Hello Family!

Thank you so much for the love and support! It was wonderful to open my inbox and see the huge influx of Birthday Messages and love! The pictures of Halloween looked fun as well, they don't celebrate that sadly.

Mother! Thank you so much for the birthday present! That picture album was just what I wanted. Also, you wouldn't believe how good those Butterfingers and Pixy Sticks were. Seriously.

To resolve one concern: We're guaranteed to get out mail at least once a month because that's when people will go to Singapore and back, or something like that. E-mails I get to see every week, so I have limited time. Letters are easier to read on my own time. Also, Dear Elders or Hand Written doesn't matter because I will get them the same time probably anyway.

Anyway, onto Miri. Life here is fantastic! I know a lot of people have questions about stuff, so I'll just ramble and hope they're answered.

Miri is a seriously beautiful place. The best way to describe the atmosphere is that it Singapore and Malaysia are like Western cities and neighborhoods where everyone is Asian. A lot of things are different of course, like everyone driving on the wrong side of the road, and palm trees and exotic plants everywhere (Mom, eat your heart out), but the Gospel is true everywhere! The favorite meal I had so far is Nasi Beryani or 'Brave Rice'. Also, I've been blessed a lot to be safe on the roads so far. You know about that "don't ride in darkness or heavy rain"? Forget it! If we actually did that we would never get work done. Also, we like to cross road medians. 

There's also probably thousands of these little Pandai (shops) where Indians give you awesome meals for like 9 Ringet (3 U.S. dollars) We eat out a lot because biking home and cooking use a lot of our time.

A lot of members we have live in Kampung (Villages) where the Government doesn't technically own the land. That doesn't mean they're poor though. just lazy. They usually have comfortably furbished houses, 2-3 cars, and sick stereo systems (seriously everyone has huge speakers here). Whereas, people who live in Terrace houses actually care about improving themselves, but they're usually harder to convert, but once converted are solid forever. 

Other stuff: We have our entire schedule moved down a half hour, so we get up at 7 instead of 6:30. The rest is in the white handbook from there. I haven't had Durian yet or any other exotic fruits, specific questions about culture, please email me!

The wonderful thing about missionary work is that it is missionary work! Though we started with no investigators, the work is already progressing! One thing that we have been mandated to do is to Pray every hour, as a companionship if possible, and place a B.O.M. every day. On my first day of tracting we had a awesome experience. The only people we're really teaching is the Panang Family, with like 6 kids that we're teaching to read, then share a spiritual message. It's great.

After one such meeting, we prayed and felt we could place our daily B.O.M. though it was 8:30. We randomly rode through the neighbourhood and the first house we stopped at the guy came out and talked to us instantly. His name was Desmond, a Catholic Taxi driver that had been to Utah before and always wondered about the Church. He easily took a B.O.M. and invited us to come back and talk about the experiences with God we've had! Sweet!

Similar Experiences have happened with a woman named Jeanie from Hong Kong and a Ex-Malaysian Commando named Francis. I'll keep you updated!

Now, Pictures!

Love you all! -Elder Christensen 

 Awesome.

 First view of Singapore

 Last moment with Sessions

 Everybody on the Trax

 Nasi Beryani

 The Berhenti sign on our street

 The Stake Center in Singapore

Exit sign

Yield sign

Other tidbits of information...

We asked and he would prefer snail mail...Dear Elder or Snail Mail, he wants to have and re-read them and just doesn't have enough time on the email....

Are you a little saddle sore from bike-riding? Answer: Golds Bond Body Powder.

For my Birthday my wonderful Mother and Father 

financed us to have a delicious Italian Dinner consisting of Pizza AND milkshakes! Oh the Luxury! Also we're staying with 2 chinese Elders, Flecher and Mitchell, they came also.

What was church like?  How is your language coming?  What do you eat for breakfast? How are you and Elder W getting along? What is tracting like?  Trucking along, Apples and Tomato Sandwiches, Swimmingly, and it's fun. You pray a lot.

