FIRST ZONE CONFERENCE (week 11)

Hi!!

     I looked at the date today and was blown away at how it's already mid November. Thanksgiving is literally right around the corner. I'm pretty sure we are eating at a member's house for Thanksgiving. I've eaten with them before and they make some good grub so I'm not worried. This week was unique as we had zone conference and I participated in my first exchange. I'll talk about each of those more in depth here in a sec but I thought I would let each of you know that the work is been going well! I've continued to love Oregon and it genuinely just keeps getting better. I forgot to mention this but I had gotten word from my bishop back home saying that I will be leaving to Korea on December 11th! Now I haven't received offical word about this from my mission president so take it with a grain of salt. But either way I am glad to be hearing some news! I really haven't worried too much about it. As it says in D&C 4:3 "If ye have desires to serve God, Ye are called to the work." It doesn't say "Ye are called to a place." Basically what I am trying to say is, no matter where I am the work will be the same and thus I need to be greatful no matter where I am. Okay enough said, lets now talk about...

-The Exchange

     This week I had the unique opportunity to participate in my first exchange! For those of you who don't know what that is, its when you switch companions for a day with another companionship in the district. This week I exchanged with... Elder Baggs! He's a legend. One thing that is cool about his assignment is he is spanish speaking out here in Oregon. So, I got to walk around town trying to find hispanics all day. Elder Baggs is from California and he's been out in the field a little less than a year, like 9 or 10 months. His Spanish is really good! At least I think. I couldn't really tell what anyone was saying. But you know what that is good practice for what I will be experiencing out it Korea Ha! 

The spanish work out here is actually pretty tedious. They just do a ton of tracting trying to find anyone who speaks spanish so they can teach them. We went the whole day and met some great people but found absolutely no one who spoke spanish and wanted to be taught. It also doesn't help that apparently I.C.E has been patroling the area and been deporting a lot of them. So when most people see a couple of young dudes walking around with ties and name badges, safe to say they didn't want to answer the door haha! 

All in all it was a great little experience for a day and I got to know Elder Baggs a lot more and I'd say we became pretty good friends after that.

-Zone Conference

Now time for the biggest event that happened this week! Zone Conference! One thing that was cool about it was it was held in the Medford Stake Center. That Stake Center literally shares a parking lot with the Medford temple! Now if you didn't know that temple is absolutely massive! I mean it probably larger than Mt. Everest. Just kidding the Stake Center was probably larger than the temple... lol. What is funny about that is my companion told me something similar saying that it was one of the biggest temples in the world. I didn't realize he was just joking around so I believed him. But anyways, zone conference was awesome. I learned some great things. One of my biggest takeaways from it was its important to be bold when you teach. Don't be afraid to ask questions to people. Along with how important it is to have councils. Whether it’s with your companion or with the district. One of the biggest councils ever held was the one that took place in heaven that decided how we would come to earth. So its safe to say that councils are very important.

One funny thing that happened in zone conference was when we had to talk to the Senior Missionary who is in charge of all the cars. He showed us a video that is very reminisant of the same videos they showed us back in 10th grade. Where they basically talk about every possible way someone has crashed a vehical and how to avoid it. But, the main thing that happened was when he started to talk about receipts. A couple weeks ago my comp and I were getting a car wash and for some reason the machine you pay at doesn't give you a receipt so my comp just decided to write on a piece of paper,

"Car Wash. $4.00"

Then he submitted it to wherever you're supposed to submit it to and called it a day. Well back to zone conference, the car guy pulls up a picture of that exact piece of paper that we wrote on and says,

"This is a good example of what you shouldn't do when submitting a reciept. I am not going to say who did this but you know who you are."

Me and comp say absolutely nothing but we both know that was us ha! We ended up talking to him about it later and he had a good laugh and figured it was just a fluke. In fact he felt bad he used it as an example but we just laughed and told him it was pretty funny.

Apart from that zone conference was great. It took a while to drive out there but it was a great little road trip. I will continue to say that Oregon is beautiful!

-Conclusion

So, that was the week! Pretty eventful. The Lords work has continued to hasten and there are some more awesome stories on the horizon. I am excited for them and I hope you all are too! Please let me know how you're doing I will try my best to respond but I like reading your emails so keep sending them! I love you guys I'll write back next week!

Love Y'all (x6)

-Elder Christensen