Week 56

Mommy & All,

"You gotta dream...you gotta protect it. If people cant do something themselves, they're gonna wanna tell you that you cant do it. If you want something, go get it. Period." -Will Smith

This week was pretty good. On Tuesday we headed to Rauls for a bit to see how he was doing. We walked in and there was a big plate of meat in the middle of the table. When we sat down he brought out 2 plates and told us to eat. So we started eating and it actually tasted pretty good, but it was a taste I'd never tasted in meat before. So out of curiosity like I do most times now when I'm eating a plate of meat here in Argentina, I asked what kind of meat it was. And of course most of the answers are interesting and different. So when I asked Raul, he looked up at me with his little Raul smile and said, "It's Roadrunner." Like the bird off of the Looney Tunes with Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner haha. I'd heard that people here hunted and ate that but I never had gotten the chance to try it and its actually pretty dang good! Thursday something similar happened. We went to the Familia Naimans house for lunch. We got there and ate some good Locro and Empanadas and such. Then Hermana Naiman put some slabs of meat down on the table and told us we had to eat it and guess what it was. So we picked it up and started eating and it tasted like regular meat for the most part. I guessed it was horse meat because I've already had that and that was the kind of flavor it had. Horse meat is the best sandwich meat in the world by the way and I highly recommend it. Anyways, we couldn't guess what it was. They ended up telling us it was Boar meat like Pumba the pig from the Lion King haha so that was cool. So just in the last month I've eaten Mussels, Road Runner, and Boar. 3 things I'd never eaten before. I don't suggest the mussels but the other 2 are pretty good. 

Thursday morning was interesting as well. We were contacting and we knocked on this wooden house. This lady who was about 70 years old opened up the window. I got to say "Hello we are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ" before she looked at me and screamed, "I AM A WOMAN OF CHRIST!" And then this lady starts screaming, I mean SCREAMING, verses of the Bible at us IN HEBREW for about 3 minutes before she took a breath haha. It was another one of those times when my comp and I had to choke back a hard laugh. So after those 3 minutes she flipped back to Castellano and continued to tell us that when we walk in the streets we must tremble when we walk to show people that we have the fear of God in us and that we are true disciples of Jesus Christ, and that we must wash the feet of Jesus with our blood and stuff like that. Then she put her hand out towards us and blessed us, then told us to have a good day and shut the window. My comp looked at me and asked if that really happened. I looked back at him and told him that it was just another day in the mission hahaha we both had a good laugh in the end.

We have been working with a lady named Luisa this last week. She was one of our investigators when I was with Soto, but since I've been with Vega we haven't really seen her till this week. She came to church once when I was with Soto and is honestly super ready for baptism. So we went to her house 2 days this week and just talked about baptism and all the blessings that brings and it was pretty good. But she told us that she didn't wanna get baptized again. She was baptized once in the Catholic church as a baby, and then baptized in an Evangelist church a few years ago. We explained the whole line of authority thing and how we need to receive our authority to teach and baptize form God but she still has lots of doubts and doesn't really want to pray to see if its all actually true. So we will see what happens with her. 

We found found some new people this week named Fabiano and Angelica. They have 3 kids together, the youngest being about 4 months old, but we don't yet know if they are married. They are both from Salta (northern Argentina) and said they knew the church up there. Angelica told us that she has some Mormon friends and they are really cool. Fabiano told us that he actually talked with some Elders from the U.S. up in Salta and he actually had the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price up in Salta as well so that was way cool to hear. So we were able to teach them the Restoration and give them a Book of Mormon. We talked a little about baptism with them as well and we told them about Ana Maria and when Fabiano found out that we baptize her, his eyes got huge haha. Of course us being new here, it is different and surprising for the people who knew the church in other parts to see that here. Also Hugo, Susana's friend, came to church for the 2nd week in a row with her so that was awesome. We are barely starting to teach him as well, so we hope to keep continuing the progression with all these guys.

Much Love,

Elder Christensen

Added from another email today:  The housing situation still isn't great but that's okay.   We didn't have Church there because the guys from Comodoro didn't bring us chairs so we couldn't do it there anyway. There's lots of stuff I guess that we need to do to become a branch here including number of priesthood holders, number of people here in Perito etc.. we are actually a lot farther off than what I thought to become a branch. We don't plan the talks or anything for sacrament meeting, Hno. Naiman does that but we make everything work so its equal. All we do Sunday is take the sacrament and then someone gives a talk and if they don't take enough time then one of us gets up and just fills the time that we need to fill. The whole thing is only one hour so just sacrament meeting. We have 17 members in total with there kids I'm pretty sure.  The members take care of us and we are really united out here I feel and they do tons for us and just keep the church alive out here so its good. It will be hard to leave since I've never spent this much time in one area. This is technically my 4th transfer here so it will be something like 6 months working with these guys and a 4th of my mission.