...July 4th? Whats that?..

Yeah, guess what, I totally forgot about the 4th of July, which when I realized it, it actually stung quite a bit. It is so huge of a holiday at home, and here it meant absolutely nothing. It was just a normal day (yeah, big surprise. Austria doesn't celebrate America's Independence Day ;-)). It wasn't till that night that I remembered that it was the 4th of July and that at home you would be eating Ice cream, watching fireworks etc. Yeah that was a rough, but it is what it is, and I am fine with it now. Haha, Familie Schultz in our ward lived in the United states for quite a while. Sister Schultz is american, Brother Schultz is German. Anyway, yesterday their 6 year old daughter came to church in a Red white and blue dress, with stars all over it. That made me smile, no one in the ward had any idea what it meant, but it made me smile. :-) That was the extent of my Fourth of July.

This week was really good. Bru. Cukic is pushing forward firmly toward quitting smoking. Twice this week when visiting Familie (who all smoke) he smoked 2 cigarettes. But the first time was after 3 days, the second after 4 days, and in between nothing. He is going to try and isolate himself this week, and indulge on Grape Fruit Juice ;-) I can't help but stand and be amazed. This week Bru. Egger's home teaching companion dropped out last minute, so he called Bru. Cukic and he went for 3 hours home teaching! And he told me that he really enjoyed it! He has come to church these past two weeks, stayed for all three hours, and was very active in the lessons! HE HASN'T COME TO CHURCH IN NEARLY 7 YEARS!!!! UNBELIEVABLE! The changes that he has made, in only the few weeks that I have met with him is, indescribable. He is pushing forward very steadily determined not to fall away again. Wow. 

Tuesday was also really cool. Its a long story though, which goes clear back to last transfer. Do you remember when we purchased the two desks for our apartment? Elder Esplin, Elder Hanson and Elder Sampson went to pick up the desks in the "Truck" that Elder Sampson was renting. Elder Hustead and I stayed and demolished the desks in the apartment ( we were going on exchange, and for some reason saw it necessary to split that way). Anyway they come back with only 1 desk. The store told us that they had two in stock, but they only had one and, so we ordered the other one. A week later we get a text saying the desk was in and that we could pick it up. This time I was in Winterthur on exchange, Elder Esplin, Allen and Sampson went and picked the desk up. Cool we have two desks, all is well. 

Until about two weeks later when we get a text saying that our desk is in. Weird, but we ignore it, thinking its just an error, until a week later when they call us saying that they have our second desk that we ordered. We told them that we had already picked up both desks. They tried to convince us that we hadn't picked up the second desk, that we only had one, despite the fact that we could see BOTH desks. After about 15 minutes when we finally convinced them that yes, we did indeed have both desks (they were pretty stubborn...) they said that we needed to bring in both receipts because we only payed for one. No, we payed for both, ok we will bring the receipts in. So we take them in, hoping to only be there for a few minutes. We were there for about 40, in which they accused us of making a mistake and ordering three desks instead of two, and he pulled out a bunch of paperwork and was showing me all these things trying to convince me that it was our mistake and we needed to pay 70 Euro, which would then be given back to us as store credit. (It makes no sense to me why they would do that). 

Elder Esplin was clueless as to what happened when he went and ordered them, which ticked me off a bit, he was there, I wasn't and he couldn't remember anything that happened. In retrospect this guy was being a total jerk, desperately trying to make us pay the 70 Euro, it couldn't possibly have been his mistake, it had to be ours. Anyway, I didn't have the money nor the authority to do anything with the money, so I told them we would need to come back with Elder Sampson to get it figured out. They gave me all the paper work and told me it was fine, just come back when we find the time. Long story short, the soonest that The Sampsons could come was this past Tuesday. In the time between I was looking through all the papers he had given me, trying to figure what happened. Elder Esplin looked through and had no idea, and he wasn't really worried about it. Lucky for him, it was really bothering me. I wasn't there so I didn't think I really had a chance at figuring out where it the problem started. Then early Tuesday Morning I awoke, and I knew what happened! I knew what the problem was, and how to fix it. It wasn't our fault it was their fault, we didn't owe them anything. After district meeting I showed Elder Sampson all the paperwork and explained what I had figured out, he agreed that that had to be the problem. We went to Kika (the store) and within 5 minutes I was able to explain what happened, get it all cleared, and we walked out not owing anything. That was cool :-).  District meeting that day was also great. I learned a whole lot and got a huge compliment from Elder Sampson, who is a former mission president. It was a much needed confidence builder. :-)

Thursday we found two new investigators. We originally found them while dooring about a month ago. We were able to recontact them on Saturday of the week before last week. They said to come by on any night after 8. We found time on Thursday, so we went and visited them Herr Geyser and Frau Fink, an unmarried couple with 4 children, the oldest of whom just graduated the Austrian equivalent of high school. At first they were a bit skeptical (we found out on the end of the appointment, when their neighbor hear that they had invited us over, she started telling them all these bad things about us, that we were a sect etc.) getting into the lesson though they were impressed with how open we were. We taught them essentially the first lesson, and answered all of their questions, cleared up all rumors and by the end they invited us back in a couple of weeks to talk about what they will have read in the Book of Mormon. Not bad :-) 

We may also be getting another new investigator fairly soon. His name is Anton, he is 13. He has been coming to church these past few weeks, and seems to really be enjoying it. I think he feels fairly at home in the ward, so we will talk to him and hopefully be able to meet with him and his parents. Someone told me they thought he was only coming to church because of Anneke Vuissa, a girl who he may be crushing on, don't know. But the Vuissa Family is currently in Provo, and will be spending time there and in California for about 10 weeks. 

