2 letters one day

Hello Family and Friends!
how is everyone? from your emails, sounds like everyone is back to normal, and not sick anymore, ya? Dad, i didnt have time to answer your questions last week, so i'll answer them now. yes, we have the 15 names program here, it's a world-wide program- unfortunately not many wards actually have a fully functional one, including Mudgeeraba. and as for who is senior companion, we're actually co-senior, so we're supposed to switch off weeks being senior comp, but we get along so well, that we just kinda dont have one senior comp, whoever has the better idea is the one that calls the shots. so it jumps back and forth between us multiple times a day. anyway, thats so exciting that the tree business is starting to take off! i hope it does well for sure, imma be broke after the mission! :P and yous are going to utah for thanksgiving! are you going to the gray's again?
My week has been... well... for lack of a better word, interesting. we were all over the place trying to contact everyone. it was so hard! no one seemed to be home, and i think i've lost weight for all the biking as fast as i can up hills, and whatnot. then, we set up 2 appointments for saturday, which were supposed to be really solid, in member's homes and everything, and then everything fell apart on us friday night- we're getting fed up with people around here, so we're just going to find some new investigators. p-day was fun last week though! we played baseball! it was fun, but a little sad, cause the sister i came in to the mission with was there for her last p-day. she's way cool, and today is transfer day, so tomorrow she goes home to new zealand. that leaves me as the ONLY one left from my intake! so since i go home earlier than i would have been, no elders will go home the transfer after i go home. oh well. thats probably good, cause the intake i go home with, theres like 20 of us, so that'll be a big hit the mission. speaking of transfers, we found out on sunday night that neither of us are getting transferred, so we'll be in mudgeeraba through christmas and new years! we're excited for that. i had a few kinda cool insights this week while studying though. one of them hit me pretty hard though. i was reading the last chapters of mosiah, about the sons of mosiah leaving on their mission to the lamanites. this time i looked a little deeper at what might have been going through their minds and through mosiah's mind. a few moments of looking a dates and events, i realized that mosiah sent his sons on a mission to people who were his enemies, and one year later, died, 13 years short of their arrival back in zarahemla. of course they must have known he was nearing the end of his life, as i'm sure he probably did too. i think of the missionaries who's parrents or other famiy members die while they are on their mission. how hard it is for them to stay on the mission! and for another 13 years! how difficult would that be for them? it helped me gain a deeper appreciation for the kind of men the sons of mosiah were, and mosiah himself. anyway, i have to go again, i'm being kicked off AGAIN. so i'll talk to yous next week!
Love you all so much!
Love,
Elder Tayler Christensen

so i got kicked off earlier, so now i get to finish the email from this morning. after we got stood up this last weekend, we had a good day of church, we taught the lesson again in gospel essentials, and then had a good chat to neel prasad- the less-active guy whose wife and daughter are the ones we're trying to teach and baptize. then we had dinner at the Ryan's house. they're a way cool family, and they have a PING PONG table!!! i was so excited, and bro. ryan gave me a game, and i beat him in overtime! so i'm still not too bad at it, which means collin, you better watch out! :P then yesterday, we went out to visit a bunch of people, and it was raining all day, except for when we had to be on the bikes. it always seemed to stop for us. we even went to dinner, and as we pulled up, it was just starting to spit, and as soon as we were in the house, there was a massive cloud burst, and it went until about 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave, and then started again a couple minutes after we got home. it was sweet. many tender mercies. oh, last week we had someone back into our bikes while we were using the car, and they didnt leave a note or anything. the only damage was my front wheel was bent, and elder prina's back wheel was bent, the tire popped, and a spoke was broken, and we later found out, so was the gear thingy. so we carried our wheels to the shop, and had the guy take a look at them, and he had them until the next day in the arvo, when we got them back. that same day, we GQ'd an older guy who immediately just said that he would buy us a coffee, and talk to us, so we sat down with him, (dont worry we didnt actually get any coffee) and he "gave us 20 minutes." well turns out he's anglican, and he wants to teach us. so we talked to him for almost an hour. afterwards, Elder Prina asked me why i didnt say much, and i had to say because i couldnt think of anthing nice to say to this guy- he couldnt "accept a church that was based on the book of mormon and 'prophets.'" it was all i could do to counter that with how HIS church started... it was kinda frustrating... but kinda funny, and then the classic statement when the converstaion turned to politics- "Obama is doing wonders over there, he's such a good president." i wanted to spew. but we had a good laugh about it afterwards. anway, that was the week, so i'll talk to yous later! love yous!

love,
Elder Tayler Christensen

Some teaching! yae!

Hello my family and friends!

