WEEK 9 PHOTOS

#1 & 2-The sisters once again caught off guard

#3- Our district with our matching mission shirts!

#4- Flashing the 'serbski sam' which is basically like a serbian national pride sign that looks like a gang sign, but its patriotic so HA its okay :) if you really wanna hear the story behind it, you can ask me, or i'll say something about it next week. Or you all can look it up on the internet, cuz you can do that haha.

#5- Me next to a Tesla we saw on our temple walk. Basically one of the coolest, sleekest cars ever, and by far my favorite car ever. 

#6- Sister Brooklyn Downs, who was in my ward at BYU. She's going to Denmark.

#7- Got some new Serbian nametags, with my last name spelled right (haha its serbian, see if you can tell the difference)

#8- Us with our teacher Sestra Watts. She got back like 4 months ago, and then became a teacher pretty quick so she's a great teacher.

#9- My companion before his haircut. He needed it. Bad. haha.​

Week 9!-Faith, one crazy skype, and miracles

​This week was incredible! I can't wait to get out of here, but I can't believe they're sending us out! At some point I guess it just felt like we would stay here forever, and I just accepted that, but now we'll be in the real world in just a few days! I can't tell you how much I don't feel ready for this, but we're just gonna jump off the edge, and hope that we survive. Speaking of which, that's the first thing in the subject line.

This week we've had so many incredible moments where I just felt the spirit tell me what I needed to hear so that I could be better. The one theme that's been repeated over and over is that we need faith, and through faith we can do anything. Elder Anderson came to speak to us on Tuesday, and that really made me think about what I might be lacking faith in, and how I can trust the Lord to fulfill those weaknesses, and make me able to help other people that I run into! 

As for our crazy skype, we got to skype a memeber in Serbia yesterday, which was interesting, especially since we've been learning 90% Croatian, and 10% Serbian, so we just did our best to talk in what Serbian we knew, and then just filled in the rest with Croatian, since they're pretty similar. She was a very interesting and funny lady. She told us she played the harmonica, and my companion asked her to play a song for us, and she did! So we were serenaded by a harmonica, and everyone else in the room could hear it! it was quite funny. And then she told us to translate a verse we had just read into english, because she was learning english and wanted to hear it, but neither of us could do it, so I just read it out of my scriptures haha. Definitely a memorable experience.

OK, back to spiritual stuff. The last thing I'd like to talk about today is miracles. Miracles are things that we believe in, and they're pretty incredible. As I've been learning about faith, and had the opportunity to watch Ephraim's Rescue on Sunday, I saw that any miracle is only dependent on one thing, and that is faith. Every miracle in Ephraim's Rescue, every miracle in the life of Jesus Christ, and every miracle in our lives, have been and will be predicated on our faith. When we don't believe or have faith, that limits our ability to receive miracles. It's an incredible principle and I can't wait to apply it when I get out there!!!

This is it, my last email from the US! If I drop off the map for a few months, it might be because I'm in the middle of the Balkan states with no way to access internet so here goes! Just kidding I highly doubt that will happen, but hey ya never know. My P-Day should be Mondays, so y'all will have to wait a whole 9 days for another update! But it's also 8 hours ahead, so mornings there will be late nights here. I just wanna leave my testimony that I know this church is true, and it has brought me so much joy and happiness. Because of that joy, I want to share it with others, and that's what I will be doing for the next (almost) 2 years. I also know that a PROPHET of God called me to this crazy place that I will come to love! If that wasn't the case, there's no way in the world I would do this. But because I know that God has asked this of me, there is no way in the world I cannot do this. Doviđenja Amerika!

Starjesina Christensen (I got too lazy to change the keyboard settings :P)

P.S. If anyone wants to tell me everything ever about the Olympics I would love you forever :D

WEEK 8 PHOTOS

Pictures from the week!

1. Sister Tucker's last day :( She's one of our teachers and we miss her already

2. Our class and district (minus me) doing what we usually do-study for dayzzz. Plus the water bottle, front and center :)​

3. TRAVEL PLANS

Week 8-Travel plans

​TRAVEL PLANS!!!! we got those yesterday and have had a hard time focusing since then because we've been so excited to get out of this town! oh goodness! the gospel is true!

One thing I've learned this week is how much we need to be humble to accept the Lord's guidance. I was called out a few times this week in places I could improve, and sometimes I was willing and ready to change, other times I was willing and ready to make excuses, and not change. 

We studied Moroni 7 in class this week and I absolutely loved it! if you have time this week, read that! It's an incredible chapter and it answered a number of questions I had. try this: write down a question and then search for an answer. Use topical guide and keywords and all that, but find everything you can, and then write a little summary of what you learned as your answer. The scriptures can answer any question you have!

Look up the song "prayer of the children". It's beautiful, amazing, sad, and heartbreaking. I love it so much and wish I could listen to it right now! 

If you ever want to change something in your life, whether it's habits, desires, or even your nature, ask God to change it. If it is a righteous desire, and will make you more like him, He will ALWAYS help. Just believe that he will, and give your best effort, and ask him how, and he will help. 

