Week 10

yes. If you have been following josh blotters emails, read the first linme of his last email, and I will echo that.

So not much has happeneed this week in terms of actually working, but we DID have 7 baptisms and 7 confirmations. AND I got to do one of each of the ordinances. IT was nice.

Its a family with a 85 year old mother, her two daughters, one of her sons, and three of her granddaughters. one of ther daughters was already super active in the church,a dn they have heard the discussions for the last 6 months, but have never really gotten anywhere. Then one lesson, they said that they felt something that they have never felt befroe, and wanted to be baptized. It was pretty nuts.

We would normally baptize in a river, but since the grandmother is in really bad shape, we drove 3 hours to the nearest chapel and baptized in the font there. Her son said that he wanted me to baptize him because i was big. So that was pretty flattering. I give my thanks to my parewnts for giving me the genes. I didnt mess up the ordinance, even though i memorized it once in the MTC and forgot to practice it. So that was nice. It was a pretty special experience.

They will probably end up being a very active family in the church, since LLopez is such a nice town.

Now for the secular stuff- My umbrella broke in the middle of a rainstorm. So that sucked. I was soaked.

Also, our appartment is in the middle thrid of a house. we literally have to walk through someones bedroom to get to our living quarters. it rocks. One of the days, I saw A guitar leanign against the bed... so i asked if i could borrow it, and he said yes, and i played my heart out that night. I miss the guitar... IT was the best day of my mission yet haha

Elder Christensen

Week 9

Whats up, gang??

So nothing really happened this week, sorry. I think we spent 2 days in our area, which sucked, and couldnt really do any work. We had a zones conference, and a district conference.

At zone conference, I got my package! ¡que rapido! so thank you. We got to speak english to the americans. That was very enjoyable. And we got to hear president lapierre talk to us. He is a very stellar man, let me tell you. It was very uplifting.

We found a store in encarnacion that sells empanadas for 10 cents each. Holy freaking cheap, haha so we bought 20 (only) for two dollars.

Our group leader{s son just got back from his mission, and helped us teach a family preparing for baptism. It was going to be just 3 of the women in this family getting baptized, but we got them all to agree to be baptized on saturday, since we were able to tell them that they have recieved answers to their prayers, and theyre prepared. Theyve listened to all the lessons multiple times, and have come to church every week for years, so it was awesome for them to finally make the step towards bapitsm! so instead of 3, we should have 6 coming up on this Saturday!

Our 82 year old investigator has been in Argentina, across the river, for the past week with his brother, so we are just waiting to set up a new date for his baptism. Its a weird situation.

We just watched the first vision video. And i saw joseph smiths log cabin home and thought {{wow thats a nice house{{. I thought about what i just thought and kind of laughed. haha because it IS nicer than any building in Lopez. Its kind of weird how 200 years ago, the americans lived a nicer lifestyle than the Paraguayans today.

Kind of humbling. So i spent over 20 hours on the bus this week. That{s a part time job. I got a pretty sick picture of me riding the bus, my head out the window, the dirt road going off into the distance, the farm fields, the jungle starting up again. Its freaking awesome. But i dont know how to hook up my camera to the computer, so sorry. hahah

I love you all!!

Elder Christensen

Week 8

So not a lot happened this week. sorry.

We had a zone reunion. So that took two days of travel. We had to wake up at 1 AM to catch the bus into encarnacion. We rode for almost 8 hours, then walked like 2 miles to the stake center. Whew. but our zone leaders are WHITE!! and american11 and speak english!! woohoo! so i had the first englsih conversation i had had in almost 2 weeks. Which means I had the first conversation ever in 2 weeks. Just kidding.

We ate lunch in encarnacion, and looked up at the tv. And they were rolling the sports scores along the bottom of the scrreen. And it said Jazz 102- 100 Cavs. And me and one of our zone leaders jumped up and cheered and high fived and yelled "were going all the way!!!" hahaha so that was good to see

We had a lesson with a part member family this week. The dad is kinda anti-mormon, and never really liked the missionaries. As We were just chatting, I pulled out the picture of my family, that i keep in my scriptures marking dyc 110:4-5. their son brought over my whole scriptures to thier dad, and he read the scripture. and then sat and pondered and said.. how beautiful...  and he stayed for the lesson! He usually leaves when we share something! AND he participated. So well see if that gets us somewhere.

I drank beet juice. It made me think of dwight schrute.

So we hoped to get a baptism this week, but our invesigator is 82, and dying. His anti-mormon children are nursing him back to health right now, but its not looking good. its really scary, because this pretty much is his last c hance for baptism, because his children Do not want a vicarious baptism. Its a really weird situation. We hope to baptze him this Saturday, health or sickness. We'll see

I have been reading the crap out of the libro de mormon. In Spanish translaitng the words that I didnt know, I started this week. I just finished 2 nefi 27, the last charper of isaiah. And it is the first time that i endjoyed isaiah. When you liken his words to laman and lemuel, it IS pretty clear. Strange.

