New Years!‏ Mon, 29 Dec 2014 11:16

Hey family!

Oh man is was so good to talk to you guys on Christmas! I dont know if this is a good thing or not but just seeing you guys and knowing that not much has changed (in that you are all the same goofy people with random questions and personalies) makes me realize that being here in brazil isnt that far away. Though my life my dip and sway on the mission, knowing that you all are safe and sound makes me feel great. So thanks for that!

Hopefully you were able to ask everything you guys wanted and sorry if I was ever distracted or disinterested with talking about anything. Life here on the mission has reached a point where everyday is pretty much the same and its becoming harder and harder to share the stories that take to backseat to the overwhelming problem known as the language barrier. SO today I dont feel like talking about it anymore. Its not worth it. Neither is talking about the struggles of this mission in particular. So i have decided to try harder to share better stories, and if they are mediocure to begin with I will use my Christensen charm to over exagerate the stuffing out of um. 

Ha alright so I never described to you guys the story of when I played soccer with the Brazilian kids. They play soccer on a whole nother level. No joke! I cant explain it. It is so smooth and beautiful! But they do this all without shoes... right so I wanted to be cool too. I took off my shoes and started to play some ball and I could litterally feel this monster of a blister start to form on the bottom of my left foot. The next moment I got another on my right! By the time I was done playing soccer I coulnt even walk on the balls of my feet! haha I am fully recovered now (have pictures of it though) but if there is anything that you take away from this story.. let it be that if you american, dont play ball without shoes.. (but I did score a goal and nutmegged some 5 year old! haha) As far as my hair cut, everyone was super thrown off about my bald spot! haha Like no joke they dont understand that I was born with it. haha They all keep making jokes about how I sneezed while I was cutting my hair or something.. everytime...

Oh also I dont remember if I told you guys this or not but my first name is a verb! haha yeah COOPER means TO JOG and not only that, It is the pun of a joke to people from sao paulo.. an inaproriate joke apparently? haha yeah they have tried to explain it to me but i still dont see why it is funny. (I think the joke has something to do with having a good butt) haha so hopefully that will lift your day.

Other than this we have no real plans for new years.. But we will be rigning it in before anyone in the North or South americas so thats pretty tight. Our investigators are few and little progress so we keep at it. 

Family! I love you. Enjoy the winter break as long as you can. Texan travelers, be safe! West it was great talking to you and Stasia and BROK! love you guys! Stay happy! you dont know how much I need it from you guys right now! 

Te Amo! 

ELDER CHRISTENSEN

Christmas

We got to skype and see Elder Christensen.

He was awesome, he says that there is no portugese sound for CH, in Christensen so whatever someone calls him he just goes with it.

alright so lets get down to the real talk. Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 10:43

alright so lets get down to the real talk.

Today is not my P-day. Last minute change.. anyways I need your skype stuff and maybe even someone elses skype information that i can use because there is no way that I remember what mine was. So yeah Password and Username would be awesome and then I am sure also that once I login I can call you cause it should have your contact saved. 

Second, we are allowed 40 min. If it happens to run over I wont say but yeah we only get 40 so prep yourselves to only talk about what is important! haha I will call sometime in the afternoon brazilian time. Probably around 2pm here. So whatever that turns out being for you guys .. idk . right before lunch I am guessing. 

Also I will have a full email time that morning so if there is anything you want to tell me before skype I will be able to respond then. 

Glad to hear everything is going great though! SO STOKED TO TALK TO YOU ALL ON CHRISTMAS!

love 

OPA! Date: December 15, 2014 at 6:05

Yo yo! Family!

Hey! Everyone sounds so awesome! Glad to hear from all of ya! Honestly P-days are only great because of Email!

