Christmas, Birthday and New Year's...

Thanks for the birthday wishes! It was fun to talk to you on Christmas! The call goes way too fast, though. The Christmas experience was good here and I will never forget it! Elder Afane is a great companion. I don´t know the exact address of our pension yet, but I will write and tell you what it is when I get it. I will try and get some pictures of it too.

Things are going like they always have been in the office, busy, but slowly we are getting things done. The office is a never-ending job. You just do enough to get to the next day. There is never just not any work. Sorry, this isn´t a very exciting email. Since we did our “Skype” call we had a Consejo de líderes (council of the leaders) in the mission, and I was sooo busy! I also, this week have never had to deal with so much money in my entire life! I miss going out and sharing the gospel, we are going to go out and do missionary work in January, though, if it kills me!

The Asado Elder Slade cooked for us on Christmas Day was good! We are going to do another one to celebrate the coming of the New Year!

I am glad Cole got his mission call! He will do great in California!! I will pray for him. I will keep doing my best to keep you all filled in. It is so hard to tell you about everything here in the short time I have to write!

For my birthday on P-day we ate at Burger King and I bought a cool sign in a store.

 Mom, Dad, thanks for all that you do for me and for all the advice.

 I love you and miss you. You are the best parents ever like I always say, and your examples are amazing! 

 I love you all! Chau!

Love,

Elder Nate Pendleton

Christmas Dinner at President's House!

Overlooking Resistencia on top of our apartment building...

Not a great picture of us because it's taken at night and we all have red-eyes, but you can still see us having fun!

The little cactus of mine that I named Espinosa...

Have a Happy New Year!!!

Merry Christmas! New companion and new pension...

Hey, Everyone!

         I can´t believe that Christmas is already here!  The “Light the World” activity went really well. I had to fill up tons of balloons in a Chinese sweatshop while everyone else enjoyed the activity. It was like 110 degrees, and I was sweating so bad in that room filling up those balloons! Haha! Everything went really well with the activity though and the Area Seventy is going to come next year because it went so well. We worked our butts off until 12 pm at night cleaning everything up. We were running back and forth all night in President’s car to get everything back to the church. Just barely today, we are getting everything back to normal.

         At the activity, President Patania pulled me aside and showed me your new haircut, mom! He wanted me to see it! It looks so good! I like it! Sorry, Dad that you had to do jury duty this week on your Christmas vacation. No fun…

  

         Actually, this week we changed companions in the office during the transfers, so I am now companions with Elder Afane and I also moved into another pension (apartment) just today. Elder Slade is now companions with Elder Pedernera. I now live like a block from the church, which is so nice. Elder Afane is excited to be companions with me, it’s great to have him as my new companion!

         I bought myself a USA soccer jersey instead of leather boots for my Christmas present from you. The shoes here are super expensive. The cheapest pair I found are like 150 dollars. I bought the jersey for like 35 bucks. It is super awesome. I still have a ton of money left over too. I will wait until I go home off my mission to buy cool shoes from here. I just got the package from Elder Slade, today! Please tell his mom thank you for everything! I am going to go out today, p-day, to get Christmas presents for the other elders. 

         That picture that we had taken in front of the giant cross is at the entrance of Formosa. I never got a chance to take a picture of it when I was serving there, so it was cool to finally get one.

         So, this week has been busy. The new missionaries came into the mission and the old ones left, There was a strike in Buenos Aires so the plane ride home for them got canceled,  and it threw us for a loop! It was super unorganized because of that, and then the Atlanta airport lost power, so there was no way to get everyone home easily, but they are all home now and everything with that is fine. This week was just a ton of work but now things are finally chilling out.

         Now that it is the end of the month I will  be sending the rent money out and all of the other money owed to missionaries and I have to do the expense reports and also, with it being the end of the year, everything has to be accounted for, so next week, even though it is Christmas week I will still have a lot to do.

         This Christmas Eve we are eating dinner with our Mission President and his family at their home and on Christmas Day we will be Skyping, and then we are going to eat an Asado later in the day. We are also going to exchange gifts then, too.    