For those of you who are wondering why they are in Provo, Sister Vuissa is an American, her parents live there, and both she and Brother Vuissa went to BYU. Its really weird, Trevor, the american for whom I was translating is now back in Salt Lake, the Vuissa family ( who live practically across the street) are in Provo, and I just found out that My German Teacher was in Chur (the area right below mine) to visit his brother for a couple of weeks. WEIRD! Despite being here, I still find these connections with people that I know from there coming here, or people here going there. 

Anyway, as far as this week is concerned, Transfer Calls are this Thursday. Elder Esplin, having been here for nearly 4 transfers, is most likely going to be transferred. So I will let you know what happens next week. Haha, right after we get the phone call telling us if we stay together or not, I leave to go on an exchange in Switzerland. :-) I can't help but laugh, we will get a phone call saying that Elder Esplin is going to leave, then right after the phone call I will go jump on a train and leave... Komisch (Funny). 

Thats about all that is going on here. I got to live out a bit of an adventure fantasy yesterday, running for cover while dodging large golf ball sized hail. Thats a bit of a funny story, we were meeting with someone outside, a group of Jehovas Witnesses, actually, and in the middle of our conversation they look off into the distance and say "Hagel" (Hail). I was like "Hagel?" just then a huge piece of ice strikes the table in front of me and smashes into pieces. So we all run for the house while narrowly missing getting hit as ridiculously large hail begins to fall. 

That was only the beginning of the weather adventures yesterday, Elder Esplin and I got stuck in a tunnel because of a huge lightning storm that lasted for about 30 minutes... yeah, not fun. Being in the tunnel, the thunder resonated louder, and one time is was so loud, it about knocked us over, somehow we managed to cover our ears before that one, that was nuts. Anyway, I am still in one piece, and I didn't get struck by lightning, nor pulverized by hail. So I guess I can say that I am doing well! ;-)

I hope all is well at home, I am glad to hear that it rained finally!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen 

Juli? Schon? Unglaublich!

Title: July? Really? Unbelievable!


I can't believe that it is already Juli. To think in a couple of weeks I will have been gone for already six months blows me away. This week went better, it seemed to drag out a bit though. 


On tuesday we went to Winterthur to have interviews with President Miles Which is always fun. President Miles is awesome. He is always incredibly happy and knows how to encourage all the missionaries so that it isn't possible for anyone to leave a meeting with him feeling overwhelmed, sad or anything but happy. 


The only thing I really dislike about Switzerland is the different Currency. In order to pay for bus tickets you need Francs, so it makes going there a hassle, needing to switch currencies. But that is just how it is. Dealing with dialects, different currencies, and navigating by trains, just typical life here in the Alpinländische Mission. :-) I figured out that there is more than one dialect in our area. Vorarlbergerisch is the main one. But up in Bregenzer Wald, there is another, In Lustenau there is a COMPLETELY different Dialect, as well as having a bit of Bayerisch/Schwäbisch in Lindau, and Swiss in Sankt Margerreten/surrounding cities. Its always an adventure when you start talking to someone and they start going off in a some weird dialect that you aren't familiar with. Its getting easier to understand now, I have a pretty good hang on Vorarlbergerisch. Swiss however... I still need to work on it :-).

On Tuesday of this week we had our lesson with Ronald which went fairly well, he hasn't had a chance to read in the Book of Mormon yet, but hopefully by next week ( our next appointment is next Monday) we will have read a bit. We also went by on Frau Moohre. Funny story behind that, she is a friend of Sister Vuissa ( Christian's wife), we knocked on her door, and she originally told us that she had no interest. But feeling bad that we probably go door to door and get told no everytime, told us that we could come back and talk about America. (She told us later that she wanted to try and show that Austrians really are kind people ( not that we didn't already know that:-) ). Its true people are here are the nicest people in the world. They just have no interest in Religion. 

Anyway, we ended up going back, hoping not to talk about america, but maybe to introduce ourselves and talk about what we do etc. She had made us cake and we sat in her garden and talked. She had another friend over ( also a friend of Sister Vuissa) and we were easily able to turn the conversation to a more spiritual note. We talked about why we were here, how long we come, etc. And by the time we left, she asked if she could have a Book of Mormon! That was cool. At the beginning she had really no interest in the Church, but after hearing that we come for 2 years, most of missionaries paying for themselves, to only talk to people about our Church, it essentially comes down to this: either we are insane, or there really is something to our message. And after talking with us, most people rule out the " we are insane" ( well at least rule it out enough to consider the possible truth of the gospel ;-) ). 

We met with Brother Cukic twice this week and he came to Church!!!! ITS BEEN NEARLY 7 YEARS SINCE HE HAS COME TO CHURCH!!!! Missionaries have been trying to help him for that entire time, and he has made no progress, but suddenly... He has changed. I have only really met with him 4 times so far, and he has made a tremendous change. When we met with him on Thursday, he told us that he wants to quit smoking, start coming back to Church, and try make progress in the gospel again! He invited us over on Saturday, to have lunch than start a fast with him, that he will have the strength to quit smoking. He will be doing it Cold Turkey. This week. The church's stop smoking program is really amazing, and if he can stick to it, he will have no desire to smoke again after this Saturday. 

I never really knew how the whole stop smoking thing works, I thought that it would be a temptation forever. But in truth, once you quit, its only by choice that you start again. It all comes from the Nicotine levels. When they are high, you feel fine, when they start to get low, is when you have the desire to smoke, the lower the level, the stronger the temptation. But once the Nicotine levels hit 0 you no longer have a desire to smoke. The hard part is enduring to that point. Which is why cold Turkey is the best, the faster the Nicotine leaves your body, the shorter the amount of time it will take to completely quit. Apparently grape fruit Juice helps get rid of the Nicotine, so part of the program is to drink a lot of it. Which from what I understand is terrible tasting stuff. But it works. Anyway, we will be calling him every night to check up on him, and we will go by on him this Thursday.  

