Week 9 - Boulogne

I've been thinking this week,  "Why is it that every Argentine feels the need to put cut up hard-boiled eggs on every freaking food? Pizza, empanadas, rice, pasta, it's in everything. I'm sick of it.

On Tuesday and Wednesday it was so hot, or at least it felt hot, bc it said it was only like 19C or 20C [66F or 68F] which is nothing compared to the summer. I already know that I'm going to die from the heat in the summer, but thats okay, those are my only two complaints for now.

One thing you need to know about Buenos Aires specifically is there are two main football clubs called "Boca" and "Rivers" and when they play everything shuts down. We were trying to teach a lesson on Wednesday night when River was playing, but whenever River scored,  I thought there was an earthquake going on, like I was scared the first time.

We have this really awesome investigator named Milagros. She's from Peru, and is really interested in learning about the church, and we taught her twice this week and it's really nice because a bunch of the members of the ward have already reached out to her and befriended her. She's going to be baptized on the 22nd of September, we hope.

So Friday, we did divisions, and I went out with the District Leader, Elder Vasquez and that was fun. We talked to a bunch of people and taught a really good lesson to a member and his friends. But the best part of that day was the lunch, because we got a ton of milanesa [thin cuts of breaded meat]  and potatoes, it was awesome.

Sunday was the day Elder Rasband was going to come and speak in Stake Conference, or so we thought. It turns out he got sick and couldn't make it. All the missionaries were joking that he ate some bad milanesa, but that is definitely possible, believe me I've already experienced that, and you do not want to know more.

We did have one of the Seventy,  Elder Carlos Godoy speak and he gave a great talk about following the Prophet. He said that President Russel M. Nelson is going to teach and reveal a bunch of new things this upcoming General Conference and we should be ready. Another thing I liked about the Stake Conference, was that missionaries are like rockstars and I literally stick out from the rest. I had like 15 people ask me to take pictures with them and I'm kind of famous in this stake now, which is awesome.

Sunday night it was finally time for Elder Telis to have a language mistake for a change. We were walking through the Villa Hidalgo late at night, which was probably not the best idea, but anyways, this dude looks like he's been waiting for this opportunity to talk with an American his whole life and screams out at us in broken english "I want to **** you tonight", and I'm like, man what a weirdo, and I kept walking. But Elder Telis doesn't speak English so he walks over to start talking to him about the church, but I'm, like "Nope let's go", so that made me laugh for a long time after that.

This morning we taught a really awesome lesson to this family, and when we were talking they were super-touched, and started crying, so we have 3 baptismal dates set for them, so that was awesome.

The mission is awesome, it was a great week.

Elder Tanner Christensen


For Family:

Everything is going well, the Spanish is improving and I'm bonding a lot more with the people we are teaching. I just decided, man I'm gonna talk, I don't care if its wrong, and its been going well. I miss you guys, and hope everything goes well at school next week for Katie and Garret.

[Parent note: Here's a link to a General Conference talk by Elder Carlos Godoy, to get a feel for what he's like, the talk is called, "The Lord has a Plan for Us!"]