Direct Answer From God

Aloha: haha just kidding I don't speak Hawaiian :)
   This week was a sweet week, We stayed super busy and had a lot of fun. The only thing is that it was a pretty regular week so I don't really know what I want to say to you all haha. hmmmm....
   The Maximo family was not able to come to church this week due to the dad being really sick, and he is the only one that can drive their tricycle. That was a bummer but we had two others there. Linette, 22, who is the best friend of a members and she is doing very well, maybe will be baptized in a couple months but not sure, she has some concerns we are still figuring out and working on. The other was Sonia, 60+, who we were teaching when I first got here but she wasn't progressing well so we didn't really visit her much, she told us she had like a vision about Christ and Joseph Smith and stuff so she went to church haha. She is....different but really nice and funny. We also teach her daughters.
   We had a cool story with the Maximo family last week though. What happened is on Saturday night we visited them and they loved our lesson but the dad had to work. (He owns his own welding business) because he was welding a tricycle and the owner needed it. He said he told the dude it would be done in four days but it had already been a week so he was being pressured to work on it instead of church. We tried to address the situation but eventually I just promised him that if he asked God through prayer, in faith, if he should go to church or if he should work, that God would show him what to do. He said that after we left he was pondering and thinking about what to do. He said he wanted to look for an answer from God so he opened the Book of Mormon and he said the first verse he looked down at and read was Mosiah 16:17, which is about resting on the Sabbath day and not working. He said he took it as his direct answer form God and promised us he would follow all that we are teaching him and his family. They went to church the following day (June 17) so they are doing so well! We also taught them the word of wisdom and even though they all have problems with it, they all committed to follow it no matter how hard it would be. They are rad.
   I love Mandurriao and the ward takes such good care of us here! The only thing weird right now is that Elder Price, Collins and all those guys go home tomorrow! It’s nuts haha. I am excited for them but lots of my good buddies in the mission will be home in two days haha. Mission is short. Elder Light and I are doing great too. We have the same vision of what we want to happen in the area. He might transfer on Friday though? We also get to work with all the incoming missionaries this week. So we will be the first real missionaries they work with until they get their real companions. Should be fun.
All my Love,
Elder Garrett Christensen

Hey Elder Light plays guitar here.....could you look up and send us the guitar chords for the George Straight song "Best Day"....Thank you!

Having Fun, Being Obedient and Loving Life

This is the Maximo family of 9...Don't mind the kid flipping you off. They don't understand what that means here haha. They just do it because they see movies where people do that. It is of them in their tricycle...It's used for hauling things like steel, animals and his family.

Hey this week was way rad, we were really busy though. First of all, we had to go on splits on Wednesday so I worked in Mandurriao with Elder Collins (my roommate from Roxas) and Elder light went to Molo to work with Elder Manwill (a new missionary) and we had a great time. Elder Collins goes home next week so he is really nervous/excited. We also have some elders giving us some problems in our zone, so Thursday morning, we gave them a surprise visit to their house when they should have been doing companion study. We will just say they weren't...they weren't even dressed...So we had like an hour long talk with them. So frustrating. They are both close to going home so they don’t want to work...big waste of our time. We then had to go report to President Pagaduan so we talked to him for a while too. We also had a high counselor tell us that he was assigned to their ward this week so he went and he said they were 15-20 minutes late for church and just talked the entire time. He went on a mission and he said they were the worst missionaries he has ever seen. Needless to say we have lots of work to do with them this week, but President is involved so I am sure we will get it taken care of.  I also got your package and Elder Light did too! Needless to say we have been snacking on M&M's, jerky, Big Hunk, salt water taffies, and dill pickle sunflower seeds!! It’s the best! I also liked the U of U shirts mom, I wore one this morning because we played basketball at 5:45 a.m. (I know, crazy things happen on your mission, like waking up happily at 5:45) but we won, of course.

   Well the Maximo family came to church again! All nine of them! I also got a picture of them because I knew mom would want one! They are the best and are sacrificing a lot to go to church. They have a baptismal goal date of August 4. We also had some other investigators go to church so we had a way successful week!

   Hey mom, we have a member here that sells real pearls color white, pink, or black and they come with one necklace, one pair of earrings and one bracelet for 2,200 pesos which is like $50... Are you interested? I have seen them and they are very nice. Elder Light ordered some so he will take them home. Just let me know. They can be for you, or Macy, or a gift or something...

