I Have ... Come to Know These Things

Hey Everyone:
   Wow, I am way shocked about Tanner Holt. He is the only one of those boys that I knew but I am way sad about that. I remember like a week before my mission he was like "hey we need to go hunting before you leave" but I never had time so we didn't but he was way good guy. Crazy how things like that can happen. I can't imagine how hard things like that would be without a knowledge of the gospel. Life would just be so shallow...That is why I am thankful that I have been able to come to know of these things.
   Sorry I wasn't able to e-mail yesterday. We had what’s called a mission tour. Elder Nielsen from the Area Presidency came and talked to Iloilo and Guimaras zones. At 8am we had a ZL meeting with just Elder Nielsen, Pres. Pagaduan, Elder Light and I, the two ZLs from Guimaras, and the APs so it was cool and very personal. He talked about how we need to act instead of being acted upon. I learned a lot. At 9am we joined all the zone and we had a few talks from Pres. Pagaduan and Sister Pagaduan. Also Sister Nielsen spoke about accepting your companion no matter who he is. I am lucky to have Elder Light for my comp. We get along great and both have the same vision of what we want for this area. Then we had a training from Elder Nielsen about "the revelatory process" and that we need to 1. ask or have an inspired inquiry..2.look! or find our answer through our ideas and study...and 3. write down what we feel so we can then apply it. I learned a ton...then we had a catered lunch which Elder Light and I had to correlate haha. It was good though we ate Estofado, chop suey and mango float so we got full and we got to sit with Elder and Sis. Nielsen so we talked about college and where I wanted to go and stuff so it was cool. After lunch we had another short training by E. Nielsen about how to help our inactive members here. it was great and I think we will help lots of less actives with his advice. After that we had a question/answer section where the Elders and Sisters asked him questions and he would answer. He is definitely a man of God.
   Another thing is that we have zone leader counsel on Thursday in Arevalo (like 30 minutes away) and the Nielsens will be there so we will report how our zone is doing and seek their advice of how we can improve. We are super busy here! I am getting so bad at my journal haha. I never have time!
   We also have some baptisms this week so that is exciting! We will also be finding a lot to get new investigators that we can help progress! Missionary work is the best. Happy birthday mom, I hope you enjoyed it!
   Regarding your questions, yes, people live in that house, it is above a river or "suba" and is super scary to walk on. I always feel like it will snap. I did break another small bamboo bridge this week from stepping on it :( haha I am too big for this place.  The city is sweet mom i love it. We have good places to shop and eat and everything! i have never felt in danger. The people are almost all way nice.
Anyway I love you!
Elder Garrett Christensen

Hey Pops, What’s going on? Things here are going so well. I love it. We are super, super busy and have great instruction from our area leaders! I feel for the Holts too. I can’t believe that. Tanner was way young too! Haha thanks for calling me a big shot :) more like Presidnets little slave haha just kidding. It’s cool that he trusts us with a whole zone of 28 missionaries and we have lots of responsibilities like correlating with ward and stake leaders and stuff so it fun but busy! Have fun cleaning boats!
Love you,
Elder Garrett

Hi, Momma! How is your day? Gotta go! Love you mom!

Right in the Heart of the City

 They have these urinals along the roads...

A member's kid from Pototan.

Yo yo yo whats up?

   This week was sweet! We ended up having two baptisms my last week in Pototan and then on Wednesday we had transfer meeting in Arevalo. It was sweet to see all my good buddies (some probably for the last time) and hear President Pagaduan speak to us. So now I am assigned as Zone Leader in Mandurriao, Iloilo which is right in the heart of the city! Yeah boy! My companion is also ZL (there are two in every zone) and his name is Elder Light, he is from Montana and we get along great. We are over 28 missionaries right now throughout all of Iloilo city and it has been busy but fun.

   We have the best ward ever too! They are super involved in the work here, they are also very rich so they drive us around in their cars and feed us way good food! Yesterday we had a fresh strawberry shake! That’s the first one I have had in my mission because strawberries only grow in Baguio which is far from us, but since a member went on vacation there, she brought some home. We also have two Americans in the ward. One married a Filipina and another is here with his American wife and kids just for work right now but they are rad. 

   We have two investigators that will be baptized on June 2...They are A B, a 21 year old boy. His parents are members but he just recently started listening to the missionaries. The other one is a woman named A E who is like 25 and she has two kids but her husband is training to go on a ship so he isn't there right now, but he wants to be baptized too! Our ward is the best here, there are like 170 people that go to church weekly, which is like 100 more than I have had in my other areas but since the church has been here for longer, it is bigger and ran way smoother!

I think there are some things I will want to get when I am closer to going home for like souvenirs but right now I don't know? Do you want anything specific? It was sweet talking to you all and I love you lots, I am happy that you are all doing well!

All my love,

Elder Christensen

Hey dad what’s up? I am happy that you got to go see the baseball playoffs... That is too bad that SC won though...never good when that happens... But that is cool that you have some weddings coming up...I am just going to bring a girl home from here so it is easy for me to get a wife haha :) just kidding. I am doing way awesome here. I am in Mandurriao, Iloilo (good luck pronouncing that haha :) (man-dur-ee-aw)...It is sweet . our job is to essentially train, supervise, and help all the missionaries in our zone to be better elders and sisters. I love the new responsibility! We are always busy and helping others is fun.

