Week 61! I AM SO FILLED WITH JOY RIGHT NOW I CAN'T CONTAIN IT.

Hello everyone!

So many amazing things are happening right now, I don't even know where to begin!

The north is amazing and so funny. Sister Young and I have a phrase that we have been repeating any time something ridiculous or hilarious happens... We just laugh and say, "Welcome to the North." 

Here are a few unique things about the north, that we hadn't experienced in any previous areas!

• On our first day, we saw a "Bear Crossing" sign, and a "Handicapped Crossing" sign. Two new ones for Sister Young and me...
• The "student drivers" here drive Ford Mustang convertibles.
• The Cadillac Chamber of Commerce sign is in COMIC SANS MS FONT. (This was probably my favorite "Welcome to the north" moment.)
• We drove to the grocery store and back... and used 40 miles.
• A member told us he was getting a tattoo of the San Diego temple. Welcome to the north.
• The "After Hours Urgent Care" is only open from 10am to 6pm...
• We considered getting our apartment dedicated specifically to be free of brown recluse spiders... WELCOME TO THE NORTH!

It's been hilarious. I love it here. We met some incredibly prepared people just in our first week! I know there are so many people who are ready to hear this gospel. I can't wait to continue to share it with all of them!

Now on a silly, music-related note... I experienced three tender mercies this week involving music.

1. We have a new brand of phone, which means all the ringtones are different, and the have the most hilarious ringtone called "Gloomy DJ." It is the best thing in the world. You should see if it's on YouTube. I don't know why, but I think it's the funniest thing. There's just some chill, "gloomy" music at the beginning, and then you hear a random turntable scratching. It's our alarm, and I laugh every time I hear it. It's been wonderful waking up laughing every morning!
2. Sister Young loves music as much as I do! So when we're driving around we always get to be listening to cool covers of hymns and stuff. We've had so much fun.
3. THERE IS A NEW MORMON MESSAGE and the background music is SO GOOD! It sounds exactly like Explosions in the Sky, so there's either a new song they released that I don't know about, OR whatever trendy hipster Mormon produced this video decided to shamelessly turn a bunch of different Explosions in the Sky songs into one soundtrack for the video. 

That video is also just very well-done and I recommend it to you all. Please watch it! It's so cool! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w49_1a9X0Q#t=382

Also, I just found out that I have a great-granddaughter! I trained Sister Brems, who trained Sister Rogers, who is now training this new, beautiful sister missionary, Sister Chatmant! Look at them! <3

 

 

 

I love you all! You are in my prayers!

<3 Sister Christiansen

 

Week 60 in the field!

BEST WEEK EVER!

But also full of craziness.

Let's get the big news out of the way... I GOT TRANSFERRED. It was really sad because I love Mt. Pleasant with all of my heart. It's been incredible here. But I know it's time to move on, and if I'm going to move on, it might as well be to the coolest place ever! Are you ready for this? I'm going to Cadillac! 

Cadillac is in the Traverse City zone, which is super far north so it has no sisters in it and hasn't had sisters in AGES (if ever!). Well, the new mission president decided he wants to send sisters up north, so he's sending Sister Young (my new companion!) and I up there to try it out and to get it started. Sister Young and I are both being released as STLs so that we can devote all our time to going crazy in this new area! 

All these sister missionaries have been emailing me today in shock because we never thought sisters would be in Traverse City zone! It's really exciting. It's every sister's dream to serve up north, but it's a dream that we never expected to actually come true! I know this sounds really silly, but here in the Michigan Lansing Mission this is really exciting, okay?! Hooray!

Also, more very exciting news is that DAMIEN GOT BAPTIZED THIS WEEK! He was so happy and his family came, too! It was the best. (Here's Damien, me, and Sister Oswald)

 

 

 

I also got to reunite with Sister Pyper which was AMAZING! 

Hmm, other news... Oh! We got typewriters this week for free! Don't judge my messy desk. Isn't it cool though? You can see Sister Oswald's on the right, as well!

 

 

I was sad to leave Mt. Pleasant, but snagged a picture with Bishop Peless before I left! He has been the best bishop I've had on my mission! He's awesome.

 

 

The Mt. Pleasant missionaries! #NeverForget. My favorite part of this picture is the awkward "elder-sister-gap" that always ends up in every picture where elders and sisters stand next to each other. No touching! Haha it makes for lots of awkward poses.