   We also had to attend a general priesthood meeting on Saturday with all the priesthood from Iloilo Stake. We learned about home teaching. Elder Light and I were the only missionaries invited because they want us to learn and then "show the pattern" to our zone. Hopefully we can get better home teaching here in the Philippines soon. It is almost nonexistent.

   I hope you guys are all having fun and loving life. I go home so soon I really am doing my best. I feel like I am in my prime and our work is exploding so we are happy boys! I also love hearing about all your plans and things going on there!

All my Love,

Elder Garrett Christensen

Hey what’s up Pops!

Thanks so much for the e-mail. I did not hear about JR Seau that is crazy. I also never knew about LT so thanks for telling me. Crazy how many changes in the world can happen and we are completely oblivious to it all.

   Life is so awesome here. The lord is really helping us. I appreciate all your prayers and the stuff you sent in the package. Thanks for the Elk post card, crazy seeing an elk for the first time in a long time...I even taped it up by my desk so I can see it lots. I can’t wait to hunt again. Our health is great and our spirits are high.

I am happy to mow the lawn when I get home :) I am also happy to have a new mower haha...hopefully it is a riding one :) jk... Happy Father’s Day by the way.

The Pacquiao fight is pretty much done because they say there is a rematch in November so I will be in America to see it! I am excited to see what happens.

I have a question... what are the words to that country song by George Strait about like camping with his dad and then getting a car and saying like "this is the best day of my life"...Elder Light likes country so we sing it sometimes...The song of this week was..."Johnny's daddy was takin’ him fishing, when he was eight years old..." haha. We are having fun, being obedient and loving life.

I love you lots dad!

Your boy,

Elder Garrett

Hey Britt:

  We are having a good week and I agree sometimes it isn’t that fun wearing the same thing but we like it because we get to share about Christ every day. How is it going up there doing track and stuff? I hope you are liking it.

Love Elder Garrett

It's Official, I Will Be Coming Home in October

Yo Yo Yo:

Whats going on there in Snoop Dogg's hood? Things here are going so well! We had the best week! It started out last Tuesday. We taught our zone meeting in Arevalo to all our missionaries. We taught about teaching our investigators to seek revelation through prayer. We had a lot of fun. After that, we did interviews of every companionship, so it took a while. Interviews were to find out 1. How their obedience is. 2. If they are doing effective studies. 3. What special needs they have that we can pass on to the stake leaders, and 4.Their needs for their investigators. It is fun to talk one on one with the elders and sisters. We get to get to know them a lot better. We had a dinner appointment every day this week except on Thursday haha. We get treated very, very well in this area, which is for sure the richest in my mission. One night we ate at Jason Hibbert's house, he is an American here with his American wife and kids for a couple years for work. She cooked us a chicken casserole! Talk about heavenly. Followed by brownies and ice cream...gotta love Americans!

On Saturday night at 7, Elder Light and I had a stake correlation meeting which is where we pass on needs of our missionaries to our stake president, President Torres. He is the man and you can tell he really wants to help us. President Pagaduan also accompanied us to that meeting.

On Sunday we had the sweetest thing happen. We have a family named the Maximo family that we are teaching. There is a father, mother and then seven kids! They all came to church yesterday. They don't have a car but they do have a motorcycle with a side cart thing that they use to haul pigs around so they stacked chairs on there and rode like ten minutes to church! It was so sweet. The kids ages are 17, 14, 13, 11, 10, 8, and 6...so that means we could potentially have the baptisms of eight people coming up soon! yeah boy!

Regarding the Pacquiao fight, everyone here says it was "ihaw" which is a slang word for like "unfair" or "pre-decided"....they all think that Bradley paid the judges or something haha, so I don’t know. It was a pretty big deal yesterday for us. Lots of people yelled at us about it haha, but it’s fine.

I love my companion, Elder Light and we get along great. We are working super hard and we found some sweet new investigators this last week. I love this area and this work.....

Please tell all the family there that I love them a lot and think about them. Tell them I can’t wait to see them in October. (Yes, its official, I will be coming home in October.)....I hope you all have fun. Love you all tons!

Elder Garrett Christensen

Hey Pops:

This week was sweet. It’s official. They asked us this week and I decided to go home on October 10 or 11 whenever it is, we'll see...but it will be mid-October. Which is crazy because that means I have like exactly four months left. Time to sprint to the finish. Sounds like you are all having fun in California. I could use me some relaxing on the beach, but this is more fun anyway. The people are all mad about Pacquiao but that is expected so no biggie. Luckily that will be my last time here during his fights haha. His fight days are way hard to get any work done! Everyone is "busy"....I love it here and am happy to be here. Love you dad.

Elder Garrett