Welcome to the roughly monthly email to update friends and family about the life and adventures of Kirt & Emily Christensen as they lead and serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 3 years in the heat and humidity, and chaos and craziness of San Pedro Sula, Honduras!
Note: I’ve got family members, friends in the Church, and friends that aren’t members of the Church of Jesus Christ on this email list, so I’ll attempt to explain any church specific terms and phrases that I use…
Young men in Church are invited to serve a mission for 24 months, and are eligible once they turn 18. Young women are also invited, the length being 18 months, and they can apply when they are 19.
“Mission Leaders”, are an adult couple, with or without children at home, and do not volunteer or apply in any way, they are specifically asked by Church Leadership to serve. They commit to serving for 36 months, and make that commitment before they know which of the 450 of the LDS Mission world-wide that they’ll lead. “Mission Leaders” as a phrase means the husband and wife. The title “Mission President” is held by the man. Both are called and blessed by Church Leadership to be full-time missionaries.
The whole process of us going on a mission started actually in November of 2021. That seems like so long ago now :)
At that time I was doing my calling as Stake Social Media Specialist, Which led me to do a lot of things with activities in our Stake, the Spokane East Stake, but I also volunteered my services to the Washington Spokane Mission, to help with their Facebook ads and other online advertising efforts and their use of technology in missionary work, and finding people who would like to meet with our missionaries.. I was involved in a lot of their “Tech Committee” meetings.
…So, at the time, I was actually expecting a return phone call from someone who worked in Facebook Ads at Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT, whom I had been in contact with, when the phone rang. I casually noticed the Caller ID said, “LDS Church Office” and picked up the phone and said “Hey, this is Kirt what’s up?” The confused executive assistant on the other end of the line said, “Is this Brother Christensen? My name is Sister Godfrey, and I’m calling on behalf of Elder David Bednar, he’d like to have a zoom conversation with you and your wife Emily. Could we meet tomorrow afternoon?” Not the call I was expecting.
We actually weren’t able to meet with Elder Bednar that specific week, but I made the “mistake” of telling Emily immediately that same day that Elder Bednar‘s office called. It was a nerve-racking week, wondering what the heck Elder Bednar would possibly be calling for? My wife had a lot of questions for me, none of which I could really answer other than generalities.
Doing a little bit of research and asking around, we quickly figured out that really about the only appointments that the Church Apostles make of this type, is to check with couples and ask about their availability, means, and desire, to serve as mission leaders. Now, remember, this is totally out of the blue, we had no idea that this would possibly happen. No heads up, no warning, no nothing, just a call from Elder Bednar‘s office.
I had also never had any Church Calling or Assignment that would put me onto any type of reasonable consideration for this type of calling!
So we met with Elder Bednar, for what was an incredible hour and a half, he was very direct and forthright from the very beginning. He said we are considering calling you as mission leaders, is there anything that would prevent that from happening? He then taught us and instructed us on his personal expectations for Mission Leaders . He said the very best way to be good Mission Leaders is to actually go out and work with the missionaries in the streets and in the homes of the friends that they are teaching. He said there is no other way to actually know how good your missionaries are at the various missionary skills, like finding, teaching, and extending invitations.
He said “After you get called as Mission Leaders, the next time that I see you, I’m going to ask you very directly, President Christensen, when was the last time you went out with the missionaries? And if the answer isn’t ‘Very recently!’, I’m not going to be able to help you much more. This is my very best Mission Leader advice, I really hope you take it to heart and do it!” 
…And he said when I ask that question to current Mission Leaders I get a lot of squirming, because they don’t want to fess up and tell me that they haven’t been out with Missionaries in a long, long time. It was very funny at the moment, and a great lesson.
We didn’t feel at the time that the timing was right to leave on a mission in the next cycle, which would have been the Summer of 2022. Elder Bednar assured us that he knew we desired to serve, and would say yes to going right then, if that was the choice. However, the Church is in a much better position with Mission Leader callings currently, and can give people some time to make plans and put things in order, sell businesses, retire, etc.
