Week 88

We have had a ton of divisions this week. For 5 nights this week, there was another pair of missionaries in our apartment. 2.5 kilos of ceareal and 10 liters of milk disappeared after 4 days. Me and Elder Christiansen were pretty livid, but then we realized that it was a great opportunity to build our charity. So I guess thats good. Were so blessed.

The highlight of this week is that we reactiviated a less active woman a couple months ago, and her son got baptized. Were now working on getting her to the temple. We gave her the booklet ´´how to prepare to enter the Holy Temple´´, and she pretty much read and memorized it in a day. We taught her the law of chastity, which she had never heard anything about before, and now strives to live it. Which is good. Her dang boyfriend moved out a while ago. And last week, we downloaded for her a conference session. And she watched is ´´about 6 or 7 times.´´ And she now has a huge testimony of the living prophets. Shes the best! She even offered to go and bring an investigator to church when she accompanied us on a visit! She started bringing her extremely less active mother to chruch, too, and now her mom started talking with the bishop!

Its truly amazing the changes that occur in some people that just want to do what God wants them to. For the church to grow, it just takes a few good people who want to magnify their callings.

iT rained a lot yesterday. Not many pepole came to church. But one investigator DID make it. A 70 year old man. I actually have not yet taught him. Thank you, divisions.

Im doing great. The ward is awesome and the members help a ton.

Elder Christensen

PS, in one of these pictures, im standing in front of a building. Look up the Denmark Copenhagen Temple, and you will find that it looks EXACTLY like it!

PPS I love you

Week 87

Mother's Day

Hola che

Well I don't really know what more I can say. It was awesome to see the family. Pretty much they're all the greatest.

I'll just send you a bunch of pictures. I already told you all of our stories. Enjoy my family pics, and enjoy your families.

Elder Christensen

Week 86

First things first, it has been FREEZING here lately. We're talking 40 degrees Fahrenheit! In the afternoon, it's still hot, but we have to sleep with a heater! Crazy!

The... what the... a little kid just came up to us, tapped us on the shoulder, asked us if we were the mormons, we said yes, then he gave us a little pass along card of the Virgin Mary. ... Something fishy is going on here...

Anyway, it was the best testimony meeting of my life yesterday! I even cried!

Our mission president told us to challenge Diana to give her testimony during testimony meeting. She passed her baptismal interview, she is allowed to be baptized at any time, but she just wants to wait until she's even more sure... So we challenged her to give her testimony. She said she would.

When she stood up, everyone knew that she was an investigator, and there was just a stillness in the room, and she gave a killer testimony. It sounded like she had been a member for years. She said that she knew that the church and the Book of Mormon were true. That her life has changed a lot. That going to church, she really DOES feel better about herself. That reading and praying makes her know that God exists. She talked for probably 3 minutes, testifying. It was crazy. After the meeting, all the members went up to her and congratulated her, and gave her advice, and it was awesome. It made me feel very overwhelmed. I was just so happy for her.

We went by afterwards with a member. He showed her pictures from his baptism, and told her of all the blessings he has received, then HE invited her to be baptized, and she still wants to wait. It's killing us.

In other news, One of the families that we started visiting, the one who said that the day before we came, he saw two pillars of fire coming from the sky, started going to church! But for whatever reason, they started attending a different church. I'm not sure why. It's extremely frustrating.

Another woman that we found last week said that she prayed to God, asking to know what church to start attending and asked for help in deciding. 2 days later, we showed up at her door. She said that she felt the Spirit, and is so stunned that we came to help her decide. Well... we visited her Saturday, and she said that she decided to attend the Lutheran Church. I wanted to jump up and yell "ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!! WHY??!´" She doesn't want to pray and ask God anymore which church to attend. She said that she was baptized Lutheran, and it wouldn't be right to change. I was GOING to yell at her "you think that it was just a coincidence that we showed up at your door right when you were praying for guidance?" But we didn't. All we did was thank her for building OUR own personal testimonies in our message. We felt the Spirit with her, and now are certain that what we teach is correct, and that we really are guided by God. Then we left.

Well it's been a rough week. But Diana´s testimony was great.

Hey, I'm not sure if I said this last week, but...

We're teaching another family. They didn't come to church yesterday. They were on vacation. The mom said that she had a lot of questions about religion. She attended an Evangelical Church, and it just made her more confused. So she stopped attending. A week later, she prayed to God, asking for help. And within an hour or two, we showed up to her house, and set up an appointment to return. We went back the next day, and talked about the Restoration. And she loved it. Her husband, also, loved it. They will be baptized, I know it.

Ups and downs this week.

Today, ill be able to see Elder Baskin, so i'm pretty stoked about that. We'll be staying in the mission home tonight together!

Elder Christensen

me over a freeway

me close to a river and an old volkswagen van

selfie

me eating choripan with our Elders Quorum President in the church

The entrance to a cemetery freaks me out

me cooking lunch today!

PICTURES!

On the side of the bus you will see "Orgullo de ser misionero".  Translation: Proud to be a missionary.

With Elder Christiansen

Trevor intently reading a manual.  

Heres some pictures for you! They're all from when I was in Posadas, or in the apartment.

Week 85

Well I figured I might just give you another story. Life is great.

We were walking around looking for another contact we had received. We knew the general area, and were just going house to house looking for them (funny story- one time, we got to a house, and the lady immediately left and said "I'm Jehovah's Witness, I don't want to talk with you, I'm very happy in my own religion." That's fine, whatever. But I asked "Thats fine. We're looking for Eduardo and Mara." She responded with ´´YOU'RE looking for Eduardo and Mara, but I'M looking for Jehovah!" ... and then never told us where they lived.... Sometimes, people just make it so hard for us to love them).

