5/30/2011 photos and letter

Hola Familia,
So this last week i was sick a lil :( i was throwing up and stuff for a day and a half! it sucked sooo bad!!! and then now i think one of my cavity coverings came of and my tooth hurts soooooooo bad! ugh!! so im gonna go to the dentist and see whats up!! oh and to top it all off, the family that was progressing so well dropped us!! :( just one day we were going to teach them and we got there and they were like "it will be better if we just stay in our own church" and all this stuff... it was so frustrating, cuz they were our best investigators and they were so cool!! ugh. So last week wasnt the best.. pero esta bien. But yesterday we had a much better day, we had a good amount of people at church, two of our investigadors came to church with us. then later that day we followed up one of our contacts that we had, and he is so cool, he has a family and another family lives with them too, so we could have 6 babtisms total just from this one house, and they are all pretty interested!! tambien we have a date of a babtism for the 11 of june, for Juan, hes a guy that we got a refferial to and we taught him and his commited to be babtised that date! then Jader, one of our old investagors called us yesterday also and said he wants to be babtised! so we set a date with him also for the 18 of june! That all happened in one day of that horrible week, so we were excited!!! i just need to get this tooth fixed :(
Right now im on splits with another elder in our district because my comp had to go to a meeting in san jose. So right now im in a place called Zurqui. Its a lot closer to the country, its cool, we were gonna go do the ziplines today, but its raining :( but we still might right after this :) cool huh? and if not, were gonna go explore in the rainforest! im excited!!
I havent got the package yet but well see. I want a book called "Exploring the land of the Book of Mormon" it looks soo cool, one of the members showed me it and i need it, so if you wanna send me it, sounds great!!
Thats sick you got a deer tag dad, better bag one this year, when does the season start?? Did you not buy a turkey tag? Hows the new shop doin? You should give Christensen Electric a new name, like more exotic and mas tuanies. Did you jack up your truck yet?
Mom i miss you a ton, Hows work? Hows teaching majerle to drive? What else have you been up to?
Majerle y Maddi, i miss you guys too i guess.. what have you been up to? hows soccer maddi? hows not having braces anymore??
well i love you all a ton, talk to you next week!!
Love, Elder Christensen

letter may 25 2001

Hola familia, 
sorry that i didnt write you guys on monday, but our p day got changed to today(wednesday) because we had a zone activity, we all went to the temple today and did a session! it was way cool!! the temple is so pretty!! its was so hard doing it all in spanish tho. haha But this last week has been good!! we found some new families and stuff, and were still workin hard!! ugh im frustrated with spanish tho!!! 
Last week we contacted this family in la calle, and now we have taught them twice already. There names are Jonie(the husband) y Isiada(the wife), and they have a 1 year old daughter!! they are so awesome, theyre from nicaragua, as most people in Leon Trece are, and they are way cool! i know theyre going to be babtised! we set a date for them the last time we taught them for the 11 of june, and they said they didnt feel ready, but then we reasured them that we are there to help them and if they feel ready and recieve and answer that this is the true church then they said they will be babtised! haha theyre awesome! but last was good!
Last monday instead of the pday, it was a month exactly reuinion with my district that came in with me from the mtc, it was cool, we all came from our different areas and spent the whole day at the mission office with President Galvez and stuff! we have a couple lesson thing from president and then we went and had a huge feast at his house, with steak, grilled pineapple, fresh blended smoothies, and tons of other food! it was sooo good!! then that night after we returned from the office, we had an appointment with Jonie and Isiada again, we talked about the temple and how they can live with their family despues de esta vida.
Oh and while we were in the city going to the office, we walked in the middle of the whole big city and its soo cool, there are so many like stores and cool little things you can buy. im so excited to bring you guys back here!!!!!!!! well we dont have a lot of time this week to write cuz we just got back from the temp and now we have another cita con jonie and his wife :) so i love you guys and i will talk to you in less than a week :)
-Elder Christensen

