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...