week 62

Mommy & All,

"To be or not to be. That is the question." -Shakespeare

This week was pretty good. It's been cool to get to know Ushuaia and my area. When they told me I was gonna be in Centro, I thought great that's perfect I wont have to climb up all those mountains or do any of that it will just be all flat. I guess I didn't know Ushuaia like I thought I did haha. There is a famous area down here called Monte Olivia that is famous because it is pretty much all mountain face and is straight up and down. But in the end, every area ends up like that. I guess I hadn't realized that Ushuaia is one of those places where you walk out your back door and it's a mountain pass, but you walk out your front door and it's the Arctic sea shore. It's pretty cool though and there's always a nice view. There's a lot of snow up in the mountains, but there is more snow on the ground in Perito than here so its not too bad. 

So on Wednesday, my first day here, my comp decides to show me the very top of our area. That's when my whole "I wont be walking up any mountains in Centro" theory died. The apartment that we're in is set up on a hill, and everything behind that is dirt roads because that's where the mountain starts. Well this time of year they aren't dirt but 4 inch think ice roads. It was actually pretty scary going up and down haha. The only way to do it is climbing up and down straight ice slopes that no human can physically climb without an ice pick and spiked shoes, or if you're lucky there will be a set of 65 year old wooden steps that aren't made for anyone over 145 lbs haha. On the way down I broke 7 steps and we hit an ice slope that was about 30 yards from top to bottom. So my comp to get down starts sliding like he is on a snowboard. It was pretty cool until he tripped and fell and slid the 2nd half of the way on his back. The only thing that stopped him was crashing into a fence which was kinda funny. Until it was my turn. So after seeing that, I decided to try and inch my way down, yet there was nothing to hold on to. It felt like a movie scene. I'm inching myself down little by little and all of a sudden my feet are in the air and I land head first backpack second onto the ice. I was able to stop myself from sliding though. So that happened 2 more times before i got down and its the first time I've fallen all winter so it was an experience. 

We have 2 really cool investigators here named Mikaela and Frederico. Since I got here Tuesday we'd been planning their wedding and they were able to get married Friday and it was awesome. I wasn't even able to meet them till Thursday night, but they are great. They are both from Buenos Aires and have a 6 yr old boy named Bautista who loves to arm wrestle me and a 1 yr old little girl named Augustina who loves to shake hands. Their wedding was really cool and went great. The end of their wedding was interesting. We got all our stuff, said our goodbyes and got ready to leave. As we were walking out the door, I swiveled my head around and saw Mikaela sprinting across the room in her high heels and wedding dress towards me. She grabbed my arm, looked at me and said "You're gonna sing me a song before you go right?" I thought she was completely joking. I'd met her for 45 minutes the night before and now she wanted me to sing at her wedding...? Sadly she wasn't joking. On top of that, after she mentioned it my good buddy Elder Jensen encouraged it all the way. So I made Jensen sing with me since he did theater and all that in high school, and we found the first English song they had and sang "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Mraz as our present to her and Frederico hahaha. Now we know that if nothing else in life works out for us after our missions, we got our 2 man band with Salt and Pepper haha. We are hoping to have Frederico and Mikaela's baptisms this Saturday.

Much Love,

Elder Christensen

The stairs to the top of his area