Crazy Costa Rica- May 16 2011 letter

Hola Familia, como estan?
So this place keeps getting crazier and crazier... hahah about three days ago we were walking our usual route to hermana luzs house and we were just walking along, and all the sudden i saw another way we could take to get to the house just for fun. so we started to turn off our usual trail through the park, about we were about 20 feet from the path we usually take,,, then all the sudden... BOOM BOOM BOOM!! 20 feet away from us was a guy that just got shot by another cop. we were right next to them and if we went our usually way 20 feet to the left.. we probably wouldve been caught in the cross fire and shot! haha now that is definately the spirit that prompted me to move just barely to be safe! crazy huh! but it was cool to see a guy get shot right in front of us! haha he had a gun and was about to shoot the cop but the cop shot him first, they the other two cops ran to him and were slapping him with their night sticks hahaha classic. There have been a ton of shootings this week, like 2 each day. it was weird at first but ive gotten use to it! just at random times were here BANG BANG, someone just got shot. its a crazy place!
    Pero our investagadores are doing awesome! we have 2 families that were pretty sure theyre gonna get babtized, but well see! the first family there names are Ricardo and Marylou, they have 3 kids, they are 12,7, and 4. they are way cool! They love the book of mormon and are way excited always to learn more about it! i love teaching these people about the book of mormon because its about their ancestors the mayans(lamanites) and stuff. its my favorite thing to teach because i can apply to them so easily and you know how much i love mesoamerican culture stuff! but we teach that family again today and were gonna set a babtismal date hopefully today for the first week of the next month. then our other family that are doing really well, there names are, Harold, Jaquilin, and they have 4 kids, one girls thats 22, a 15 yearold boy, a 5 year old girl, and a 4 year old boy also! there are a really cool family, we met Harold when we were taking a taking home cuz it was late and we didnt want to walk and hes a taxi driver, and he was driving us home and we started talking to him and got his info and stuff, they are way cool! Jaquilin is very interested in familias eternas, and she wants to know more, the first lesson we told her that she can live with her family after this life and she was like "what?? HOw??" haha it was funny so she way excited about it, and Harold is way interested in el libro de mormon tambien.
  When i get home im probably gonna hate kids just to let you guys know.... when were teaching every families kids just talk and talk the whole time and its so hard to teach with little kids there!!! haha ugh its frustrating but oh well,,, i still love them!! We have about 4 other families besides those two great families but they arent growing as much in the gospel as the others. but were still teaching them :) and looking for new families like crazy!!
  Yesterday we had dinner at the bishops house again, i think hes gonna invite us over every sunday night, haha but we had like the crape kinda things with fresh mangos and piñas that were sauted in a skillet on top of the crapes.... so good :) with fresh juice from this fruit that i dont know the name of but its really good!!! besides that we pretty much have rice and beans everyday. haha for most meals anyways. for breakfast we ether go to the bakery right next to our house and get fresh baked things that i dont know how to explain but theyre amazing and way cheap, or we go to one of the fruit stands on the side of the streets and get some fruit.
Ugh i cant wait to bring you guys back here after my mish and show you!! i want to come back right about im down with everyone and have you meet all the members and everything and show you my areas!! so start savin your money, and tell nana papa, joe lisa, the hansens and everyone else theyre coming also!!! so tell them to save up too :) haha im dead serious.
but im having fun, i can feel my spanish progressing, but ugh its frustrating when you want to say something to them to help them that you know it would help them but you dont know how to say it in freaking spanish!!!! haha but esta bien. I just finish the Book of Mormon today, i started the night i got into the MTC, and have been reading it every day since, and just finished it all the way through!! Ugh i love the BOM, all i think about when i read it is the mayans and stuff and how much it makes sense!! i love the book of mormon haha
I have a few thing i need: Spiker gel, the gel here doesnt work haha, 2 more pairs of pants, 1 white shirt, several pairs of bottom garments, mesh por favor. The movie "The Restoration" the 20 minute long one so we can use it when we teach the restoration to people. A USB adapter thing for my SD card so i can send you pics and what not. and i dont know what else but if you can think of anything useful send me it :) esta bien. muchas gracias.
By the way.. the earthquake wasnt big at all.. we were walking when it happen and it was like less than 5 seconds and didnt damage anything haha Oh and last tuesday... we were walking and all the sudden we see this sheet of raing about 20 feet in front of us haha and all the sudden it hit us and we were soaked!!! remember the scene in the movie Jumanji, when it floods in the house... well you can pretty much picture it like that.. haha the streets were seriously like rivers because theres so much rain!! its rained like that 3 times this week, and its rained at least once a day! w
    Well i love you all :) talk to you soon,
Pura Vida!!    Elder Christensen

1st photos of Costa Rica

I think this is Cole's first companion Elder Vasquez.

