My Missionary Adventures in Argentina Elder Nate Pendleton: Baby pigs and mangos, service opens doors...

Hey, Everyone,

We are actually teaching those people that we served last week, now! They are pretty awesome. We will see what happens with them!

So, we had a stroke of bad luck on Saturday and we think M might not want to talk to us anymore, but we aren´t sure why. : (

We went by his house in the morning to take him to church, Sunday, but he wasn´t there. G, a new investigator, told us she would come to church on Sunday on Saturday night, but she didn’t show up either. Juan also didn´t come, and A did not come either. So, I don´t know what to do with all of them anymore. We might have to start dropping some people we are teaching because they aren’t keeping their commitments to attend church, but we will see. Anyway, I have just been a little down because I just can´t seem to get a baptism, but whatever, I will just keep trying!

Yeah, my companion is great! My companion loves trucks and he knows a lot about fixing cars. He won the Weber State Auto Competition against all the other schools in the state! I am learning a lot from him, Haha!

I am doing my best with trying to be a good example to him. I am a little self-critical but my companion says I am doing fine as his trainer, there is always something to work on! We had a zone activity where we all went and worked in one area to find as many people to share the gospel with as possible. It was really successful! I didn´t have to do much as a district leader this week, it was just a pretty normal week. The member with the alcohol problem that I gave a blessing to last week is a little better.

So, this week has been interesting, we talked to this crazy dude that said the Holy Ghost told him to kill his family, but that it didn´t tell him to kill us because we were servants of the Lord. Scary. Right? He just kept talking and talking, and it was really hard to understand him, but anyway he was just a little crazy. Then this lady asked us about the Golden Tablets of Moses that Joseph Smith found. Haha. We were like that is actually the Book of Mormon, Hahahaha! There is so much misinformation out there about our beliefs.

We also saw toucans this week, the big birds with the huge beaks!!! We are going to try to get pictures of them the next time we go to that ladies house!!! M showed us his baby pigs! Chanchitos!!! Haha! They were pretty awesome, Haha! The mangos are also starting to grow on all the trees here and there are going to be millions of them, there are mango trees at every house, and there are a million mangos hanging on each one!!! I can´t wait!

I will never go hungry while contacting, Haha! Anyway, that is pretty much it for this week. We are just going to keep trying our best to get baptisms!

Love you,

Chau, Chau!

Elder Nate Pendleton

( From Nate’s Mom...)

I’d like to share a story I found in Nate’s companion’s group email about an experience they had this week in the mission field, that I thought was so worth sharing. I hope Elder Ashby won't mind me sharing it here on Nate’s blog.

Elder Ashby writes:

We were walking home the other night after visiting an investigator way out in Lote 4, and a man on the street stopped us. He was kind of in a bad way, and I´m pretty sure he was either drunk or high on something. He didn´t say a whole lot, but he stopped us and said basically ´Hey. I know you guys are servants of God, and I see you guys walking around all the time helping people and preaching the word of God. I know that there are angels with you, and I was wondering if you could say a prayer for me right now because I am having a hard time in my life right now.’ Elder Pendleton and I were kind of surprised, but we agreed, and we all just stood in the middle of the street while busses and motos and cars screamed by and people walked around us, and said a prayer out loud for this guy right on the sidewalk. After we finished, he thanked us, shook our hands, and then walked off.

It really amazes me how nearly everybody here, even if they don´t want to listen or believe what we are teaching, they still believe that we have power. We have had a lot of really nice folks stop us and tell us that they don´t want to listen to our message because they´re some religion or another, but they always say they respect what we are doing and the sacrifice we are making and how they know we are people of God.