A much better week

Well this week was much better than the last week. Despite having no appoitments we were still able to teach 4 lessons or so and find a new investigator. Not bad. Plus we gained a lot of new potentials who we will go back and contact within the next week if possible. It was good to get back into a somewhat normal routine again.

Despite the exchange. The exchange in Ravensburg was good, showering was miserable (no water heater), but the rest was good ;-). In Ravensburg we were able to go by on a few Less actives, as well as do some street contacting. Something which I, in the last transfer or so, have actually gotten fairly good at. I forgot had forgotten how awkward it was at the start until Elder Hanson asked me how I am able to walk up to someone and start a conversation spontaneously. I remember now how hard it was for me at the start, but now its well, fairly easy.

Still no contact with Nick, we think he might have taken a trip somewhere because his work is done for a while. So we will continue to keep going by until we somehow restore contact with him. This upcoming week we have a few appointments which we are excited about, such as Ronald. Elder Esplin and Elder Smith originally found a long time ago, and gave him a book of Mormon in German. But he is from Holland, so German isn't his mother tongue. Anyway, roughly 3 weeks ago, we bumped into him in Bregenz, which was cool because he lives in Rankweil, (near Feldkirch which was about 40 minutes away from there). He was heading home and we happened to be taking the same train. Which was awesome, because I was able to get his address and we went by a few days later to give him a Book of Mormon in Dutch. At which point we made an appointment out for Tuesday. ( 3 weeks a way at that point). He is a really awesome guy, and seemed fairly interessted in learning about the church ( he is just incredibly busy with work).

We have another appointment with the Cukic family again ( In case anyone has forgotten, brother Cukic was the one who had a severe burnout and depression). He has been making quite a large amount of progress and we hope to invite them back to Church again! That will be neat.

We will also most likely meet with Isabelle. She is 28 years old and has had an incredibly hard life. At the age of 16 her mom spontaneously kicked her our of the house, didn't say why, and to this day refuses to have any contact with her or Isabelle's dad. Because of that she ended up begging on the streets of France for a while. I don't know the whole story, but things eventually got better for her, and she found the church and was baptized. However not long thereafter she went back to the way she was (  i.e. smoking, drinking, etc.) and the guilt of being baptized but then doing all of those things was so much that she had her name taken out from the church. But she wants to come back. She justs wants to make sure that this time she is completely ready, unlike last time when she said that the missionaries really rushed her into the decision.

She doesn't want to discuss baptism at the moment because for her that is a huge step, but she has stopped drinking, comes to Church every week, has read the entire Book of Mormon cover to cover ( in about 3 weeks or so) and last time we met with her, she was already into John in the New Testament ( she likes to read.) She is going through a really hard time right now, she is in the hospital with immense stomach pain, which the Doctors have not been able to figure out why yet. Which somewhat confuses her because she is trying to do what is right, and just as she is coming to church every week again, she starts getting immense pain, and no one has been able to figure it out as of yet.

I really hope things get better for her, she has been coming to church every week, and has been participating more in the lessons, than any of the other members do! And yet she is not ready to let go of everything yet, smoking, or peircings she said that she isn't quite ready for that yet. But maybe while I am here she will change, we shall see.

I think that's it as far as any major appointments go this week. On un related news, I speak German with a Danish accent. :-) I don't quite know how that has come about. Something that someone told me once is that as you get better and better at speaking German, you will start sounding closer and closer to a German. And as this happens, your accent changes and resembles that of a European, specifically Scandanavian. As people guess where you come from, and  they will start guessing closer and closer to Germany. Well everyone that I have been talking to has been asking me if I come from Denmark or the Netherlands. And with a Danish last name... its starting to lean more toward Denmark. :-) Which is cool, because that means that I am getting better at my German. :-) It has had a bit of an effect on my English as well, not a huge influence, but I do sound a bit different...

