November 20, 2017

Thanksgiving and Being Poor

Well, a lot of you have asked me if I have Thanksgiving and if you can believe it, Argentina doesn't celebrate pilgrims surviving in America. It's a real shame but what'll you do? Today is a holiday though. Don't ask me what it's called or why they celebrate it but no one is working or going to school today. That's another fun thing about the culture here. There is literally a holiday every other week and no one ever knows why but they know they don't have to work!!

Last P-day was pretty interesting. We went to the city so my comp could by some souvenirs before going home this next week. While there we got really hungry but couldn't find a restaurant anywhere. Eventually we found one and just sat down without thinking we were so hungry. Let's just say when they handed us our menu we knew we were out of our league. They charged us 40 pesos just to use their silver wear. But yeah, we stayed and ate there all the same. It was funny to see 4 poor missionaries eating in this super nice place. Everyone kinda looked at us funny but whatever. I don't have any more money to buy groceries, but the experience is worth it right? When else am I going to buy a 200 peso Milanesa?

The best part of this week however was seeing some of our long time investigators finally start making some real progress. It's happening because they're finally reading the Book of Mormon on their own. Let me just remind you all that the key to spiritual development is consistent daily acts! 

It's a great time to be alive people! Go out and do some good in the world today :)

Con amor, 

Elder Nixon

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL

One of us eating at Don Ferreros, another with a crazy ward member doing service 

November 13, 2017

Monotony

Well world I really don't have much to say this week. It was a super routine week but still really good at the same time. The heat here is starting to straight kill me and I'm told it's not even bad yet. I guess to fill some space I'll tell you all some more about the culture here cuz that's always kinda interesting to hear about right? Before that though, huge shout out to my sister Meghann for making me an uncle this week! Uncle Elder Nixon. I think it has a pretty great ring to it.

If you don't know what the siesta is, you're probably going to be jealous of it. Pretty much what it is is every day from 1-6 the whole country just goes to sleep. The businesses close and literally no one is in the streets. We ususally do our studies then or meet with members. Um, men think the world is their toilet here and seeing women breast feeding is nothing. Also last Sunday Boca played against River (a huuuugee rivalry) and literally no one would even answer the door to talk to us during it. So yeah, soccer is HUGE here and everyone wants to know who you support. For me it's Rosario Central or nothing....

Yeah sorry this email is so lame but I gotta run. We're going to Rosario for Pday today to do some souvenier shopping for my comp who is going home after this transfer so maybe I'll buy myself something nice :)

Elder Nixon

Here's just a pic of us outside our pension. Yes, that is some razor wire on our neighbors fence. Welcome to Argentina.

November 6, 2017

More drunks, pass along cards and Halloween

Hola mundo! Dang I won't lie to you all, language is at a weird point right now for me. I can pretty much understand what people are saying to me finally but I can't really talk back too effectively. And all at the same time it's been so long that I've really had a solid conversation in English that lots of times English feels weird in my mouth too. So basically right now I don't have a language I'm proficient in but what ya gonna do?? :)

       Well Halloween was depressing for me because I didn't realize it was Halloween until 6 in the afternoon but once I realized what day it was, Elder Gagnon and I switched nametags and I was Elder Gagnon for Halloween! We also went to a sweet shop and I bought myself lots of alfojores so that was nice.

       We met a pretty cool drunk dude this week. He yelled at us to come over and just started begging us to help him change his life. We told him we'd bring him to church with us and he loved the idea but when we came Sunday morning to get him, he was too hung over to be woken up by our loud clapping and knocking so we eventually just gave up.

       We had a hard day as far as the work goes. Our best investigador Angel straight up moved within a day on us. Like we had dinner with his family one night and during the conversation he told us "oh yeah, I leave tomorrow morning to go live with my dad in Santa Fe." So yeah, that was really hard but hopefully he keeps on learning and progressing!!

Also huge shout out to my mom for her birthday this last week. She's incredible and I love her so much!!!

Elder Nixon

The first pic is what happens on a p-day after playing soccer way to hard in the sun. You make a sofa out of your mattresses and buy a kilo of ice cream and put a fan in front of your face. The second pic is me and Elder Gagnon wearing each other's name tags. The dude's a stud and definitely a really good friend to me!

October 30, 2017

Drunks, pass along cards and questions

Hola familia y amigos! Como andan con ustedes? Sometimes I feel like I need to write just a little bit in Spanish just so every single word isn't underlined in red so if you can't understand that just throw it in Google translate and it will probably mess up what it actually means but if you could find out what it means you'd realize it's super anti-climatic anyways so yeah....

Um it was another pretty basic week but really good too. I guess one of the highlights would be one day we were doing service for a member digging up tree roots (which felt pointless but we got blessings so oh well) and while we were digging this dude came by riding his bike. He was so drunk he fell off his bike and we had to go pick him up and he just laid in the middle of the road until someone called the police to get him. So yeah, that was kinda fun I guess.

We had divisions with the zone leaders this week again. They're super good guys and so that's always fun to have them come spend the day with us. We got pretty bored right before bed so we had a pass along card throwing competition. What resulted was we literally threw every single pass along card we own (which is a TON) at a balloon in an effort to pop it. We succeeded eventually but made a huge mess so there was a trade off I guess!!

On more of a spiritual note, we had a really good experience with Talia and Angel and everyone in la familia Loca. I dunno how much I've wrote you all about them but pretty much they are this ginormous family that is loud and proud and has pretty much every problem imaginable but we work a lot with them and they're really good friends. We had a lesson with them this week that was super powerful. We came by and they were all outside drinking mate so we sat around and joined em. What made the lesson so good was they had lots of questions and we just had more of a conversation than a lesson and we all learned so much more that way. So if you ever need to learn something, learn to ask questions and search for the answers. This gospel is built on asking questions and then finding the answers through God. 

Con amor

Elder Nixon

This is actually the only picture I took this week which is sad. It's what we made for dinner one night. What it is is a cake made out of egg and potatoes and yeah it's weird.