Week 9: My First Transfer

It's transfers week! I will be staying in my area with Elder Iverson which I'm really happy about! 33 new missionaries will be coming in on Wednesday so I won't be the baby anymore haha.

Guys, I met the weirdest dude the other night. We were riding our bikes through a neighborhood and there was a man outside cleaning up his yard. We stopped to talk to him and he asked if we were Mormon. We said yes so he came over and starting talking about how he knows everything about our religion and that he owns an old VHS tape produced by our church. We asked what his name was and he said some super long name, so all I caught was "Pastor Charles". He ended up inviting us into his house, which was actually more like one big garage with stuff piled everywhere. He showed us all these books he had and then gave us one about Hillary Clinton and said it was his gift to us haha. Now here's the best part... he told me to play his piano and then stopped me halfway and told Elder Iverson to make up a song and sing it along with me. I was actually really looking forward to hearing what Elder Iverson would come up with but Pastor Charles got distracted with another tangent :( After that he took us back outside and was telling us about how he knows all these famous people and that the moon is a drone that's watching him. Then he took us across the street to another house that he apparently owns as well. This one wasn't as cluttered but there was spray paint all over the walls and a big hole cut out in the ceiling. He told us that the hole was there because he had to fix some pipe after the freeze that happened earlier this year, but that he isn't going to cover up the hole because it's proof of a hate crime. Once again, he had me very confused. It was almost 9:30 at this point so we told him we had to go and he told us he looks forward to meeting with us again and that we are like his sons. So that was a really weird experience but at least he likes us. We're planning on stopping by tomorrow so I'll let you know how that goes haha.

There was a shooting at our apartment complex the other night. Apparently a fight broke out and it escalated really quickly. Luckily we just moved apartments, so we were on the opposite end of the apartment complex, but it's still pretty scary. I'm not sure if anyone got hurt but police were there for awhile.

Elder Iverson and I were tracting at an apartment complex last week and we prayed to know which building to knock. After the prayer, Elder Iverson asked if I had any impressions and the number 6 immediately came to my mind. We followed that prompting and went to building 6. A woman answered the first door we knocked on and told us that she's actually been looking for a church to go to so it must have been a sign that we showed up at her door. Is that a miracle or what!? We got her number and are just waiting to set up a visit now!

We got a referral for a lady named Candace and were told that she needed some service done. She asked us if we were okay with dogs so we said yes... little did we know she had 8 dogs in her house. And not only was there a crazy amount of dogs, but the majority of them were very large dogs... that liked to jump. I'm honestly surprised they didn't knock me down haha. We came out of there with an immense amount of dried slobber on us but at least we were able to help clean her house a little bit! She is on disability because of a chronic illness and she's also taking care of her young daughter and going through a divorce. She was crying within the first 10 seconds of meeting her so that was pretty sad. We're also gonna go bless her house at some point cause she feels like there are evil spirits there so hopefully that and some Bible study will help her out!

We had a first lesson with a sassy old lady named Jennifer on Saturday. She asked us before the lesson if we could answer the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?". We were able to share some of the plan of salvation with her and that the trials we go through in this life help us grow and become closer to Heavenly Father. She really liked what we had to say and was excited to read the Book of Mormon and tell us what she thinks of it.

Lastly, our friend Carlos came to church for the first time yesterday and said he enjoyed it! 

I love y'all!

Elder Christensen

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