Once again, it was a very full week. We got rejected by the majority of the people we were teaching this week, which is always tough. We had a couple fun travel days this week though, which makes up for some of the suck. Because Elder Gibbs is the district leader, we go spend the day with another set of elders once a week. This week, we went to visit the elders who live 3 blocks from the Bolivian border. It was fun, but relatively uneventful. However, the next morning on the bus ride back to Tartagal, we almost got detained by the Argentine border patrol who thought we were smuggling drugs from Bolivia. There […]
Mission Life
I’ve just been getting into the groove of life here in Argentina. Elder Gibbs and I are getting settled into this area and are starting to be able to use our days more effectively than at first. A normal day in my mission is as follows: It’s a pretty exhausting schedule, but we get a lot of work done and have a lot of fun while doing it. Thank you for all of your love and support. Have a great week and know that Jesus loves you. – Elder Hansen
All In A Week’s Work
It was a full week of working. We’ve been busy making relationships with members and trying to help a lot of inactive families come back. The temple in the providencal capital of Salta is going to be completed soon, so we have been able to get a lot of families excited about the blessing of temples and eternal families. There were a couple hard/sad things this week. First, several of the people that both we and the missionaries before us have taught for many months have all but stopped coming to church. It’s hard to get so invested in someone’s life and well-being, then have them choose instant gratification instead of long-lasting and eternal joy […]
I Made It!
I made it! After an immensly long series of flights, layovers, and van-rides, I’m now in the town of Tartagal. On Friday, we landed at the airport in Salta, where the Mission President and his wife picked us up. We went to the mission office for a couple hours to meet our trainers and eat some food, then embarked on the final leg of our respective trips to the areas that we will live in for the next couple of months. My van ride was 7 hours through the Argentine countryside to Tartagal, ~30 miles south of the border with Bolivia. My companion is Elder Gibbs from Grace, Idaho. He’s been on his mission for […]
Almost There
I’ve got less than a week left in the CCM. Next weekend, I’ll be in Argentina. Nothing too exciting happened this week. We’ve just continued practicing teaching in Spanish and learning grammar. My favorite part of the day here is my hour of personal study in the morning. I’ve been reading through the New Testament with commentary from an Institute manual. I’ve read through the New Testament before, but I’ve always just read a certain number of pages each day, so I would often just rush through it. Currently, I’m taking copious notes of things I like from the commentary with no concern for how much I get through each day. This hour of study […]
Mexican Independence Day
Friday was Mexican Independence. It didn’t affect life in the CCM too much, but we had a couple fun things. At dinner, there was a mariachi band playing. Everyone loved it. It made for a fun atmosphere. It’s a tradition for everyone in a town to gather and chant “Vive Mexico!” (Long Live Mexico) while the mayor rings a huge bell. So that evening, all of the missionaries got together and chanted while the CCM president rung a big bell. I didn’t understand the significance of it until the next day when our teacher showed us a video of the President of Mexico ringing a bell in the main governmental plaza and it looked like […]
Still Alive and Learning Spanish
It’s been a long (almost) two weeks. The way our schedule worked out, we had a preparation day on our first Saturday, two days later on Monday, and then no break for 11 days. It wasn’t actually too bad, but we’ve all been looking foward to today and opportunity to talk to our families. My best friend from West Point, Caleb Watson, got here last week. Our schedules are totally different, but somehow we still bump into each other at least once a day. I live in a house with Sam Furhriman, whose dad is the bishop of the ward at West Point. We all did our mission preparation class together, so it’s fun to […]
The First Week
Tuesday morning I woke up at 3am to head to the airport with my parents. I then had a flight to Salt Lake, where ~85 missionaries were on my flight to Mexico City. We then meet up with a bunch of other missionaries from the East Coast and had an hour-long bus ride through Mexico City. When we arrived to the Centro de Capacitación de Misional, The CCM, we had some orientation meetings, dinner, and got checked into our houses. The CCM used to be an American boarding school run by the church, but when the age requirement to be a missionary was lowered in 2013(?), They turned it into another Missionary Training Center. The […]
Online MTC
This week was my first week of missionary training. Since Covid, the first week has been online at home for everyone because the Church decided it helped missionaries assimilate better than just throwing them into the deep end. Every morning at 9:00 I had a 3-hour long Gospel Study class. This would be followed by an hour-long workshop for everyone doing the online MTC, with topics like emotional resilience, The Plan of Salvation, and becoming lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. The workshops would end at 1, so I would eat a late lunch, take a short nap, and then play a card game or bake with my mom until my 4:30 language class. This 4-hour […]
Starting my Mission
Today I officially start my missionary service. I spoke in my church congregation this morning, and we had a lot of family come over afterwards. If you would like a copy of my talk or if you want to reach out for any reason, you can email me: hansen.warren@missionary.org