Elder Sam Christensen

Sam sent the following email and pictures on Sunday, June 29, 2015:

From: Samuel Christensen <samuel.christensen@myldsmail.net>

Subject: A Ballpoint Banana!

Date: June 28, 2015 10:01:21 PM MDT

What's up guys?

So we had a really solid week. We had 25 lessons; 14 of which were investigator lessons. Our area has come a long ways. This week I kept feeling like all of that seeding that we did several weeks ago really payed off. We can ride down roads and I feel like the atmosphere or the attitude towards us is much more positive and open. We haven't been counting seeds for a while, but by now we just wave and say hi to more people regularly. We've had a bunch of good contacts of nice people who are willing to meet with us. I feel like it all comes from the good karma of planting those early seeds.

Here's a handy tip for missionaries that I just learned: When you contact someone or talk to someone else to try and set up an appointment, don't just ask them when they're free and then try and schedule it, but say "ok, so do you want to meet Tuesday or Wednesday? Oh, ok Wednesday. Morning or night? Night oh ok. 6 or 7?" Gotcha. When you ask people if they have free time they'll say no or just say Sat/Sun, but this nails people down by only giving them two options. I could really care less when we meet people because that's what we do all day everyday. All I care about is that we get to meet them. Another missionary told me about this and when I tried it I found out how genius it is. So take notes, Skibby and Nate.

A lot of random people here are like hey I saw your picture on facebook of you holding an English sign. And I'm like hey I've never met you before. So the facebook page has a pretty wide reach.

One of the new guys that we started teaching this week is funny. He interrupts us all the time, but he's a really smart kid. But we taught him lesson one and about the plates becoming the book of mormon. He speaks English with us. After we taught that part about the plates he paused and said "It would be good to have these." No kidding, buddy.

I was also thinking about how interesting it is that Christ's church should bear His name, so why is it that so few churches actually have the whole name of Jesus Christ in them? Like we have it, I can't actually think of any other sect that does have it even though I'm sure there are some. But like Methodist, Catholic, Protestant, Seventh Day, Korean Church, The Timothy Vision Center (there was one in BB), et al. We are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It seems so obvious from that perspective.

They shuffled around districts for transfers and now my district is us, the APs, and Phnom Penh's only STLs [Sister Training Leaders]. Last week the APs asked President who he wanted to be the district leader and he literally made a "flip of the coin" motion. So it must have landed on tails because I have to do it now. No, it's because I have the least experience and I'm not an AP or STL. So I have to do the lesson every week, but that's ok because I don't really mind studying for it. It makes me feel like I can think deeply about stuff again.

You'll be getting a new mission president on July 1, right? Yep, President and Sister Moon are out of the office on Wednesday. They've been fantastic leaders for the mission. I really do look up to President Moon and all that he has to go through in being the president of this mission. It would be so hard and he's done the best job possible. We'll meet the new president on Thursday. You can't go wrong with that name, so he'll probably be a pretty good president also.

I've gotta go now, but I'll email some pictures later.

Peace

PS: What's yellow and goes 'click click'? [for the answer, read Sam's "Subject" line above...]