Well, Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year, everyone!

Love,

Elder Nate Pendleton

Filling up balloons for the "Light the World" activity...

 My Christmas present, my new soccer jersey...

A crazy storm that blew in, view out of my pension window of the city of Resistencia...

Busy, Busy Christmas season!!!

 Hey Everyone,

         So, this week has been crazy, with all the preparation we were doing for everything! We had two Multi-zone Conferences this week, one held in Resistencia and one in Formosa. Monday we worked so long getting the conference ready for the missionaries in Resistencia that President Patania told us to stay as late as we needed to until everything was finished! He bought and brought us dinner and we were all there until 12:30 pm that night! Then on Tuesday, we had the multizona and it was crazy! You can see in that video of us singing, where one of the elders didn´t get the memo that we were not going to sing a certain part. Hahaha. After that happened everyone started laughing so much they had to cut the video of it! Haha. It was funny. Those missionaries in the other video of us were running in together as a zone. We were doing a “game show” thing. They did almost run me over. Haha! (These were posted  earlier on Facebook.)

         Then Wednesday we worked until 4pm and then left Resistencia for Formosa. It is about 100 miles away. I rode with Elder Tuttle in our President’s Trailblazer up to Formosa. It was super cool to go back to Formosa! I saw a few of the members I knew from serving there. It was cool to be in my old church building. I actually got to drive in Formosa in some of my old areas and I knew all the street names and exactly where I was. It was super awesome! Then halfway through that activity in Formosa, we had to take an elder to the hospital because he was feeling super sick. I spent the rest of the activity outside of the hospital in 110-degree weather with mango trees raining mangos on me, Haha. After that, we packed everything up from the conference and drove back to Resistencia. When we got back to Resistencia, I had a headache so bad, I had to lay down, I was sooo tired! I slept really well that night. You have no idea how much stuff we had to do for these activities. I think I am slowly losing years off of my life, Haha.

        I had to put that “Blanca Navidad” decoration up at both multizonas this week and it wasn’t fun. All those years of helping dad put up the lights on our house came in handy. President took that picture of me just after I had finished it.

         I got to hang out with Elder Ashby and Elder Hopkins at the Multizonas. Elder Ashby is such a good missionary. He was so funny at the activity. Also, Elder Ashby bought me a Hotwheels car of a Datsun 240 z for Christmas. It was awesome! I feel so bad that I haven´t even had time to buy any gifts for Christmas for my companion or friends here in the mission. I seriously need to try to do that today!!

         Saturday, we will be having our LightTheWorld activity in a park. Also, this weekend, we are going to be having transfers, which means I have to plan three meals for all of the missionaries. We don´t really get much of a p-day today, (Friday) because we have too much to do to prepare for all of the activities this weekend.

         My health is doing fine, the bug bites I got are gone now. I have lost weight in this area though, and I have had a lot of people tell me that I have.

I can´t wait to find out where Cole will be going, to serve his mission. My guess is that it will be Vancouver, Canada or somewhere in Mexico, one of the two.

         Everything went well with all of the activities that we had to do this week. I am glad everything is well with you all. I am really tired, but I have felt the strength that all your prayers have given me this week. 

Chau,

Elder Nate Pendleton

The group of elders I'm lucky enough to work with, here in the office. Getting ready for the first Zone Conference in Resistencia...

Me hanging Christmas lights up....

Conference in Formosa...

Getting to meet with my old Stake President, in Formosa!

(Sorry the above picture is of poor quality, we all have red eyes in it! Haha!)

Sunset pictures out of the car window...

Driving, Moving Mattresses, Asado and seeing old friends.....

Hey Everyone,

         I am finally getting better from being sick. To be honest, mom and dad, there isn´t much time to exercise here in the office, but we walk a lot, trust me. We go all over the city to pay rents for missionaries and to do all sorts of other things. My computer has a post-it note system on it and I use it more than you could possibly ever imagine. There is no way that I could remember everything I have to do without it.

