Hey everbody,

I will just do a quick follow up on last week. So do you remember Eduardo from last week, and how he was afraid of his wife meeting us? Well we met her this week and taught a really great lesson in which she accepted a baptismal date. Her name is Yanet and It turns out she is in a very spiritually sensitive time in her life and is trying to strengthen her relationship with God. So I guess it just shows that you can't judge somebody's receptivity to the gospel without asking them.

And yeah have a great week because I sure will and it wouldn't be fair for you not to.

Besitos,

Elder Christensen

This is a picture of a dead baby opossum outside of the chapel in carrasco. The spanish word for opossum is zarigüeya, but here in Uruguay they are know as comadreja, which is the spanish word for weasel. Uruguay is silly like that. 

High

Hey everybody,

So this week it rained a lot which is great because I love rain! So we were walking around in the rain and we clapped at a door and this guy named Eduardo came out to talk to us, but didn't want to invite us in and said to come by another time. So then we went a couple of doors down and this other guy came out, got control of his rather vicious dog, and told us to go right in. This doesn't surprise me because nothing surprises me anymore. So we go in and he comes inandhis name is Francisco.And then Eduardo from down the street comes in because it turns out he wanted to listen to us he just didn't want his wife to know because she wouldn't have liked that. So we got talking and it turns out that Francisco had a mom who was a member of the church, so he is familiar with it. And then we asked if we could say a prayer and share a message about Jesucristo and he just started saying the prayer without us asking him too. That did surprise me. Maybe the one thing that surprises me. And then we agreed to come by on saturday, but we called him on thursday to see how he was doing and if he had read El libro de Mormón and he asked us if we could come by on friday instead because he had really enjoyed talking to us and had a lot of questions about what he had read. So we went by yesterday and had a super spiritual lesson where we answered a bunch of his questions.

So that is just a little snap shot of what it is like to be a missionary here. By the way if you haven't had a good talk with God lately try praying. It is really great. I have been thinking a lot about discipleship this week. I have decided that it basically comes down to being dedicated about living the commandments and serving others even when it is difficult. Satan would have you turn inwards worry about yourself, while Christ would have you turn outwards and help others and trust in God to take care of you. Through prayer we can ask Christ to change our selfish desires into selfless desires through his atonement. It works. Also see 2 Nefi 1-3

1) Chemical happiness.

2) A typical, but especially delicious, Uruguaya meal. As you can see it includes oily noodles, chunks of meat, and pan. Pan is a leavened wheat dough substance similar to bread. It is the most important part of the meal.

Hello

First of all, have you guys seen my dad's new beard?! It is super sophisticated looking. I always tried to get him to grow a beard and he wouldn't until now. One thing about Uruguay is that it seems to me like a lot more people wear facial hair than in the states, especially profesional people.

And yeah things are good here. This week I did my first set of residencias, which is where we take the missionaries who are just finishing up their three month tourist status to the legal office so that they can keep being legal. One thing I have learned from being the mission secretary is that life is a lot more about faking it than I had though before. You just kind of show up where you need to be when you need to, with the right people and documents and an official demeanor, and hope that everything turns out all right.

But yeah so it has gotten really hot and humid here lately, but that is nothing to hold back a Spirit driven Servant of Christ with souls to save and the gospel of repentance to preach. We have been trying to work a lot in recent weeks with with our investigator Carolina. If you don't remember who she is refer to my earlier communications. Anyway we had this ridiculously spiritual lesson with where she commit to pray to know if she should be baptized. Right after that she started having a bunch of trials. First we couldn't find her and then her house got robbed, and they started having a really difficult time in their appeals to get her boyfriend out of prison, but we are really proud of her because in all that time she only decided to pray harder and come closer to God. She decided that she wants to wait until things calm down a little bit before being baptized. But her pareja who is in prison has a copy of El Libro de Mormón and is reading it and apparently also desires to become baptized. The reason we know them is because his mom is a member of the church.

So we saw the funeral of President Monson this yesterday. It was really inspiring, really faith and testimony building, really motivating. These last couple of weeks have been really confirmed and strengthened my testimony of living prophets.

So fun things that happened this week. Earlier today we were in Shopping Portones to eat subway and we heard someone say "Hola Elderes" And it was this guy with a huge blonde beard and his wife and suegra, and he started talking to us and we thought that he was just a local member of the church but then he  told us that he was from the states and we were very surprised. Turns out he is from Calfornia, served a mission in Chile, is espoused to an uruguaya, is a spanish professor in Wisconsin, and is currently visiting this beautiful and pleasant nation. But I write this because I now have renewed hope that it is possible to have a perfect local accent even though I am a gringo. Although I think it must help to make spanish your job and marry a Latina. Also I really need to learn portuguese and Elder Araújo really needs to learne the english, so we have been doing this cool thing where every night we read a chapter together in the bible. He reads my english bible and I read the portugueses bible he gave me a few months ago. We are currently in Mateus 4. Verb of the week: Apolillarse- to get moth eaten

1: A dog that followed us home on our run one morning 

2: The street where we live

3: I actually forgot to take pictures again this week so here is everyone emailing in the offices