Love you all!! I ate asada last week too hahah and we found a frog in our room, so that was fun

Elder Christensen

2 months down

Week 7

Hello everybody.

I love you.

So this week, we had divisiones. Companion exchanges with our district. I went to Natalio 10, yes the name of the town does have a number in it, with Elder Villalba. Its the town where our group is based out of. It has a branch. Its three hours away by bus. Woohoo! this bus ride destroys your white shirts, let me tell you haha

So we contacted a lot. It was alright. Clapping outside of houses isnt as weird as I thought it would be. We dont knock on doors, we stand outside the gate, and clap. Fun.

We had a lesson all in Guaranì. how strange. What an impossible language. It reminds me of korean. We will see if I every try to learn it. Everyone said not to even worry about it. It´s impossible ahaha

One of the days on exchanges, we went deep into the pARAguayan jungle. It was beautiful. I thought for sure that i would get a huge sunburn, since we were out there forever. But I was Fine. We walked a ton. All day. The day I was supposed to go back to Lopez, it rained. And the dirt roads get absolutely destroyed when it rains. So I stayed in Natalio 10 for 6 days. And only had one shirt, and one pair of pants. They were absolutely destroyed ahaha But I made it back to lopez safely.

Halloween was sick. Everyone here has heard of halloween, but no one celebrates it. How sad. It was the first huge rain and thunderstorm i saw. It was nuts. It was like a cartoon. Every lightning bolt literallly lighted up everything like the sun. Im serious. And when it rained, you couldnt see more than 50 feet in front of you. It was coming down so hard. I have seen more rain here than in the rest of my life combined.

We have a baptism on saturday!!!! Woohoo!! hes 82 years old; His name is A and he is pretty much awesome. His family doesnt want him to get baptized, but he has a testimony.

I shined my shoes today. They look awesome.

That´s all. I love having an hour every morning to read the scriptures. I feel the spirit every day. Its great

Have a nice day

In Natalio 10

Yeah I live in the jungle. This is like 50 feet away from where I live

Week 6

So this place is awesome. i dont know what everyone was freaking out about.  The area is a little bit bigger than our ward, and there are probably just as many people living in it. Its awesome. it really is. We had like 20 people come to church on sunday, and the only reason we are a group is because only 3 men have the preisthood. But giv Lopez some time, and eventually it will be the strongest stake in the world!!! haha

So the bus ride here was a bit of an adventure. It was almost exactly like the trip up to the cabin. There was about an hour on a fairly busy and small freeway, then we went down a dirt road. Except the dirt road was in worse shape, adn we were in a bus with standing room only. And when I say like the cabin trail, I mean the whole way. There was a hill that reminded me of ours. And if they weren't pumping awful 70s music that I had never heard before, but knew that I hated, I would have been scared about falling down the cliff and dying. ahahha but thats okay

The other day, we went to the Paraguayan consolate to get our visas. we went to iguazu. They told us that we were less than a mile away from iguazu falls, and we were just chillin for 6 hours, but never went. That was a bummer. But it was fun to walk around the city.

There are a ton of Germans here. Its weird. Everyone never guesses that im from the US. They all guess Germany.  I didnt really expect that. One of our investigators is from Germany. Shes sweet. She came to church on sunday, and liked it a lot, and has come a few times now, so well see what happens.

Yeah, a ton of people here speak guarani. Its the native paraguan tongue. it sounds a lot like korean. And apparently its as hard to learn. Therres like grunts and stuff. Its weird. So I wont be learning that any time soon haha.

Hermano Ramirez is the group leader here. He is going to be the next prophet. He is freaking sick. He lived here for20 years and had the sacrament every week for his family. Its sick. He translates our lessons into guarani for our investigators that dont speak castillian. He is awesome!!

Dinner and Breakfast dont really exist here. Everyone just eats lunch. And siesta time sucks. Theres nobody anywhere. We have our study time during siesta time. We have a really weird schedule. And everyone goes to sleep at like 8 so its really hard to stay our for the whole time

Had my first barbeque on sunday. It ROCKED: Its as good as everyone expects it to be.

Missionary work is different than I thought it be. All we do is just go around sharing lessons and scriptures. I dont know why I thought it would be different. But its very chill. At least for the first few days in Lopez. AND I can actually speak a fair amount of Spanish. At least with Elder Silva- hes sick, I love him. But still I just cannot follow anyone else. Elder Silva says that it{s because everyone speaks castillian as a second language, and alll have way thhick guarani accents. So... sweet. Oh! and its probably because Elder Silva is from  Peru, and the peruvians are known to speak very slowly.

Everyone here loves  Portugese music, and crappy music that sounds like a shuffle of Casey Kasems top 700 from the 70s. Its awful but i can deal with it

Go to church. Read the scriptures. They're nice. Have a nice day!!

Elder Christensen

Posadas

HEy. so I made it. And the keyboard is really wierd, so forgive me of my misspellings.

