Ethan's Ten Percent in Argentina: I Believe in Second Chances.

I have passed the 10 month mark in the mission. Hallelujah. Our week was pretty normal, other than that it felt a little shorter with p-day on Tuesday now. Its a bit unnatural but I'm basically used to the change already. I'll give you the summary of the week starting on Wednesday.

We found one new investigator that day, her name is asusena. We had been trying to find her for about a week and There was a lot of confusion because I thought her name was "asusana" so every time I knocked on the door her little kids answered it and had no idea who I was talking about. I'm special haha. But finally we talked to her and we set a return appointment for later in the week. Our work was slowed down that day because my bike tire popped for the 5 millionth time in my mission and we had to walk and wait for it to get fixed. I also managed to lose the receipt so the money I used to repair it will not be coming back. Brilliant! That night we played soccer at the church just like every Wednesday, I scored a really good goal with my head everyone went crazy haha but I will admit it was luck.

Thursday my comp said was crap but I actually thought it was a good day. First of all, I found 2 old area books hidden in our apartment. For those who don't know, the area books a huge binders full of names and addresses of people who the missionaries have previously taught in the city, but who they gave up on for one reason or another. And it also lists the lessons they have been taught, who taught them, and why they don't teach them anymore. We had one area book, but I've already visited everyone in it who I felt we should visit (including 2 of them who ended up getting baptized!) But there was nobody else in the book to visit. I'm basically famous in the mission for being someone who loves to work with "antiguo investigadores". In English I believe they are called former investigators. I don't like giving up on people. Its true that in the mission sometimes we have to give up on people because the just aren't ready to change, but I believe in second chances and I believe people really do change. Especially over long periods of time, because some of these people are from the early 2000s. I also love using the area books because with the information in the book we already know a little bit about the people before we knock on their door, and it helps. I'm happy to say that of all the baptisms in my mission so far, 4 of them were former investigators from years past that somebody else gave up on. So when I found those 2 old area books it was like Christmas morning haha. On Thursday we also visited this old guy named Luis. When we got there he said that he was reading the bible that morning he said he knew that we were going to visit him that day. We hadn't visited him for a long time so that was cool. We also visited milagros Ortega..I don't know if you remember her, she was someone I was teaching 2 months ago but nothing came of it. Well we had a really good talk with her, she has had an operation and couldn't go to school or do anything for 15 days. I'm sure she had a lot of time to think about her life, and she told us she wants to come to church and be baptized. And she was sincere about it, so I'm happy that her situation is revived. She always wears this Chicago bulls shirt its funny.

On Friday we went at 9:30 am to teach asusena, its weird because we normally never go out earlier than 11. But that was the time she wanted, and it went well. She had been to church once before with her 7 year old daughter. The daughter has really puffy hair and she's really funny! She also has a 13 year old daughter who might possibly be pregnant so that's kinda a disaster.

On Saturday we ate lunch with a family. The mom's mad because she made an alcohol joke in the church group chat last Sunday, and someone told her she shouldn't do that on Sunday and she got mad and left the group. The members here fight so much about the dumbest little things. If they all got along I bet there would be double the number of active members. After lunch we went to church to try and drain out the water from the baptismal font. The drain isn't working. So we may have to end up removing the water with buckets like we did in La Rioja. It is a lot harder than it sounds and it takes about 3 hours. There is ALWAYS something wrong with the baptismal font. That's just a testament of how important baptism is. Because Satan always tries to attack it any way he can.

On Sunday milagros Ortega came to church with us. She isn't well enough to ride a bike so we walked to church, thankfully she lives close.

Monday morning we did a little bit of service for the bishops grandma. She's the only member of his whole family who isn't a member of the church. She also is not interested at all, but she's a nice lady. I was trying to hang up a curtain for her outside but apparently I didn't do it how she wanted and she was yelling at me in Spanish about how I was doing it wrong and I didn't understand how she wanted it so I just let my companion do it haha.

That's about it for the week...hope everyone is doing well.

Love you all

Elder Christensen