          I want to study the Book of Mormon more and I still pray a lot like I’m supposed to, but it is just hard to find time to read and study the Book of Mormon because we get to the office at 8am in the morning and we go home by about 9pm. Our pension is a 20-minute walk away from the office and then I have to write in my journal before going to bed, so it makes it really hard to get study time in. I get so many phone calls a day. Last night all of the office elders were together for P-day and we couldn´t go three minutes without someone´s phone going off. I don´t have time to always be teaching and talking and reading about the gospel anymore and I miss it. It is just money money, money all day long. You have no idea how many utility bills I have to pay, Haha. This is just a big mission, so that means big money. The end of the year with finances is just crazy, maybe things will slow down for me with the start of the new year.

         It was so nice to be able to see members from the Puerto area where I served last. Sister Villordo was baptized by the Hermanas (sister missionaries) while I was serving in the Puerto area and she is a super faithful convert. She is already teaching gospel doctrine classes in church and she is going to get married in the temple. After I visited with the members from Puerto, I went on divisions with Elder Peterson. He was my zone leader in Formosa and now he is my zone leader here in Resistencia, Haha. We got rained on that night unexpectedly, so we were drenched when we got back to the office. It helped me to feel like a real missionary again. I miss just being in the mud and the rain all the time!

         It was pretty cool to get my Argentina driver’s license. I have gotten better at driving, but it is still not very enjoyable to drive, here in the city. There is so much traffic, its like driving in San Francisco! This week we went to the airport to this field to practice driving. There were other people out there practicing too. We met these three dudes from Haiti there.

They spoke Spanish, French and a little English and some other tribal language. They were really nice.

         We actually had our p-day yesterday because the power was down at the church the whole day, so in the morning we all helped move 45 of the new mattresses we purchased to the back of our mission president’s home. Then my companion Elder Slade cooked us all a huge Asado (barbeque) so we had dinner with the mission president and his family. We played our mission president at ping- pong, he has a cool ping-pong table in his house! His house is massive, it is so nice.

          We might be moving pensions into a closer one to our office. Our pension, right now is so far from the office, we don´t even live in the area that we are assigned to.  After we had dinner, we went and got ice cream because it was soooo freaking hot, then after that, we slept over at the assistant to the president’s pension. Elder Slade and I slept on the hard floor because there were only 4 beds and 6 of us elders.  

         Things with my companion are going great but we haven´t been able to work in our area much right now and it depresses me. Our investigators are just kind of on the back burner because we are so busy in the office. I really feel bad that we can´t visit much with them. Elder Slade still uses the phone to stay in touch with them so we should be able to pick them back up again soon.  We have had to run a ton of errands all over the place this week for the mission because we are coming up on our busiest week, next week, so we will see how things go for us.  

         This week we did some service for this dude that lives way out in the middle of nowhere after that, he cut all of our hair for us. He cut my hair really well! We were cutting his tall grass down with machetes, which is how they do it here and then we raked it all up for him. There were so many bugs and I didn´t even realize how many bit me until the next day. They must have been ants or flies because they got me good! It was fun but I was sweating sooo bad, Haha. The dude that lived there was like Zane with super long hair and a big beard and the wife was this super cool farmer lady.

They were super nice. They had all sorts of animals. We got to hold ducks and chickens and goats, Haha.

         I wasn´t able to watch the First Presidency’s Christmas broadcast this week, but we did watch a little bit of Sister Franco’s talk from it when we had a little time. It was cool to see her speak. I am glad that you all got to go downtown to see the devotional at the Conference Center.

(Sister Franco was Nate’s former mission president’s wife before becoming a member of the General Primary Presidency.)

         Will you please tell grandma, thanks so much for the money. I will eventually find some boots and a sweet soccer jersey to get myself for my Christmas and my birthday presents.  I put up the paper Christmas tree that you sent to me in my office. I will try and get a picture of me next to it, soon.