I love you dad,

Elder C!

I'll Be Home in October!

We enjoyed visiting with Garrett via a Skype call on Mother's Day.  Here is some of the things he said:

I'll be home in October, unless President specifically asks me to stay.
My shoes and clothes are all fine.  I don't even wear any of the pants I brought anymore.  I just wear pants I bought here.  My shirts are all still white and fine.  My Ecco shoes are still good, but I only wear them to meetings.  I mostly wear the rubber shoes I buy here.  My socks have holes in them, but if I need more I'll just buy some here.

It's hard to think of what your questions might be, because everything here is normal now.

Brittney looks way different.  She's like a big girl now.

We don't have a scale here.  I feel like I'm pretty much the same.  I've lost muscle and gained fat.  I'll still take on Breck and Dad though.  I'll be cocky until I get back in America.

We went golfing last week.  Lets just say you wouldn't be proud of me and my score.  Elder Price who used to be my companion used to be a golfer so we went golfing.  He was bad, too.  He was way frustrated.  He is from Riverton.  He was on their golf team so he was way good. It's like a regular golf course, but there's p....... or a....... coconut trees and dirty water. 

That's wierd to hear "LB", because we don't do that.  We use kilos. 

He said that his mission president called him and asked him to be a zone leader.  He will be transferred for this calling on next Wednesday.

There's a lot more, but I don't have time to trascribe it all. 
It was fun to see all the little boys standing behind him looking at us.  We also heard him talking Illongo with the Filipino people and he helped his companion who is new to the mission and learning the language. It was a wonderful call and it will be our last before he comes home. 

President Came to My Church this Week!

Hey,

   We had the best week this week! One of the best I have had I think. We were able to exceed most of our goals and the mission standards for lessons taught and stuff! It was sweet. We were able to teach 21 lessons with a member present which is tied for the best I have ever done in my mission. We also had six investigators attend church so we were excited about that. We should have two baptism here this Sunday! Of C and S J J...it will help complete a family so even though they are still young, we are happy to teach and baptize them. We also reactivated his mom and grandma. Another thing that was cool is that President Pagaduan, his wife, and his two daughters came to my church this week! Afterwards they took us home and checked our house if it was clean........we got the highest grade possible haha :) They were proud of us. They also brought us food but it was fast Sunday so we had to wait until night to eat it. They are sweet.

   We also started teaching two new investigators this week with two completely opposite backgrounds and stories, one is the sister of our Branch President, named R. She is 22 and works six days a week. She pretty much didn't know anything about Christ or why he is important. The other investigator is named T L. She is 18 and one of the smartest people I have met in the Philippines. Her family is super rich. She is home right now from Iloilo City because she is going to college there. She wants to be a lawyer or writer. She told us "on paper, I am catholic, but..." and then told us she doesn't like the Catholic Church haha. We were laughing. She is way good at English...like I can just fluently speak with her in English...She even says things like "yo" and "yep just pop by later" haha. She is awesome. One tradition here is that when you have visitors, like 90% of the time you give them "pamahaw" which is like a treat...She gave us pizza hut which was from Iloilo haha and root beer from Iloilo. It was so good and they are way sweet. She is studying Japanese right now as well. She told us she wants to learn more about our church because she said she has nothing motivating her in her life. She also feels she doesn't have fun, or joy in her life...It was awesome to teach two people for the first time with completely different backgrounds and beliefs about the church, and Christ.

   Regarding calling home, we will do it next Monday here about 10-12 am...I am not sure of the time difference but that is when we will call. That means it will be Sunday night there. It will be about the same time I regularly e-mail. Please send me my Skype password and address thing cuz I forgot haha. I will go somewhere where I can use the

video because they said we can. 

   I am glad that you got over your sickness mom. Being sick is noooo good. We are both healthy here and loving life in Pototan. I told the members here that I would request President to leave me here for the rest of my mission and they were like, yeah do it, do it haha. Oh yeah, one of our members got his mission call to Philippines, Angeles mission which is in Luzon by Manila.

   I can’t wait to talk to you and see what’s going on. Love you all tons and I hope all is well for you all wherever you are!

Love,

Elder Garrett Christensen

Hey pops.

   Things this week were so good. We really enjoyed our work this week and had a lot of progress here in the Pototan Branch. That is cool that you saw Garrett Kite. What is he up to?   When does the actual baseball tournament start? The doughnuts were so good! I loved them, they were melted but they still tasted the same and that was such a sweet surprise haha, so thank you...I am also sorry I can’t cut the grass...I wish I could help you more but can’t right now haha, so you'll have to do it by yourself for this summer :)

Love you dad,

Elder Garrett

A Rat In Our House - Sweet Victory!