Anyway, we talked with this pretty cool dude. His name is Hugo. He has a mustache. So immediately we wanted to talk with him. He said we should pass by later. So we did. Last week. It was a pretty great lesson. We went with a member who lives close by, and we basically just talked about family. Great. We left the Restoration pamphlet to read.

We went back. They read up until Christ's ministry. Great. By the way, we left with a young man from the ward this lesson, and we let HIM explain the Joseph Smith story. Super powerful. It was awesome. We left soon after.

We went back a couple days later. Saturday. With another member. And she immediately started telling us that she had recently left her church. She didn't feel comfortable. And started praying to find another church to go to, and that someone would come to explain the gospel to them. The next day, we showed up to her house after talking with Hugo. She also said that their family had started talking about the Restoration right after they left, and they talked about how it was an answer to their prayers and that it was, indeed, from God.

It was a great experience. I love it. They didn't come to church yesterday, though. They thought that the meetings started at 9 PM instead of 9 AM... poop.

Another uplifting story...

We were walking down the street going to an investigators house. I saw a woman sitting on her porch with her kid. As we walked past, I heard myself reading out loud in Preach My Gospel "talk with everyone." ... crap.... so I could only bear the guilt for about 10 steps, then I told Elder Christiansen that we had to turn back. ]We went and taught her and her husband about the Book of Mormon. Then left

We went back on Friday. She said that She had moved there recently. She's Lutheran, but the chapel was really far away. She went with her husband to an evangelical church, and left feeling more confused. so she said that she prayed and started reading the bible. She said that she was praying so that she would know the correct church to go to. 2 days later, we walked past their house, and I felt the impression that we had to talk with her. We taught her about the restoration, and she said that she has doubts, but she's willing to see whats up.

It was a great week. We just had interviews with president LaPierre. It was sad because its the last interview that ill have with him... He's such an inspired man, its crazy.

Elder Christensen

Turns out, my memory card didn't work... so I had to use a new one...

Here's me and Elder Christiansen showing some school pride!

Week 84

We just got changes! And me and Elder Christiansen are staying together! woohoo! looks like I'll have even more time to reminisce about Woods Cross!

Well this week was probably my most successful week, numbers wise, as a missionary; due to the fact that we found 4 new families to work with. And we taught the whole family in every visit! It was quite astounding! There are many stories (4 to be exact) about how we just happened to find them all, but I'll tell you just one.

Well, we were walking down the street looking for somebody to talk to, and we walked past an extremely pregnant woman carrying a bag of groceries. We asked if she needed help. She said no. But we felt impressed to just keep talking with her. She was pretty cool. She's younger than me and is already going to have her second child, so thats crazy, but she was pretty nice. We asked if we could pass by another day to share something. She was "busy" then. But said okay, and pointed out a house.

We passed by a day or two later, and she definitely did not live there. It was raining pretty hard, and as we were leaving the house, we saw a dude sitting down underneath a little roof thing out side his house, and we both wanted to talk with him. We did, and he immediately invited us in, and had us sit down, and we called all his 4 kids to us, and his wife and his neighbor to sit down and listen. It was great! They were way nice! We went back, and they made us chipa. It was great. Weve had a few good lessons with them. They even accepted a baptismal date!

Well, during one lesson, he asked us "do you guys believe in signs from God?" uhhh.. yes. so then he said "because the afternoon before you guys came, I was sitting on my porch with my daughters, and we saw two big pillars of light come down from the sky, and we didn't know what they were. Then you guys showed up!" He said that he thinks its a sign from God. I didn't really understand what happened, but cool!

On Saturday, we were walking down the street, and they drove past, and asked us if we wanted a ride! We said yes! So they drove us to the next lesson, and they told us that they had just filled up their van with gas so that they could go to church the next day! Sick! But they weren't there. We went back the next day, and they said that one of their neighbors got attacked that morning, and was bleeding all over the place, and they took him to the hospital, so they couldn't go to church. They even have the bloody back seat to prove it!

Crazy stuff happens to the Vasquez family!

Elder Christensen

Week 83

I got to revisit Obera! One of my old areas! It was one of Elder Christiansen's old areas, too. So we were both pretty stoked. We had a leadership meeting there with our zone. I took pictures and everything, but I'm pretty sure that my camera is extremely fake. Thats what you get when you buy electronics in Paraguay! We had a lot of priesthood power in that meeting. We got stuff done!

Then we did divisions. It was pretty fun to be walkin' all those hills again. My legs were feeling it. Obera is the San Francisco of Argentina. Super pretty, too. We found a pretty cool girl. We just kind of clapped at her house, and she walked out. She was pretty interested in the gospel... she said she loves gospel music, so me and Elder Ferner sung her a hymn. I'm not the best singer. Anyway, The elder I went on divisions with is from Sao Paolo Brasil. And he showed me a picture of him with the mission president from his mission. President Farns! Whose children are Skyler and Ashlyn! Pretty crazy! Such a small world.

Another great thing that happened was that as we were walking down the street, a guy called us over, so we went. He asked us what time church started. We told him. Then he said that his wife really has heard good things about the church and wants to start attending. He gave us his address and we're going there tonight. Can't wait.

I know that the Church is true and that Christ lived and lives!

Elder Christensen