week 45

Mommy & All, 

"When people point fingers at someone else, they should remember that three fingers are pointing back at them." -Unknown

This week was pretty good. We met a really cool guy named Adrian. We knocked on his door one day, introduced the Book of Mormon and said we would come back. Adrian believes in God, but was never baptized in any church. He lives with his girlfriend Joana and his 2 yr old son Leon. They are great. Joana is Catholic but sits and talks and listens to us all the same. Not too long ago, Leon was baptized in the Catholic church as well. Adrian always tells us that he wants his kid to be Christian and doesn't like the Catholic church very much. The first time we met with them, we talked about the Restoration, the line of authority and Priesthood power to be able to teach and baptize and invited Adrian to be baptized and he accepted. We tried to invite Joana as well, but she is a little tougher haha. The only problem is that before we can put an actual baptismal date with him, we need to put a marriage date with them. We went back the second time and talked a ton about marriage. Why its important to God, and all the blessings we can receive from that. It was pretty funny Adrian told us that there was 2 things in life he said he wouldn't do: Have kids and get married. Well he already has the kid, and when we talked about marriage he said it made a lot of sense and said that would be good to do. We were pumped haha. It was even more cool to see Joana because I guess that is something she has been waiting to hear for a long time. So as we continued to talk about baptism ans how its needed to by the proper authority ot be able to have an Eternal Family, i asked Joana what baptism meant to her. She said that for her and her church, they are baptized to eliminate the first sin that we were all born with that they believe we receive from Adam and Eve. I was able to explain to here that we really are born perfect and how babies don't need baptism. I explained it by saying that if we receive sins from our "Parents" Adam and Eve, that would be like if she sinned and her children, in this case Leon, paying for what she did. She jumped back in surprise ans said "noooo of course I would pay for my own sins not my son." And we explained how we are baptized for our own sins exactly like she said. That opened up her mind a little bit. We also invited Adrian to read 3 Nephi 10 where Jesus appears to the Nephites for the first time and mentions baptism 11 times in the first 20 verses I think. We read a little of the beginning with him, and he looked up at us with huge eyes and said he'd had a dream just like this. He'd had a dream where he was among a large group of people in an open space and Jesus came out of the sky and down among them. He told us this described his dream almost perfectly. The craziest part is that he'd never heard of the Book of Mormon before or read anything like he had dreamed. That was really cool. The goal this week is to figure out all the details for them to get legally married. 

This last weekend we went to Perito and that was interesting. We got there Saturday morning and realized no one had made plans on where we were going to have sacrament meeting Sunday so that fell on me. I called the place where we usually do it, but someone was already renting it out. So we kind of just thought we were hosed because we had no clue where else we could do it. So we just prayed we could find a place and headed out. We went to try and visit an investigator as and as we were walking down the street, this guy came out of a store and started walking next to us and talking to us. I thought it was another one of my homeless friends because he kind of looked and dressed like Juan Carlos and was half insane. I don't know why, but I asked him if he knew anywhere we could have a meeting. He said "oh yea!" So we followed him as he turned down the next street and walked up to a guy who I guess was his friend and asked if we could rent his house for a few hours. The guy looked at him like he was crazy, and I thought that too, and how that was the weirdest thing to ask someone, so I was done. After he said no, this guy then turns and walks into this place called "Raul's Mini Camping" and tells us to follow him. At this point we didn't have a thing to lose so we went in. This guy ends up being Raul and shows us that he owns this place where tourists stay when they come through Perito. He has been hosting tourists for 20 yrs and has received people from all around the world. He had a place in the back where we could meet and he gave it to us. So that's where we had church in "Raul's Mini Camping" haha or "Raul's Crazy Smoke House" as I like to call it. This guy smokes more than anyone I've ever seen and is all over the place. He started talking about how we can build our church right next to his camp site so Joseph Smith can come and preach to the people, then he started talking to us in Hebrew and telling poems and songs he wrote. Come to find out that he is actually really famous in Perito and is considered the town Crazy. But I've now made another friend. Its kinda stressful juggling all the stuff in Las Heras and Perito Moreno. But things like this keep it interesting.

Much Love,

Elder Christensen