Missing Investigator ......

This week was really strange. The week before we had the best statistical week of my mission, to include the confirmation of my first convert! There is a picture attached of us, Cristina Rivadera is her name. We also had a lady in the church who has cancer (I wrote a little bit about her last week) and she had a baptismal date for the 28th.

So since last week was so great, we expected to improve on that this week. That was not the case! It was cold and rainy all week long, but what was worse was that the lady with cancer (mariele is her name) completely disappeared off the face of the earth. She lives with her daughter, but her daughter hadn't seen her since monday morning, nor had anyone else in the family. We stopped by her house 3 times a day all week and she never turned up. She is almost completely blind and can barely walk, but nobody knows where she is or has seen her for a whole week now! Me and my comp are way worried. I hope she's not in the mundo de los espiritus. Hopefully she turns up one of these days.

On Tuesday we had a conference with all the missionaries from La Rioja and Catamarca...it was our last conference with our mission president, he is getting released on the 18th of june! We all get to go to Cordoba on the 13th for his farewell. 

Besides the Lady who disappeared, our only main investigator is a Girl named Genesis. She came to church this week with her friend, and she's all ready to get baptized..she just needs her dads permission, and he told us if she wants to do it she needs to talk to him about it herself, not through us. She has a lot of fear of her dad though so she's scared to do it and wants to wait a while. We are trying to get her excited about it and trying to help her have courage though. We read 1 Nephi 3:7 which of course everyone already knows, its famous. But its the one that says "I will go and do the things the lord commands, because I know the lord gives  no commandment save he provides a way to accomplish it". 

That scripture is really good for times when it seems really hard to choose the right. Yeah, it might be hard but its not impossible...God will always help people who are trying to choose the right. 

Im basically out of time. Im sorry I feel like my email is really boring this week. I love you all and Im missing home, I hope everyone is doing well!

Love, Elder Christensen 

PS - the pictures are of my convert, and the other is of our district and our mission president who is getting released. He is the coolest! We are all sad he is leaving. 

Working Hard.

Hello everyone,

We put up good numbers this week: 18 new investigators, 4 lessons with members present, one person confirmed and one person with a baptismal date who attended church. All of those match or exceed my previous numbers in the mission, and I can say that we are definitely trying our best right now. Im going to be honest it is kind of hard having a latino comp. Im learning a lot, but he can be really impatient with my spanish when I sometimes don't understand a word he says to me, and its frustrating. I don't get how someone can get mad at somebody who is learning a language when they don't understand a word or phrase they've never heard before. Even if we don't get a long the best, at least we are working hard.

Our investigator who was baptized last week was confirmed yesterday! yeahhhh first convert. Its a relief!

The person who we had attend was the mom of an investigator who had dropped us 2 and a half months ago. We didn't plan to ever pass by her house again, but we were close by and I felt like we should so we did. Vanessa (the daughter) wasn't there, but her mom was. She is pretty old, and she has cancer and does chemotherapy and stuff. But she told us she used to go to our church in the 80s, and she still has her book of mormon from way back then. She is almost blind and can't walk hardly at all, but she said shes been searching for a way to church because she wants to get baptized. What a find! She accepted a date to be baptized (the 28th) with joy, and came to church the next day with our help, and she liked it a lot! It was kind of hard to get her to church, we had to ask president to drive us and it made us late because she took 20 mins to get ready and president was mad. He told us to take a taxi next time.

Me and my companion are seriously low on money. We have now 72 pesos for the rest of the month, thats like 5 bucks. It didn't help that a member asked to borrow money from us yesterday because he desperately needed it and he didn't want to bother the president he said. He is our ward mission leader so we gave it to him.

Something out of the ordinary that we did this week was that we went to go donate blood. I was surprised that we would be allowed to do it while on the mission, but I guess its allowed. But it turned out that I couldn't do it because I still don't have my Argentine ID. :( so I got to watch everyone else do it haha.

Sorry I don't have any way to upload pictures this week. I have one with our convert, but my computer doesn't have a place to do it. So next week!

PS Im basically out of time but Im heartbroken that the ward split! I can't help but feel that that was a really bad idea. They did it recently down here in La Rioja and it was really hard for a lot of people. Im sad about it but I guess its part of Gods plan. I love you all and keep the faith!

Love, Elder Christensen

Week #20 - Into the Waters of Baptism!!

It finally happened! The first baptism of my mission! Sometimes I thought that it would never happen. After all, she has been an investigator since 2006! But it finally happened, hahaha just when elder packer got transferred after we had been teaching her for 3 months. Her name is Cristina Rivadera and she’s 52.

