God Loves us More Than We Know.

We are in September now, people are saying its springtime here but its still super cold! I think this last week was the coldest week since July. Its still so weird saying cold and July in the same sentence haha.

Anyway, all of our best investigators got baptized last week, so now we have been working with the more difficult ones..the ones who need to get married before they can get baptized, etc. One of them is named Valeria. We taught her on Tuesday, and She has been having a really tough time lately. She has like 6 kids and she's not married, its always really crazy in her house (loud). But she told us she thinks God is mad at her and punishing her for something that she's done. I explained to her that God loves us more than we know, and that he's not mad, rather that he "chastises" us to help us change to be what he wants us to be. I had her read 

Helaman 15:3 "Yea, wo unto this people who are called the people of Nephi except they shall repent, when they shall see all these signs and wonders which shall be showed unto them; 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." as an example. That scripture really works for me in a lot of situations! So we left her with the homework of reading 

3 Nephi 27 (which talks all about baptism) and then to pray about what God wants her to change in her life.

On Wednesday we had our district meeting like always. We have the soccer activity in the night time and its always really fun. My comp plays incredibly well! And also our bishop...he literally weighs 300 lbs. And he looks like an NFL lineman, but he is somehow amazing at soccer.

On Thursday we printed photos of the baptism last week for our converts. I also printed some for some people in La Rioja finally, I've been procrastinating it for 3 months. I don't really know if I trust missionaries to deliver my mail to La Rioja but I don't have any other choice.  We also had an activity in the church. They call it "noche de hogar", which would be family home evening, anyone is invited and all we do is eat haha. Nancy brought her friend José. I can't remember if I've written about him or not, but he has some kind of problem with his vocal chords. He speaks with squeaks and whistles it's awesome haha and he wants to come to church.

On Friday a new family moved into our ward..the mom is from Argentina but the dad is from Washington. He doesn't know Spanish, he only speaks English and Portuguese because he served his mission in Brazil, where he met his wife who also was in the mission. So me and him speak English together. Its funny, they asked him to say the prayer and he said it in Portuguese. On this day we also taught Valeria again. I was excited to see how her reading and prayer went. When we got there she said she felt great reading, and afterwards she went into the bathroom to pray. But she said while she prayed, she said she felt a really bad feeling come over her, and she stopped praying but the feeling didn't go away, and it stayed with her all day and she felt like crying. She said she didn't understand why that happened because she felt super good reading and usually feels good when she prays. I had no idea what to say. I wasn't expecting that at all that's not what normally happens. I didn't know what to do but I just started talking and suddenly the Joseph Smith history came to mind. I know it was inspiration because I've never shared this part with investigators before (the part where he is praying and gets attacked by Satan). We usually don't share that part because we don't want people to be scared to try praying. But it was perfect for this situation. Her situation is a lot like Joseph Smith's because she doesn't know what to do, and Satan knows if she finds out the truth it will impact a lot of people (all her kids) and he doesn't want that so he tried to stop it. The difference is that Joseph smith kept praying when he got attacked, and Valeria didn't. So in the end she understood really well and she's going to try again.

Saturday we found two new people to teach: Carlos, a police officer who wants to join the Argentine equivalent of the marines, and this old lady named Blanca.

On Sunday, it was the day that Mariano, Milagros, Antonia and Nancy where supposed to be confirmed. The plan was to have members confirm them like always, but apparently Antonia and Milagros asked me to do it for them. It was my first time in either English or Spanish but it went well I hope. My companion confirmed Mariano, and Nancy didn't get confirmed because she slept in. All she does is sleep, we always say she hibernates like a bear. "Osa" we call her. She will get confirmed next week. In church, we also had to teach the class. They never tell us ahead of time so we have to improvise the class almost every single week. At first that kind of stuff made me really mad but I'm basically used to it by now. It always happens. After church we ate pizza with bishops family. Argentine pizza is nothing like American pizza, but it's still pretty good. There is ward conference next week, so we had to go to choir practice for 2 hrs to prepare for that haha.

That's about all...wish Lawson happy birthday for me.

Love, Elder Christensen

PS: the picture is my comps first time eating Mac n cheese...a historic moment. Thanks for the package.

Also heads up: my pday got changed to Tuesday so I'll be emailing on Tuesdays now :(