Meeting him on Saturday has a really cool background story to it. Normally the Bus that we would take is the 52a. It leaves Eisplatzgasse at every :33. And gets us there in the perfect amount of time. So we originally planned on taking the 12:33 to make it out to him in time. That morning during Companionship study, we decided to take the bus an hour earlier and go by on Herr Schneider, a refferal given to us from Bru. Cukic, before we went and had with Bru. Cukic at 1. So we get out to the bus stop at 11:24 or so. Then we realize that its Saturday, and that the 52a doesn't drive on Saturdays. That means that we need to take the number 50. Right then the Bus number 50 drove by (opposite side of the road). Drat! That was the only other option. But then I remembered that there was an IC (InterCity Express) that left Bahnhof at 11:30, which would take us to Bregenz, then we could switch trains and go to Lustenau, to catch that same Number 50 bus there. I explained this to Elder Esplin, and we started to walk quickly toward Bahnhof. 

Only to see the S-bahn leave, which means that we had about 60 seconds to get to the IC  before it left. At a full sprint it we could maybe get there in a minute and a half. It wasn't possible. So we stopped and discussed the other options (forgetting that once again that it was Saturday) I said that it wasn't a problem, we would take the next number 50 bus in a half an hour, and just not go to Herr Schneider. We then decided we would just street contact around for 25 or so minutes until we needed to catch our bus. So we walk toward bahnhof (train station) (to check the bus time and to street contact on the streets near Bahnhof). As we got closer and closer the IC was still there. And the conductor was still on the platform, meaning the train wasn't ready to leave yet. "Dang it, we could have easily have made it if we had ran" is what I said to Elder Esplin ( thinking the conductor was going to get back on the train any second and leave). But as we got closer, he was still waiting. So we decided to try and catch, and we start to run. Getting to the stairs leading to the platform,  some man tells us that the train isn't waiting for us ( it was weird, but he was trying to tell us that there was no way we were going to get on it). We yell back as we run down the stairs "we know, but it's still here!" Get out on the platform and sprint for the train. The conductor sees us and motions inquisitively, if we wanted to catch this train (there was another train coming in on the track right next to it) we motion yes, as we were running down the platform, we run down there, we jump on, the conductor right behind us, and the train starts leaving almost instantly. The conductor told us after we got on "you guys are really lucky" I just nod and think to myself " there is no such thing as luck, especially when you are a missionary". 

It worked out perfectly, we made the connection, caught our bus in Lustenau, were able to go by on Herr Schneider ( who we found out later was gone) as well as knock on some doors and find someone who may be interested. Later on I realized that, had we not caught that train, we would have 20 minutes late to Bru. Cukic. The next bus would have come an hour later. The train left 4 minutes later than scheduled. Being an IC, and leaving only a minute after the S-bahn traveling in the same direction, it has to travel on the other track, the one with trains heading the other way. So it had to wait for the S-bahn heading to Bludenz ( coming from Bregenz) to get into station before it could leave. The S-bahn delay was the perfect amount of time that we needed to figure out that we needed to catch that train, and to run out an jump on. S-bahns are HARDLY EVER late, and even if they are, not by 5 minutes. What a HUGE blessing. To say that was luck or chance, just doesn't cut it. Heavenly Father is all knowing, and he knew how long it would take us to finally realize that we needed to make the change of plans, and delayed the S-bahn just enough to get us on the train. Literally, we got on the train, and before I had take 4 steps the train was moving. Those kind of things just don't happen by chance.

I have heard that it has been really hot back in the states and that there are a lot of fires. Crazy. Any news on any of them being under Control. The one in Colorado made the news here in Austria, but I haven't heard much (We don't see the news, we just here it from people that know us). I hope everything is going well. It was incredibly hot on Saturday too. After a long day we got back to our apartment, which was 87 degrees Fahrenheit. Bleh! I don't know how hot it was out side, but the apartment felt cooler than outside, and we were still dying!  No one in Europe has internally cooled apartments. It doesn't exist "Only the rich have them, but even they probably don't use them, because then they wouldn't be rich anymore". That was terrible. We called our landlord just to be certain. Yup. The way people cool their apartments here is, open the windows at night, and during the day shutting all windows, blinds etc. It works fairly well, as long as you don't have incredibly hot days ( our windows were open too, which probably didn't help). 

Yesterday was probably the most interesting Fast and Testimony meeting I will ever have in my life. In the middle of the meeting a Bird flew into the chapel, and started flying around. It hit a the wall, and knocked itself unconscious for about 15 minutes up on the ledge. Then it started flying around again for a good 2 or 3 minutes before it finally found the window and flew out. At one point it landed right on the podium and was starring intently at the person bearing testimony. That was funny :-). What was interesting though, is that the meeting continued on like normal. Despite the bird, people still got up and bore testimony. Yeah, the congregation was a bit distracted, but the meeting didn't halt till the bird flew out, it just kept on going like normal. 

Anyway, that will do for this week, I am out of time. :-) I hope that all is well at home, and that the no one is in any danger from the fires. Take Care!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

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.

10 Investigators, and Running out of Books of Mormon

This week has seemed to have taken an eternity, but so many amazing things have happened! (Parental Note: This seemed like a very long week for us as well.  Not sure why this week was so long, but it feels like forever since we heard from Ryan. Funny that we both felt that way.)  We have found 3 new investigators this week, which brings our total number of Investigators to 10! ( 3 are former that we were able to meet with again). 1 of which we found by going to door to door, he let us right in and we taught the first lesson. He is very determined to find the truth, he has been meeting with the Jehovas Witnesses once a week, is learning Arabisch, to try and study the Koran, and seems fairly enthusiastic about reading the Book of Mormon. I have high hopes for him. 