Remind me to talk about church and Robert next week.

What time do you leave the apartment in the morning? How long are you in the apartment, what time do you usually leave? We study til lunch because of Language and Training hours, leave around 12:30 or one

Sweet boy, before you go, just tell your family, are you happy? Are you doing well? Are you alright?Yes, yes and yes

OH YEAH! Zone conference is this week and apparently we get Papa Johns Unlimited!Hi Everyone

 1)An Iban family cooking dinner

3) Here is my pickled egg

4)There is an old Iban grandma that makes these ties out of beads. She is making one for me right now

5) A close-up of the beads. This is a very traditional Iban craft and they can make some crazy things out of beads such as ties and sword sheaths and such

1) The stairs to get up to the long house

2) Inside the long house

3) From a different angle

4) An Iban shield hanging up above a doorway. They make really neat shields and carve them really well. 

5) Still inside the long house

6) A hand made mat

1) The jungle

2) A river in the jungle

3) Another picture of the river in the jungle

4) A waterfall in the jungle

5) Another waterfall in the jungle

6) An Iban member standing next to the long house

7) The long house

1) One of the main paths in Kampung Api

2) A house

3) Another house

4) Another house. This one is interesting because it shows the reason why all the houses are built on stilts. It also has several chicken coops built around the side that are also on stilts.

5) This is the road that connects Kampung Api to Kampung Pasir

6) This is the jungle where we went hiking today

7) Some plants growing in the jungle. I thought this picture looked pretty neat

 

1) A crocodile

2) see #1

3) see #2

4) A sun bear drinking sweetened condensed milk from a can

We got this late last night:

Hello everyone! We just get one email to send quick so I want you to know I'm safe and sound, the flight went well, we've all contacted people, my first area is Miri in Sarowak, my new companion is Elder W, and the gospel is so true! Love you all, Pres. and Sister Mains are excellent people!

Just a couple of notes from our conversation with him:

He has no idea if he gained weight in the MTC, they don't have scales. He never ate cold cereal once while he was there. We asked him what he had learned about Malaysia; the people are very kind, no crime, simple people, kimono dragons, monkeys, dragon fruit and amazing food are everywhere, "best food in the world" and food is a big part of their culture, men wear skirts called "serongs",  he will have a machete. They build compounds out over the ocean because they don't have to pay property taxes, and there are planks going out to these houses on stilts that he will tract on. He heard the little kids are wild, they poke and tackle the missionaries while they are praying, etc.  Coy's MTC teacher, Bro. Pulver woke up one night to sounds under his bed.  They found a snake six feet long. After trying to coax it out and get it out for a long time, they just got the machete from the closet and cut it's head off. The locals told them the next day it was a COBRA!  They believe if you kill a cobra it will come back and kill you in your sleep.  (Jeff still wants to buy Coy a mongoose, like Riki Tiki Tavi).  The apartments are very nice, each elder will often have their own bathroom (cobras included!).  Children will yell "white guy! White guy!" while they are walking down the street. He advised our family to use the section of Preach My Gospel on Christlike attributes. As missionaries they focus on one every week.  Apparently the zone leaders facebook stalk the elders coming in, then pray about placements and companionships. (We can't find his companion on Mormon. org).  Elder Christensen will spend a couple of days in the mission home where he will learn to eat with his hands off banana leaves (they don't use utinsels), and to get by without toilet paper, among other cultural things.  He sounded SO GOOD!  Oh, we love that boy. 

Miri Sarakawa is in East Malaysia, the "poor" side, though near the city the tourism areas are absolutely beautiful and well developed.  If you have a second to look at Miri, Sarakawa on google images or google earth, it is pretty fascinating. 

He said his Pdays will be Mondays, so we'll live for Mondays at our house!  Thank you so much for keeping Elder Christensen in your prayers, and for all of your love and support!  God Bless! 

Hello lovely hordes of letter-readers!