Alright so we had a pretty good week I guess. Since I last wrote on Wednesday we had a pretty normal 5 days. Walked around and Invited everyone we saw to church and then did you usual. ha We are currently strugglin to get some solid investigators. Our area is pretty rich so the people are harder to get a hold of and not as humbled and ready to hear the gospel. So yeah is a struggle. We are teaching a few sweet people but they are moving super slow. We have a church pastor who is super cool because he basically just studied the Bible for 10 years on his own and then created his own Church because he couldnt stand the corruption he kept seeing in all the other ones around him. He has tons of questions and we dont know how much listening he actually does when we teach but he is reading the Book of Mormon so hopefully the spirit will crack through then. He is super educated which means that I cant understand a word he says so I sit there and play with his dog the entire time. HA jk I pay attention.. as much as I can. We also taught our American people and as expected they kinda turned us down because the Mother is a very strong Catholic. Which is a bummer because the daughter would be elict otherwise. We still sat there and talked with them. They kept bringing up questions about the church though and temples and stuff so we were pretty much teaching them gospel truths anyways without them knowing it. haha Love it when that happens. 

Other then all this, life in Brasil is pretty sick. Still dont have the language where I want it to be but that is alright. Elder Loveland is great but he is having a hard time run the area and help me learn the language so I get kinda left in the dirt a lot. Its all good though. Part of the learning process. This place is so funny though. There is just such a weird culture to it. So one side of our area is super loaded with cash and the other is kinda fevela status so we see some of the weirdest things sometimes. Like horse drawn carridges in the middle of the appartment highrises. And yeah everyone here are beach dwellers so Shirts and irrelevant. I love it here though even if the work is hard. When you compare it to the states is probably more succesful number wise but the work is just so much more than numbers so it struggles. Hopefully we can get someone to come to church. Then we can talk about baptism. haha 

So yeah SKYPE next week on the 25th.. we will be at a members home. Not sure yet but it will be pretty sweet to see some faces! Stay posted.

Well, family you all sound awesome. Glad to hear AZ was so sweet! B! Youre a man and a half! That 6 months to sexy worked out for ya! If you remember and Elder Stanger that was Visa waiting in your mission I met him at the CTM and he said he knew you. Also I met the kid that just left from your home ward in the CTM as well. There was some serious AZ represented in the CTM. Mom&Dad travel safe. Dad- glad to see you still wear the gross old sweaters! Mom you look great! Love you both. LAMBSONS! Rollin up in the BENZ! jk Suburban is pretty sick though! Hope the travel was safe. You guys are awesome. W&S&B hope you guys are alright. What are we gonna do about skyping all the non new mexico people? Kodras! Enjoy the vactions! Glad to hear the AZ game was sick. Beardown. Hang in there guys! Enjoy christmas with the RENTS. 

ALRIGHT 

Love all of ya. Love the gospel. Read your scriptures. They are a lifesaving device!

love,

ELDER CHRISTENSEN

3rd Week on the Beach!‏ Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2014

Family! How are ya?

First off this week was transfer week and so for whatever reason we dont have a P day until wednesday so for now on every 6 weeks just expect and email later in the week. No changes were made for me or anyone in our house really so its all good in the hood.

Another week is in the books and cant honestly look back and say it was any better than the week before! ha But its all good. Had some cool experiences along the way that were pretty great. We knock doors pretty much all day long and on this one door in particular we knocked an started to talk. She was asking us some questions about where we were from and then we found out that they both speak english! haha so it through them off pretty hard and we started laughing about it. They let us in and yeah we have some new investigators in English and I actually get to talk to them! So i get to feel like a missionary again! Its pretty great. We saw them this monday and I dont know how far it will last but hey I enjoy it for now. Just another week of walking and trying to learn Portuguese other wise. I feel like I understand most of what people are trying to say but if it enters another topic other than the gospel I am doomed. I am beginning to understand a lot more about myself and grow stronger so thats the positive side. Still not loving it too much but hey its all part of the journey. Oh and another funny story I just remembered was that last night we had to push a members car out of the road! There was an underground water pipe that just exploaded and he was driving over the water (because it just flodded the entire streeet) and his front end fell in to this massive ditch that the broken pipe caused! haha so we got to help out with that yesterday night! ha 