The 2nd is Thomas Bäck, who we found in Feldkirch ( I mentioned that last week). We taught him the first discussion and it went very well! We will meet with him again this upcoming Wednesday. The third is someone who we met on our finding day on Thursday he was going into a business meeting of some sort, but he had a little bit of time to talk to us, and invited us to stop by and visit him. Which we did on Saturday. Unfortunately our timing wasn't very good and we only got to talk with him for 20 minutes, but he took the Book of Mormon, and was very excited to read it. He wants to try and read it in a Month. He invited us back this Friday to discuss a little bit more about the Book, but then wants to read the whole thing, then invite us over to talk with him about it, and invite his pastor over as well... We will see how that goes... He is Catholic, but is a bit (discouraged?, confused?), I don't know how to quite describe it, about the history of the Catholic Church (i.e. the Crusades and Inquisition).  He doesn't agree that the Catholic Church has the Authority of God, because of those things, which is why he is open to the Book of Mormon/ our Church. I am interested to see what will happen with him.

Tomorrow is Zone Conference in Winterthur, it will be interesting because Elder Esplin and I will each need to take a suitcase there, to try and transport all of our supplies back. We were very ill-equipped for this transfer, we had only 20 Copies of the Book of Mormon in German, 4 in Turkisch, hardly any pass along cards, Very few other Book of Mormons in other languages... Its amazing we been able to do what we have done. Although, haha, we ran out of Book of Mormons about 2 weeks ago, so Zone Leaders brought us 8, but those where gone in a few days, so We borrowed 5 from Ravensburg. But then we gave those out... Well lucky for us, when giving a Church tour to Thomas, we found a Box of copies of the Book of Mormon, which the Bishop said that we could use. so we took 7, and now those are gone... Lucky we get our restock tomorrow. We ordered 40, but Elder Esplin thinks he may have previously ordered an additional 40, which we are both praying for, because we just gave out 20 Book of Mormons in a little less then 2 weeks... there are 6 weeks in a transfer... But its paying off! We are finding more people, and making new appointments, we have 4 appointments made out so far with potentials this upcoming week. Possibly 4 new investigators! 

 

We have learned by sad experience that our freezer sometimes has problems shutting completely. And when left that way unnoticed for 24 hours, it can coat the inside with about 1 inch or so of Ice... that was a lovely surprise, let me tell you. so now comes the problem, how on earth to we get rid of all the ice. If I was at home, I would just spray it out, just like we do our full size freezer, but I am not at home, and that's not an option. So what do we do? Well we improvise, Unplug the freezer, Put Hot water in a water bottle, have one Elder spray out the freezer with it , while the other holds a large bowl to catch all the water, praying that there won't be an overflow of water ;-) Well, it took us about 25 minutes or so, and there were times where Elder Esplin was "trigger happy" spraying more water into the freezer than could come out through the little drainage system, resulting in water going everywhere, but by the end, we were able to dry the freezer out, put our food back in, and mop up the floor. :-)  That was quite the adventure. It made for a pretty good laugh, because its a bit of a Red-neck/missionary type of Solution, but it worked! :-)

I got my Visa! I must admit, I am rather impressed with the Austrian Government, It was going to take 6+ weeks for my German Visa to arrive, but My Austrian Visa only took a single week! I am legal in Austria now! Which is a huge relief to be done worrying about Visas for awhile ( now watch me get sent back to Germany and have to start the process all over again...) Now I just need to get a License, and I am good! We were planning on taking care of that today, but today is a holiday, which is rather horrible for us, because everything is closed, including almost all stores ( luckily the Sutterluty on Bahnhof is open, or else we would have some serious problems). So I will have to take care of my license either during the week sometime, or next p-day, depending on how quickly the office wants me to get the process going. 

I have attached three pictures to this e-mail, 2 are of Liechtenstein ( yes one of them is with me in it). (Parental note:  Mom is very happy now to have pictures that include her misisonary!! What a beautiful place!)  The 3rd picture is what I usually do after a long day of being outside :-). Allergies have been absolutely ridiculous! And I have tried 3 different types of Allergy Medicine, none of which seem to be able to help me at all. There is so much more pollen then I am used to, and I don't know what to do. I am still continuing to take some medicine, because anything is better than nothing, but I am afraid that I may have to just wait it out. I don't know, I am going to talk to the Mission nurse today to see if she can help me, I know of a few other Missionaries that are also having a hard time. Maybe someone has found a solution. 

Other than that things are going very well here! We are finding more and more people, and teaching more lessons. A lot of investigators are busy, so it's been hard to meet with some on a regular basis, but hopefully we will still be able to help them progress. 

Friday is Transfer Calls! This transfer is almost over again! Wow. Start of my Fourth Transfer, after this I will have been out here for roughly 6 months. Can it really already have been that long?

I hope all is going well with everyone at home. Congrats to all those Graduating this week!! I can't believe its now been a year since I graduated, its unbelievable how fast the time has gone! 

Thanks for all the support!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

Another week has gone by already?! Exploding from Excitement!

Its been quite the week here in Dornbirn. And I am about to Explode from excitement! We have been so blessed! We have been finding people in the most unplanned of ways! (If you recall the letter from last week, they were focused on fasting and finding people.  The following stories are the successes that came from those efforts and faith.)   We were waiting at a bus stop to take us to Bahnhof to catch a train somewhere ( I don't really remember where or why) but there was another lady sitting at the bus stop with us. The bus didn't come, which almost NEVER happens, buses can be late, but rarely to they just flat out not come. So we started talking to her, and she wants us to bring her and her friend 2 Copies of the Book of Mormon in Spanish. By that time, the next bus arrived, we went to Bahnhof, and caught a later train ( we missed the first one, but we are the Lords servants, so I guess he is entitled to change our plans as He pleases ;-)).

