Elder Ben 4-26-10

Where to start this week has been so crazy busy! But it has also been one of the best weeks of my mission!
So on Thursday we had zone conference which was good we did a lot of talking about our purpose as elders and then we talked about our companion study and how we can make it more effective. It was a really good meeting. Then on Friday we did service at sister Simmons as usual and didn’t do much this week just a lot of standing around while she talked about nothing it was kind of frustrating cuz I just wanted work!
Then came Saturday and we had mission conference/ spiritual out pouring and it was amazing! Elder Bednar is nothing like he is on TV at conference he was warm and funny and made quite a few jokes, it was awesome. It was more of a question and answer meeting then a lecture and the first thing that he told us was not to write down everything that he said as most do when listening to a talk he called that a silly tradition of our fathers but he told us to write down the impressions of the spirit and the things that we learned from the meeting. So a couple of weeks ago president Murri gave us talks about faith from Elder Bednar and told us to study them and so when we got there on Saturday that is what we talked about. Elder Bednar asked us what we learned from the talks that he gave us and a bunch of us stood up and shared what we learned and then he asked how we could apply the things that we learned and expounded upon the things that were brought up. It was so cool he is so intelligent and has such an amazing aura about him that I can't put into words. After we did that he turned the time over to us to ask him questions about the gospel and things of that nature and gave us a couple of examples of good questions and one of them was elder Bednar being one of 14 men who was their when a prophet of the lord was called what could you tell us about that process and what advise would you give us to following the prophet? So someone asked that same question and the answer was so amazing how he described being on the fourth floor of the temple and how president Monson was called and then explained how the first presidency was organized it was such a powerful testimony and really helped strengthen mine to know how a apostle of the Lord is called as a prophet and president of the church and that it is no accident.
The last thing that he did was he leave an apostolic blessing on us as missionaries and told us to be good boys and girls and as we are good boys we will be blessed. and that part hit me really hard as long as we are trying to do our best and humble ourselves before the Lord and always remember him in our daily lives he will bless us!

So last night we went over to the elders quorum president's house for dinner and his wife was out of town so he cooked for us or at least tried... he cooked tri-tip and the first one that he cooked he called a burnt offering so he tried again and this one was perfect but he said it was not done because their was still pink in the middle so he put it back on the grill for like another 5 minutes and tried it again and still had pink in the middle so he put it in the microwave!!! Ya the freaking microwave now if you know me you know that I believe only certain things should be cooked in the microwave. Popcorn and top ramen that’s all! it should be used for reheating not cooking but he cooked it in their for like 3 minutes and when it came out it still had pink in the middle so I grabbed a couple of pieces before he could put it back in and when it came out the second time it had lost all of the flavor and was brown and dry and gross. So that is the lesson for the week don’t use the microwave to cook your meat it does not work.

As for the work it is going well we have found a bunch of people to teach most of them are former investigators and I don’t know if it will go anywhere but we are going to go over this week and try to teach them I would put in their names but it might not work out so I don’t really want to...

Love your missionary
Elder Christensen