Elder Jordan Van Christensen: MOVING DAY.‏

Hoooooolllllllllllllaaaa!!

How is everybody doing? Sure hope all is well!

So, first off, sorry about not writing yesterday. I had ZERO time to write. We were in the office for 2 hours, and I was swamped with work. Also, yesterday we moved! We were living in the apartment just above the Stake President CARRASCO (Mom, it’s not Contreras, hahaha), but we were experiencing some problems with the landlords. The owner is an alcoholic, and they are always smoking. He yells at the top of his lungs in the middle of the night and wakes us up. They are always having parties, and blasting music. And besides, they apparently need our apartment for some of their family that is coming to Cusco. I don’t know, but it was a headache for us. So, President Calderón and his wife had been looking for an apartment/house for us, and they found one! They found a house, an entire house, about 4 blocks from where we were living before. Awesome! So I get a call from Sister Calderón saying that I need to go with her to sign the contract and pay a guarantee of S/. 2,400 the next morning at 10am. So, I run to the bank that morning, take out the money, and go sign the contract. The house is sweeeet! So long story short, we hired a truck to help us move, and got all moved yesterday. I went and bought some light bulbs that were much needed, but other than that, the house is in good shape. We do have suspicions that it could be haunted though. We always hear creepy noises at night, and we were all kinda hangin out last night right before we went to bed and we heard a loud “THUD” in another room in the house. And last night, Elder Gutierrez said he heard someone literally walking on our ROOF. It’s a shingle roof, and he said that he hit the roof with his hand to maybe scare it away, but it kept walking. He was scared that someone was trying to break into the house! But, it eventually disappeared and he went back to sleep. Looks like today we’ll be dedicating our house! So yeah! Anyways. We are all moved in, and are pretty happy! I love the change. It’s nice to be in a new place.

On to another subject! Carol, a non-member that has been attending the church for what seems like forever, has finally decided to be baptized! She has a date for this Saturday, and if all goes well, she’ll be confirmed this Sunday! We are going to go over everything with her this week, to make sure she really understands what baptism is, and the covenant that she will be making with our Heavenly Father. I am confident though, that she will be a great convert, and will continue to be strong in the church. Her mother is a member, and we helped her to come back to church and be with her daughter. We see them every Sunday in the chapel, and they are great! We haven’t been able to contact Victor this week, but were hoping that today or tomorrow we can find them at home. They have been traveling a little bit, and we haven’t had the luck of finding them. But we continue onward! We went to a FHE at the bishops’ house last night with a couple of our recent converts, Pilar and Alicia, and we had a fun time. The bishop is a really good guy, but at some times can really be… not so great. Haha, Whittaker gets worked up real easy so I literally have to hold him back, or put my hand over his mouth so that he doesn’t do anything he would regret. Hahaha, no, it’s not that bad, but he can be a little silly at times. The work is going great! Me and Whittaker get along really well. We always joke around and have a lot of fun.

Okay, so the meeting with Elder Andersen went really well! He spoke to us on Saturday, and spoke on a few topics: Merits, mercy/compassion, and grace of God. It was a real treat to be able to hear from an Apostle of the Lord here in Cuzco! We had the entire mission here, and this event just happened to fall on the transfer week. Talk about CRAZY. It was one of the most stressful weeks I’ve had in the office. But, it’s all over, and I can take a deep breath. Elder Hallstrom of the Presidency of the Seventy also spoke to us. On Sunday, the two stakes here in Cuzco had stake conferences. The Cusco Stake had the presence of Elder Andersen, and us in the Inti Raymi Stake had Elder Hallstrom speak to us. He spoke on having our lives facing toward the temple. It was really special, and all the members loved it. It was so big, they had to make huge tents outside of the chapels and had to broadcast the meeting inside the building to the tents by projection.. It was pretty cool, I didn’t take a picture, and kinda wish I did! Oh well.

I just got off the phone with Sister Rogers from South Jordan. She is Elder Rogers’ mom. He needed me to call her and tell her to send a different size of shoe. She sent him really nice shoes through that same company, and they got here. But, they are too small, so he needs a bigger size. She asked for your number, Mom, so be expecting a call from her sometime today! She sounds like such a nice lady.

Anyway, I really wished you would have sent the camera, but it’s a good thing you didn’t send it through the post office. If you ever do decide to send it use the company in Salt Lake. Talk to Sister Rogers, and she’ll convince you. Thanks! Or…. maybe she can include it with the shoes of Elder Rogers! I just talked with Elder Rogers and he says that she will totally do it! She will be sending them tomorrow, so here is her number to ask: Home, 801-254-8868. Cell, 801-842-5739.

I love you all! Thanks so much for the support. It means more than you know.

MUCH LOVE.