this has been a bit of a trying week, with lots of little tender mercies mixed in. yes, I still have my cough, unfortunately, but it hasnt affected me as badly as last time. i found that cough lollies (drops) work well for keeping the cough down, so i almost constantly have one in my mouth. i went through like 5 bags of them this week. it was kinda funny, but they worked well. also, my brakes on my bike pretty much didn't exist any more, so i had to replace them too. i'm SO glad i learned how to fix bikes- biking high adventures are a MUST for any young man planning on serving a mission. if you cant take care of your bike, you are stuffed! anyway, i also went on a trade-off with the district leader this week- Elder Paki. he's pretty cool, and his area extends down into New South Wales. so there's a round about that is half way in Queensland and half way in New south wales, and we drove around it like 6 times and i took video- funny thing is, NSW is on daylight savings, and QLD doesnt do daylight savings- so on the one half, it was 5 o'clock, and on the other, it was 4 o'clock. it was funny! if the video fits i'll attatch it to this email. and i'm sending that jump drive home soon, cause it's full! 4 GB of photos and videos! anyway, on a more serious note, we were finally able to teach people this week. we taught violet and her family this week- she's a fijian lady who is very spiritual, and also happens to be a pastor at some church in robina. but she committed to read the book of mormon, and to pray about it, and when we asked her if she would be baptized, assuming she got an answer that the book of mormon was true, she accepted! so we were happy about that. no date, but we can work with that. then, the same day, we had a lesson with the prasads- he's a less-active member, who is fijian-indian, and his wife and daughter are non-members- they've been taught before, but anny, the wife was always to preoccupied with her studies, so it never really went anywhere, but she's done now, so we asked if we could start teaching her and zinia (the daughter) again, which they accepted, so we taught the restoration, and it went well! we also had them come to church this week, and they've done that before, but they leave after the second hour- i think because anny is shy and doesnt want to go to RS by herself- but this week, one of the ladies in the ward came up to her after our gospel essentials class, and invited her to RS, and she went! and then after church, like every lady in RS was surrounding her, and talking to her and she was having so much fun! i was like, YES! answer to prayer! it was so good. yesterday we actually taught gospel essentials, and Elder's Quorum. and it was funny, mum, we were teaching about the Holy Ghost too! isnt that amazing how organized the church is? we're on opposite sides of the world, preparing the SAME LESSON! anyway, i'm being kicked off, so i have to cut this short... i love yous so much!

Love, Elder Tayler Christensen

Hello November

hello family and friends!
what a week this has been! Cara, i totally forgot to say happy birthday to you this last week! Happy Birthday! i hope it was a good birthday, and from the sounds of it, it was. and you turned 19! i turned 19 while i was at BYUI! it was awesome! and mum sounds like that convention thing was really good! lots big mormon names there. and larry's not doing too well is he? thats not good. hope he gets feeling better. i hope things continue to go well for you dad. soudns like being bishop is bringing you a lot joy, being able to help people, and be an answer to prayers. it always feels good when someone tells you that you are an answer to prayer.

anyway, this week was another frustrating week for me, everyone who we were going to teach baled on us. the sad thing is that they had like no remorse- they literally said, "i'll have to cancel on yous" without any explanation or excuses- ugh so annoying. common courtesy just doesn't seem to exhist anymore. oh well. but we did have a lesson with an inactive girl in the ward. she's the daughter of a couple that just recently became active again. she's been anti before, and hasnt ever really given church the time of day. but we started teaching her daughter the discussions (her daughter is only like 4, but it was a way to indirectly teach her mum). so ashleigh finally sat in on the lessons, and this last week she actually came to church! it was AWESOME!!! she even came to our gospel essentials class. it was way good. so hopefully we'll be able to get her back on track. we're excited to see what could come from that. besides that, i havent really had too much going on this week. it was Elder Prina's birthday on sunday, so that was fun. we just did something at the flat, and had cake and ice cream. it was really good. but that is basically all that happened this week. oh, and i have my cough back, so your prayers on my behalf would be greatly appreciated- i know you all pray for me regularly, and i am so thankful for that- i need all the help i can get. ok well, have a good week, i love you all!
love,
Elder Tayler Christensen

Re-dedicating

Hello My Family and my Friends!

Well, sounds like everyone has had a very fun week! my week was decent, and very spiritual for me. i learned a lot this week, and made a few decisions. so the first thing i know you'll want to hear about is whether or not the extension on my mission got approved- well i'll tell you about that. it's quite interesting. so after i asked president and told yous that i was trying to extend for as long as i could, i began to feel a bit uneasy and not sure it was the right thing to do. i began praying very hard to know if it was really the right thing to do, including in the celestial room in the temple. i didnt have any answer for a while, until friday morning. i was taking a shower of all things, when the answer came. see, i was expecting this spiritual experience with this, the way i usually feel the spirit- that is, with tingles up my spine and goosebumps and the works- what i kept failing to realize was that the spirit works in different ways, not only with different people, but with different times and answers in the same person's life. so im in the shower, and i'm thinking about it, weighing the pros and cons, and then out of nowhere this voice comes into my head- not my voice, which doesnt really happened when i'm thinking- and basically just said something like this: "i gave you your mission call when i gave it to you on purpose- i delayed you coming out because i needed to, but that doesnt mean you get an extension- come home when you're scheduled to come home." and that was that. i wont argue with God. so even though i would love to stay longer, i think God has other plans for me. this was the first time i'd ever felt like i was finally doing what my patriarchal blessing tells me to do- that is to constantly seek the lord's will concerning me throughout my life- finally i understood, and now i'm applying that to myself.

anyway, this week was kinda frustrating in the work side of things. we taught zero lessons to non-members this week, though not for lack of trying. everyone decided to cancel on us, or just not show up. the highlight of the week was the ward halloween party- the first "trunk or treat" party the Mudgeeraba ward has ever had. pretty cool. it was fun, and we got lots of good pictures. i'll have to get them off elder prina though, my camera was dead- oops. so that was fun. church was also pretty good, we had a good lesson about the priesthood in the gospel essentials class, which elder prina and I taught, so hopefully the 2 recent converts from last transfer will be all good with that. besides that, there's not a whole lot to report this week- it was just really frustrating, but elder prina is that man, and has managed to keep himself and me optimistic. i'm glad to be serving with him, it has really made my life easier, and has helped me recover from the stress of Emerald. anyway, thats the week. I love yous all so much! Cant wait to hear from you next week!

Love,

Elder Tayler Christensen

ps- i would attatch pictures this week, but the computers at the liabrary are retarded, and wont let me upload from my camera, so i have to go get a card reader- so there will be photos next week.