Feelin' the heat

Carolina Reaper!

Hello!

Long week over here in Waterloo…but hard is good, right?! So all is well. At the beginning of the week were able to have MLC with all the mission leaders. Just another opportunity to hear Pres. Badger drop some fire, so you can never pass that up! It was also super fun to see all of the homies, especially the Spanish Squad. Solid group of guys right there. One day, I’ll be back speaking the good ol’ Spanish every day.

death in a picture

But speaking of Spanish, we finally ran into a Hispanic homie named Manico on the streets. Scoresby and I were walking back to our car after an appointment and Manico had just gotten home. Hearing Spanish, I grabbed my Libro out of the car and went and said what up. This man was hilarious but super dope also. Couple minutes into our convo he just whips out the question, “Do you guys like peppers?” I translated the question to Scoresby and we both were down for it. I’ve had my fair share of some pretty spicy and outrageous peppers from the Marquez fam in Des Moines so I wasn’t about to back down. Manico told us to each take a little piece from it and we were pretty stupid because that’s absolutely a sign that it’s going to be insane. So I popped a piece in and kept talking with Manico. But holy cow! Couple of seconds later my ENTIRE body felt like it was on fire. Scoresby and I both. I literally started tearing up right in front of this dude because it was so dang hot. I managed to keep it chill though and kept talking and asked what kind of pepper he had just given us. Turns out, this homie just gave us a Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper in the entire world! And this random homie in Waterloo, Iowa has five bushes of them casually growing in his front yard. Gotta love it! After saying goodbye, we went directly to the gas station and each bought a quart of milk to chug…it was that hot.

My mouth after I ate the pepper.

Scoresby and I have been really trying to switch thing up lately. We’ve been trying to go from knocking the same apartment buildings, to being out in the streets. We are trying a whole different group of people from my first transfer here. We’re trying to change the whole culture here in Waterloo, getting members involved, stopping by part member families, just different things that will ensure success. The area has really struggled getting people to church and keep them consistently coming. And I’m getting a little tired of that…to be honest, more like A LOT. What helped our plea for help from the members was that we were asked to give talks in sacrament meeting this past Sunday. No better time to talk about the urgency of the members here helping us then when you have the entire congregation focused just on you. So in my talk, I totally dropped my topic of forgiveness half way thru, and spun it off into missionary work and the need for help from the ward. I said it all in a loving way, but firm enough 'to singe their eyebrows a little'. We’re excited to work for these changes and see some success here. 

Check out Mosiah 4, what I based my entire talk off of.

Much love,

Elder Christensen

….or after the all the publicity Kate got last weekend maybe I should sign off, “Kate Christensen’s older brother”

Spanish Squad

Marshallese Baptism

the Homies