Hey Everyone:

   Sounds like you all had a good week.  We did too. We worked really hard this week again and had some good results. We are stoked because we are going to have baptisms for sure on May 13 after church. It is to complete a family! About a month ago, we went looking for a 'Jorda' family that we saw on the membership but had never met. We finally found them and they accepted us into their home. We started teaching them and it went well, but it was only a grandma, Consuelo, who listened to us. Over the last few weeks we also involved all her grandchildren and her daughter-in-law and son (who were baptized forever ago, but say they are Catholic now) and then last week and this week they came to church and they want to baptize their children into the church and become active again. It really is a sweet miracle to have found them and see the fruit from it. We will baptize Coniel and Seth Justin on May 13 which might be my last Sunday here in Pototan (but not sure).

   We have been having a rat in our house every night the last few weeks and we tried to set little hand-made traps but it never worked so this week we bought a real trap and set it up with a banana as bait. Within like a few hours we caught him! It was a sweet victory haha :)

   We had a few sweet service projects this week. We helped a member get his house ready to lay cement for the floor (instead of bamboo like it was) and that was fun. We also had a different CSP where we cleared a field of weeds and stuff and that was with our ward so we had fun then we burned all the weeds!

   I'm glad Britt is doing well and running track, hopefully she gets you to Hershey since I failed :haha jk but I hope she does well. I sure hated the 400!

   We will Skype you on Monday here which will be Sunday there but I am not sure what time...Probably about this same time. I will let you know more next week. It is crazy that this will be my last call. We will try to find a nice computer place so we can talk and it will be quiet and air-con! (unlike the one we are in now haha)

   Regarding the box...President Pagaduan does have two girls that are like 14 and 11 but I barely know them so you don’t need to give them anything...I don’t even know...I guess the apron and tie is good...they will like that. Just don’t get him a flashy tie cause he isn't very flashy haha just a nice, good looking tie. Put lots of Reeses and Pretzel M&Ms in there, too, haha.  They are so good :) also I thought of one more thing! Big Hunk! Could you send one of those? I am craving it. Yeah this might as well be my last package. Thank you for everything mom and for getting the packages ready.

Love,

Elder Garrett Christensen

Hey Dad, What is going on? Things here are awesome! We are loving Pototan and Elder Miano and I get along great. We have some awesome investigators and members I will miss lots when I leave.  That is nuts about Snow Canyon haha. It is funny though and I love it.  Yeah I heard Britt did well in the track meet, so I am happy for her.  When are you eligible to retire? Will you do it right away or keep working for a while after?   Love you tons dad and thank for the support and love!

Elder Garrett

I Totally Know Now How It Feels for a Parent to Let Their Kid Leave

This is us playing a game at family home evening

gotta stack the matches and they can't fall.

Some photos us going through the forest haha

Hey guys how are things going?
   Elder Miano and I had an awesome week. Maybe one of the best ones I have had in Pototan. It started out on Monday we had a sweet family home evening with a part-member family, then Tuesday through Sunday it was work, work, work and we saw amazing blessings! We had six investigators go to church which was exciting and also we had some of our less-actives that we are working with go to church for the first time in years!
   We have eight investigators right now with baptismal dates for May...Hopefully I will be here to see them get baptized. They still have to go to church three more time though to be baptized so we will see!
   Yesterday we had a fun day. After church Elder Miano and I went on splits. He went with a returned missionary who is like 28 years old and I went with some guys that are preparing for missions. I totally know now how it feels for a parent to let their kid leave for a night or something haha. I just worried about him and how he was doing with teaching, the language, getting around...but it all worked out great and they taught good lessons and we did too...We were able to teach 17 lessons with members present which is over our mission goal so we are happy and glad the ward is working with us.
   We also had a member return this week from Saudi Arabia. He is a returned missionary but in Saudi Arabia it is against the rules to have Christian meeting or church business so it was awesome to hear his story about how much he went through to find the church there. They have the largest area branch in the world because it covers all of Saudi!
   I can’t think of anything really for the box. I loved the ties you sent me in the last package, it is always sweet having new ties since it’s the only thing you can really change up every day. Also I will request those dill pickle sunflower seeds! I loved those and they were gone in like two days haha! Crazy how much I miss stuff like that. It reminded me of baseball season.
   I am loving life and we are doing so well. Thank you for all your support and prayers. Take it easy.
All my Love,
Elder Garrett Christensen

Hey Dad what’s up?
   The weather here is rainy right now, too, but it will get hot soon they say so we'll see what happens! I like the hot better than the rain though. We always get muddy and wet when it rains even when we have an umbrella.
   That is cool we have Dick's Sporting Goods. Where is it?
   I bet you will love teaching seven year olds. I have definitely learned how to teach kids better since I have been here. Just always include them with questions and use lots of visual things and drawing and stuff...Just really try to make it apply to them by using examples of toys, playing, swimming and stuff that they are interested in...The same way Jesus used examples of baking, planting, harvesting, fishing...which all applied directly into the lives of the people he was talking to.
   We are doing great and I love you tons dad!
Your boy,
Elder Christensen

Community Service Project

After a Soccer Game

 Teaching the kids how to brush their teeth.

 Kids eating the 'bihon' we made for them

A dessert called 'halo halo', which means 'mix, mix'.  It's just a ton of stuff in milk and ice.