On a week from Tuesday, we will be in ZAGREB CROATIA! I'll send a little document that details how to send packages and letters next week. But to be honest, they really don't want you to send packages, and if you do I'll have to pay some sum of money just to pick it up so that's no bueno :( but I think normal letters are fine! But I could be wrong!

Thanks as always for your prayers and support!

Elder Christensen

WEEK 7 PHOTOS

#1- a few elders lost a bet, so they shaved their legs. Heres the before picture.

#2 - Starsi Peck thinks he can take selfies

#3 - Our pioneer day picture. Blue and white for days. We totally didn't even plan this.

#4 - I was ready for that

#5 - My companion, and the Slovenes. We're all going to the same mission, but they're speaking Slovenian, and we'll speak everything else :P

#6 - An after picture of the shaved legs.​

Week 7-Shaved legs, being humbled, and cool Croatian (MTC)

Alright here goes! The final countdown *cue music*

Next week we will have our flight plans, and the end will be in sight! 

This week has been incredible and I have absolutely loved it! On Sunday we had the Nashville Tribute Band come for our Pioneer Day devotional which was fantastic and I loved it! I would highly recommend listening to their songs wherever you can find them! We also got to listen to a talk by elder Bednar called "Listening to the Spirit" or something like that. Also incredible and I highly recommend it.

This gospel is so true! I've been loving it, and learning so much every day! This week we seem to have focused a lot on the plan of salvation. I would invite you all to study and ponder the plan of salvation, and what it means for us. It is quite incredible, and it really is the 'why' of the gospel. Put simply, the restoration is the 'how', the plan of salvation is the 'why', the gospel of Jesus Christ is the 'what', and the commandments are the 'so what' or the 'what now' of the gospel. It all fits together wonderfully and I absolutely know that it is true. 

I've had some pretty humbling days, and it definitely hasn't all been easy, but little by little, day by day, I can see that I am being changed and made into the person Heavenly Father is making me into. And He can do the same for you too, if you let Him. 

One cool experience we had this week was Skyping a native from Croatia! He was super cool and knew English, so he helped us with some words we didn't know in Croatian (since we have to teach in Croatian, no English allowed) and he was just so amazing! It was incredible to hear his testimony, and just to let him know that we could be seeing him again in three weeks! He's the branch president in Zagreb, so if I ever serve there, I'll probably get to know him really well :) 

Oh here's something fun in Croatian-the verb imati means to have and you conjugate it to say I have, you have we have, etc. Then you just add a negation to say the negative of that, so the word nemaš = 'you do not have'. #hrvatski #croatian. 5 letters = 4 words. Love this language! Oh also we got 4 new Bulgarian elders this week added to our zone!

Mislim to je to (I think that is that) other than pictures! Loving it here and thanks for all your prayers!

Starješina Christensen

WEEK 6-I love studying, but not grammar, Elder Bednar, and one small prayer

I'm starting to lose track of the weeks, and they go by faster and faster every day. 

Don't know if I've said this before, but Sundays here are fantastic! We get so much time just to study the gospel, and I honestly love it! We focused our studies on chapter 4 in preach my gospel: how to recognize and understand the spirit. There is just so much that I found that I could improve on, and I'm sure if I studied again, I would find even more. I've found that if we want to know more about something, and put in honest effort, Heavenly Father will bless us with what we want. It's an amazing thing to see, and I challenge each of you to do that for just one topic or idea, no matter how big or small. It works!

We also had a surprise visit from Elder Bednar on Sunday, and he taught us so much! He had a ginormous Q&A session, and I learned so much not only from what he said, but how he said it, and how concerned he was for the individual question that was asked, and how concerned he was that he had answered the concern. I learned so much about his character, and what I can do to be more like that. 

We got our countdown going this week! We're down to 24 or 25 days left I think!

Also ran, quite literally into an elder going to Argentina who ran a 9:12 2-mile! Needless to say I'm trying to keep up, and if anyone breaks any records now, it'll be him, but it's been great to have someone to run with everyday who pushes me!

Oh my companion, Elder James, told me on Thursday or Friday this week that he heard me talking in half Croatian/half English in my sleep! So I've been dreaming in Croatian, but I don't remember it haha!

Now for my one small prayer. On Friday I wasn't doing so great. Just really negative and not feeling the spirit at all. We got to lunch, and I started eating, but I realized I hadn't said a prayer. So I stopped, bowed my head, and just said, really quickly how I was feeling, and shared with my Heavenly Father what I was feeling, not necessarily with words. I just asked if I could have a better rest of the day because it was not fun. And as soon as I finished I got this reassuring feeling that I just needed to keep on trying, and that He was pleased with my efforts. I didn't think much of it, and went back to eating. I realized at the end of the day, that it had been pretty great, amazing, and wonderful since that point, and I was just so grateful for that. I know that Heavenly Father answers prayers, and he can change us so much if we let Him!

Sorry no pictures this week! Will try to get an especial lot next!

As always, love you all, and thanks for your letters, thoughts, and especially prayers! They are felt, and they do help!

Love,

Starješina Christensen