P-Day #17 - Comps Toenail Removal

Hey, It was a bit of a crazy week. I don't know if I have written about this in my previous emails or not, but my companion has had an ingrown toe for quite a while now, and it just kept getting worse and worse. He's been talking about going in to get it taken out for weeks, but he was scared to do it, and anyone who has ever had an ingrown toenail will understand why. So this week, we finally went to a clinic to get it taken care of. Now my comp has previously said that the operation to remove his toenail in America was the worst/most painful experience of his life...and remember, that was in America, the country with the best Medical Care in the world. And if that was bad, just imagine how it was in Argentina. The doctor walked in wearing street clothes, that should give you an idea. 

So yeah, I won't go into detail about the operation but it was pretty gross, and my comp was confined to his bed for 3 days on doctors orders. I expected to be in the apartment all day doing nothing like I did with my last companion, but the Guatemalan elder who has 18 months in the mission decided that that is something he would enjoy, so he took turns volunteering me and elder pace to go out on exchanges together and work in his area for him. I never volunteered to do that, but I had no problem doing it. It was interesting, because elder pace and I are both fairly new (he has 8 months) and we both still aren't top at spanish. I was nervous because it was going to be my first time really taking control of a lesson in spanish without a senior companion who knows the language. There were a couple moments where the people couldn't understand us, but we just repeated ourselves and then they were always able to understand, and everything worked out! It was awesome to see how far I've come with the language, and sure it might be ugly sometimes, but I can basically say what ever i want now and have it make sense. Me and Elder pace even taught a first lesson with a family, and it went really well i thought (the secret was the banana bread we made them).

On saturday, me and elder pace worked in my area. We visited just about every person in the area book in one day it felt like, but everyone was busy with one thing or another and we couldn't get into anyones house. However the highlight of the day for me was when we talked for a couple mins with our investigator Rodrigo. He is pretty quiet usually but he seems to have real intentions to learn. I asked him how his reading went, and if he prayed, and did he get an answer? He was excited to tell me that he had a dream, of the book of mormon sitting on a rock, with a pillar of light descending upon the book. He said that now he knows the book is true. That made me really happy of course! I've never had any kind of dream like that, but apparently its common in this country. Thats the second time this has happened in the last month. He wasn't able to come to church yesterday because he didn't have a ride. The dad in member family who we count on to help us out with driving rodrigo and genesis now has a job on sundays. He is also the president of the elders quorum. Great.

However, the best thing that happened this week was that we finally got Cristina Rivadera to church! On tuesday, we had a nice talk with her and she got emotional and said she would come to church for sure on sunday. I came by with Pace on saturday to confirm plans (we had a member named norma lined up to drive the 3 of us). When we got to her house at 8:30 sunday morning, she was waiting outside all ready to go! It was a nice change from last week, when we knocked on her door for 20 mins to no avail. From her house we went to Normas house which was just one street over. However, norma didn't answer her door. We knocked forever and i literally looked through the key whole and saw her walking around. It made me so mad!! We even texted her the night before and she said she would do it. Whatever. We ended up taking a taxi because Cristina doesn't walk super well and if we didn't we would've missed half of church. I felt bad but it was for a good cause. right? 

If all goes well, Cristina will be baptized on saturday. We are meeting with her tomorrow! 

I could write more, we started meeting with this kid Atila (the hun) again, and its going really well he is cool and asks a lot of good questions! He feels the need to repent for stealing lots of oranges from his neighbors in years past. I can relate to that, because i once took oranges from my neighbors tree and threw them into his pool while he was out of town! Haha but I'm out of time to write. 

Love, Elder Christensen