We only have an hour to email and i have so much to say. oh and we arent supposed to take pictures so sorry no pictures . I made it through the first week in the MTC. So the flight here was super long and I barely made it on the flight to buenos aires from atlanta. It turns out they lost both my bags when we arrived the airport so when I arrived I had just a change of clothes for the first three days so that was interesting. Honestly they need to change the name of this places to Malos Aires bc its always super smoky from the pollution.
My companions name is Elder Peterson he's from Mesa, Arizona and we get along super well. We both speak about the same level of Spanish so we are some of the better teachers in our district. There are twelve people in my district. 10 elders and 2 sisters. 8 of us are going to buenos aires north, 2 to buenos aires south, and one to santa fe. I really like all the people in my district and in my room. there are a ton of spanish classes and they just throw you into it. I'm glad i took a couple years of spanish bc i would be so lost if i didn't. everyone hear speaks spanish super fast and with a super stupid accent but i can understand most of it its just speaking which is the hard part.
The food is usually either really good or really questionable. usually its some kind of meat w a side of pasta or rice. We had some really good steak and potatoes one day and then some sketchy lasagna that gave my stomach the rumblies. In our free time we mainly play soccer outside with the latins and they are really good which is crazy like every single one of them is crazy good. After a couple days of getting schooled in soccer we played a game of basketball and I humbled them to set them straight. I'd say there's probably 45 latins here and 20 americans. So thats 5 spanish speaking districts and 2 english speaking districts. Most of the teachers speak little to no english so i am definitely going to learn spanish a lot faster mainly because nobody actually speaks english.
Hmmmm... Some funny things that happened this week, so there are 2 rooms on our level and they have the ceiling with the ceiling panels that lift up and then there's a big attic space that connects to the other rooms. So the last couple nights me and elder martinez have been throwing stuff across the attic so it lands on top of their ceiling tiles so they are convinced that they have rats above their bedroom which is really funny. We also teach all the latins a bunch of phrases in english. One night elder gamboa from mexico comes up to me with a super thick accent and says "elder does these words mean". and i thought he was gonna say like "my name is" or "how are you" but hes says "today i secured the bag" and we all just started dying. Another thing so Argentina played France on Saturday and suspiciously all the teachers had a meeting at the same time of the game. After they ended up losing our teacher was literally crying like bawling it was super funny.
All of the missionaries are super nice and its been a great week so far. We went to the temple today which is just across the street and it was super pretty and super awesome. Anyways spiritual thought for this week is during Sacrament Meeting which was testimony meeting this week Elder Heineken got up to bear his testimony. now Elder Heineken is this super hick dude from St. George, Utah and probably knows a total of 12 spanish words so i start laughing because he's just a goofy guy and we joke and i know he doesn't speak any Spanish. But anyway he gets up and says "yo se que jesucristo es nuestro salvador" and sat down but that was really powerful and Icould definitely feel the spirit which reminds me of the scripture in Moroni 10 which basically goes "by the power of the spirit you shall know the truth of all things". I love you guys hope you all dont miss me too much!
My companions name is Elder Peterson he's from Mesa, Arizona and we get along super well. We both speak about the same level of Spanish so we are some of the better teachers in our district. There are twelve people in my district. 10 elders and 2 sisters. 8 of us are going to buenos aires north, 2 to buenos aires south, and one to santa fe. I really like all the people in my district and in my room. there are a ton of spanish classes and they just throw you into it. I'm glad i took a couple years of spanish bc i would be so lost if i didn't. everyone hear speaks spanish super fast and with a super stupid accent but i can understand most of it its just speaking which is the hard part.
The food is usually either really good or really questionable. usually its some kind of meat w a side of pasta or rice. We had some really good steak and potatoes one day and then some sketchy lasagna that gave my stomach the rumblies. In our free time we mainly play soccer outside with the latins and they are really good which is crazy like every single one of them is crazy good. After a couple days of getting schooled in soccer we played a game of basketball and I humbled them to set them straight. I'd say there's probably 45 latins here and 20 americans. So thats 5 spanish speaking districts and 2 english speaking districts. Most of the teachers speak little to no english so i am definitely going to learn spanish a lot faster mainly because nobody actually speaks english.
