Week 85

Mommy & All,

"I like what Zig Zigler says when he says that Fear is false evidence appearing real." -Les Brown

This week was pretty good. Wanna give a huge B-Day shoutout Lil Bro Caleb turning 17 on Saturday!! Hope the day goes well for you big man and we all glad you made it this far haha!

On Thursday we had the Christmas dinner with Presidente Salerno like we did last year. As you can see by the pics, we had a pretty good time. My comp elder Nelson came up with the great idea that we had to do something for the talent show they had. So he decided that we were going to dance and lip sync to a song by Pentatonix with Elder Sudweeks and elder Galvez. It turned out pretty nice and funny and was really fun to do haha. There is a soccer team here in Argentina called Newells Old Boys. So since Nelson came up with the idea and put the group together, we are now calling ourselves Nelsons Young Boys hahaha as an Argentine play on words. But anyways we had a good time doing that. ( I will see if I can send the video out this week or next week.)

On Saturday, we gotta see Luis get baptized!! We were able to meet all of our goals with him, and Elder Sanchez who is another Elder in our zone did the baptism. It was really cool to see. Luis and Elder Sanchez were sitting playing chess on P-Day and started talking about the mission and stuff. Elder Sanchez told Luis that he hadn't yet had the opportunity to be in the font and participate in the baptism of someone. So Luis told me he could do his baptism and Elder Nelson and I were all good with that and it was great. Luis is such a nice guy and loves to try and help everyone and make them feel good about themselves. After the baptism we all got to stand in the circle yesterday and confirm him. Its amazing to me to always see the changes that people make as they progress and go through baptism. Luis told me his plan right now is to get ready for a mission, go on the mission, them come back find a job and then look to marry a girl inside the church haha the bro has a good state of mind. 

During this time the year we always sit back and look at our blessings and all that Christ has done for us. Always grateful for my family and have been thinking a lot about all the friends and examples God has given me that have helped me get here. I just wanna give a huge shout out also to all the bros who are out serving or who are ballin back home, THANK YOU GUYS FOR BEING MY EXAMPLE. A lot of the bros from high school, you guys changed my life, made me who I am, and have helped me get here so thanks for that. Talking to Elder Woody Udy last week he told me something I loved he said "We all out here still ballin, just on a different field!" And that's exactly how it is. Wherever you at guys keep on BALLIN!

Much Love,

Elder Christensen

NELSONS YOUNG BOYS

LEFT TO RIGHT: Elder Sudweeks, Elder Galvez, Elder Nelson, Elder Me

week 84

Mommy & All,

"Someones opinion of you does not have to become your reality. You don't have to go through life being a victim." -Les Brown

This week was pretty good. We've just been flying around doing more zone leader stuff and trying to do the work at the same time. We did a lot of service this week while trying to work with Luis at the same time. We found out last Sunday that a family from our ward was moving to another house and they announced that in Priesthood. Luis was the first guy to raise his hand and say he was gonna be there helping out haha that was really cool for Elder Nelson and I to see. So we went there on Friday with Luis and he helped us move them out. He is a way nice guy who just does everything he can to serve others. We also helped the bishop do a foundation to start laying a cement floor and that was an interesting experience too.

Luis is the coolest guy. We have been working a lot with him on completely stopping his smoking and drinking problems that he has. They are really even problems anymore and he hardly ever does it and its been cool to see his progress. Especially in the situation that he lives in. His is 21 and is the youngest of 8. He has 2 older brothers who still live with him and his parents and they aren't the best example. His brothers and dad spend about $1000 pesos a month on cigarettes and they all like to get drunk. His dad literally lives drunk and its crazy. He almost fell on me one time because he was so drunk. He is a funny guy though because every time we go over he tries to talk to us in English. He is also a really nice guy because he always is inviting us over to eat, and he also gave me a watch on my birthday without even knowing it was my birthday haha. His mom also has 2 really bad legs and cant really do anything and Luis is the only one that helps. So he lives in a really hard situation. Anyways Luis told us he wants to get baptized as soon as possible and start his progress in the church. He even talks with us about a mission sometimes which is really cool. He told us some of the things he would do if he went on a mission. One thing I will never forget his he was talking with us about bringing people to church. Sometimes when we go over to his house Sunday morning when he doesn't answer our calls, and he is sleeping and doesn't wake up when we knock, then his mom has to wake him up and its a whole process. He said if that happened to him, he would just go in the street and find some little rocks he could throw at the window to try and wake the person up. Then he said if that didn't work, he would go find a big rock that would go through the window. Then he looked at us and said "but you guys know I'd bless the rock first, so then I know it would do its job so that's fine." Elder Nelson and I died laughing haha he is a really funny guy as well. He has his baptismal date for this coming Saturday, so we are praying all can work out this time. Luis is really someone who has made me more humble and helped me become a better person and missionary.

Much Love,

Elder Christensen

Week 83

Mommy & All,

"My soul is not contained within the limits of my body, my body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul." -Jim Carey

This week was pretty good. We have been working pretty hard and just flying around trying to work with Luis and trying to get this conference ready for when Elder Bragg came. 

So something I thought was funny happened this week. Like I said we had to fly around to do stuff this week. We found some new investigators and went to teach them a few days after we found them. They were super cool and they listened to what we had to say. We had another lesson about 30 minutes after this one, but we ended up talking longer than we thought. By the time we left the house, we are already 45 minutes late to the other lesson and still had about a 30 minute walk ahead of us. So instead of taking the road, my comp decided to take the back roads which was down the mountain and through the river. Except this wasn't a normal river. It was a river of sewage or crap river as we call it haha that takes all the sewage from the houses and runs it down to who knows where. It literally looks like a natural river in the desert, but its the smell that gets you. Anyways when we got to the river, my comp wanted to cross it but i told him no way. There was a part in the middle that looked a little solid, and you could see animal tracks imprinted so things had walked over it before. So they told me we were going to jump to the middle, then to the other side. I told him no way, but if we went around the river, it would be a lot longer walk. So as we were sitting there on the bank talking, all of a sudden Elder Nelson stops in the middle of his sentence and takes a running jump to the middle part of the river. He told me later that he thought that if we just went Id have to follow him. Anyways he made a perfect jump and made it to the middle. The only problem was that middle part wasn't actually solid and it was just a deceiving look. As he landed, the man sunk into this mixture of human crap up to his shins hahahaha. It was like mud, but dark black and didn't smell like mud. He froze there for about 15 seconds and I was just dying on the other side in tears from laughing so hard. So he climbed out and jumped back across. We found another place to cross further down and ended up making it to that lesson and teaching. So another experience with crap in my mission.

Elder Bragg from the Seventy also came and visited us yesterday and that was awesome. He is such a cool dude and is the NICEST guy I think Ive ever met haha. He came and just talked to us on how we can improve on just the basic missionary stuff like planning and studying. I honeslty learned a ton and it was fun to hear him and his wife talk to us. After the conference, he came and shook every single one of our hands, stopping to ask where we were from and just a little bit about our families or our lives. That is a guy who makes every single person feel like the most important person in the world which we all know is a gift. After he did that he even pulled me aside and asked to take a picture with me which was really cool to do. But I think the thing we all thought was the coolest about him (at least us elders), was that he married his mission presidents daughter haha!! I mean you have gotta have some guts to do that. He served his mission in Mexico and his wife was there with her parents and thats where they met and we all died haha it was great. But it was an awesome experience to have him come talk to us and to recieve all the counsel he gave us. 

Much Love,

Elder Christensen