Last full week of the Transfer!

Wow, Yet another week goes by and this upcoming week might be my last week here. Transfer calls are this week! Its crazy that is has already come to this again. Having been here 4 transfers already, I am not counting on staying. It wouldn't be unheard of for someone to stay in an area for 5 transfers. Nor for a missionary to stay with his trainer for 3 transfers, but it is REALLY RARE. I think my time here has come to an end sadly... but that is just how it works. A new area, a new start more people to find and more missionary work to do :-). Interesting.

This past week was all over the place. We had roughly 7 appointments fall out this week, mainly in these past few days, which has been really hard. As well as having none of our investigators in church for the first time in 4 or so weeks. But on the upside WE SET 2 BAPTISMAL DATES!!  Gerold Willi, and Michael Wuggeneg. 2 very different people. Because we set them so close to each other we set the same date for both of them; Oktober 27th. Yeah, I will more than likely not be here for it, but I am still very happy! And we are again set up for another great week with maybe a few more Baptismal dates! :-)

This area seems to out of nowhere exploded. FINALLY! We have been working like crazy to improve the way we teach, specifically re-creating lesson 0. No missionary in this mission understands what a lesson 0 is, I never was trained, but I brought it up, and we worked for weeks, changing it, perfecting it, and now it works really well! It sets us up to set a Baptismal date by the 2nd lesson (which is technically what we are supposed to do, but no one here really does it). This week is also in pretty good shape, there are already a few days this week that are completely planned, full of appointments. So I am pretty happy about that.

Anyway, I don't really know what else there is to write about. The baptismal dates were obviously a huge highlight, but that happened on Monday and Wednesday, After that our week kind of fell to pieces... I guess I can tell you about last Monday.

So, We had planned that day to actually teach two lessons. One to a Family in Lochau (10 minute bus ride north of Bregenz) and then teach a lesson to Dejan Djordjevic in Wolfurt (10 or so minutes south of Bregenz by bus). They would have both been new investigators. The family in Lochau had told us to call them on Monday, that they should be free and that then we could come by. We called 3 times throughout the day, no answer. Ok, so forget that. I had called Dejan the day before and he had said that without a doubt the appointment was still on. That was supposed to be at 18.00. Sweet! At least we still had that, then we planned to go by a less active member who we haven't visited in awhile. Right after I got done sending e-mails last week ( at just before 5) Dejan called us and cancelled the appointment :-( He had to work late (on a separate note :and I called him yesterday, and he says that the earliest he could meet would be after New Years... :-P) so that was out.

Great, now what do we do? Well we decided to go by on Willi. So we did, and he was home. We had a spectacular lesson, and he said that he felt it was true. So we recommitted him to be baptized once he KNEW it was true (hinting at actually praying to God to gain a testimony) and then were able to set a date with him. With the date set, we made out all of our appointments with him from now till Oktober, as well as told him about Church.  He said that it wouldn't be a problem and that he would come! We were quite happy, to say the least :-). We then met with him later that week (On Thursday) and Bishop came with us. We taught the first half of the plan of salvation (up to our life on earth) then brought up commandments, specifically Word of Wisdom. Which was good. He is going to work on quitting smoking. Which is good. :-) That was neat. And we were still able to meet with Bruder Schader (the less active that we meet with on occasion). That was a good day :-).

We set the Baptismal date with Michael on Wednesday. Also a really good lesson. We met with him twice as well last week, but sadly the second time, he was feeling sick, he had a headache, and couldn't focus. So we weren't able to really teach him, nor was he able to come to church that next day... :-( But we have 3 appointments with him this week, and I hope that he will come to General conference this weekend. 

We had a really neat experience on Thursday. We were able to go and visit Stefan. Stefan is 25 years old and was a referral given to me and Elder Esplin back in July. He met the missionaries at the San Diego Temple (he thought it was a church and tried to go look inside, but the sister missionaries got to him before he went inside). When we first made contact with him, his mom was really skeptical of us. On our first meeting with him, we mainly just did a question and answer session with him. Talking about what he experienced at the Temple etc. Part way through his mom walked in, looked at him and asked how it was going with the conversion. He looked a bit alarmed and said, I am not getting converted, just talking. That pretty much killed that lesson. He was only at the temple for 30 minutes or so and he didn't really know much. But that lesson was pretty much over, so we talked for a few more minutes, said a prayer and left.

He just got a Masters degree, I don't know the exact name of the degree, it's essentially a mix between Mechanical and Computer Engineering, I think it was called Robotic Engineering or something. anyway he has been applying for jobs all over the place and has been hard to contact. But we managed to find him and were able to meet with him on Thursday. The only thing was, both his mom and his sister were there. Which made me really nervous, last time it killed the lesson. So for the first 20 minutes we ended up just talking, not real specific topic, a lot about where we were from at the beginning.

Then it started to turn more toward who we are, why we are here etc. Which was a huge blessing. I took the advantage to explain a little bit that we are here to help other people come closer to God, find answer to questions and obtain blessings that God wants for them, but that it is completely independent (dependent - See "Quick Note" from Ryan below) on the person if they accept it or not. It opened it up, and his sister asked us what our message was, and then another question came of why our church was different than other Christian Churches. Perfect for the lesson 0 Elder Robins and I had. So we taught them that. The mom had to take a phone call part way through, but we taught Stefan and his sister.

His sister took a Book of Mormon and said that she would read it (she also had something she had to do, and so we shortened our explanation just a bit) but after she left Stefan sat there a bit in awe. He told us that he had never had such an explanation of the Book of Mormon before. And now it made sense why he should read it. And he was more than happy to read it, and meet with us again. And his mom is much more open to us now. VERY COOL.

Anyway. we are excited for what will yet be another full week. Our entire weekend from Friday to Monday is booked out. Tuesday is completely planned. And Wednesday and Thursday have 2 and 3 appointments already planned respectively. Not bad. Yeah, on a normal week, 1/2 of those will fall out, but it is still huge improvement from when I first got here and there were no appointments at all! SO I will not complain in the least. :-) Things are going REALLY REALLY WELL here. I am grateful for all of your prayers and support. They mean a lot to me.

Oktober 1 already! Crazy! I am looking forward to General Conference this weekend! It will assuredly be amazing! It still cracks me up that the Saturday and Sunday "morning sessions" are broadcasted  LIVE at 6pm. We will watch the Saturday Morning session live from 6-8 pm, then the Priesthood session from 11am-1pm on Sunday, the Saturday afternoon session from 2-4 then finally the Sunday Morning session at 6-8 that night (Sunday night). The Sunday afternoon session will not be broadcasted as far as I know. They will probably show that in Sunday school a few weeks from now. Or I will just have to wait for the Liahona to read the talks.

That's it for this week! I hope all is well with you!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

(Ryan sent the following email to correct a portion of the letter above. Normally I would just change the text above.  However, when reading this it was just so Ryan that I had to include the whole thing. Those that know Ryan well will understand and get a good chuckle, as well as feel like he is in the room explaining it to them.  Did I say we miss our boy?)

Quick Note:

Woops, (in the story about Stefan) The message is completely "dependent" not "independent" Sorry, a bad translation on my part. the Word in German is "abhängig" (well actually "abhängen") and for some reason I took "ab" and made it into an "in" even though "abhängig" means dependent. My thoughts are all over the place and I didn't think about that. :-) I say it so much in German its hard to say something in Englisch. Sorry :-)

I love you all!

-Elder Ryan K. Christensen

or for Josh,

- "Current" Elder Christensen ;-)