Elder Sam Christensen

Sam sent us the following email & photos on Monday, June 30, 2014. In much of his letter, he makes reference to things we told him in previous letters. To help you understand what he's talking about, here is some background information:

Paragraph 1: My parents (G&B--Grammy & Bompa) have cherry trees and they sent him a package of fresh cherries last week. I sent him a package containing plastic champagne glasses, pastries, and after-dinner mints. In his email last week, Sam mentioned that the new mission presidents & their wives who were there at the MTC receiving training, appeared to be enjoying a few more niceties than the GI missionaries were. We also sent Sam a "mind reading" magic trick he had requested.

Paragraph 2: The picture Sam's referring to is one that appeared in last Saturday's issue of the Church News and shows the MTC choir which Sam has been singing in. This choir has sung for some of the meetings for the new mission presidents. We had asked Sam if his choir got to sit in on and listen to the training meetings, or if they just filed in to sing and then filed right back out.

Paragraph 3: Herbert is our 6-week-old duckling and his leg was injured last Saturday night when our dog, Cubby, accidentally stepped on it while trying to herd him into his pen. I have been trying to contact a vet who I hope treats ducks...

Paragraph 4: We went waterskiing last Saturday morning, and Peter felt something pop in his rib cage. He assures us he will be fine. Peter and Nate went up to Ogden that afternoon to see the air show at Hill Air Force base.

Paragraph 5: We asked Sam if the missionaries will be allowed to view the Stadium of Fire's fireworks on the 4th of July.

Paragraph 6: Skibby will be leaving for her humanitarian service trip to Peru next week, and we are helping her get packed.

Paragraph 7: Sam is just 2 weeks from leaving for Cambodia now, and we asked how he was feeling--nervous? excited? both?

Paragraph 9: My mom has noted on several occasions her observation that Pres. Uchtdorf is an amazing speaker, and also very handsome!

Finally now, here is Sam's email:

Hey all you people,

I did indeed receive the 6 pounds of cherries from G&B. What a delight. I told them in the email i sent them that people kept asking me "where on earth did you get fresh cherries in here?" And I just told them that I had grandparents who loved me. I shared them with a bunch of people, but I probably ate 60-65% of them by myself. They were delicious. I also got the package with the "fine dining" materials. Much needed, thank you. I shared the donuts around with people in the zone. Big hit, mother. Made me feel like a human again to drink out of the fine glass. I've been living like an animal in here. No, just kidding. And I've blown about ten peoples' minds with the magic trick. I've done it 3 different times, and people have picked the yellow dot all three times. Good thing is that I already knew that....

I know what picture you're talking about. I saw it. I'm not in it, but that's it. I'm farther off to the right of the picture, but the left of the formation. We heard the "ordain woman" was excommunicated and everybody was soo ecstatic in here to hear that. She truly is a lunatic. Yeah, they're very strict so we entered and left the room every time. But the room was absolutely packed with (I think) 129 mission couples, so there wouldn't have been any room for us anyways. Did grammy and bompa go to one of those before they left? You should ask them about it and see who they got to hear speak.

Too bad to hear about herbert. But I feel like I've said before that I questioned the idea of raising ducklings in captivity. But that's neither here nor there. A duck specialist. Classic.

I hope peter's rib is ok. Sounds like you guys are doing fun things every night that I'm not there. Just trying to live it up without me. I want to go to the air show!

We get to watch the fireworks, but I'm not exactly sure how it'll be done. There's a paper that explains it, but I haven't looked at it yet.

Lucky you guys get to pack again. I hope to see a lot of pictures from her trip. Maybe Peter can give her some photo-taking tips and some good ideas for angles to take pictures from.

Cambodian is pretty good. The more I try to read, the better I get. And I'm trying to expand my vocab by filling my room with sticky notes of normal vocab like "mirror" and "shoes." Isn't it weird that I went 6 weeks without knowing the word for "door," which I probably learned the first day of school spanish, but never even learned how to say something like "holy ghost." That's the difference in here. We Skyped last Monday night for TRC, which I think I told you about last week, and that was very hard. First of all, I hate skype because it's always weird and the connection is rarely good. But you just get worried and forget to do things. I feel like the lesson would have gone much better if I could have been in person with him instead of looking at the camera. We have to do it again tonight. But like there's a sister in here from cambodia who we talked to yesterday at the temple and you could understand a lot more of what she's saying. A little nervous, excited, yes.

Today they scheduled us to go clean the temple. When we got there and we changed into the white scrubs they told us (the men) that we'd be tearing the carpet out of the celestial room. So we ripped it all up and worked in there for about 3 1/2 hours. It was very hard work because the carpet came up easily, but the sticky stuff underneath didn't, so we had to scrape it and it still wouldn't really come up. But I'm very comfortable with the celestial room in the Provo temple now.

We sang "Oh, Sweet the Joy This Sentence Gives" on Tuesday for the meeting. Uchtdorf was speaking after. This was our knockout song. Everyone loved it and there were probably 9 GAs or so there. Almost all of the women were crying in the audience, and apparently a few general authorities were misty. Including Holland. After the song I made direct eye contact with Uchtdorf for probably 5 full seconds. Tell Grammy that he's just as handsome in real life as he is on tv. At Tuesday's devotional, Christofferson spoke. There were 5 other big guys in attendance: Oaks, Bednar, Nelson, Anderson, and Ballard. Then on Wednesday we sang "JS's First Prayer" for the thing. That one wasn't as good, but was still good. Apparently "Oh Sweet the Joy" was still all the rage even the next day and Bro. Eggett said he got several emails from the "brethren" about how good it was. Uchtdorf's talk was on "I know that my Redeemer lives," and nobody knew that beforehand, so it was really something. RM Nelson came in before the Wednesday thing and said good job, we appreciate the work you're doing. Boyd K Packer was speaking, which was a big deal that he was there, but I froze and forgot to look for him. I really didn't have time to look at any of them on that last day.

I wouldn't mind getting some stuff about how people have said the jazz's draft went. I was very excited to hear that we got Exum, because the talk was that he was pretty big time. And he fills shooting guard, because that's just where we needed him. And getting Harrison is pretty big time too. But I'd like to hear about what real critics think about it.

Because the "Oh Sweet the Joy" was so good, they requested us to sing it at last night's devotional as a special musical number. So we did and it was good.

Good luck guys, I love you and miss you all