Week 26 - Boulogne

This week has been pretty sweet! We are finally starting to have success in the area and have three investigators that are progressing.

We have this lady named Maria that's like 70 years old and, she has come to church and we think we are going to have an interview with her this week... And she always talks about thieves in the neighborhood, and always makes me laugh.

Kati is 21 years old, and is the neighbor of a member, and we have been teaching her for a while now and we are also having her baptismal interview this week.

Lautaro is 12 years old and we actually found him looking for a reference that didn't exist. He came and played soccer with all the kids in the church, and then came to church the next day and is super excited to get baptized too.

This week we had an interesting experience as we were walking through the Villa Hidalgo, which is not exactly the safest spot in our area, but it's pretty mild during the day. We are walking to go find an inactive member, and start walking down this kind of narrow road with a ton of people on it. I'm not really paying much attention when I hear that there is a bunch of people shouting back and forth. There is this skinny dude thats getting shouted at, and then I see that three sketchy tattooed dudes walk out of a house with pistols, and I'm like "oh crap", we happened to walk right behind the skinny dude, so we just took off running. We made it out safe, but we never did find out what happened with that skinny dude!

Hope you all are doing well!

Elder Christensen

Elder Jared Justice of Costa Rica, San Jose Mission Fame (92-94), Elder Tanner Christensen (18-20) and Elder Jimmy Justice (16-18) of the Argentina Buenos Aires North Mission!

NOTE: Elder Jared Justice served with Tanner's Dad, Elder Kirt Christensen in the Costa Rica San Jose Mission, and his son, Jimmy, served exactly 2 years before Tanner in the BAN mission.

Christmas goodies, delivered by the Justice family

District Meeting?

Christmas Day Video Call

Talking to Tanner on Christmas, 2018

Tanner, Christmas of 2018

Week 25 - Boulogne

What's up family, how's it going? Hope you guys are having a good week!

This week has been pretty good, not much happened. Turns out Christmas here isn't super-festive, just kind of an excuse to drink a bunch I guess.

We had a sweet Zone Conference on Thursday with about half the mission in the mission home which was super fun. We went to eat at this restaurant called "Kansas" which was like super american and we ate really well there!!

They announced in church that in our ward, Boulogne, we are going to be starting at 10AM, which is awesome, because now more people will come hopefully! We had 1-hour of church yesterday and all of our investigators flaked as normal, and so it was alright.

I got my DNI, which is like my national identification card, and its pretty cool because it says that I was born in Estonia which is sick right? I'm gonna ask someone to look in to that. haha.

Anyways, I hope you have a great Christmas!

Elder Christensen

Week 24 - Boulogne

This week has been quite good, we have a couple good investigators that are progressing, but it's so stinking hard to get people to church. Oh and another thing, this week the weather was so weird. one day its 90 degrees and humid, and then the next its a torrential downpour. What gives man? We are getting ready for this Sunday and are hoping to have a ton of people show up to church, so we will see how that goes. The Spanish is good, I'm learning more and more slang every day and I'm realizing that people swear a lot here, haha.

Funny thing that happens, usually every time we leave the chapel there is a huge gang of like 10-year-olds that are always playing outside in the street by the chapel and they always shout at me jirrafa, jirrafa! [giraffe] and I always shout back at them duendes, duendes! [dwarfs], so I always get a kick out of that.

Anyway, in this Christmas time, I want you to all remember the importance behind it, and the real reason why we celebrate because of Christ. If you have a hard time remembering why we celebrate it, just break the word apart CHRIST-MAS [Christ-More], it's a neat little trick I learned. In all seriousness, I hope you all remember the Savior at this time of year!

Questions from mom:

1. What time are you going call on Christmas?

we plan right now for 2 o'clock my time

2. Do you get to email next Monday or is your p-day going to be Tuesday?

sounds like PDay Monday, so we can coordinate well next week

3. When is the last time you washed your sheets?

today

4. Where do you wash your clothes?

theres a washer in our building and then we hang the clothes in our bathroom and put a heater in there, it actually works well

5. Any plans for Christmas yet?

no one actually does anything on Christmas during the day. they all start the parties and stuff at like 10 at night, so for now nothing

Week 23 - Boulogne

Hello everyone, this week was very good!