         It is going to be really hot here in Argentina this week, that’s for sure! It’s forecasted to be in the 100’s here this next week and with the humidity, oh, boy, watch out!

         I am so grateful for all of your love and support. I will keep trying to be the best missionary I know how to be! Love to you all!

Chau,

Elder Nate Pendleton

Elder Petersen and I on divisions and Sister Villordo from the Puerto area...

Practicing my driving...

Moving mattresses...

My companion cooking dinner and a big old piece of meat we put in Chimmi Churri sauce...Haha!

The elders I work with...

President Patania and his family...

Sister Franco speaking at the First Presidency Christmas Devotional...

Statue of San Martin...

The bugs had me for dinner!!!

Gloster Meteor F4 Airplane...

Here comes trouble or... We got our Argentine Driver's licenses...

Hey,

So, I still feel a little sick this week but anyway, this week was less busy but still busy. The end of the month with finances in the mission is just crazy!

The food that I have planned for us to eat at zone conferences have been these giant hamburgers, Haha, They are Argentine hamburgers so they also have an egg on them. Here is a picture of them, they are absolutely huge! That is Elder Tuttle and Elder Olmos, the mission AP’s, who work in the office with me, eating them.

Lately, I am always all over the place during multi-zonas, so I don´t get to rest much or just hang out with the other missionaries like I did before at them. That’s why you don’t see me in many of the pictures that are posted on the mission Facebook site.

I get to see Elder Hopkins, my former companion a lot because he is working in the Resistencia area this transfer. It was so good to see him and also my other former companion, Elder Ashby at the conference that was held this week! Elder Ashby got his package. Will you please let his mom know that he did, okay?

Elder Hopkins is soooo great on the piano! I gave him the Princess Mononoke sheet music and it had like four flat notes in it and he just played it without even knowing what the song sounded like. It was sooo awesome!

This p-day I had to go to the bank and we also had to take a sick elder to the hospital so we are taking our p-day a little later today.

I got to drive the mission Truck today!!!!!!!!! Which means, that yes, I passed the written driving test after taking a 7-hour long course at a college here and the course that we had to take was all in Spanish! I learned a lot of new Spanish words that day! Haha!  I then had to take an on-road driving test, which went horribly! Haha. I stalled the truck right at the start, and I also found out that you can´t turn right on a red light here like you can in Utah. After many horrible crunchy gear changes, I got back from taking it, thinking. “I totally didn´t pass this test”, but the man had mercy on me, and the three of us that had to take the driving test had passed it!!!!! 
We all got our Argentine Drivers Licenses!!!!

Now I am just getting used to driving a manual transmission in a very busy city. Haha. It is super cool! It was thanks to all your prayers and God that I passed! The truck is a Ford Ranger 2014 with a 3.6-liter diesel engine in it. It was really weird to drive again, really weird!

 I am so glad that Cole got his mission papers in!!!!! That is so great! I can’t wait to find out where he will be called to go serve. 

We are going to have a “Light the World” activity in the park for Christmas this year and it is going to be pretty fun. I'll let you know more about it as it gets closer.   

Yeah, mom, that is our apartment building that you had found on Google Earth.
Our apartment is the far right one on the third floor.

 The pig meat they cook here to eat is not super-good tasting, but the tongue isn´t as bad as you might think. It is a lot of people’s favorite part here in Argentina. I always told dad that I have a stomach of steel! It did not taste like bacon though, but more like a greasy pork chop.

Elder Slade got my cold from me, so I felt bad about that all week. Whatever sickness I got, seriously sucks. My head hurts all the way down the tips of my teeth. I think I may have some issues with my sinuses.  

I love you guys! I was thinking the other day that I really do have the best parents in the entire world. I haven’t been writing in my journal as much as I should. It is so hard to find time, but I still have written down pretty much everything that has happened to me on my mission. I have only missed a few days. I need to do better. I think the whole driving thing was the highlight of this week but other than that just a normal office week.

I love you all and miss you,

Chau,

Elder Nate Pendleton

Merry Christmas Everyone!