Week 71 - Retiro

Tanner didn't send a letter today.  We did get to talk to him.  He is doing well.  He stayed in the same area, the Congreso Zone in the Retiro Branch (the slums, Villa 31).    He got a new companion.  His name is Elder Armstrong.  He is from Highland UT.  He has been in the mission just a month shorter than Tanner.  He has been a member all his life.  He has an older sister who is married and has a daughter that he has never met and a younger 16 year old brother.  He says that he liked being on student council and to go skiing.  He is going to go to BYU after the mission.

They were supposed to have Abigail's baptism on Saturday, but she called 2 hours before she was supposed to be baptized and said that she wasn't ready.  They had a zone conference with 5 zones this week at a stake center in the city.  The 5 zones are all zones that are located in the city.  The other 4 zones are the country zones and they had zone conference another day.

We talked a lot about basketball.  Since they fired the head coach at Idaho, he's trying to figure out what he wants to do.  UVU and BYU are both showing some interest in him.  It's going to be fun to try and do the recruiting process with him on a mission.  We will keep you updated.  It's hard to tell what Tanner thinks about it all.  He just kept saying, "It's a lot to think about".

He's down to less than 7 months, but who's counting.  Oh wait, I am!! 

Week 70 - Retiro

We had a good week, with some interesting things that happened.

On Thursday morning we are sitting there talking when Elder Higueras (a missionary from the other companionship, that serves in the same branch as Tanner) starts picking at a scar/scab thing on his leg and then somehow it starts bleeding a lot.  We thought it was nothing at first but then he starts bleeding more and more until finally we decide to take him to the hospital.  It turns out he popped a vein in his leg so he was in the pension resting for a couple days after that.

We had stake conference yesterday and some really good talks were given.  The Area 70 had all the investigators raise their hands and then gave them a council "bauticense" (be baptized) then paused for a monument and said "haganlo no mas" (wait no more).  It was crazy.  We had a big asado (roast) on Sunday afternoon.

This weekend we are gonna have the baptism of Abigail if everything goes well.  It was a pretty solid last week of the transfer.

Obelisk in downtown Buenos Aires, 12 blocks from their apartment

Congreso Zone

Outside the apartment?

Elder Higueras

Elder Higueras

Week 69 - Retiro

On Tuesday we went out with Elder Jones who is a former General Authority who is now on a mission with his wife serving in the Area Offices.  It was pretty crazy because this dude knew a lot of stuff.  He was President Zuniga's (my mission president) mission president 25 years ago and President Zuniga was his Assistant.  We went and visited a couple of families with him and it went really well.

On Thursday we had our interview with the president and he was just roasting everyone basically because the mission isn't having as much success as it should have.  On Friday we had the Leadership Meeting with the zone leaders and sister trainers in the mission home.  Basically there were shots being fired and everyone had a lot of different opinions.  I don't know. I just think that sometimes nothing really gets done in meetings like this.  Less meetings, more working would be better.

Saturday morning we had the baptism of Ruth Choquemamani in the morning. Very few people showed up.  Us, the Elders Quorum President, another member, Ruth, and her mom.  Even though there wasn't a lot of people there it was really nice anyway.  Elder Rodriguez baptized Ruth and she was super-excited during the whole thing.  At the end, someone from the Relief Society showed up to support.  The crazy thing that happened at the end is that the stake had a temple trip and all the members that went to the baptism were also going to the temple. So they invited Ruth and her mom to go and Ruth says that she can go, but the mom (who's not a member) says she can't because she has to work.  But in the end we learned that Ruth's mom ended up going to the temple (we had never taught her, barely even talked to her) and not Ruth.  (Ruth's mom just sat outside the temple.) Sounds like the mom had a great time and now wants to know more.

On Sunday it was fast and testimony meeting and Ruth got up and bore her testimony about how good she felt and how she wanted to invite all her friends and family to church.  We got really excited about that.  It was a very good week and we saw a lot of miracles.

Baptism of Ruth Choquemamani

Baptism of Ruth Choquemamani by Elder Rodriguez

Church Video that Tanner's Dad (Kirt Christensen) appears in, being set
apart by Bishop Steve Willis, from about 2002 in Provo, UT