The baptism was really stressful at times (the planning of it I mean), mostly because it was my first one and I didn’t know what I was doing, and my new comp  only had 5 days in the area and didn’t know anyone so I basically had to figure it all out by myself. It didn’t help that the priesthood wasn’t very excited about it. The first councilor bet me that she wouldn’t attend next week, and the president was really annoyed that I picked the time for the baptism as right after church, because “people need to go home and eat” he said. But thankfully, the sisters of the ward were really helpful, especially in welcoming Cristina and being her friend.

As soon as sacrament meeting ended (for us its last), Cristina disappeared. No one knew where she went and I started to freak out haha. I asked a sister named Laila if she could check the bathroom and she thought it would be funny to play a joke on me and say she wasn’t in there! So I went out in the street looking everywhere for her I thought she ran off hahah. But in reality she was just changing in the bathroom and then she was ready way before me, and the president told me to hurry up because people need to go cook. I wanted to tell him to relax and enjoy his wards first baptism in a year but I didn’t haha.

The baptism itself was really good, she liked it a lot and she seemed really happy. If anyone wants to help, please pray for her to continue on the path and attending church. My worst fear is that she will read something bad because she believes everything she reads online haha (she thinks we have live aliens captured in America).

Like I said before, she’s been an investigator since 2006. We had tried everything we could to help her, and I was just about out of ideas. I’m sure the missionaries before us had done everything they could think of as well. I thought forever and all I could think of to share was Helaman 15:3 and to explain the meaning of chastise, and how maybe she has a lot of trials because God is trying to help her change. That seemed to have an impact on her, but then she told us about an experience she had. She said the other night around midnight she was sleeping, but she wasn’t asleep. It was like an out of body experience. She knew she was asleep, but she was awake. And then she heard someone knock on the door. And she said “who is it?” and a voice said “the missionaries. We have something from heaven that we want to give you.” And then she said she fell back asleep, but ever since that moment she said she’s been thinking about us and the church. She also said one time she had no money to buy food for her or her kids, but she found $100 pesos in an old bag that she said she never put there. She felt very blessed, and based off those “señals” she finally decided to get baptized. Elder packer will be really jealous that she got baptized the week after he left!

I also gave my first ever talk in Spanish yesterday. I have no idea if people understood me or not ,but I had bigger things to worry about that day.

Something funny is that there is this little kid named Leo who comes up and sits next to me on the piano bench while I play piano in church. He sometimes puts his hands on the keys while I'm playing but thankfully he isn't bold enough to actually press them haha.

My new comp and I aren't exactly the best of friends yet. He is a native spanish speaker and he sometimes gets impatient if I can't understand something. But im sure that I need to be more patient with stuff as well. We are working hard though at least. 

Miracles are real, God is real, and he really does answer prayers. We will get out of life what we put into it. I can see already after one week of working more than i ever have in the mission, the fruits of that work, my first baptism.  I hope I can have a couple more this transfer. 

I hope everyone is doing well. I love you all and I miss everyone. 

-Elder Christensen 

Tracting with the Spirit Pays.

Hey guys, we had transfers yesterday. It all got pretty crazy and the scheduling of everything was kind of frustrating for me how it was all set up! When skyping family, transfers, church, and a baptism are all scheduled for the same day things get a little crazy! Unfortunately, the baptism fell through (and it hurts me to say it but that actually helped my comp out because if it hadn't he never would have finished packing. He finished packing at 11:45pm, we were supposed to leave for the bus station at 11:30). Also, the skyping was made very difficult because there are no places to do it...thankfully me and my companion both had tablets and we were able to do it on the church wifi. However I forgot my charger so that didn't last very long for me :(. 

Now the baptism. There was actually supposed to be two. The first one didn't happen because the lady (Cristina) Went out of town without telling anyone, the second person (rodrigo) couldn't get baptized last week because his mom wouldn't sign the paper. She said she doesn't think he is old enough to make that choice (he is 12) and that she doesn't think he really wants to get baptized. And we are talking about a kid who has read the entire book of mormon in 3 weeks, takes it to school with him everyday and even gave out copies of it to some of his friends when they asked him what he was reading. He has the strongest desire to be baptized of any kid i've ever seen, but now i've got some work to do to convince his mom. We have a similar situation with a girl named Genesis, shes come to church a million times (shes 15) but her dad won't sign the paper.

My new companion arrived at 5:30 this morning, his name is elder Campos and he is from Chile! Im excited to have a latin companion so I can be forced to always speak spanish, and hopefully i will have improved a lot by the end of this transfer! I don't know him very well yet but he seems cool so far.

