October 23, 2017

Tea Time with Elder Gagnon

Hello beautiful outside world! I had a real good week to be honest. My new companion, Elder Gagnon, is an answer to prayers. The guy is a stud. We know how to work hard play hard for sure.

       Last Monday was kinda like a blue moon for us missionaries. We had a holiday fall on a p-day which never happens. I dunno what holiday it even was but I do know there was a pretty neat little fair that we were allowed to go to and buy ghetto stuff we don't need so that was way fun. There was a man there who did something called spacepainting. What it basically is is he takes spraypaint and makes these insane landscape paintings with em. They made me think of you Jed and all your spraypainting adventures!! We couldn't resist so we bought two each for cheap and hung them up in our pension. We also found an old nature calendar and put all those pictures up too. So yeah you could say we're making the pension a home. We also put our weekly plans on the window in whiteboard marker and put up a ton of dots on our map. Oh yeah and Elder Gagnon burns incense. So yeah, definitely breaking in the pension.

     I think I had my favorite visit we have ever had this week. We were walking by this old guy and we told him "good day" and he quickly spat back "what's so good about it? I'm 85 years old and have already died twice!" So of course, we went back and talked to him. Imagine a stereotypical old sailor and that's exactly what this guy looked like and was! I dunno how, but we ended up going in his house and there was cobwebs and dust everywhere. I legit thought I was talking to a ghost. It was so dang weird it was awesome. He told us about his pact with the devil he made and how he wants to be the secretary in hell. Then he showed us a massive scar on his stomach where he had all his intestines taken out and cleaned then put back in. It was just straight creepy. We're gonna go back this week too ;)

Well, the thing I look forward to every day now is tea time. Tea time takes place from 10-10:25 each night outside our pension. We prepare light crackers and jam or some other snack and have mate cocido every night. (mate cocido is kinda like herbal tea). So yeah, we just chill outside and light up an incense and then just sip our mate cocido and talk about life and the mission and just whatever we want. It's so dorky that it’s fun. And it's such a change of pace that it has increased my mental health by like 300%. 

Con amor,

Elder Nixon

I didn't take too many pics this week. So here's two pics from tea time (one with and the other without flash :)) and the other pic is of the sunrise this morning which is nowhere near as good as Utah sunsets but is still pretty dang dope I think!!

October 16, 2017

Assassin

Well today is the day of transfers. I killed Elder Bareiro (means I sent him home to his house if you're not familiar with missionary terminology) and received my new companion. His name is Elder Gagnon and I'm super excited to be comps with him. He's from Tennessee and here’s the fun part- I'm going to kill him too, meaning he will finish his mission with me in 6 weeks. To have a trainee kill both of their trainers is almost unheard of, so we will see how it goes!

The language is coming along a lot better. I think I made a lot of progress with it this week but I'm not sure how having an American companion is going to affect all that now. As hard as it was to have a Latino comp at the very beginning, it forced me to use Spanish a ton and as a result I improved a lot faster so I'm going to have to be really disciplined this transfer to keep up the same rate of progress!

Honestly not much happened this week. I guess the most noteworthy thing would be because everyone knew Elder Bareiro was going home, they all wanted to feed us so we ate like kings this week. We had an asado (expensive argentine bbq) almost every day this last week. To give you some perspective, most missionaries have 1 or 2 asados per transfer and I think I had close to 8 or 9. So yeah to say I've put on some weight this transfer would be a fair statement. 

I'm not sure what more to put. I had more blood sausage this week. The first time I tried it, it was raw and not that bad, but this time it was cooked and as a result bled everywhere and my plate and definitely was not my favorite thing, but I choked it down to avoid offending anyone. So yeah that stunk. 

Dang all I can think to write about today is food and it’s probably cuz I'm starving so I'm gonna go find food. Love you all!!!!

Con amor,

Elder Nixon

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL BABY!!!

pics of me and Elder Bareiro leaving our pension, me with an asado y our last district meeting!!

October 9, 2017

Hola everybody! I hope you all had a great week and are enjoying your fall weather and all the changing leaves because it is heating up south of the equator. I have no idea how hot it actually is because everything here is in the metric unit, but it's really humid too. My companion tells me I haven't seen anything yet too, so come December when you're all in the snow, I'll be a puddle in the calle. 