Anyway thats all for now! Things are going well here. I need a new umbrella again... number 4 or 5, I lose count. The first one broke in Esslingen, then next one fell out of my Backpack on a train (unnoticed of course), Third one developed holes in a couple of weeks ( during the intense rain). And this one had a faulty opening mechanism, which goes off spontaneously ( I have gotten hit in the face a few times...) and today, it shot out of my hand. And when it hit the ground, it smashed the handle into small little pieces. Wunderbar. :-) So I will go buy another one. Yet again. ;-)

Other than that things are going well! :-) I hope all is well at home!

Schöne Tägle! (Have a nice day!)

Love,
Elder Ryan K. Christensen

.........Yeah, its the weekly e-mail yet again.........

This week was well, a bit of a trial. We had scheduled an appointment with Nick on Wednesday at 16.00, but when we went to his apartment, he wasn't there, the weather got really horrible, hail, and a lot of lightning. So we were stranded there for about an hour waiting for things to calm down so that we could leave. We checked back a couple times later that day, and have gone by 2 or 3 times per day this whole week trying to contact him, to no avail. We left a card in his mailbox, but as of yesterday it was still there. I have no doubt that what he told us was true, but I think that he is content to take his time. We will keep trying. All other people that we have been teaching,either dropped us, or said that they want to meet in about a month or so from now. Leaving Nick as essentially our only investigator, and we can't contact him ( go figure... ;-) ). So with that, we are essentially right back where we started... But that's just how it is. God created weeks for a reason, that way a fresh start is at most, 7 days away. We've picked ourselves up, brushed ourselves off, and are prepared to go and have a fresh new week!

The weather has been really interesting. The past two weeks straight it has been raining seemingly non stop. But Thursday, the sun came out, and it essentially turned the inhabitants of the city into steamed vegetables... ;-) Or so it seemed, and ever since then it has been incredibly hot and humid, however I am slowly adjusting to it. 

One lesson I anticipate learning this week is gratitude. Let me explain. The Ravensburg missionaries' water heater stopped working this week, their landlord is in Hungary for 2 weeks, which means no hot water for them. Which makes me feel bad for them, and I am truly grateful for the hot showers that I am able to take in the morning as is. But, we have an exchange with Ravensburg, in which case the district leader most graciously assigned me to go there. I guess a need a little empathy... either way I am not looking forward to showering on Wednesday morning. I guess I should be grateful, from my understanding, there are a lot of missionaries in a lot of other missions who don't quite have the luxury of hot water...

I am officially license-less. For 3 weeks. I finally finished all the paperwork and everything for getting my Austrian License, and took it in and got it ordered today. Well, I guess there is a law which states that one cannot have 2 drivers licenses from different countries at the same time. So they took my american one, and said that the Austrian will arrive in the mail in circa 3 weeks. But they didn't give me a temporary license, or anything of the sort. I asked about it, and the lady printed me off a piece of paper which states that I legitimately gave up my license. That's it. She signed it, handed it to me and told me that was all that she could do. Wonderful, I now am in possession of a piece of paper with a single sentence on it, proving that I legitimately gave up my American license. As if the lack of one wasn't enough ;-) Good thing that I won't be driving a car anytime soon... :-)

Even though we had a rough week, we still saw some tender mercies. Like on Thursday for instance. We were scheduled to have an appointment in Höchst at 18.00, which depending on the bus, could be either 25 minutes or an hour away. The only problem is, is that the bus which takes 20 minutes, is a small bus and the last one leaves at 18.01. But there was also a family we found while dooring ( one of the 3 back to back doors) who said that we could visit them at 19.00 if we were available. When planning for that day, the back up plan, was rather ingenious, we would catch Bus 50 ( the one that would normally take an hour) at 18:15. Take it to Lustenau, where we would catch an S-bahn to Riedenburg, then ride a REX (Regional Express) to Dornbirn, arriving at 18.49. Then sprint to catch the 18:50 Number 1 to Kehlerpark, which would leave us the perfect amount of time to make it to the family. I thought that was a gift from God in and of it self, and also an indication that we were probably going to end up with a dropped appointment and meet the family instead. Well getting to that point the next day we were dead tired. It was a long hot day. We had an appointment in Lustenau with Gunther, who gave us really weird directions to where he was ( after 20 minutes of trying to find it, we realized that we had gotten off at the wrong bus stop). Gunther had told us Schiebenkanal, but there was no Schiebenkanal. There was Schiebenstrasse (Schieben street), or Schiebenbrücke ( Schieben Bridge).We assumed that he meant Schiebenbrücke because, canal, bridge, we figured that there was a bridge... and yeah it was Schiebenstrasse. Anyway, we were beat, it was a long day, and ofcourse, our appointment fell out. So we walked to the bus stop at 18.07 or so and figured we would just go with the back up plan. Getting to the Bus stop and waiting for a few minutes, we were shocked when the 52a pulled up ( the bus that takes 25 minutes) it was 7 minutes late! We took the bus, and Got back to Dornbirn, in time to take the Number 1 up to them 15 minutes early. That allowed us to go to the church, fill up our water bottles, get a drink, and make it to the family with out running or rushing. It was a wonderful tender mercy :-) 

