'll have to make sure to go to
one next year, assuming Robin is still on the team.

Transfers are coming this next week. I'm not going anywhere. Although
I will no longer be "district leader". I'm not sure if we are just
taking turns or if I failed a test or what. At any rate, 14 months in
and I'm junior comp again. No problem, I don't think I'm anywhere
close to being a good leader anyways. No longer my fault when things
go wrong.

We have been having serious problems with power outages lately. Ever
since I came back to Benin, almost every night the power will go out.
It always comes back on right about the time we are going to sleep,
but it makes daily planning hard and we can't use the rice cooker.
Thank heavens we finally went out and bought more spaghetti.

Funny story from church last sunday. The ward music conductor woman
does not know the difference between dotted eighth notes and dotted
quarter notes. So the hymn Abide With Me, 'Tis Eventide, became one of
the slowest hymns I have ever sung or played. On the other hand, the
branch already knows I saw a mighty Angel flying (or something like
that, I'm not sure exactly what it is in English, we sing it so
rarely).

Super cool that all those people have mission calls, the only bummer
is that I won't have anyone to hang out with when I get back.
Occupational hazard I guess. My brain can't really figure out how much
time I have left. Sometimes it feels like forever, but the weeks just
seem to be zipping by and I can't really grasp how the mission could
take that much longer. I guess I come home when I come home. Unless
there's weather delays, that wouldn't be very fun.

Alright, love you all a lot (especially you mom),
Elder Christensen

March 9, 2013

Hi Everyone,

Okay, well first off, sorry for how short the last letter was. We had
a couple of Elders call in having problems with their bank cards (we
recently switched banks) and I had to work on that in the middle of
writing time. I'm going to try and put a lot of detail in this one.

So as far as whether or not I like the mission office.... I still am
not sure. I definitely did not like it last week when I wrote. I'm
doing a bit better now though. As far as our duties in the office, we
come in in the mornings when we would normally be proselyting.
Normally, we are supposed to be out in the field after lunch. However,
sometimes things pop up that keep us in. Those things are almost never
planned, so it runs a hassle with investigators sometimes. It also
sometimes gives office Elders the idea that they should just expect
those things to show up so they shouldn't bother scheduling
appointments during that time...... That's why I had so much down time
at first. We are doing better at getting out now, but it's not perfect
yet.

As far as official office responsibilities go, I do a lot of phone
calls and translating. Our office couple has no French capacities, so
every time they have to meet with a landlord or go see a potential
building or go to the bank or anything like that, an office Elder has
to go with them. It sometimes feels like Elder Semken is my new
companion thanks to that. I also get to put the information from the
baptismal recommendations into the official system. What else.... I
train Sister Semken on how to work in an office, we help Sister Weed
with her projects. We get the mail from the post office and run other
little errands. I've decided we are the Office Minions. We can be
really useful at times, but we aren't important like the assistants so
when they don't want us they can just push us out of the way. I think
that means that President Weed is Gru.

No I haven't received the new driver's license yet. I did have my
first experience driving a stick shift this afternoon though. It went
alright, but who wants to bet that I forget it all before I get behind
the wheel again? I'd better get it down fast, there's a chance that
I'll be needed to help run the next transfers in two weeks. Especially
now that we have some apartments a bit farther out.

So you ready for this? Apparently I lived through an African coup
attempt. A couple of people were arrested for apparently trying to
overthrow the president. All I knew was that there were a lot of
policemen out on the streets for about 4 days, and even that was only
because I'm in a car a lot more lately. I'll check that box off my
bucket list I guess.

I found out that one of the sons from that family I was working so
much with back in Doumassesse has a baptismal date for next week. I
hope that holds, I put so much effort into that family. They mean so
much to me.

So on Friday we'll be taking Elder Tshizanga (one of my companions) to
the doctor so he can have a cyst cut out. I wonder if they'll let me
take pictures....

Speaking of pictures, I'm going to the zoo on Monday! The Finagnon
zone is going up to Porto Novo to see the zoo, and I managed to snag a
seat. That'll be fun, guess I will see a lion in Africa.

Haha, I actually ate a falafel this last week too Mom, there's a place
nearby that makes them. Everyone else thought I was super weird for
ordering it though, most Elders just order hamburgers or Chicken
Shawarma.

Speaking of Shawarma and Falafel, I found something out this last
week. Apparently they have just dedicated the first stake center in
the Middle East. Apparently there is a stake in Abu Dhabi, which I did
not know. They say that it's full of Americans and Phillipinos. So
there you go.

Oh, and the curse of knowing someone that knows the other missionary
continues. Elder Semken knows the Darowskis, who were effectively my
bosses when I worked with the Joseph Smith Papers. Always a small
world.
 
Okay, I think I got in a bit more detail this time. Hope that makes up
for the last time.
Love,
Elder Christensen

March 2, 2013

Hello family and friends,

Well, I'm still hanging in here. Doing alright.

So update about my life right now. I'm district leader in the mission
office. My district consists of just our companionship though, so it
doesn't actually mean anything special. I don't even get to lead
district meeting, we do that with President Weed and he runs it. I
really am not doing much of anything actually, and it's starting to
get on my nerves. I don't mind the office work, it's important and
interesting. I learn a lot of stuff and get to be useful. It's when I
get done with my work.... and then we don't leave because the others
are still working. I know I've become stronger since being a
missionary, because if this had been at the beginning of my mission I
probably would have been all over the internet by now out of sheer
boredom, but for the moment I'm holding strong. Give it a month though
and I might cave if nothing changes.

We serve in the Gbegamey branch. It's a split off from the Gbedjromede
branch, but it was split before I got out here. Our companionship is
the only companionship in our apartment, which is weird. It's me,
Elder Burkhart, and Elder Tshizanga.

We got to greet new incoming missionaries this week, that was fun.

I got the two packages this last week. That was a lot of food. One of
the packages was slightly opened, most of the tootsy rolls were gone
by the time I got it. Didn't seem to be a rat this time though, much
too neat. I did a calorie count on the box. 22155 calories. Give or
take maybe 100, I had to guess on one or two small items. You sent me
more than 10000 calories of peanut butter. That's a lot. And it is
going to taste sooooo goood.

I have no time today. Sorry. Not that I actually did a lot worth
talking about anyways. I was mostly just kind of grumpy because I
wasn't doing anything.

Love you all.
Elder Christensen