 

Campus has been amazing. I will miss CMU so much. The wonderful thing about being a missionary on a campus, is that you basically get to make a lot of best friends that you end up sharing the gospel with. It is the best thing in the world. But it also makes it really hard to say goodbye! The people we teach are our investigators, but they're also like our best friends! It's okay though. Onward and upward!

I love you all!

<3 Sister Christiansen

 

 

 

Week 59!

Craziest. Week. Ever.

First, some sad news. One of the members of our ward passed away this week. He was very young, and all the missionaries were very close to him because he and his wife feed us every other weekend. It was a very tragic accident, and his funeral was this week which left a feeling of sadness in the air most of the time. We are sad he is gone, but I know without a doubt that his spirit lives on, and that he and his wife will be reunited one day. That knowledge has brought me a lot of peace these last few days.

Because of the funeral luncheon being held at the church this Saturday, we needed to postpone Damien's baptism until next week. He is still very excited and ready to be baptized. He is amazing!

We had some great experiences this week! We got a new investigator who is from China and is here on an internship. She works at a dairy farm and delivers 20-30 baby cows EVERY DAY! Crazy! She is doing great and is loving learning about God.

We met another new investigator this week who is hilarious! He had just been listening to the Book of Mormon Musical when we knocked on his door! He said the play is his "guilty pleasure" but that he has always been interested in the actual history and beliefs of the Mormon Church. We gave him a Book of Mormon and met with him two days later. 

When he met up with us, he had already read the first ten chapters of the book! He had a lot of great questions and had highlighted some really cool scriptures. He said that right after we left his doorstep, he prayed for the first time in years, and he said it felt great! He committed himself to finish the Book of Mormon and pray about whether or not it's true. He's going camping this week so he's planning on getting a huge chunk read while he's gone! He is SO COOL and incredibly prepared!

Hmm, what else happened this week? I rolled a piano over my toe! Nothing's broken, just bruised! Yay!

Sister Oswald and I also played with laser pointers and my camera's low shutter speed last night. Check it out!

Also check out mormon.org!  I love you all!  ,Sister Christiansen,

Week 58 in the Wolverine State!

Okay, this week was so magical. Where do I begin? Bullet points!

• Our investigator Damien is set to get baptized on Saturday! Pray for him! He is amazing and so solid. We love Damien with all of our hearts! Sister Pyper and I found him a couple months ago and started teaching him, so Sister Pyper will get to come back to Mt. Pleasant for his baptism. Reunion!!! Hopefully everything works out - expect pictures next week!
• I held a snake for the first time this week! It was a ball python, and our investigator Austin put him around my neck! He was harmless but it was still terrifying and (don't worry, Mom) I will probably never do that again. I tried to calm myself down by giving him a friendly name, and snakes remind me of Indiana Jones, so I called him Indy. It didn't really work though, because the whole time all I could think about was that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy gets thrown into the pit of snakes (the Well of Souls!) with Marion... Yikes! 
• Enough about that. This week I also TOUCHED PATRICK STEWART'S AUTOGRAPH. Can you believe it? One of the recent converts in the ward met him and had breakfast with him a while back, and she showed me the paper he signed for her. That's right, folks, I held a piece of paper that CAPTAIN JEAN-LUC PICARD has also held! It was a dream come true.  
• One final silly tangent from this week! We live right behind a giant casino and resort that also has a concert venue. It's a small one but every once in a while someone big will come and we'll hear faint noises from the speakers and the crowd, but nothing too loud. Well, it's been getting hot, so we just recently started sleeping with the window open, which (we found out this week) makes the concert noises a lot more audible. One night, we were in bed and I could tell a show had just ended, and could hear the crowd shouting for an encore. I was like, "Who even is this band? I just want to sleep!" and then I heard the little blip that happens when you plug a guitar back into an amp and I was like, "Oh great, they're back." Sister Oswald and I were still trying to figure out who it could even be, when all of a sudden we just hear, "Now that she's back in the atmosphere/With drops of Jupiter in her hair, hey hey hey." TRAIN was playing "Drops of Jupiter" outside our window. Of ALL bands that could have been there, and of all the unapproved songs that they could play, it was Train, and they played "Drops of Jupiter..." Sigh. If I was going to be kept awake, it should have at least been for something good! But that was the last song they played so it wasn't too bad, haha. It was just hilarious. I heard Train play "Drops of Jupiter" live while on my mission. Never thought I'd be able to say that...

Anywho, I love you all! I have no picture from this week. We've been crazy busy, in the best way!

Have a lovely week!

<3 Sister Christiansen