I am doing well. We have good days, and bad days, good weeks, bad weeks, but that is just how it is. I hope all is well for all of you at home! I appreciate all the support and the prayers. They mean a lot. Well, that is all for this week!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

P.S. I am sure Elder Esplin would appreciate it if you could keep him in your prayers, he has  depression, and is questioning his testimony and wondering if he will be able to endure to the end of his mission ( and this week didn't help at all). Thanks!

Grützi mit 'n and!

Grützi mit 'n and! (Greetings Everyone)

For all those wondering what the title and greeting of this e-mail means, its a Swiss greeting for more than one person (singular is simply: Grützi!). I am starting to really like dialects, they are actually kind of cool, when you can understand and speak them that is. ;-)

Its been a crazy week, a lot of ups and downs. We had 3 investigators drop us for various reasons... :-( Thomas Bäck has no more time at all to meet with us, so he dropped us (despite the amazing lesson we had last time). We had an appointment with Nicole and Andi this week, but a few days before Nicole sent us a text saying that she decided that she doesn't want to meet with us and that she is just going to keep her religion because its easier. Then Herr Ritter, who we found last Sunday and met with on Wednesday, called us last night and said that he and his wife talked about it, and decided that they aren't interested in looking at other religions right now. Ugh... 

BUT!!!!!!!! HUGE EXCITING NEWS!!!!! I think I have written about Nick Stemple before, if not I will refresh everyone's memory. So about 3 weeks or so ago, Elder Esplin and I met a Turkisch lady on the street, and with what little German she knew, and the incredibly small amount of Turkisch we knew, we were able to explain to her that we had a free book for her auf Turksich about Jesus Christ. She seemed a bit interested and gave us her address. The next day around 7 pm or so, we set out to try and find it. The address was Haselstaunden Straße 2a. Well we found it, it was a bar. But Haselstaunden Straße 2 was an apartment complex. So we went door to door there hoping that she just got it mixed up. Well somebody let us in, and we went door to door inside the building ( face to face communication is much more preferred than talking through an intercom.) And we came across a family that took a book of Mormon and said that we could come back, The very next door is where we met Nick . He told us that he had someone over, but to come back another day.

The impression that we got from him is that he wasn't really interested, but we were still going to back anyway (of course). So we came back a couple days later to try to meet with the family we had found, and to try to contract Nick ( however, at that time we didn't know his name). Having gone door to door inside we didn't know which klingel belonged to the family ( the man told us his name was Klaus, but didn't tell us a last name, and that was what was on the klingel). But we knew which door inside was his. So I started to ring the klingels, fairly randomly, going through which ones I thought were probable, then just ringing them, to see if someone could let us in. After going through all of them, no one having answered, we started to leave. After walking down the street a few meters, we heard someone buzz us in, so we turn around and sprint to the door trying to get there before it locks again. We made it in, but we have no idea who let us. Surprisingly it was Nick. He said that his apartment was small and a mess so that we wouldn't be able to come in. So we taught a very brief first lesson, gave him a Book of Mormon and said that we would come back next week to check up on him. ( Yes, we did check on the family, and they weren't there.) 

