week 27

"Laughter is sunshine; it chases winter from the human face." -Victor Hugo

I wanna start off my email by sending all my prayers and best wishes to Minneapolis Minnesota. Heard one of my main bros out here fighting the fight with us, Garrison, went down with a seizure. Just want him to know He has all our prayers here in the Southern Hemisphere. Prayers back home to the whole Beach Family as well. After taking the field of battle with him for the last 9 years playing football, I´m confident he will make a full recovery.

Not a ton to write about this week. My new comp Elder Aquino surprised me and got here a day early on Thursday morning. He actually surprised everyone because when he got here there was no one at the terminal to pick him up haha. When I met him, he introduced himself as Elder NotHere hahaha so I knew he was gonna be funny. Aqui in Spanish means Here and of course no in Spanish means no or not so Elder Aquino=Elder NotHere. A lot of you already know that so just a refresher. He knows a little more English than my last comp but that's still not very much haha. Anyways, he is 22 yrs old and is from Paraguay, but has lived the last 5 years before the mission in Chile with his Mom because his parents are divorced. He is the middle child of 7 children also haha. He has a girlfriend who is serving right now in Cuzco, Peru. He told me she gets home 1 month before he does and after that they are going to Salt Lake and getting sealed 3 weeks after he gets home hahaha what a guy. He is easily my funniest companion and he helps me to laugh a lot and loosen up. I've only been with him for 4 days now and I've already learned so much from him. Not only about the work and how to teach effectively, but just how to treat people in general. He asks me how I'm doing, if I'm okay, and if I need anything literally about every 10 minutes haha. He cares a lot about the work and even more about his Comp and is just a great guy. 

On Thursday after he got here, he was unpacking and I was reading "Jesus the Christ". He came and sat down at the table with me and asked about what I thought of the book and the Doctrine. I told him I loved it and that if anyone needed a little deeper Doctrine about Jesus Christ just to be able to teach it simply, it was me. We then started talking about why we were out here and what our motivation was behind it. SO I told him how I really debated and thought about not coming out up until probably 5 months before I hit the MTC and just now that I'm out here it has truly changed my life. i was able to testify of the Hand of God and the Light of Christ I now was able to feel as a servant of the Lord. I was shocked after thinking about it, because I had no clue of how much I and my testimony have truly grown until i was able to testify and tell him about where I'd been to where I am now. Still have a long ways to go, but baby steps.

Friday was fun. We have 3 or 4 future investigators we found and are hopefully going to teach this week. But we had one contact that was funny. We were just contacting this street, going house by house. We clap this one house, and a Nun in full dress opens the curtain window. My comp and I both look at each other, then back at her, at each other and back at her, waiting for the other to start talking. She gave us this sly smile because she knew we knew she wasn't going to let us in. But my comp finally started the contact and after about 5 words she holds up her hand and cuts him off. Then she looks right at me and screams through the window, "Would you like some water!?" I´ll just say she is not investigating the Church haha.

Much Love,

Elder Christensen