Happy Day of the Pioneer!!!!

Hey, Everyone!

Happy Day of the Pioneer!!!!!!!!!!

            We are going to celebrate the day by eating lots of Alfajores!  This week has been sooooo much better! I'm so much happier this week. I really have been trying to be a happy missionary and trying to show my love for the people down here in Argentina.

            We finally had an investigator in church this week!!!!!!!!!!! A, came!!!!! She is so awesome,   I also took a nighttime landscape photo behind A´s house. On Saturdays it is burn all your garbage day!!! Haha! It was sooooo gross trying to take the picture, but worth it! We also went on divisions this week and we went to a place called Nuevo Formosa. It is a government neighborhood and all the houses there look the same. The work is improving a lot and we are working very hard. I think things are going a lot better.

            So, we saw like 8 monkeys up in this tree the other day!!!! There was a mom with a baby monkey on its back. There was also a big black one, and they were climbing around using their tails and stuff. It was awesome!!!  It is something most other missionaries won’t get to see on their missions here.

             Also, there was this crazy dog fight we were a part of!!!!! This dog started fighting with this other dog and the owner was like screaming and hitting the dog and pulling on its tail to get it to stop attacking the other dog. The two dogs had their jaws locked on each other’s faces. There was sooooo much blood!!! Elder Hopkins started pulling on the tail of one of the dogs and I was going to kick the other dog to get it to stop fighting because that is just what you need to do down here in Argentina, but I didn´t want to offend anyone, so I didn’t end up doing it. Fortunately, some bystanders ran up and started soccer kicking the dogs, crazy hard to get them to stop fighting. Then another dog got involved and started attacking and so the other hurt dog left and the other two dogs started fighting! They finally got them separated! It was the craziest thing I have ever seen! Haha! There was blood everywhere!  

Also, today we cleaned our pension (apartment) like crazy. I had to tie a t-shirt around my face to not breathe in all the mold dust and paint chips. We sprayed all of the mold with bleach to kill it. It is so much better now!

 Thank you very much for all your support and love! The Church is True!

Chao,

Elder Pendleton  

  Nighttime Landscape photo behind A's house

Saturday Garbage Burning

Nuevo Formosa - Government Housing

Divisions during the week

"The Last Supper" display here in Formosa

Cleaning the Pension...

New President, Zone Conference

The new president Elder Alejandro S. Patanía, is awesome and the Multi-Zona was the best one I have had so far! It was probably because I could finally understand everything that was being said. The new president gets things done but nothing much in the mission has really changed yet. Elder Afane is awesome! He and I are pretty good friends and I’m also good friends with Elder Pedernera.

            The blisters on my feet kept on coming this whole week because of all the walking, but all of them are finally healed up, so things are good now. This week I was better at trying to be Christlike, but I have felt really down in the dumps this week. We still couldn´t get anyone to come out to church. A almost came to church, but she didn´t want to come without a friend, so we need to find her a friend. A is awesome! She reads and prays and she will probably go to church next week! We also found this family and we taught them about the Restoration and then they asked us something about the Plan of Salvation and we told them that we were going to teach them about that next time, and they were like “No, we can´t wait!” so we taught them about that too! We were in their house for like 2 hours, Haha! They are awesome!  

             I am getting better everyday with the language and it isn´t really much of a problem anymore. My Spanish is better than in the video that Sister Salto took too!( posted below) I wish you could hear how good it is! I actually can speak pretty well now. We always have people tell us: “Ustedes son muy lindos con sus ojos claros.” or they say, “Todos los Mormones tienen pelo rubio y son guapos tambien” Haha!. (You are very handsome with your clear eyes”, or they say, “All Mormons have blond hair and are handsome too! Haha!) I am really glad that Elder Hopkins is my companion. We work well together.This week we boiled the fish heads, and boy did they stink! The Piranha teeth we wanted out of them turned out way better than we thought they would. We also finally got our water heater fixed and now I can take a hot shower!  

            Brother Horner is going to be an awesome Bishop!!!  His councilors will do great too!

 Will you tell Bishop Anderson, thank you for helping me so much! The new fridge that you got looks awesome!  I am glad you got to go to a car show! I love how cars can bring people together. I compliment people’s cars down here to start conversations with them when we are out contacting them about the Gospel, Haha!  Wow, that is awesome that, that guy that you had just barely met there handed you a twenty-dollar bill to give to me for my mission. I can’t believe how nice some people can be! I am also glad that you saw and talked with Rylan’s family there too!

   Thanks for all your support. This week went by so fast I didn´t take many pics, but I will try and send more next week.  Love you all!

Chau Chau!

Elder Nate Pendleton

Video of me and my companion speaking Spanish...

  My District...

Elder Afane and Elder Pedemera at Zone Conference...

My front door...

My Piranha Teeth...

Listening to the Spirit...

 Hey, Everyone,

The work has been good this week it started with us getting a call that we needed to go to Resistencia.We were there for two days to do paperwork and we also have to go back there tomorrow after the Multi-Zone conference. I will also get to meet the new Mission President, tonight. This week we couldn´t go to see A, our investigator because she lives far away and the buses weren´t running because of the Argentinian Independence Day holiday. At the beginning of the week, I walked so much that my left foot had six blisters on it and the right one had four. We used the buses, but still, my feet got destroyed. We have been struggling to get any investigators to commit to anything. We find good people, but they just want to listen to the word of God, but they tell us before and after we teach them, that “I am Catholic and I will not change.” At least we are planting seeds.