Again leaving his apartment, the impression was, he probably wouldn't read and probably didn't have any real interest in our message. But we came back the next week and rang his doorbell, no answer. He doesn't have a phone so we could only rely on contacting him in person. We lost contact with him for two and half weeks. We thought for sure he had dropped us and that he didn't want to meet. But we kept going back anyway ( we had by this time contacted the family, at which time they expressed no interest). On Tuesday this week we went by again to see if he was there. No answer again. But as we start to leave, a bus pulls up and he gets out. We go to talk with him, but before we really said much he saw the Book of Mormon in Elder Esplins hand and said " I love that book! I have already read half of it!". We were stunned. Somehow I managed to spit out the phrase " what do you think about it?". His reply: " What can I say, its true." WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This happened nearly a week ago, and I still get speechless thinking about it. And as if that wasn't enough he continued : " I was baptized into the Catholic church when I was born, but I never received the confirmation, this book has made me really want to receive it, and I think I want to change my religion and become a Mormon."

I could have exploded from happiness at that point in time! The utter shock must have been blatantly evident, because noticing the look on our face, and the fact that neither one of us could come up with a coherent sentence he said " You guys do get that a lot do you?". No, no we don't. Its very rare to lose contact with an investigator, re-establish it, and then have them say they think they want to join the church.... WOW!!! Luckily, despite the huge excitement I was in, I was still able to listen to the spirit, which told us not to meet right then, but to make out an appointment. Brilliant Idea, let us settle down a bit and prepare a good lesson, before we, out of excitement, stumble, just like Jakob was worried about doing (Jakob 4:18).

He is really busy with work, but his work ends on Tuesday, so we hope to be able to meet with him a few times a week starting Wednesday! We want to review the first lesson with emphasis on Priesthood Authority, and challenge him to Baptism! We could have a baptismal date by next week!!! We are very excited. Although, if he really wants to join the church, he will need to make a lot of changes, which won't be easy. I pray that he has enough of a testimony received, in order to take on these new challenges. But we will take it one step at a time and see how it goes, we are off to a good start. :-)

That was one of our "ups" so to say. The other came from meeting with the Cukic family again, they come from Serbia. Brother Cukic used to be a councilor in the bishopric, but he over worked himself, giving more than he could. He ended up burning out and going into a huge depression. He has been battling depression for a long time and has been afraid to try to come to church, read or pray, fearing that he will hit a high again, then crash. Missionaries have been working with him for months to try to help him out. I met with him for my first time about a Month ago, He is such a great guy, he loves to hear about our success, and how things are going in the ward, but he still had some lingering depression and fears. However this past time we met with him, when he walked in the room, there was a bit of a light in his eyes, and he was noticeably in a better mood. We inquired as to what had made him happier, he told us that he had started reading in the Book of Mormon and Praying again, and that he had noticed a huge change as a result of it. We were incredibly happy to hear this and asked him what caused him to start reading again.

Ironically it was the Jehovas Witnesses. The father of his daughter in law is a Witness, and I guess he showed up one day with a friend. Brother Cukic said "what could I do, he was the father of my daughter in law, I couldn't just turn him away". They started having a discussion in the which Brother Cukic started actually teaching them about the Holy Ghost. It was then where he " came to himself " (See Luke 17, the story of the Prodigal Son) he realized that he need to start reading again. Then he came across Onmi 1:2 where he said that he himself was a wicked man and hasn't been keeping the commandments like he ought to have. This was something that really helped Brother Cukic. I don't remember exactly what happened but he said something along the lines of " he wrote in the book of Mormon, Holy scripture, and he wasn't perfect." It gave him the courage that he could fight! And since then he has been reading and praying daily. Making progress toward coming back to church. Wow. I have read that verse a dozen or so times at least, and never thought anything of it. And for him it means everything. It just shows the power of the scriptures, and the importance of every verse!

Anyway that will need to suffice for now, things are going great! We have our ups and downs, but the difference is very noticeable, we have two or three appointments per day already scheduled this week, instead of just dooring for hours on end. Not that dooring is bad, its just doing all day every day can get exhausting... 

