New Area and New Companion (week 25)

Dear Everyone,  I am now in Mercedes. It is one of the oldest missions in all of south america. My new comp is Elder Wihongi. He's awesome! He is from New Zealand, he's 6'5 (and probably 3x my weight), and he's big into Rugby. We are quite the sight to see walking down the streets of Mercedes. A 6'4, skinny, white Yankee and a 6'5, buff, Polynesian. He speaks English with a really cool British accent and he speaks Spanish about as good as I do, it's made tracting a little difficult, but what we lack in verbal skills, we're trying to make up with sheer determination.  

We have bikes here, but so far, it has NOT made my life easier.  I got a flat on my second day here, so I changed out the tire and went on my merry way. Next day......got another flat. We stopped and I filled it up with air. Later that same day.....got another flat!!! At this point it's 6:30 in the evening and we're about 7 miles away from the train station that would take us back to our apartment, and the train was going to leave at 6:45. I had to ride on the handlebars of Elder Wihongi´s  bike while he pedaled and I tried to hold on for dear life. The best part was seeing peoples faces as we passed them!!! Haha! 

This area is huge!!!!! We literally have a cross section of all walks of life. We have a giant, rich, historic city. Then we have farm fields and dirt road towns. We have apartment buildings, the embassy and huge, beautiful giant catholic cathedrals. And then some really poor areas. We have random towns that can only be reached by taking a train. We have people who live in Huts and on farms and are very poor and then people who live in homes and apartments and are very wealthy. It's very diverse. Its awesome, but huge!!! Which makes the bike situation so frustrating. We've had to do a lot of walking because of the bikes, but hopefully Heavenly Father will bless us this week and I'll have nice, full tires! If not, I'll have to get comfortable riding on Elder Wihongi's handlebars. I just wish my legs weren't so long. They drag on the ground unless I hold them up. Oh well, the Lord will provide a way. 

So, Elder Wihongi has been here for ten months. And I've been in Argentina for 5 months. There are two other missionaries in our apartment. Elder Sales and Elder Lopez. Elder Sales is from Brazil, he's been here for 6 months. Elder Lopez is from Guatemala and he has been here for ONE WEEK. We have to sister missionaries in our district also, ones been here for 7 months and the other 4 months. Elder Sales is the district leader and I think we have the youngest district in the entire world!!!!!

But anyway me and Elder Wihongi worked super hard this week and visited a bunch of people. We found some new people and we have 4 people right now with a baptisimal date. We also have alot of great other possibilities! Also, and the ward here LOVES missionaries. It's awesome here and I'm super excited for this area. I was sad to leave Villa Tesei, but Mercedes is going to be amazing! Sorry I can't send any pics. I forgot my adapter for my camera. I'll send a bunch next week.

Love,

Elder Ren Porter

I stalked blogs and Facebook and found some random pics of ren's new comp on the "Buenos Aires West mission" Facebook page. This is Elder Wihongi...these are from the MTC (sorry to whoever I copied these pictures from!)

In this pic, from the MTC, Elder Wihongi, is the one on the very end (in case you hadn't figured that out on your own)