I don´t know how much more clearly we can teach the people, but this week I am just going to teach them with more love and just ignore the excuses. The members of the church here are awesome though, and they all have great testimonies. We still get to teach in church every Sunday. This mission experience really makes me want to work hard in the future to accomplish my dreams. I am sick of hearing things like you can´t do it, but I am going to do it, and one day I hope to be able to preach with such power that everyone I teach will want to get baptized!

            On our Independence Day, July 4th we were traveling to Resistencia, and the 9th of July (Argentina’s Independence Day) was the worst day ever because everyone was drinking and listening to crazy loud music and no one wanted to talk with us. I’m so glad the family was able to get together for the 4th.

            This week I did have one experience with the Spirit. We were planning as we usually do and we had some names written down to go visit that day. I had a prompting to switch the names to a different order so we changed them, we went to one of the people and he wasn´t home, I felt like we needed to contact the house at the end of this little alleyway we were in, so we went down there and we found this awesome lady who let us in and we taught her a great lesson. We had almost turned around and walked out of the alley and I don´t know if we would have found her if we wouldn´t have gone to the other guy's house first, so that was a cool experience.  I do my best to feel the spirit, I just need to work even harder I guess. I feel like we are the most obedient missionaries in the entire mission. One of these days someone will want to progress and get baptized. I do love the people here it is just hard sometimes being the weird kid in church clothes all the time! I love you all!

Silly face with my companion... We call this the Shenanigan McFlanigan face (It's a Pendleton Family inside joke...)

Standard of Truth

My Pension

A picture Sister Salto sent to my mom on Friday.

Chao,

Elder Nate Pendleton

Lot's of pasta and chunks of cow to eat oh, and piranhas!

Hey, everyone!

Things are great here in Argentina, lots of pasta, and chunks of cow to eat!

Happy 4th of July! America!

The work is going well. It is hard to get people to go to church but other than that we are doing great. The Spanish is going well too. I have learned a ton, lately. I can understand soooo much more Spanish now and can speak even more. It’s funny when people ask me, “Oh, you don´t speak much Spanish do you?” but it’s because I am just quietly watching them, and then I get mad and start talking a whole bunch so that they know that I can speak it. I am just quiet and need to speak up more. Haha!

We haven´t had much luck with our investigators this week, Country didn´t come to church and none of our other investigators came to church, either. It is sooo hard to get them to go!!!  I don´t know why they don´t come, its not that hard! The investigator who had her house flooded, and was excited to come back to church and get baptised has been hard to get back in contact with. We still can´t find P and I, at home, but we have this new investigator named A and her family, and they are awesome!  We visited them the other night and it was really cool, she lives by this Lagoon, and she was like: “Yeah, there are Piranhas in there.” So, she asked her neighbor to go out to the Lagoon and get some and within five minutes he had caught two Piranhas. He cut the heads off the fish and he gave the heads to us, Haha! We are going to dry out the Piranha heads so we can keep the teeth from them, Haha! We were sticking wood sticks in their mouths and they would bite clean through them! It was soooo fun!  

Look at those teeth, would ya!!!

It was also awesome because there was a nice, beautiful sunset over the Laguna de Los Indios, and the city was in the background. They also had many pigs and chickens running all around. We also ran into a bunch of drunk guys fishing Piranhas out of the lagoon and they were like; “ Hey, check out this meat and then a guy held this giant strip of meat in my face, Haha. They said soooo many funny things I don´t even have time to write them all, then on our way home these other guys asked if we were from Germany and we were like; “ No were from the United States.” and they were like;  “Oh good because we thought those Chileans in that neighborhood you went into were going to kill you for being German.” Apparently, Germany won some big soccer game or something.  

That is so awesome that Nathan and Cowley are going on missions, tell them I say, Hi!

I also can´t believe Kai Alger is coming home that soon, too!   I will let you know all about our new Mission President when I get to meet him. Elder Afane is awesome! He is super nice and he was super excited to meet me! Mom, I am glad you contact a lot of people in the mission and are able to talk to them! I will be sending pics of my new hat made out of Carpincho, (Worlds biggest rodent!) and some pics of the outside of the apartment (pension). Glad you are all celebrating the 4th of July. I think the 9th of July is a Holiday here in Argentina, but not sure. 

 

 I feel all of your prayers sooo much. My companion, Elder Hopkins is awesome and he is always happy. I know the church is true and that we have a purpose here on earth. I love all of you and hope all is good back home. I appreciate all of your support!

Chao,

Elder Nate Pendleton

 Here are some Pics! 

Me messing around with my Gaucho (Argentinian Cowboy) Clothes haha. That hat is made out of Carpincho. The world's biggest rodent! haha.

A Carpincho!

Outside my Pension...

P.S.  Also, I seriously want to feed all the Dogs here to the FIRE ANTS!!!!! They are soooo annoying with all their barking.