Hmmmm... Some funny things that happened this week, so there are 2 rooms on our level and they have the ceiling with the ceiling panels that lift up and then there's a big attic space that connects to the other rooms. So the last couple nights me and elder martinez have been throwing stuff across the attic so it lands on top of their ceiling tiles so they are convinced that they have rats above their bedroom which is really funny. We also teach all the latins a bunch of phrases in english. One night elder gamboa from mexico comes up to me with a super thick accent and says "elder does these words mean". and i thought he was gonna say like "my name is" or "how are you" but hes says "today i secured the bag" and we all just started dying. Another thing so Argentina played France on Saturday and suspiciously all the teachers had a meeting at the same time of the game. After they ended up losing our teacher was literally crying like bawling it was super funny.
All of the missionaries are super nice and its been a great week so far. We went to the temple today which is just across the street and it was super pretty and super awesome. Anyways spiritual thought for this week is during Sacrament Meeting which was testimony meeting this week Elder Heineken got up to bear his testimony. now Elder Heineken is this super hick dude from St. George, Utah and probably knows a total of 12 spanish words so i start laughing because he's just a goofy guy and we joke and i know he doesn't speak any Spanish. But anyway he gets up and says "yo se que jesucristo es nuestro salvador" and sat down but that was really powerful and Icould definitely feel the spirit which reminds me of the scripture in Moroni 10 which basically goes "by the power of the spirit you shall know the truth of all things". I love you guys hope you all dont miss me too much!
Elder Tanner Christensen
PS - Somebody update me on the world cup all the teachers are still mad about Argentina losing so I'm scared to ask.
Family notes:
hey guys i miss you all so much. i'm pretty sure that i will be emailing every week on thursdays from 1 to 2 my time so you guys can get on google hangout or whatever it is and chat with me. garret good job keeping me updated on sports news. katie good job telling me everything about the reunion and i saw sadies xray that looks like it hurts. it sounds like the reunion in mink creek is pretty cool. people in my district that are going ba north in case you want to look them up are elders smith, peterson, johnson, russ, heineken, hartman, and sister greaves. im probably the best friends with peterson russ smith and heineken.
to answer moms questions. 1. during the la airport layover i read Our heritage and talked with a bunch of missionaries who were actually coming home from the philippines. 2. i had to sprint from my plane to the one in atlanta but a bunch of other flights were delayed so it was fine. 3. the plane was only like 3/4 full so i got two seats to myself. 4. i slept for a couple hours on the plane. 5. like i said i talked to those other elders in la and had a couple random conversations but nothing cool. 6. i did not see any of the other ba missionaries until i got off the plane bc we were all supposed to sit in the back of the plane basically but the lady at the desk saw how tall i was and gave me two seats in the front part. 7. a worker from the mtc came to pick us up promptly. 8. i got my luggage friday at like 3 pm which was early than i expected it so everything worked out fine. 9. my comp is elder peterson really nice kinda quiet i like him. 10. from arizona just graduated high school going to byu when he gets back likes to snowboard and wakeboard and actually broke his pelvis snowboarding like 3 months before. 11. first day we did a bunch of random stuff, give our passports, unpack our luggage which i didn't have, make sure we had all the immunizations, get acquainted with the mtc. 12. daily schedule is wake up go to breakfast, study, and then teach IPs which are progressive investigators which we have like a fake investigator who we teach everyday, lunch, outside time, more studying, then language study a lot of the afternoon with a teacher, dinner, more studying. we do a lot of studying. then throw in an occasional devotional or service project and that's our day on pdays we go to the temple, write emails, then just play outside or hangout in the rooms. 13. honestly it depends whose talking. some people speak super fast with a thick accent and i have trouble understanding which is mainly the argentines. i actually talk a ton w the latin elders and sisters and understand quite a bit its just hard getting the words out. most people i can understand and basically communicate with. 14. the food is good mainly we ate horse one day which i didn't know till after and then another day we had sketchy lasagna and then some grass enchiladas which were terrible but other than those outliers the food is good.
i'm sad to hear about michelle i put her name in the temple bag thingy and just want to let her know im praying for her. sorry that this is so unorganized i just had to get everything out as quick as possible love u guys
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