Christmas is coming and yeah we will get to skype. We will work out the details on that as we get closer to it. Thanks for all the stuff in the package. Not going to lie I opened everything, but I feel like I was supposed to because I wouldnt have been able to wear my christmas socks everyday otherwise! Thanks mom your great! Other things to answer your questions. There are 3 americans in total at our place. E. Brown arrived 6 weeks before I did and was serving in Boise for 10 months before as well. There are 2 native Brasilians and one other Argentinian . So yeah we all just got transfer calls last night and nobody is changing so we will all be here for christmas. For P-day we will probably just go get some food real quick. Go back to the place. Sleep and maybe play some Phase 10. we arnt aloud to leave our area or play soccer but in all honesty is too hot outside anyways to enjoy it. So yeah P-days are not the greatest but hey you learn to enjoy them anyways. 

you guys sounds like your doing great. Mom sorry to hear christmas isnt up yet. You will get there. Jenn- so sick about the phone! lets see how long it lasts! also good luck with the car hunt. West- Brooklyn you are adorable. Keep on being texan! you guys will enjoy the DISCO! ha yeah man beach probably outdoes that grimmy rio . Nano- glad to hear you guys still do rediclous things like christmas at Disneyland! But hey I guess its kinda close by so make the most of it. Enjoy the cooler air in NM. I miss it too! haha 

Sorry the letters have been getting more and more lame but I have to write my ritzville people to see what has been going down! I love you all! I Will do better next week! No need to worry bout me! LOVE

if I have time I will try to send pics after

Segunda semana Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 12:01

What it do!

Man what a week. Longest week of my mission! Started off on tuesday and (also the shift key doesnt work well so i am not going to even try) i recieved your christmas package! thanks mom your the best. we tried to get some police stuff done here because the place where i would normaly have done it in sao paulo was closed so anyways we tried to do it here and because the goverment is corrupt and has a whole bucket of problems it fell through and now we are just going to try sometime this week. the rest of the week we did pretty much the same thing every day. walked, talked, slept, pretty much the same thing everyday. its weird working here because there is no break for dinner. you work for 9 hours strait and you dont start work until 2... waiting for the sun to pass by. so pretty much it feels super long.. every day. but its alright. one day , i think it was thursday, we contacted this one american in the street. haha he was from Main or something and he was just wondering the streets looking for an address! haha he was a pretty goofy guy and it was fun to be able to lead the conversation over elder loveland haha and feel like a missionary again. 

in all honesty, it has been a pretty stressfull experience trying to stay possitive through all this. language is just the half of it I think. everything about this mission is different. the way they think about the work, the way the work is organized and everything. it is kinda a bumer to walk into and see just how skewed everything here is. but no need to worry. I know things will improve and that with time and effort all things will get better. 

but to answer some more of your questions- No, president doesnt speak english. Not close to missionaries. not really sure why but yeah its a weird topic. Lunch we have provided by members. sometimes we eat with them and other times we have it brought to our appartment. My ward is pretty normal sized but our area is huge so for the amont of area our ward covers I would say there is that many active members. The ones that are though are pretty great. no bug problem either. Our chapel just got shut down actually because its pretty ghetto so now we get to meet in a newer building that is a little farther away. i drink the water and everything else. I feel like this area at least has close to no problems with any of that. So its never crossed my mind that much. no problems with food or anything as well. I honestly feel a whole lot healther than i did in the states! haha

You all sound so great. glad to hear that thanksgiving was so good for everyone! Love you all so much. Now is the time to be bumpin some christmas! Ha everyone here in brazil is rockin the lighs and are starting to get pumped for it. Its funny how man american christmas songs you hear walking down the street that are just super irronic to be playing in brazil! 

alright well my time is up..

love ya 

will do better next week. this keyboard sucks!

ELDER CHRISTENSEN