Another time we were coming from an appointment in Schlins-Beschlingen, The plan was to catch a train, grab a quick Döner, then go try to find a turkish lady who we had met the day before, to give her a Book of Mormon. We were in a bit of a hurry to catch the train ( the train station was a 20 minute walk from where we were, and we had about 17 minutes or so). Anyway on the way there, I see a man walking down the street, and right then I knew that we weren't meant to catch our intended train. Sure enough he called out to us ,,Seid ihr Zeugen Jehova?" " are you Jehovas Witnesses?". No, we are from the church of Jesus Christ... Long story short he was interested in Reading the Book of Mormon, we gave him a copy and he gave us his address to come back and explain where the book came from/why its important. We missed our train, and the next one didn't for 30 minutes. So we ate down in Schlins, and caught the next train. Which Yilmaz was on :-) Yilmaz is a security guard for ÖBB ( The train system in Austria) and he has always been full of questions for us. I don't know if I would call him an investigator, but a good friend. We don't get to meet with him very often, but he always comes up and talks to us if we see him on the trains. We talked to him, and he kind of opened up to us right then, it was really cool, a step up in the trust he has in us.

We got back, and immediately caught a bus that was to take us to the turkish lady. We find the address she gave us, but its a bar. Maybe she works there? We don't know, we didn't go in, because there was an apartment building right next to it (the number she gave us was 2, the apartment was 2a so we decided to try there). No Luck. We started to ring the doorbells, and were buzzed in right on the first one, top floor. They had no interest, but this allowed us to go and knock on all the doors from the inside (which is better because then it is face to face communication, not just through an intercom). We did so and came across a family, to whom we gave a book, and they told us that we could come back and teach them. And then we came across someone else, named Niklaus, who was busy at the moment, but said we could come back another time. We did Last night, and were able to teach him, and he is now a new investigator. :-) False address, but it results in more potential investigators, and a new investigator. 

Another time, this one happened on Saturday, we had made a plan to visit an older sister in the ward who lived clear in Feldkirch  RIGHT on the border of Liechtenstien ( The border was about 30 yards from her front door, we got there a bit early, so yes, I have now officially been in Liechenstein, and have pictures (WITH ME IN THEM, for the sake of my poor mom ;-)) but sadly, my camera is dead, so I can't post them just yet). Anyway, we had planned for a priest who lived in Feldkirch to be a Joint teach for us. The problem was, he lived clear on the other side of Feldkirch. So the plan was to meet him at his house an hour before the appointment, then catch a ride from one of his parents to the appointment. In order to make it to him by 5, we arrived at 4:30 to catch a bus that left at 4:40 to get us to him by 5. Well upon arriving, he tells us that he will just meet us at her house ( which wasn't a problem for us, because we knew where she lived). But with the change in plan, we now had an unplanned hour and a half. So we went and started talking to people on the streets. We met Thomas. Who actually lives in Dornbirn, but was visiting someone in Feldkirch. He already had received a Book of Mormon, but had never met with the missionaries. We were able to make an appointment with him on the spot for this Thursday! Had we not arrived in Feldkirch when we did having that extra time, we would probably never have met him.

Walking on the street one day, a man who owns a small shop, calls out to us on the street asking us if we want a few sodas, we say that we were fine, but he insisted. So we come in, and start talking to the lady behind the counter (she is Thai by the way :-) ) We told her about the book of Mormon and she is interested in learning more. I could go on and on with these stories. They happen every day. I am sure you remember ( or now can go read) my letters from the start of this area. 0 Investigators, 0 Potentials. At the start it was INCREDIBLY difficult  to give out a single Book of Mormon every day, much less find someone who wanted to meet with us. Elder Esplin a few days ago was telling me that before I came, they had a district meeting in which they talked about the goal of giving out at least one Book of Mormon per day. He said that there was a lot of doubt about it being possible.

Possible? I have been here about 25 days now, in which time we have been able to give out over 30 copies of the Book of Mormon. A few weeks ago, the Zone Leaders announced a goal of trying to find at least 2 new potentials every day. Possible? On Friday we found 5 people who were interested in meeting with us. The Lord works in ways which we can't really understand. He gives goals and commandments which we may or may not think possible. The first two weeks here, nearly everyone said no. But now its changed. The Lord has tested our faith, and is now helping us be led to find those who are ready to receive the gospel. I can't tell you how grateful I am to be here right now. To be one of the instruments in the hand of the Lord to get this area going again. The changes that have taken place are nothing short of Miracles. Transfers calls are next Friday, whether I stay here or not, it doesn't matter. I am grateful to have seen what I have seen already :-). 

Everything else pretty much pails in Comparison to that. I had a rather interesting time getting to Winterthur on Tuesday... Normally what would happen is that we call the office Elders, and ask them to order us tickets for our trip, then the day before they call with the codes to print the tickets. Then we go to a machine, put in the code, and the ticket prints. No worrying about money, or anything really, except catching the train. As I have said previously, to save money and time, we have been authorized to travel alone on exchanges. Which means that I don't have a cell phone, or really anyway to call and figure things our with anyone. That being said, I will continue with the story: the plan was, I would catch the 9:20 bus from the apartment, get to Bahnhof, and catch the 9:39 train to Bregenz. I would have about 9 minutes to print off the ticket, and grab something to eat. No problem right? Well I get to Bahnhof, and go to the machine, put in the code and the ticket prints. BUT it was a one way ticket from RAVENSBURG to Winterthur, not a two way from Dornbirn to Winterthur. My train leaves in 8 minutes, and I don't have the right ticket. Brilliant.

