Thank you, thank you, thank you! And a Thanksgiving tender mercy story!

Wooooohooooo another AMAZING week in the best country in the whole wide world!!! :) I love Chile! SO much! 

But first I wanted to say thank you thank you thank you so much for all the birthday wishes! I felt so much love from everyone! You can ask anyone, I was the happiest lil’ missionary the day of my birthday! We even bought ice cream from the states to celebrate at night! :) 

Birthday Fun!

But wow. So much has happened this week! I don´t even know! All I know is I am so happy to be a missionary! And it doesn´t matter what´s ahead because with faith, anything can happen! :) And will happen! Haha :)

Okay so with O. and E., E. wants to get baptized.  He´s so ready! But O. is getting more and more depressed with everything going on in her life, and there´s been some crazy things happening ... so we are going to talk with them today to see what´s going on! Oh man. Chile is crazy. 

But on the bright side, our investigator S. talked to her husband and he´s totally okay with getting married, so they are going to get married! And that is great because she wants to get baptized! AHHHH I love the gospel! And M., our investigator with 8 years wants to get baptized too! And 2 Haitians just moved to our sector that the Hermanas were teaching and they accepted the invitation to baptism too! THE WHOLE WORLD WANTS TO GET BAPTIZED!!! It´s so incredible!!! I love missionary work! It´s so crazy! I feel like we don´t do anything, and these incredible people just pop up out of nowhere!!! God is so perfect! :) 

But we are praying so much for O., and E., I didn´t know before my mission it was possible to love others so much in so little time! I love them, and I just feel so blessed God has let me feel a little bit of the love he feels for them. This gospel is amazing! And oh so true! I love my Savior! I feel so privileged to stand as a witness of him at all times! 

Keep sharing the light with everyone around you! I promise if you do, you will find the light of Christ in you! I love you guys SO MUCH, YOU CAN´T IMAGINE!!!! Thank you thank you!!! 

All the love in this Chilean´s heart, 

Hermana Christensen :) 

A Thanksgiving Tender Mercy:

****The first part of this story is taken from Ashley's journal pages a couple of weeks ago and the second part is from her friend's email***

Ashley:  ".....We went another way to get back to the street we needed and we were literally talking about how PERFECT God's timing is!  And just wait... a car passed up and then stopped and said, "Hermanas!" and we were like, what?  It was a returned missionary that served in Ranquen 6 years ago and he was with his wife, going around his mission!  They're from Utah!  And we were all talking in English and it was SO COOL!  His name was Elder Doxey and they were SO nice!  They asked us for cards to give out and stuff!  And in the end the wife was like, "Here, take a snack!" and she gave us fruit snacks from the States!  And said "Happy Thanksgiving from Utah!" AWWW!  It really hit the heart!  And they said they are always praying for the missionaries in Chile!  Well, we left and we were like, GOD LOVES US SO MUCH!  We were literally talking about how perfect God's timing is, and then we ran into them!  They were SO excited!  They were hoping to run into some missionaries! And they offered to give us a ride anywhere.  They were SO nice!  God really loves us!"

And I got this from one of Ashley's very best friends, Karina Holt, in her missionary email:

Karina:  "Okay, you’re not gonna believe this: On Thursday [Thanksgiving] at 3:30pm we leave the house, go to a house and the lesson falls through, so we go to the main street to go to our next lesson. Then out of the blue some gringos in a car are like "HERMANAS."They were this really cute young married couple. This man, Elder Doxey was talking to us because when he served his mission he worked in the sector next door, but lived in our sector, where anciently there were Elders. Well, he said he from Pleasant Grove, and I was like "No way, I’m from Lindon"! Then his cute wife was like, "NO WAY, this morning we were in Ranquen and talked with a missionary from Lindon too, but she’s in the Rancagua Mission". I was like, “Was it Hermana Christensen?” She said YES, and then I freaked out 'cause I was like, that's my best friend!!!! IT’S A SMALL WORLD!!! They were nice, wished us a Happy Thanksgiving and gave us granola bars from the States. But it was crazy to think that someone saw Ashley then me in the same day...we are so close, man! Also, they laughed because I asked them if they knew Lindsey Doxey, and they said “Hermana Christensen asked the same thing...” We’re just the same person!"

  ***For those of you that don't know, Karina and Ashley have been friends since we moved here when she was 5.  They've grown up together and they were college roommates at BYU before their missions.  Ashley got her mission call to the Chile Rancagua Mission and then a month later, Karina got her mission call to the Chile Conception Mission, which borders Ashley's mission to the south.  So even though they are fairly close geographically in Chile, they have not seen each other since they both left on their missions in January!  The fact that out of all the missionaries in Ashley's mission they ran into ASHLEY and then out of all the missionaries in Karina's mission, they happened to run into KARINA, and both on the SAME DAY and on THANKSGIVING of all days, is truly miraculous and I believe, a "tender mercy" from God!

Karina and Ashley after Karina's farewell back in January!