…He left us with the thought, “Well, I’m going to approve you and put you on the wait list, which means, since we’ve already spoken, you are going to serve as Mission Leaders in the next few years, unless you get hit by a bus.” :)
We started working very hard on the goal of being ready by the year Garret would graduate from High School, in 2025. Over the next couple of years, we talked to Elder Jaggi and Elder Johnson of the Seventy who checked in on our progress.
In the summer of 2024, we weren’t sure if we’d be called to serve for the next summer, and for some reason, it was making me very anxious. We had spent several years working very hard, and non-stop, to be ready for the call when it came… But, what if it didn’t come? I prayed very hard over a period of several weeks asking God, if I could just have an answer, any answer, if it was going to happen to be able to leave in 2025. I remember feeling that I did want to serve, but it took me those several weeks to leave it in God’s hands, and if a call did come, great, we were ready, if a call didn’t come, that’s fine, we can wait.
At that point, one day after I finished another prayer about the topic, the Spirit spoke words to my mind, as clear as day, in an audible voice, saying, “If you must know, answer your phone every Monday morning in August.” It was the end of July, so I put a note on my calendar for Mondays in August, and waited….
First and Second Mondays of August came and went… Then the Third… Nothing. I continued to pray the same prayer, to please just let me know. The Fourth Monday of August was the 26th. I had been busy working that morning, and had all but come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be this year, and that waiting and prepping for another year would be what would happen…
At 12:20PM, I got a call from “LDS Church Office Building”. About the last few minutes that you could say were a “Monday morning in August”... Some may call that a “coincidence”, but to me, this same sort of event has happened many, many times, and I believe a loving and merciful God had indeed told me, in advance, when the call would come.
I answered it on the first ring. I spoke with Elder Bednar’s administrative assistant for just a minute, and she mentioned, “You should know that this time around it won’t take very long, only maybe 15 minutes…”
We met with Elder Bednar over Zoom soon after that, and in a change from standard procedure, extended the call to us on that same Zoom. Normally, only the First Presidency of the Church issues calls to Mission Leaders, but currently most of the members of the First Presidency, besides President Oaks, are in poor and declining health, making it hard for them to do a lot of these types of interviews.
At the very end of the Zoom call with Elder Bednar, I decided to go for broke, and suggested 3 missions in Central/South America that I knew were open that we’d volunteer for :)
(We didn’t end up getting assigned to any of them, but the mission we’re in is in Central America, which was one of the regions of the world we really desired to go to, okay, maybe just me and not Emily, but anyway.)
After we got the calling extended by Elder Bednar, we could tell anyone we wanted to about it, but we wouldn’t know the exact mission until December, usually right before Christmas, of 2024. At that same time, we started getting packages in the mail, calls from the Church, and various training materials. All in all, they have a pre-mission training program that’s pretty robust, and has over 85 items on a checklist, and most items are around 20-30 minutes, so it’s not something that you can just crank out in an afternoon after Church, lol.
We received our call, via email, as a PDF on December 12th. We were super-excited and glad that it came well before Christmas. I pulled a prank on Emily and created a fake call letter that said that we were called to the India Bengalaru Mission and had Emily open that first… I had her going for a minute or two, until she read a line that said, “You’ll be teaching the gospel in the Hindi language” and she yelled out, “THIS IS FAKE!”. At that point, I had her open her laptop and read the real call, which I hadn’t looked at either, so we were both very surprised!
Looking back on it, I don’t think too many people actively campaign to get called to Central America, so I think our chances of getting 1 of the 8 Central American Missions open this summer was pretty decent :) The more we read up on the area, city and part of Honduras we are called to, the more we love it, and the more excited we were.
Honduras, and San Pedro Sula, have a very sullied reputation, due to the violence present in the area, but, since about 2016, things have gotten much, much better. Violence and random things still happen, but on a much smaller scale, and never targeted at tourists or missionaries.