Probably the biggest miracle of the weeks was when i went on exchanges with elder pace. We are both new and we are both gringos, and half the time people don't understand us but somehow every time we work together its always really good hahah. I honestly don't even expect it to be but it somehow is haha! So when we did exchanges, we only had 2 hours to work and he didn't have any appointments. We worked in his area, and normally not having appointments would be bad but we just decided to "tract" for the whole 2 hours. Last time we did this together it was in my area, and we found one new investigator out of 15 houses we knocked, and it was this crazy old dude. So this time, i set a personal goal to try and listen to the spirit when choosing which houses to contact. I don't know how to explain it, but when we feel like we should contact a house we are told to do it because its the spirit. So i focused on that, and selectively picking houses, we found 8 new investigators out of the first 8 houses we contacted. Thats the most I've ever found in one day! All in all we only got rejected twice, and we also found 3 less active members that elder pace didn't even know about. Unfortunately, the people aren't in my area so i won't be able to teach them, but it still made me happy and gives me hope for my future contacting efforts. Something i've learned this week is that talking about soccer is an amazing way to gain the people of argentinas trust. It sucks that i can't be as up to date with it as id like to be, but simply asking someone if they support boca or river almost always leads to a good conversation. 

Something funny about the 8 investigators: Before we went out to work that night, elder morales (elder paces real comp) told us that if we found 8 investigators, he would buy us dinner. He didn't think it was possible that us new guys could do it, but the spirit guided us to a free dinner! 

So yeah. A new comp and a new transfer is a chance to refresh and start over. We still have people close to baptism and hopefully we can help them get over the line. The first 6 months of my mission have been a struggle sometimes, but this part of a scripture has helped me. Its in Helaman 15:3:

For behold, they have been a chosen people of the Lord; yea, the people of Nephi hath he loved, and also hath he chastened them; yea, in the days of their iniquities hath he chastened them because he loveth them.

And so, To me that is saying that sometimes God allows bad things or hard things to happen to help us improve our selves, or to become what he wants us to be. I know that God and Jesus love us and they don't do anything except that its for the best, and because they want the best for us. When I'm going through something hard, I just try to remember this. Its not easy but there is something to be learned from everything. 

I've had more requests to talk about food. Well, I discovered this new drink called Malta. I don't know what it is exactly but our president said its fine. You put the mix in hot milk, and then stir in sugar and honey and its sooooo good. Anyways, I'm out of time.

The pictures are the last one with elder packer, and the dog that follows us. His name is brown. He didn't want to look at the camera haha, but he has different colored eyes.

I love you all! -Elder Christensen

Stake Conference - P-day #18

Hey, this week was pretty good. We had stake conferance here in La Rioja, and I can not tell you how nice it felt to have 200 people packed into the chapel compared to the 15 we had in our branch last week. There was even a choir, which is the first time I've seen one in Argentina haha. Our president of the mission came all the way from Cordoba to attend it. When he spoke, it was a really great talk and he also helped us out a lot by telling the members how much of a blessing it is to feed the missionaries, quoting "whosoever recieveth those whom i have sent, recieveth me"  -the savior. So feed the missionaries! He also made us really nervous when he began calling missionaries out of the congregation without warning to give their testimonies, but i didn't get chosen hahah. 

Unfortunately, our investigators didn't come to the conferance. Its a real shame because it really was a lot better than an average sunday in the Antártida branch. Rodrigo was nowhere to be found (he doesn't have a phone so its hard to set stuff up) and Cristina rivadera said she felt really sick. Soooo that was lame, but we are still on track to have 2 baptisms on the 7th, the last day of the transfer and the last chance for my comp and i to baptize together. Its very likely that one of us will be transferred away this week, probably him because hes been here 4 1/2 months already. But its not for sure, as anyone who remembers elder izatt knows (he was in the melbourne ward for 9 months! haha). 

Pday has been nice, all we did really was play basketball at the chapel. Its fun to get revenge on the latins for always beating us in soccer haha. 

We also had our pension inspected this week by the mission presidents wife! We had like a 10 min heads up and we cleaned like crazy and it didn't turn out too bad. She took points off for the bathroom and we had too clean it for a really long time after she left and we had to send her a picture of the finished work. 

Ill share the best scripture i read this week: 12 And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.

Its one i can always rely to share in an emergency with anybody! I like it because it promises that if we always do our part, the devil can have no power over us. 

Im out of time. I hope i have a baptism to report next week!

Love, Elder Christensen