Hey, Everyone,
We (my companion and I) didn´t get transferred this week, everything is staying the same. Elder Afane and Elder Pedernera two Elder’s I have worked with before just got moved to the office this week. The weather is really hot here and we sweat a lot!
The weather here is in the 100’s already and they say it hits 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in January!
We have found a few new investigators, we will see if they progress. I am really glad about what A said about me, and what Elder Ashby´s mom said too! (I sent Nate some kind words from these two great women that they had shared with me about him.
It’s always good to hear good things other people say about you, right?)
[I asked Nate about the toucans he saw at an investigators house, were they nice or were they mean and what they’d do if he got too close to them, and he said Those toucans would probably kill me! Haha! They were making really loud noises at me! Haha! I have a healthy fear of Fruit Loops, now! Haha! Just kidding!
He (Nate) said that he had some investigators that were going to go on vacation to a place called Pirane and so I (Nate’s mom) looked it up on Wikipedia because I was curious about where that was and what the place was like. This is what I shared with him in my letter to him;
“So those people that you were going to teach, were going on vacation to Pirane, huh? Did you know that I looked it up and on Wikipedia, and it says that the Guaraní name for Pirane is translated as "rotting fish,"? It originated from the sight of parched lagoons during an especially severe drought? Well, hopefully, you guys can share the "Living Water" with them and end that drought! Haha!]
(Back to Nate’s letter)
Tell President Grappendorf I said, Hi!
To be honest, this week was tough with teaching because we don´t have a ton of investigators but we have worked very hard this week and we are determined to get a baptism this transfer! This area shouldn´t be so hard to get a baptism in, but it is. We found some new investigators and one of them has accepted to be baptized! Things are looking up! Our area is just more in the city than a lot of the other areas in the mission.
Also, this week it was funny, we visited this dude and we chatted about the gospel while munching a perfectly cooked pig face! Hahahaha! He just had a pig head on his plate and he cut us off a slice. To be honest, it was nasty, but we ate it anyway, Haha.
[ I wanted to share with you what Nate’s companion had to say about this experience in his letter home to his family. By the way, Elder Ashby is such an awesome writer, he makes you feel like you are right there experiencing it yourself]
He wrote; We were contacting a menos activo (less active), and walked up to his house to go talk to him. He and his little Columbian friend who sells furniture from a cart were sitting out front of the house talking, enjoying a nice meal and the slightly colder day. But we started to talk to them, and asked if we could share a scripture, they both accepted, and then M, the menos activo, offered us some of his food. I hadn´t noticed until that moment that they were eating a pig head.
Now, this was not your average Hawaiian roast pig. Oh no! They just had the head., and it was still complete! I´m talking still-had-the-yellow-teeth-and-course-hair-and-tongue-in-it complete! Now, naturally, it would be rude to not accept such a kind gesture, so both of us accepted. Elder Pendleton got a small piece of greasy meat, and I was handed a much larger piece, complete with part of the ear, a furry piece of skin, some flesh, a healthy dosage of thick fat, and what I think was part of the ear canal, but to be honest I´m not completely sure. Elder Pendleton ate the meat off his piece, then he super covertly threw the rest of it into the nearby bushes when nobody was looking. I, on the other hand, had no handy-dandy bushes. So I just took two nice large bites of the most edible bits, struggling to tear the meat off a rock hard furry piece of leather, and then covertly held the rest in my hand. As we sat down, I swung my backpack off my back, and put it down in front of me on the ground, whilst, at the same time, dropping what was left of the meat on the ground behind my backpack and slightly under my chair, so that neither of the people we were talking to could see it. I may or may not have been playing the Mission Impossible theme song in my head as I did it. Tom Cruise, eat your heart out. I then spent most of the rest of the lesson trying to devise a way to hide it when I finally stood up and had to put my backpack back on. I had finally decided that I was going to stand up, and in the same movement, scoot my right foot back and put it on top of the meat to hide it, then as I would turn to leave, I would spin on that same food to dig the meat into the dirt, successfully obscuring it and saving the day once again. I had it all planned. Then his dog just snuck under my seat and ate it. I am 100 percent sure that dog received a revelation from God, and I thanked him for it afterwards!
Say Hi to Zane, Miranda and Max for me! I love that max loves cars! We are going to be such good buddies after my mission! I can´t believe Grandma has a turbo on her car, now! I want to drive it!!!!
Anyway, love and miss you all!
Chau!
Elder Nate Pendelton
Out Tracting...
Argentina Sunset...
