The Funeral

The holidays have been pretty off the hook. We have a Christmas Devotional this week and I am excited to tell you all about it. I will be performing a duet/cover with my companion by A Fine Frenzy but we changed it to Almost Convert and it has no romantic innuendos. Maybe someone will take pictures or film it if you are lucky. 

My companion is a regular scrooge.

Anyways, this week was a very long week. Each day just felt super long which I attribute to our investigator pools or the lack of it. We have very few people to teach. Our only really progressing investigator is George and he is (as you may have guessed) still in the hospital. But we have been trying really hard to go finding and get some new investigators. No luck this week but it will happen. 

I was able to go on exchanges with Paul Huntsman and it was really fun. We were able to, in our free time, catch up and talk about people we knew back home and it was really nice. I don't get to talk about home too much so it was good. He is a great Elder and we had some fun times. 

planner drawings during planner sorry not sorry

While we were tracting in a park we started talking to a drunk dude and he was super interested. I could actually only tell he was drunk because he smelled like he was made of beer. He was super alert and had some great questions about the gospel. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he started reading it as we left. But before we left he offered one of the most beautiful prayers I have heard. It was so full of the Spirit and it surprised me how sincere he was. He doesn't live in Daxi but we got his number and sent him off as a referral so hopefully he can find the missionaries where he lives. So, we had some good experiences, and Elder Huntsman is awesome. 

Liao JM a recent convert wrote me that and I have no Idea what it says haha but I am keeping it so I will understand later

As I said we have been helping Zhang DX prepare for his mother-in-laws funeral for the last two weeks. Well, the funeral was the last two days. So on Saturday night the were all wearing a lot of white gowns that my companion thought resembled the KKK and they were burning a ton of stuff and just playing crazy instruments and chanting a whole bunch it was really weird but good to support our friend. The next morning we woke up at five and went to the actual funeral service. It was fairly similar but less crazy. Still a lot of chanting and white robes but no burning of things. Everyone there was smoking except for the kids. It was so nasty. They also have this drug I haven't really talked about much called Bin-lang. It is an opiate that they grow here that has fiberglass in it to cut your gums and allow the opiates to enter your blood stream. It dies your mouth blood red and you just spit it on the ground whenever you feel. It is the grossest and worst thing in the whole world.. Anyways, they all were also chewing that. But besides all of the gross substances, it was good. We only stayed for two hours because we had church at 9 but Zhang DX seemed happy we had come. I think it is always good to try and show respect for their religion because how could they respect ours if we didn't respect theirs? 

my guitar! Which now has strings

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and I am so grateful for so many of you, but not all of you. Haha (joking) Remember that charity is the pure love of Christ and that that pure love of Christ will never fail. He is the gift. He will not leave you. 

Our good friend Ira, who is a non-member from South-Africa, told us recently he hates what Christmas has become because people focus on receiving more than the joy that giving can bring, and I agree with him. So my invitation to you is to be charitable and focus on giving because therein lies the true joy and love of Christ. I also would like to pledge to be more charitable myself, because I know I could be better at it. Thank you for your support!  

Love Elder Christensen

MERRY CHRISTENSENMAS!!!