If I was in Germany, the solution would be very simple, I would just type in my destination, and pay for the ticket at the machine. But I am not in Germany, Austrian Ticket machines don't have that function. So I go running into the Ticket office, praying that there isn't a line. There wasn't and I order my ticket, making sure to specify it being a 2 way ticket. It prints I pay for it, it was roughly 1/2 as expensive as I thought it was going to be. Then I realize, that is only a one way ticket ( at which point the 1/2 price thing made sense ;-) ) But I don't have to time right then, I would have to try and take care of it in Bregenz on my 10 minute layover. ( I wanted to buy it in Austria because I have a discount card, which gets me 15% off tickets.) Everything went well I payed for the ticket, visited the bakery, and caught my train without a problem. Upon arriving in Winterthur I realized that I had no idea where Elder Jacklin was going to meet me... Dream come true, wandering around completely lost in Winterthur without anyway to communicate. I wait at what I thought was the main entrance to the Bahnhof for about 10 minutes then decided to head toward the buses. That is where Elder Jacklin met me. RELIEF! ;-) Everything else went well, it was just an adventure trying to figure out what to do in the mean time. :-)

Anyway, that is all for now. I hope all is well at home! 

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

Finding Week

To Mom, Dad, Josh, Cassie, and Mark, who all got to talk to me a bit yesterday, this e-mail may be a bit repetitive.

Parental editorial comment:  Ryan called for Mother's Day and talked to us on the phone for about 45 minutes.  It was so amazing to hear his voice, and hear him laugh.  Almost as good as having him home with us.  As he talked about his areas, and companions, and how hard the work is, there was no sense of frustration from him.  He was very matter of fact (Ryan...matter of fact??) in telling us that he was happy and just wants to help people know and understand what he already knows about the gospel. As we read his letters, we always try to put a it in his voice as much as possible, but it was so good just to hear his voice. We very much enjoyed the call up until we had to say goodbye, which brought tears to everyone.  Tears of joy because of the chance to talk with him, and a small bit of sadness knowing we won't get that chance again until December.  Man we love this kid.

Sorry... And sorry I haven't yet posted pictures of the apartment yet, we had hoped to have gotten a new couch, and 2 new tables, because the existing ones were terrible ( My desk actually collapsed on me the day we took it to the dump). Anyway Elder Sampson rented a "truck" (Which is more like a Minivan on Steroids) and the plan was, to pick up the two new desks, from Kika, then take the old ones and the couch to the dump. Kika had told us that they had two desks in stock for us, and that we could come and pick them up. Well it turns out that they only had one desk in stock, and that the other one should come sometime this week. Alright, well at least we got the one desk. Halfway through assembly, Elder Esplin realized that they had only given us half of the required instructions to make the desk. So now we are both lacking desks, well technically I am only lacking a half of a desk, but the half that I am missing happens to be the most important part of it... Anyway long story short, Elder Esplin is using the kitchen table, and I am using the couch. Without any shelves or places to organize our study materials, the apartment is a bit of a mess... So I will send pictures, when we get the new desks, and everything gets restored to its original order :-) 

Its been a fairly decent week. On Tuesday I went to Ravensburg, Germany, on an exchange. Which was fairly cool, because they speak Schwäbisch there, and before I left Esslingen, I could actually speak a little bit of it :-). So it was fun to go back and to hear it again. The exchange felt fairly short, Elder Sampson gave us a ride back in the "truck", and it took us roughly 2 hours to get to Ravensburg. That took up a large amount of time, then we ate Lunch, or dinner, not exactly sure it was like 4.00 in the afternoon, but after that we went out and proselyted. The exchanging was comparatively uneventful, We street contacted for a few hours, and went vorbei (went by) on a few potentials. We had an appointment with a family that evening at 7, and having arrived a bit early we went and did some door-ing. Something really cool happened, we door-ed into a family who was eating dinner right then, and they had invited their friends over to have dinner with them. Their friends were members of the Church :-) It was pretty cool to door into someone who had members over, we didn't stay long, but I can only imagine what the topic of conversation was after we left. :-) The appointment was pretty short, just a get-to-know-you kind of thing. 

Thursday was interesting, this day, as well as one other day this month, have been dedicated to nothing but finding. So that is what we did. Our original plan was to go to Bregenz, because there are a lot of people there. But it turns out that they are all tourists... Bregenz is right on the edge of Lake Constance, which is where everyone comes on vacation. So after 4 hours of talking to people, having only found 1 person, we decided that Bregenz wasn't where we were supposed to be. So we caught the train back to Dornbirn. Innenstadt, Dornbirn is usually full of people, especially with the "Dornbirn in Bloom" festival going on right now. But the thing is, right in the middle of Innenstadt, where everyone is, is a huge Catholic Cathedral. Which means that we can't proselyte there 1) because its a missionary rule and 2) I think its just plain disrespectful to proselyte in front of another religion's church. So we had to scratch that off the list of places we could go. We ended up deciding to go door to door for the remaining 4 hours of the day. Going door to door isn't something that I really like, because it's slow. You walk to a door, ring the bell, wait for someone to answer, if they will answer, then if they tell you they aren't interested, you walk to the next door ( or in apartment complexes, just ring the next klingel (bell)). Its a very slow process, where as with Street contacting, if some tells you no, you can quickly talk someone else; you meet more people and are more likely to find someone with interest. But Dornbirn just isn't made for street contacting, its too quite of an area, so we went door to door. I was actually fairly surprised though, we found 8 additional people who were interested in learning about the Book of Mormon. That was such a long day... 8 hours of nothing but talking to people, finding only 9 people during that time, 5 of which were found in the last 30 minutes! 