I think the best day this week was probably Tuesday. We started the day with a district meeting which went really good! Then our Zone leaders dropped by for the day to go on divisions with me and Elder Bareiro. I went out with Elder Xavier. He's a Brazilian and is absolutely insane. He's super funny and energetic but can be super serious and spiritual when he needs to be. He's a stud and it was way fun to spend the day with him especially cuz he bought me a giant ice cream cone :) Anyways, during divisions we walked past a man and women drinking mate and smoking outside their house as is the custom here. As we walked past, we both felt like we should turn around and talk to them. At first, they kinda made fun of us and were really suspicious. Elder Xavier handled it so well though and they really opened up. When the conversation turned to how young we are, I took the opportunity to jump in. I told them about how the reason I'm in Argentina at only 18 years old is because I love God and know He has revealed his truth to the earth again and that we can find answers in the Book of Mormon. The spirit was really strong and the next thing I knew they let us in and we started teaching them. The first thing Rosana (the woman) did was tell us why she wanted to talk more. She told us about how her dad died and all she believed in know was death and suffering. You could tell she was pretty bitter to God and even had a Grim Reaper necklace on. Well, she wanted to know why her dad had to suffer so much. We started teaching the Plan of Salvation like clockwork and used so many scriptures in the Book of Mormon. We left them with the book and are going to return tomorrow to talk more. It was an awesome mission experience though. We didn't plan to teach the Plan of Salvation that day, but we each had so many scriptures and the right words to say come to mind when we needed them. It was awesome!

We had a baptism in Carcarana this week! Her name is Candela and she's one of the investigators of the other Elders in our district. So it wasn't my first baptism but it was still super powerful and the spirit was really strong. President Allred even came which surprised all of us. The service was super good and it reminded me why I'm here. It all went so perfectly minus the cake I tried to bake for it.....I won't tell you what happened to that.

The other noteworthy thing this week was our trip to Rosario for interviews. It went really good and I love President Allred so much. He was behind schedule, yet still made me feel like he had all the time in the world to help me. After interviews we went to McDonalds. It's nothing like it is in America. It's kinda the same taste but way better. Also they have like 25 employees behind the counter making the food and they just blast their music and have a grand old time. It's kind of the social hub of Rosario actually. Definitely not like the dumps in the states! So yeah that was fun to get a Big Mac in Argentina :)

Sorry this email is so long but we did a lot this week and it was definitely a good one! To close, I'd like to request all your prayers that Argentina qualifies for the World Cup cuz they might not and if the one time in my life I live in a culture that loves soccer, they don't play in the world cup, I might cry.

Con amor

Elder Nixon

The first picture is all 6 Elders in our pension having a lunch we cooked. The second is what happens anytime an Elder falls asleep on the bus-it must be documented. The last one is a pic from the baptism this week!!!

October 2, 2017

I ate blood :)

Well, to everyone concerned about my ability to understand conference- a miracle happened. I did not receive the gift of tongues, but I did receive splits with another American in my district and a computer lab to stream in English. So yeah, I was able to watch in English as we pigged out on Alfojores and I was a happy missionary because of it. My favorite talk was President Nelson's. I told you all a few weeks ago but I'll repeat it here. The Book of Mormon is VITAL to conversion. If you wanna be happier and closer to the Savior, the Book of Mormon is the way to do it. 

       This was probably my favorite week so far. I don't know what happened, but something finally clicked inside me and even though understanding is still in the coming, I don't feel so stressed and Carcarana just is my home right now. I'm not afraid to talk to people anymore and Spanish is coming along so much faster. It's going really good right now. I still have mountains to climb in the language, but I can finally see the summit and it's motivated me like I haven't been before. That and my comp got sick on Wednesday, so I had a whole day to study and rest again so that definitely helped as well!!

       We have another tentative baptism coming up this month. His name is Angel, he's 14 and he's a stud. Lots of the guys here are so into drugs and alcohol they don't know what to do with life. He wants more for his future and I'm pretty sure he has recognized he can find that in the gospel of Jesus Christ so that has been a definite high point teaching him this week. I'm really hopeful about his progress. 

       Well let’s finish with some more fun facts about life in Argentina. The value of the Peso is a joke here. To illustrate that, let me tell you about what happens when you don't have the exact change. They give you little candies, no questions asked. It's just how it is. So yeah, they use candy for change. Food is super oily here also. A regular meal consists of lots of noodles and pastas and some sort of small portion of chicken. On good days, we get beef, and on incredible days we get ASADO. It's basically Argentine barbeque but is so good. I had my first time with it this week and I'm in love. I also tried BLOOD SAUSAGE this week which is exactly what it sounds like and it really wasn't half bad!!! 

Love you all!!!

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!!!

Con amor,

Elder Nixon 

Here are the pics for the week. This one is our District (me, Elder Bareiro, Elder Mallet  and Elder Argyle) prepping for one of our many service projects. This one is when we put concrete on a ceiling and it all fell off and was a monumental waste of time!!! :)

This one is Elder Argyle and I watching conference in our own room in comfy chairs while everyone else sat on a hard wooden pew.