New roomates

this is his new area

5/2/2011 email

Hola Familia,
   This place is literally crazy!! hahaha its awesome tho!! ive almost been robbed like 5 times hahaha its loco! and while we were walking here there were these two girls that came up to me and were just hissing and saying all this stuff in spanish and one of the girls had a snake around her neck hahahaha i asked my companion what they said and he just looked at me and said... i cant tell you, its too bad hahaha in my area its seppareted into 3 different places, a normal area, a poor area and a poor poor poor area, hahah my area is the last one! :) most of the houses are sheets of tin put together! and there are tons of crime here and stuff. everyone looks at me like they wanna kill me hahha its classic.our area is Garrabito, the village that im in is called Tabais, but it is nicknamed ¨liones tres¨ which mean 3 lions, haha cuz its the most dangerous place here in costa rica. i wanna take pictures of it soooo bad, but we cant take our cameras there cuz someone would rob us haha i brought my camera the first couple days there and pulled it out once and told my companion to take a pic of me by the sid of the river where it goes from shacks to jungle, and i was like take a pic of me, and he was like ¨WHAT!! YOU BROUGHT YOUR CAMERA HERE!!??¨ haha and he was like flippin out :)
 so yesterday was the first sunday in costa rica. our chapel is soo pretty, and there was about 60 people that came to church.
Last saturday we had a ward activity where we played soccer at the church, the church has a Mahenga court(which is what they call soccer when its like street ball) it was fun, they are fregin good haha  Me and elder vasquez live with two other elders in our district, they are way cool!
The fruit is amazing of course, every morning we go to the fruit stand buy some fresh mangos or something and cut em up and eat em:) so good!! the gallo pinto is really good also. The other day, our siniorita that cooks for us every meal cooked us gallo pinto with pollo cullo, pollo cullo is necks of chickens haha it was the grossest thing ive ever tasted hahah it still had the vertebrae bones in it and it was all crunchy and what not! haha
I am ether gonna call you on monday or tuesday... i get like the whole day to talk to you guys if i want, so just expect a call on monday or tuesday and we can talk :)
ive been workin hard here, i can already feel the spanish comin way fast, and weve been contactin and what not like crazy. i wanna speek spanish sooo bad!! most of the time i cant understand what most people are saying, unless i listen as hard as i can hahaha but ive gotten a lot more use to how fast they speak, im starting to be able to understand it a lot better!!
Our bishop is soooo coool!! hes 27, served his mission in guatemala and is from costa rica. he has a beautiful wife, 1 boy thats 2 years old, and 2 twin girls that are like 8 months. they are awesome. Last night they invited us over for dinner and it was sooo good. home made fries and then this chicken ravioli stuff. and also the bishops wifes sister was there and not gonna lie.. shes cute, shes 20, and shes a member... so im probably comin back here after my mish to find my wife. cuz there are some pretty cute members haha
We talk to tons of people about the gospel, we pretty much only look for families, so we talk to tons of families in the streets and knocking doors, they are some way cool people. but most the people we set up citas to teach them, we get to their house and they arent there :( it sucks. but hopefully we can keep finding more people.
we have one investagator right now that were planning on babtising him this next saturday, his name is Yader. hes from nicaragua and is way cool! But i dont really understand much of what hes saying, but i do understand enough to be able to talk to him and teach him, so im excited.
i havent seen any way cool animals yet, there are tons of parrots tho, everywhere!! and they  are way pretty. the trees and the plants are so crazy!! i cant wait to go hiking in the forest some time. there fruit trees everywhere its way cool! haha
Well family, i love you all, and i will talk to you guys on monday or tuesday :)
Elder Christensen

English translation of a members letter - Thanks Lloyd!!!

Hi Dudes!  Or should that be, how's it going 'mops'?
Your son was in our house today, and he looks good.  He ate a lot.  With us, at least, he ate bird with salad, and fresh mango. (sorry Bruce, but I think "pintico" is pidgeon!) And told us a lot about you folks.
We now how you are feeling right now, missing your son, as our son is serving in Santiago, Chile.
Your son will be serving in our area, so if you ever need to get a message to him, you can send it to us.
Your son sends greetings, and much love.  He told us how he was crying on the flight down here.
Your son's companion is mexican... well, everything can't go well, can it? Ha ha... just kidding. At least he's not from Nicaragua!... I feel sorry for him!!