We gave out 7 book of Mormons that day! 6 German and a Turkish, as well as found people who wanted copies in Arabic, Persian, and Serbian. Exactly what that will mean for the coming weeks, I am not sure. But I can only pray that those who took a Book of Mormon, give us a call so that we can meet with them! ( There were a number of people who took a Book of Mormon, but didn't want us to meet with them, and they aren't counted in the 9). My heart goes out to Ravensburg though,  they talked to people for that same time as well, but they didn't find a single person who had any interest whatsoever. So, as hard as it was here, at least we were able to find a few people. 

Things are starting to be on a bit of an upswing here, we have been working really hard, and are starting to see some fruits of our labors. For example, last night, after our Phone call, Elder Esplin and I, went right back to work going door to door. At about 8:30 we found Nicole and Andi. They are a married couple with 2 young children, that don't live to far from us. She (Nicole) is against organized religion but believes that she has a personal relationship with God. I don't really know much about Andi, he is heading for a 3 week business trip in Vienna today, so for part of the time he was busy making sure he was ready. But we talked about the Book of Mormon, where it comes from, our personal testimonies, and that we aren't here to convince, or persuade them. That are purpose as missionaries is to invite others to find out for themselves. I think that was the reason they let us in, after we said twice that we just invite; we don't persuade, is really when things seemed to open up. They invited us back in after Andi gets back from his trip to talk more about the Book of Mormon! Just like that we found 2 new investigators. In a matter of a couple of weeks we went from 0 to 3, granted the 2 can't meet till June, but still! :-) And we have a long list of promising potentials, so we will see how that goes. 

Haha, so I have kind of a funny story that happened this week... After our District Leader meeting in Winterthur, we came back and visited a member of the ward. He is probably in his mid to late 50's and is the only member in his family. A common thing here in Europe when someone invites you in is to ask you if you want tea, usually a fruit tea of some sort, which is fine. With non members we always ask to make sure we know what kind of tea it is before we drink it. Well he offers us tea and we accept, and Elder Esplin asks him what flavor, and he says "Irish Cream". He shows us the box and sets in on the counter. He pours us each a cup and we start talking. Well, I am not much of a tea person, I only drink it because its rude not to. So I didn't take a sip right away, I was going to wait. In the meantime Elder Esplin takes two big scoops of sugar in his and stirs it around. I glance over at the box, and I notice something. The box was just far enough away that I couldn't quite read it, but I thought I saw the word "schwarztee", "Black tea". I turn to Elder Esplin, to warn him that I think this could be black tea, but I turned just in time to see him take a large sip from the tea. So at this point I have a bit of a compromise. I think this is black tea, I am not sure. But we are at a MEMBER'S home. He wouldn't give us black tea would he? He should know that we don't drink it. So do I ask? What if I am wrong? Will he be offended?  But what if I am right? I decided that I one thing was for sure, I couldn't drink the tea. He asks how it tastes, Elder Esplin says "Amazing!"  I say that I haven't tried it yet. Then he kind of looks at me and says, well try it! I slowly slide the cup toward me, praying for help on what I should do, I can't drink it, but how do I get out of this situation?. At which point I ask the question, "so what kind of tea is this?"  he says, I think its a few types of Fruit tea, and there may be a bit of black tea in it. The expression on Elder Esplin's was PRICELESS. Relieved, I push the cup away and say, we don't drink black tea. He was a bit flustered and apologized, and the situation resolved itself after that. After we left, Elder Esplin walks out and turns to me and says "Elder, I just drank black tea, with whiskey in it!" (a bit in shock, not in excitement ;-) ) ( it turns out that the tea had whiskey flavoring in it as well :-) ). We both laughed and thought it was kind of funny, especially how I when I went to warn him, it was too late. Kind of a mix between spiritual, and funny, it makes for good memory :-) 

Anyway I am out of time, I hope all is well with you at home. Things are going well here! 

Love, 

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

To Uncle Tracy, who was sitting in the train station in Munich ready to catch a flight home and sent us the following picture asking if Ryan knew where it was, his repsonse is:

 Ryan's Response:

Munich Bahnhof (station)!! I haven't seen that in awhile...

Well, Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) to be exact.

Needless to say, he was excited that Tracy was in Munich at a familar place.  Thanks Tracy, for the picture!

Long Week...Miraculous Events

This week has been quite the week. It has been an incredibly long week of seeking to find people to teach. Meanwhile both Elder Esplin and I, have been battling various physical infirmities. But the Lord has blessed us, and we have a new investigator, as well as a number of potentials with whom we will meet over the next few weeks. I will share with you a few miraculous events throughout this past week. Monday "Eismann contacting". In short, there is an icecream parlour in Dornbirn that the missionaries like to go to, and we have been talking with the owner about the church ( he asked who we were and what we are doing in Austria). He is Italian, so we promised to bring him a Book of Mormon in Italian. Well we did, but Lucky for us, Trevor ( The american who I translated for last week) served his mission in Italy, and despite it being over 10 years ago, still speaks fluent Italian. So he came with us and spoke to this man. He ended up talking with him for 2 hours ( we ran out of time, and had to leave). Trevor called us later and told us that he as well as his whole family sat around and listed to him, and they are fairly interested! They said that they would read a portion of the book ( they said they couldn't promise to read the whole book, but would begin reading it). Trevor told them that we will come by during the week to ask them how the reading has gone ( Trevor is in Salzburg with Christian Vuissa for the next month :-( ) but they can speak German, so we will see how things went. It was awesome of Trevor to spend 2 hours with them. Addressing their concerns, answering questions etc. We owe him a lot for that. 