Honduras has a rich history in the Church, and it has grown very fast here. There are 4 total missions in the country, 2 up in the highlands by the Capital of Tegucigalpa, and 2 based in our city, San Pedro Sula. San Pedro Sula is the second largest city, and the industrial and financial hub of the country. Lots of agriculture, business parks, shipping and textiles factories. Our mission, San Pedro Sula East, covers the eastern suburbs of the city, almost the entire Caribbean coast, the Bay Islands, of which Roatan is the biggest, and all the way to the Nicaraguan border in a region known as the “Mosquito Coast”. Half of the land mass of our mission actually has zero missionary presence, as the Mosquito Coast has no roads, it’s all canals and rivers for transport there. Even with that, the farthest missionaries are about 10 hours away by car, in a city named Trujillo. We have about 150-160 young missionaries at a time under our direction. Every 6 weeks, a few go home, having completed their time, and a few join us!
After the holidays, we started getting ready for the move. We immediately got our home under contract, without even having to list it, with lots of help from Emily’s dad, Mark Spear. Even better, we concluded the sale in April and rented it back until we left in June, so we didn’t have to move twice!
As a bonus, we sold it to the Coy family, relatives of the Jeff & Diane Kipp family in our local LDS Stake, and it should be a wonderful place for them to live and raise their young kids!
Bit by bit, we sold jetskis, cars, RVs, and the worst of all, the boat! We sold the boat to my brother Brett and his wife Kristi, so at least we’ll maybe get visitation rights? I also had a good talk with Brett’s oldest son Carson, and asked him to please take care of my boat, make sure that they used it a lot, and that they made lots of family memories hanging out on it, the same as we did.
The moving process has been surreal, as most of the process had to be completed months and months in advance, and it seemed endless. I guess the main reason is that on top of the normal moving stuff, we were also getting all of our medical and dental issues taken care of, transitioning my ongoing business from “mostly active” to “mostly passive”, updating wills and financial records, and getting Garret ready for a mission at the same time!
So, for the first, and probably ONLY time in my life, my junk drawer is empty, my financial paperwork is in tiptop shape, and I’m up to date on every possible random medical or dental issue :)
We also hadn’t moved in 22 years, so lots of items to junk or give away!
Garret received his call while we were in Hawaii, and he was back in Spokane, so we did it over Zoom, while he was in Spokane at a friend’s house, who opened his call the very same day! (He started Home MTC on June 30th, and is going to the Chile Concepcion Mission.)
At the start of June, the insane sprint was on… Garret graduated from Seminary, from High School, we finished moving out of our house, shipping some of our stuff to Honduras, and selling or getting rid of a large majority of personal items, and then rented a small 5’x10’ storage unit for the rest!
We ended up with 6 large checked suitcases, 2 carry-on suitcases and 2 backpacks, for 10 luggage pieces for the 2 of us… Since we won’t receive the items that we had shipped to Honduras for up to 4 months, we had to bring a little more than normal.
On Tuesday, June 17th, the 3 of us got on a plane and flew to Salt Lake. We spent Tuesday with the amazing Joel & Tamara Peterson getting some last wakesurfing in! Wednesday morning, we met up with my Mom, and Emily’s parents, to go to Elder Dale Renlund’s office to be “set apart” (blessed and given authority to lead). It is a very unique and rare experience to have a small, family meeting with a LDS Church Apostle, and we were deeply moved by his message and words to us. He promised Emily that she would be blessed, that she would have friends, and that she would learn the language, all things that she had worried about.
…As long as I live, I will not forget Elder Renlund shaking my hand after giving me a blessing and saying “President, you are ready for this, we fully trust you and are giving you direct authority to conduct missionary work as Jesus Christ has commissioned us, in San Pedro Sula. It has been my honor to meet you and your family.”
Later that afternoon, we travelled to Provo, UT, and entered a new world, a new stage of life, the world of being a Mission Leader for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint…
I’ll cover our 4 days in the MTC, and the amazing people we met, in the next letter.
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