If you want to know, the mission home address is 

Elder Trevor Emil Christensen

Misión Argentina Posadas

Córdoba 1243 Casilla #12

Posadas CP 3300

Misiones

Argentina

And mother: They have a lot of packages sent here, and they said theyve only heard of two that went missing. They open up every single package, since they dont allow food or electronics to enter. So keep that in mind. They say letters are as reliable as packages. And no one cares about the Jesus stickers. They ahve to open every package. Or you could just send me a Dear Elder.

Well travelling was fun. 10 hour flight. always a blast. The Uruguayan rugby team was aboard with us, so they were really fun to watch haha

On all 3 of our flights, I sat on a row of only missionaries, I guess they didn{t trust me to talk to anyone, haha. BUT the hermana in front of us on the flight to Buenos Aires started talking to the guy next to her. I heard him say that he didn{t want to talk about religion, then I forgot about them. She kept talking to him, thne like an hour later, I heard him reading aloud the first vision, haha and then I watched him read the entire Joseph smith history haha she leaned back and asked for a Book of Mormon, Which Elder Ah Quin (yeah, he{s poly) had. And they kept talking for a while. I couldn{t really hear what about, but it was fun to see. I wonder what will happen

So we had an 11 hour layover in the Buenos Aires Airport... Well a different one. We flew into one, then took a really... nice... bus to a different one across town. And yeah. like 50% of the time, there are painted traffic lines, and no one really uses them. not even as suggestions. For the plane ride, we just walked onto the tarmac as planes are taking off and went up the ramp onto the plane. It was fun. It was really loud. I was like 50 feet away from a plane that was taking off.

My first thought about Posadas was "wow" it's really big. And it kinda is. Theres not a lot of area to it, but its got a lot of skyscrapers. More than SLC. I guess we landed in Paraguay, then drove across a bridge to Argentina. That was fun. The mission home wasreally nice. reaally nice. It has a pool! haha But posadas is cool. It{s... I dont know how to describe it. There arent really any traffic laws and its just like any other south american city that I picture to be like.

It's REALLY nice weather here right now. Perfect. Not that humid. kinda cool. temperature wise. They said it gets up to 50 degrees here. Celsius. Oh yeah. So Im going to die in the next couple months.

Everyone here is really awesome. President LaPierre is the nicest, coolest guy I have ever met. I love him to death. He was great.

So my first area is going to be in Paraguay. In a town called Carlos Antonio Lopez. Legit. Theres not a ward there. Theres not a branch. Its called a group. So that means that theres a man thats allowed to give the sacrament to his family. He showed me where it was. Its not on the map. He showed me where the branch its based off of is located. THAT town isnt on the map haha. And its a two and a half busride of 70 Kilometers from the town with the branch to CAL. hahahahaha so this is gonna be awesome. President told me that the only place that has internet is a member´s home. one of the grown sons of this man. He said the internet might not work on Pday, so you might not hear from me next week. Or in the next 6 weeks. He told me it is literally the most remote area in the mission. He said "some people speak spanish" haha so I'll have to learn Guarani. My companion is Elder Silva. speaks very little english. But im replacing another tall white utahn, so I should be fine!!! hahhaahaha im so fetchin stoked

I love you all. Ill keep you in my prayers!! Remember to read your scriptures and pray!! It will do ya good!! I love to read Luke 12:27-28 if you were wondering. Look it up. Its fun

Have a nice day!!

Elder Trevor Emil Christensen

Elder Fallentine & Trev at temple

Adam Kemp (Church history tour) Harrison Rodgers (WXHS) Chase Jenkins (Church history tour)

Week 5

Hello everybody.

Pretty much this week has been the same as every other week that I have been here. So I will skip the secular stuff and just go straight on to what I have been studying in personal study, if that's alright with you.

I spent like 2 hours studying 2 Nephi 25, and I would recommend it to anybody. It pretty much just prophesies of Christ. It talks of his resurrection, and his life. It's legit. It just really hit home with me that day. Verse 23 says: "For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." We have the scriptures and we have the gospel today for the purpose of bringing everyone's children and everyone's brethren to a knowledge of Christ and his redeeming power. He is the only way we can gain salvation. It doesn't matter how good of a person is, how many kind deeds they do for men. They still have to believe in Christ, and verse 30 tells us that we "must keep the performances and ordinances of God." Verse 26 is awesome, too.

Remember that the only reason why we share the gospel is because we know that through the gospel is the only way that we can return to the full glory of God, and we want others to have that same chance to live up to their potential. So be missionaries. Spread the good word of the restored gospel. Go to the temple. It's awesome. I'll try my hardest if you do!

The only reason Mormons are so weird about sharing the gospel is because it brings us such joy!! We want everyone to get to know the living God through prayer and scripture study! We have  a living prophet on the earth, and he has the authority to tell us God's will. For everyone on the earth. Read the Book of Mormon. It's fun.

Sorry that this email is pretty much all over the place and really scrambled, I'm sorry. But I just want you all to know that I love you and I wish you the best! You're all awesome, and I'll be seein ya in Posadas, Argentina next week!

Have a nice day

Elder Trevor Emil Christensen

This is my district saying goodbye to our teacher Hermana Martinez, and two MTC volunteers Jose and Hely