My Missionary Adventures in Argentina Elder Nate Pendleton: 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...