I hope all is well at home, Take care! 

Tchau mit 'n and! (Goodbye everyone)

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

I am getting sick of trying to title these e-mails....

Parental Editorial Comment: Ryan typical has something in the reference line of his emails.  We use that whenever possible.  If he doesn't do anything, we will create a title for the blog post.  We have not asked him to title the emails, he has just done that.  Obviously, this week he had writers block when it came to the title. Still laughing...

Well transfer calls were, well uneventful. The entire district is staying! Which I am most certainly happy about, we have a good district ( Did I mention what everyone was studying in the district? Elder Esplin was studying Chemistry, (But now wants to be an engineer) Elder Hustead is studying Physics, and Elder Hanson is studying Chemistry. I feel very at home here ;-) ). 


I think I may have mentioned Zone Conference in my last e-mail, we had this past Tuesday, and it was incredible! It was in Winterthur, which meant that Elder Esplin and I needed to get up at 5 am to be out the door by 6:15 to catch a train from Bahnhof at 6.37 to make it to Winterthur (transferring trains 4 times) by 8.30, because that was the only option that would get us there before 10. Wunderbar. :-) That ate our entire day we got back from Zone Conference at roughly 7:30 that evening. It turns out that we only ordered 40 Book of Mormons but, Elder Sampson ( Ehepaar) said he is going to bring us some more tomorrow to hopefully get us to survive this month :-). 


But with all the other supplies we ordered my suitcase weighed probably around 100lbs. Elder Esplins was much smaller and probably weighed around 30lbs. Let me just say, there is nothing more fun than trying to carry a 100-pound suit case from Winterthur to Dornbirn, taking 4 different trains and 2 buses ;-).

We had a cool lesson with Thomas this week. The first thing he said when he showed up was that he doesn't want to meet with us anymore, he felt like he was being rushed. (Coming from our first lesson with him, Elder Esplin pushed for a 3x4 ( meet 3 times a week for 4 weeks) which comes from Preach my Gospel. I have never used it, and don't like it, because here in Europe, it doesn't work (its rather Ironic, it was brought up in Zone Conference that the culture here is different and that the 3x4 can cause people to stop investigating). 

Well sure enough, he told us that he couldn't meet with us, because the program was too extreme. In his mind he had gotten himself into a 4 week vortex of no escape which would force to be baptized in 4 weeks. ( Which is why I don't like the 3x4, people here only see it as us pushing to meet a quota, and when it comes to religion, if they are open to it, they don't like to feel pushed.) Luckily for us, he had some time right then to meet and we talked. The Spirit was there, and before he left he said, that he wanted to meet with us again next week :-) YES!! Wow, that was one whirlwind of a visit, we went from being dropped, to having a really good discussion, to him realizing that he like meeting with us ( BUT ONLY ONCE A WEEK) and that he wanted to continue. Thanks goes to the Holy Ghost for that one. We about lost one of our investigators... 

Other than that the week has been a fairly "Normal" week. I say normal, meaning similar to the past couple of weeks, but in reality, I guess the term "normal" doesn't quite suffice. :-) On Friday we had another lesson with Ralph, which went really well. There was no organized structure, he had read the entire restoration pamphlet we gave him and said that it wasn't hard for him to imagine it actually happening. Then he said all that was left was for him to read the book and pray about it to find out if its true! Awesome! The only thing is, is that he wants to have time to read the book before we meet again ( this is something which comes up surprisingly a lot, people think that they have to read the entire book before they can meet with us, and even after we explain that they don't need to, they still want to anyway.) So he said to give him a call in 2 or 3 weeks. Which isn't what we would like to do, but we are just going with it at this point. 