On Thursday we had a Zone Conference and Interviews, which is always good, and we had an activity where we went out to the street and basically practiced contacting, and I went out with Elder Dominguez, the AP [Assistant to the President, one of the missionaries with the most responsibility in the mission] and this Elder was crazy, like sprinting after people, and stopping them trying to talk to them, but he was quite a good missionary.

I realized after that, at that point, he only had 3 days left in the mission, which means he left this morning, but he still had that excitement, so I learned a lot from him. Later in that Zone Conference all of the members of the Stake came to receive a training with us from the President of the Area, which was really good and got everyone super-hyped about missionary work.

On Saturday afternoon two of our lessons got canceled because who knows, nobody is reliable here, so we went to contact a reference on the other side of our map in an area called the "Villa Cava".  This villa is divided up into things called, "manzanas" [blocks] and absolutely no named roads and just a bunch of small passageways, and I thought for sure we were gonna get robbed, the reference didn't actually exist, but it was still cool to explore this place.

Anwyays, we are just trying to bring as many people to church for the December 23rd... Gonna be a great Sunday

Love you guys!

Elder Christensen

Questions from mom:

1. Do you have a piano in your church? Can anyone play? 

we have a very out of tune piano, and the first counselor is the only one that knows how to play so he has to run back and forth

2. Did you get to watch the 1st presidency devotional?

no

3. Did you get a Christmas card from me yet? I sent one to the office and one to the address you gave me.

i got the card from you and Ryan's family and the magazine from dad

4. How often to the missionaries get their mail from the mission office?

never

5. Have you ever gotten any actual mail? I have never sent you anything in the mail (sorry), but I was wondering if anyone else has?

no mail, no one really gets mail

6. Do you have any plans for Christmas?

be a missionary

7. What is your companions 1st name? Garret asked me and I didn't know.

Dallin

8. Are any of the people that you have baptized still coming to church? 

Yes, one of them is in the primary presidency and is preparing for a mission, 2 of them once in a while,  others we are working on to go to the temple

9. Why did you have all that cash in the picture you sent? I thought the church wired your rent money?

They gave us money to pay some expenses like water and stuff

10. Have you gotten mugged yet?

no

Week 22 - Boulogne

This week was quite interesting and very good.

There was that G20 conference this weekend which made everything a little crazy. They took all of the missionaries out of capital [downtown] and put them in the suburb and countryside areas. In our area, which is suburb, there is a protest every now and then, but then this weekend everyone just used it as an excuse to ransack everything and burn a bunch of stuff, so that was interesting. Nothing too sketchy, just got to know what areas to avoid at night, haha.

We had a baptismal interview with a lady this week, who i never thought would get baptized. Elder Telis and I started teaching her 3 months ago! She's 66 years old I didn't even think she was going to pass the interview, because she kept asking us if Joseph Smith was the one with the big beard, and I was like,  "No, gosh darn it lady, thats Brigham Young, we've already been over this!!" ...But she passed the interview on Friday, and all she had to do was come to church this week, but of course when we went by her house, she wasn't there. So now we have to wait 2 weeks for her to get baptized, but oh well, such is Argentina and crazy porteña ladys [Buenos Aires Ladys]. This week has been kinda cold actually, we have had to wear sweaters, which is weird considering everyone was saying we were gonna die in December...

Ummm. what else? Elder Haycock and I are getting along well, and we are both learning a bunch of Spanish. We have been finding an extraordinary amount of people who speak English here and mainly because they always approach in the street, and we get so excited, but they only want to talk because we speak English. We have 6 kids who are supposed to get baptized soon, but its insanely difficult to get them to church, we still haven't succeeded. The membership of Boulogne Ward would literally skyrocket if the Sunday Meetings started at 10am instead of 9am, so we are praying that in January when 2 hour church starts, that it gets pushed back an hour, but we aren't holding our breath. Anyways, hope you are all having a good week and i would love to hear from you guys!!!

Elder Christensen

Me with our monthly rent money in Argentine Pesos

NOTE: Here's a link to a news article about the G20 conference and the protestors

Signs reading "Get Out Trump" and "Social Left" in the streets of BA