Tuesday was really neat for me. We were completely booked, with District meeting ( a 80 minute train ride away). Traveling there, having the meeting, and traveling back took about 4 hours of our day. We got back to Dornbirn, where we were supposed to have an appointment with a former investigator, Jörg. But he didn't show up, and we weren't able to get a hold of him for a few days. We stayed at the church, making some other phone calls and things that needed to get done, until Peter Netzer arrived. He gave us a ride home to install a whiteboard in our apartment, then drove us to Feldkirch, where we were to catch a bus to a dinner appointment. After that we caught a train back to Dornbirn, and arrived back at 8:15. But here's the thing, Elder Esplin and I, have made a goal to give out at least one Book of Mormon per day. We needed to be in at 9, and we still hadn't given one out. So we said a prayer asking for help in finding somebody, and started to walk around an talk to people. We talked to quite a few people and they all said no, it was now 8:50, we needed to start heading back. I started to pray, asking Heavenly Father to help us, we were trying to do our best to find people, to please allow us to find someone before we got back to the apartment. Time was running out, but I knew that anything was possible with God. At which point in time I felt a reassurance that we were going to find somebody. We came across two more people, who both said no. With every step toward home the reassurance got stronger and stronger, at 8:57 only a block away from our apartment, I saw somebody down the street in a green jacket walking toward us. And I could feel that he was the one who would accept a Book of Mormon. So we approached him, and talked to him for a minute or two, bore testimony about the Book of Mormon, after which he not only accepted the book, but gave us his number and address, as well as made an appointment to meet with us! Wow! Right before we reached the apartment, when it looked like all hope was lost, was when my prayer was answered. That has been a huge testimony builder to me. God does answer our prayers, he will help us, but sometimes not until it looks like all hope is lost. That is how this entire week has been, working incredibly hard, being told no, hundreds of times, and right before we need to return home, something happens. It has been marvelous. Another day this week, was incredibly incredibly long. We had done service for a sister in the ward, in which I had, completely alone, cleared out about 40 square feet of weeds and grass from a garden platz ( Elder Esplin mowed the lawn and did "Mädchen Arbeit" (girls work) as Sister Vuissa ( different Vuissa, not Christian Vuissa's wife) called it. That night it was late I was absolutely exhausted, but yet again we found ourselves at 8:45 still needing to give a Book of Mormon out. That was hard, walking past the apartment, feeling like I wouldn't have the strength to make it back, to go find a child of God, who had been prepared to accept the Gospel. We were really short on time so we couldn't walk very far, but we didn't have to. Someone called out us, having seen us frequently, asking us who we were. We talked with him, and his mom, who he was visiting, and they accepted a Book of Mormon, and he was already reading in it before we left for home. the Lord has blessed us this passed week, but not until we had given all that we could. Amazing things have happened this week, and many more amazing things are to come. This is definitely going to be a hard transfer, but it will also probably be one of the most rewarding.  

Its been a fairly good week though, we had an appointment with Frau Feuerstein, who we met back when I first got here. She is a very lively 84 year-old lady. We taught her the first discussion, she understood it all and she said that she would pray about Joseph Smith being a prophet. She would read the Book of Mormon, but her eyes aren't the best. So we are going to try to find a Book of Mormon in Large Print. She is our new investigator :-) We will see how far we can go... 

Its been weird adjusting to here, everything is different, the culture, the food, the stores, everything. The things that were Cheap in Germany, are expensive here, which means I have to completely switch up my meal plan. The apartment is amazing though! It is larger than Esslingen's and we have a Dishwasher and a Dryer! ( Most apartments in don't have dryers, they have drying racks instead, so the fact that we have a dryer, automatically makes it one of the nicest apartments in the mission :-) ) Someone moved out of our building, and they gave us their ridiculously large sofa. It comes in pieces, but when but together in a line it's about 13 or 14 feet long! We were in need of a new couch, and were authorized to buy one, but we got the one for free instead. The desks we used to study at are horrible, and when our apartment was inspected by the Ehepaar (Couple Missionaries), they said that we needed to buy new desks. So the Sampsons ( the Ehepaar (the couple)) will come and pick up our two desks tomorrow and deliver them to our apartment. After we set them up I will send pictures. Austria is REALLY weird when it comes to doors. You need a key to get in and OUT of the apartment. So if you lose your keys... you are locked IN your apartment. That is something that really amazes me, is that every door has a lock, and both sides need a key... It makes no sense to me, and I think its actually a bit dangerous, it would be very easy to lock someone inside of a room and for them to be helplessly stuck there. But that's just Austria I guess. 

Speaking of Austria, President Miles has asked me to get an Austrian Drivers License!!!!! VERY few missionaries in this mission are asked to get drivers licenses, and he asked me to get one! I only barely been here for 3 months, and he has already asked for me to get one! That has been a bit of a confidence boost, The fact that he trusts me enough, that he wants me to have a license so that I can drive if I get to an area with a car ( which I think there are only 3 areas, as of now, that do.) He is trying to get a few more cars, but here in this mission it is very rough,there are only 120 cars made available between the 3 German missions.  And Cars are more expensive here, and gas prices are over twice as expensive as in america ( its1.50 per liter, meaning roughly 6 Euro per gallon, which is about probably around 8 or so dollars per gallon). But yeah, I am very excited to get a License!

As you can tell, things are going well here. Its rough, at times discouraging, but the Lord is helping us. I am excited to see what the future holds for Dornbirn. 

I hope all is well at home!

Good luck to all who are Taking AP tests!

Love,

Elder Ryan K. Christensen

P.S. My Exchange in Switzerland has been moved to next Tuesday, and the district leader meeting, is going to be this Saturday, as opposed to last Saturday. So I haven't had the chance to get lost in Switzerland yet ;-)