Saturday was cool, we had about 4 hours free. So we did a lot of dooring, We started on Fishbachgasse, and in about 2 hours where able to completely door 8 buildings. Covering about 100 doors. Only 1 of which was interested and invited us back this week. with 2 hours left we decided to try going by on a few people, none of which were home. But then we started going door to door in Kehlerpark. 5 doors back to back to back, all invited us back this week! ( We should have started there earlier!) It helped that by that time is was a bit later in the day, when we went to Fischbachgasse, it was around 3 or so, and more than half of the residents weren't home. But they weren't really on the streets either... That's always something that boggles us as missionaries. On holidays, there is no one on the streets, no one driving around ( i.e. no one going anywhere)  no one in the stores, because everything is closed, and yet no one is home! Where do they all go? 

Its been cool to see a change in the ward recently regarding missionary work. There is a much more noticeble excitement about missionary work. Some of the Melchizedek Priesthood brethren have been asking to go door to door with us. Yeah you heard right, we are getting request from people to come with us tracting for a few hours ( doing splits that is in order to double the effectiveness). Either people are starting to become more insane, or this church really is true, maybe a little of both...  ;-) The idea to come on splits with us while we tract actually came from a member of the bishopric. We had gone by on him earlier in the day and asked him if he knew anyone interested. He couldn't give us any right then. But then that night at Ward Council he brought up the fact that here in Austria its a different mind set. People just don't talk about religion, he said he would rather go door to door for a few hours then try to think of people who may be interested. So he did. We did it last week, and we have plans to do splits again this week. :-)

It still amazes me how sometimes things just fall into place. Coming back from Church yesterday we talked to a couple on the street, it turns out they are new to the area, and were very open to hear about our message! We made an appointment on the spot with them and will go visit them this week! We weren't even out looking for people and we find them! The Lord has been putting people in our path right and left. Its been very cool!

Thats about all that I can think of right at this moment,

Thanks for the love, support and prayers, I really appreciate them!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

Preparing for a Mission - Thoughts for Young Men

Josh asked Ryan for some first hand advice on what young men should be doing to best prepare for their mission.  Josh's email and Elder Christensen's response are below:


Josh's Request:
Hey Ryan, sorry I havent talked to you for a while. But this week I am going to scout camp. Tuesday night I am giving a devotional on preparing for a mission. And I was wondering if you could write something to the young men of our ward on how to prepare for a mission and some things that you did to prepare. I know that you are limited on time, but if you could atleast write me something for it that would be great. Just send me a email on what you want them to know, and I will read it to them from my phone at camp. Thanks so much, and also send a copy of it to dad because he wants to use it with the teachers. Your awesome Ryan and a great example, thanks for everything. I am thinking about you and hope your having the most amazing time of your life. I promise I will write more, you're amazing.


Elder Christensen's Response:
Preparing for a mission... That's a topic I have found hard to discuss. The best things that I can really think of, are just the small and simple things. Reading and praying daily receiving that daily guidance from the spirit. I like Alma 37:41-47 it directly compares our journey through life ( or maybe journey to prepare for a mission) to Lehi and his families journey to the promise land.  It talks about how When Lehi and his family stopped giving heed to the Liahona, their Journey was brought to a standstill. 


In verse 44 of Alma 37 it says that it is just as easy for us to give heed to the scriptures as it was for them to give heed to the Liahona. That right there is the key. The scriptures are the compass that can guide us through our lives, but they can't help us if we don't read them! Alma 41:1 says that there are many who have "WRESTED THE SCRIPTURES and have GONE ASTRAY because of this thing".  2 Nephi 32:3 "feast upon the words of Christ, for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do". ALL THINGS; The scriptures hold the answer. 


A testimony of the scriptures is the greatest thing that will help them. It has been the one thing that has really helped me Ether 12:4 talks about Hope coming from Faith which will be an Anchor unto us that will make us safe and steadfast. That is what has helped me, it has given me an anchor, something to hold on to while EVERYTHING around me has changed. I still didn't feel quite ready when I left into the MTC. Its a big change, but I had the faith that God would help me. And so He has. 


With a testimony and Faith, serving a mission is very possible, not always easy, but possible. I will end with my testimony that the scriptures, specifically the book of Mormon, are true. They have blessed me in my life, with a testimony, which gives me something to hold onto in when everything else has changed. I know that as they seek to read and pray everyday their testimonies on Christ will be strengthened. And that alone with make everything else possible.