Thank you so much for the amazing outpouring of love I've felt this week! Every letter boosts my heart so much!
Here's one thing I need to answer my wonderful Mother.
I DON'T 'NEED' ANYTHING FOR MY BIRTHDAY! I have too much stuff already! What I would like is just pictures of you guys, maybe your favorites from all the adorable ones you've sent me (yes, even the one in need of a haircut). Anything else just keep the money and donate to the general missionary fund please.
Anyway, this week was so much fun! We started with Bro. Pulver's Birthday party last Friday, where we ate the cookie bars and pumpkin cookies I recieved from my wonderful family and grandparents and drank apple beer and Martinelli's that Paiwei had randomly recieved. It was really fun.
Other exciting events include that We will be flying out on Tuesday, leaving at noon! That's insane! We're sad to leave eachother but ready to go!
Anyway, I'll be having to drop maybe fifty pounds of stuff before I leave so I'll send some things home. Expect a package!
For my family: CONGRATULATIONS DAD! Insert here how much you want to say about it (Jeff had nose surgery!) but I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU! That must feel wonderful!
One other thing to get out of the way, The M.T.C. has been an absolutely amazing experience and I've loved every second of it.
Now, funny and interesting stories!
Culture Shock is an interesting thing. I wasn't there when this happened, but Jin, Blackwelder, Wilson, and Coloma were sitting on the couches in their apartment when apparently Jin (insert whatever word you use when this happens). Coloma, sitting next to him, said "Elder Jin, I can't support this!" They asked what he meant, and he said "IT SMELLS SO HARD!" It was hilarious to hear about. Coloma's a great guy.
Microculture evolution: Whenever we have anything work out or good happen to us, we cry out "The Gospel is True!" Usually when it's not related to that at all. Whenever something bad happens, we just, like, don't say anything, because, well, we, um, can't complain.
Elder Sessions had ink leak on both of his long sleeve white shirts, and bleached them in our Classroom's kitchen sink. Fun times.
I've met a new best friend and fellow Brony Elder Law from the great country of Washington. He's writing a book right now and he is a very talented writer. We've had a lot of fun times together and great experiences, and he inspired to me do what I've been thinking of for a long time and I'm now writing a book on P-Days! Expect more on that when the bell tolls 1!
The Finnish Invaded Singapore yesterday and we were kicked out of our classroom. Apparently we were supposed to have been sharing a classroom apartment with the other Singapore district this whole time, but didn't because the Indonesian classroom next door was empty. They had a live Durian (a very stinky fruit) in their fridge and the whole place smelled like carbon monoxide. But worse.
And to end, a cool experience today. Elder Sessions and I did Sealings in the Temple today. While there, we met an Elder who got home from Germany 11 months ago, and these 2 super old sisters. Sister Dart was very good at Genealogy and had a giant stack of sealing names with her. Her older Sister, Sister Donovan, told us that she had never been sealed to her children, or her husband, but loved to come do sealings anyway. It was a really neat experience to meet her. People like that inspire me.
One last thing: Our Devotional this Tuesday was by Elder Dallin H. Oaks. It was a extremely inspirational talk and I wish I could talk about it forever, but my personal favorite things about it was basically that the entire talk was his testimony of the divinity and truth of our church. He basically taught the first couple lessons in his own words. It was really neat. I got to sing in the Choir and we sang an amazing rendition of Praise to the Man.

 Flight Plans!

 Elder Sessions loves his Smolder!

 Some Precious Ancient Indonesian Artifact

 World's Best Back Scratcher

 Birthday Party

 Bleachin Shirts...

 Elder Law

 Singapore Elders

 Singapore Elders

Elder Bester

 Our MTC Mission President

 We found this on the back of a map that has been hanging in our classroom the whole time!

Well, I love you all! The next time you hear from me will be in Singapore! I'm So Stoked to Read the B.O.M. and Study Malay for 30 STRAIGHT HOURS!!! :-D

-Elder Christensen