Understanding Unity. (Week 5)

안녕하세요 여러분! 

     The MTC has FLOWN by I cannot believe I have been a missionary for 5 weeks starting Wednesday! This week the days did NOT feel like weeks. They felt like seconds. When I talked to my parents on the phone this Saturday they told me that the first month felt like FOREVER! So, I hope that it starts to move fast for you guys back home as well haha! I am going to be honest, classes during this week were a blur and I don't really remember much of what we learned in Korean. But I have noticed that my abilities to listen and understand Korean are slowly growing! The biggest takeaway from this week has definitely been my passion for unifying the district and how I can better understand how to do that! Here are some of the experiences from this week that have helped me Understand Unity.

     To start I want to talk about a key takeaway from our Tuesday devotional speaker, Elder Clemet M. Matoswagothata. One thing I have noticed from all of the talks I have listened to from these leaders (this one being the 5th) is that they all say something similar to the effect of:

"The Lord knows you. He has called you to this work. You have been reserved for it. So act on it!"

Elder Matoswagothata did not disappoint after he said that. I think that's something a lot of us kind of forget as missionaries. That we have a hard time believing that the Lord has called us for this work. That there are people out there who need us! As Elder Oaks once said,

"He has called me because I am me"

It is also important to remember that Jesus Christ died for all of us. Am I going to let that go to waste by forgetting that great sacrifice by not acting like a called servant of God? You bet I'm not. You may recall from my last email about the question I asked. 

"Do I truly believe that I have been redeemed?"

You may also remember that I said I was striving to believe in that. I also challenged each of you to do the same. Did ya do it? I know I did. My testimony of Christ has grown exponentially this week by striving to use one of Jesus's best attributes. Loving everyone. This was something I had wanted to improve from my second email titled "Faith and Forgiveness" I just didn't know how to do it. Well I can confidently say I have "mostly" figured it out.

     One thing I remember from either last week or the week before that. We had a district meeting with one of our ecclesiastical leaders, the big man himself Brother Reily, who you may recall from my last email. He said to us that we needed to be more unified. However this was weird for us because we believed we already felt unified as a district. I mean, albeit we didn't know everyone's life back at home very well but that doesn't mean we aren't unified right? That's what we all thought. But for some reason the thought of not being unified was just stuck in my head. I couldn't get it out. What was the Lord trying to tell me? So, I did one of the best things you can do. I pondered and prayed about it... In the shower. When I had done this one of the greatest shower thoughts had come to mind directly from the Spirit. This question popped into my head:

"What are our personal strengths?"

That's what we were missing! We didn't know what each of us were good at. We all understood that we were representatives of Christ and chose to be here. But why? What do each of us do that will benefit each other? I immediately gathered some Elders together in my room and asked them what they believed they were good at. It was a hard question because I didn't want to hear what others thought of them. Not yet. I wanted to know what they thought they were good at. Every Elder thought about this question hard and every single one gave a different answer. Some of the answers that were given made me start looking at each Elder differently in a great way! I gained new knowledge about each person in a positive way! After they gave their answer I then told them what I thought they were good at. When I did this everyone else joined in and we began to compliment each other for a solid 30 minutes it was great! There are still some of us I haven't gotten to yet. But from the small group I have gotten to I feel like I have increased my friendship with them exponentially because I now know what they are excelling at. I now also know who I can ask if I am struggling with something specific to their strengths. Now I didn't expect to get through those discussions without someone asking me the same question. So then, what are my strengths?

I firmly believe that I have a strong ability to articulate the words I say, specifically when I testify, to be spoken with The Spirit. I am great at meeting new people and making each new conversation feel personal because I want to care for them. I have started to appreciate my ability to sing. Which I know is something my family has wanted me to feel confident about. Trust me it's been hard but after not hearing a lot of music I have been forced to sing songs myself haha.

Phew, that felt good to write down. Self confidence is something each of us need. It's way easier to pass along joy to someone if you find joy in yourself. So I challenge you all to smile more! Appreciate yourself more. Because YOU matter. God needs all of us. We are HIS children and if you matter in God's eyes you matter to me. I hope all of you can have that same mindset because we all need each other. Let's start to uplift ourselves so we can uplift others. That's how we, as Children of God, can show our love to Him.

-Conference

     I want to dedicate this next section of my email to General Conference and the revelation I received from it. I am not entirely sure how I want to structure this section so I think I will just let The Spirit guide me as I write. But first, I just want to say I had never in my whole life had sat through the entirety of General Conference, heck I didn't even know there was an evening session on saturday whoops! I've been missing out because the knowledge and revelation I received from Conference was astronomical!

     This week I was asked to go into Conference with a question or a general topic that I wanted to see. The topic I chose was oddly specific but it was something that had been brought to my attention after discussing it with my Dad. That being "The Family: A Proclamation To The World." I had shared this with my district in one of our councils and it stuck out because most of us said things like "How can I be a better missionary?" "Where can I find Christ more in my life?". But no one really brought up Family. I was glad to find out that The Family Proclamation was mentioned at least 3 times. 2 of which had talks written specifically about it. One of those talks was given by the President of the 12 Apostles. Safe to say I received a very specific answer on that one haha! One of my favorite things President Oaks said was when he was talking about his family and how his father died very early. President Oaks said that the reason his mother was able to raise 3 children as well as she did was because she did it through Christ. He also emphasized how impactful it was that his grandpa filled in the gap of his father and that we should all be filling in the gaps for each other's families. The importance of family is something we all forget at times. It's something I have forgotten about many times. But as President Oaks said, "We are a Family Church. That the family is central to God's eternal plan of happiness." Don't forget that. Something my Mom pointed out to me was that where I am serving my mission (Seoul South Korea) struggles a lot with family. I feel the reason for this is because the people in Korea have become insanely dependent on media consumption, other pointless things, and that they lack the Gospel of Christ. From what I have learned here in the MTC, people in Korea spend at least 14 to 16 hours a day on nothing but school and education. Sister Park, our Korean tutor who is a native Korean, claims that for High School she would wake up at 6:00am and go to school until 11:00pm and then study till 2:00am even on Saturdays. The only time where I could see people spending time with family is on Sundays. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if people would rather be doing other things than spending time with family on that day. But if we as missionaries can show them the blessings of church and families we might actually make a difference for them. That's what I hope to give to the people of Korea and that's what I hope we can improve on as a Church. To understand family and its eternal benefits is understanding God's plan for us. I promise that if we focus more on each other as a family and we surround each other with Christ we will be blessed eternally by God. Because he loves us and he wants us to come closer to him as a family. I know this to be true and I hope each of us continue to love as a family forever.

     With that I will conclude this email by thanking you personally for making it this far. I feel that when I write these emails I personally grow my testimony because I know that The Spirit helps guide me when I reflect on the goodness of the gospel. I also feel joy knowing that my message each week has an effect on the people that read it. Being one month into my mission has brought me an immense amount of joy and knowledge. I can really feel myself changing for the better! I have started to recognize The Spirit so much more in my life along with all of the blessings I have been given. The fact that I am here right now writing about my joy and happiness to something that I know will be hard, just goes to show how much the Lord has confirmed to me that what I am doing is worth it. I am so glad I am here and that I am making each moment count to the best of my abilities. Korea ain't going to be ready for the amount of happiness I'm going to bring through the Gospel. Ahahaha!

P.S. I am going to try a little better to take pictures. I know that reading can be hard for some so look forward to more pictures next week :)

Thank you,

Love you all

-Elder Christensen

A sister missionary from Bountiful

Tate with his companion (white shirt) Elder Grawrock and another missionary from his district.