Nate's Letter Home - Dec 26, 2017

Well I probably don´t have a lot to say that I didn´t say yesterday. Except I forgot to tell you about the biggest hamburger I´ve ever eaten. So last Monday after we got done emailing we went to a burger restaurant called ArgenBurger. We didn´t have a lunch with members that day and it was only a week till Christmas so we decided to treat ourselves haha. Anyway, we both ordered the biggest thing they had, which was a hamburger that had 5 patties. It was huge! Couldn´t really get my mouth open wide enough to bite it. It was kind of a challenge to eat but it was amazing. Probably the most American thing I´ve ever eaten and it was while I´m in Argentina.

Speaking of hamburgers we found this one guy who is always on the side of the street cooking burgers on his grill. We´ve bought some from him twice now. He puts a fried egg on top of the patty then puts it on a bun and hands it to you. Then you can put like lettuce, tomatoes, and mayo on it. Honestly one of the best burgers I´ve ever eaten.

Well that´s probably about it. I honestly can´t really remember what happened this past week haha. It was kinda a slow week, and by that I mean we didn´t have a lot of success. But we have some new investigators that I think are very promising, I´ll probably just tell you about them next week though. In fact we are teaching them later today and already have plans to bring them to church this sunday.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. It´s a very special time of year, and a great opportunity to remember the Savior and all that we have because of Him.

Talk to you next week,

-Elder Shelton

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This is the stuff I got for Christmas:

-Boca mate set

-Argentina Messi jersey - it´s got a digital look to it, which if I understood what the guy told me correctly, is the new design they´ll be wearing for the World Cup.

-Black tie - We tried to take a picture that looked like it belongs in GQ

-This is the asado we had Christmas Eve

- My comp completed 1 year at the beginning of december and it´s tradition to burn a shirt, so here´s some pictures. Don´t worry, I have about 3 merit badges and my comp almost got his Eagle so we´re pretty much fire experts.

Nate's Letter Home - Dec 18, 2017

Before I forget:

We´re having dinner with members on Christmas (we´re having asado, which will be my first time having it) and we´re going to skype after. I will be calling at 8 pm... give or take a little. You know how it goes down here. I´ll try my best to call as close as possible to that. I think we´re 4 hours ahead so that we´ll be 4 for you. I think. I also think we´ll only have 1 hour to do it. Also, I think I´ll still be emailing next monday, so I might be able to tell you more then. But if not, just plan for 8 pm my time. 

The address to our pension is I think Albarracin 632. Not entirely sure about the 32, but I know we live on the 6th quadra of Albarracin. There´s three pensions that are all in the same building, and we´re in the middle one. Also the church is right around the corner on Homero. On the corner of Albarracin and Homero is a fruteria called Juaquin that we walk past every day and where we buy our fruit.

Click here to see this area in Google Maps

Nate's "pension" is the middle one (click for bigger)

Church building is just around the corner

Fruit stand on the corner

Also, I keep forgetting to send you this:

Elder Nathan Shelton
La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días
Misíon Argentina Buenos Aires Oeste
C.C. 92
1702 Ciudadela
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Maybe you already have this, but it´s the best address to use to send me letters. Speaking of letters, could you send me an envelope that has a bunch of US postage stamps inside it? We use pouch mail to send letters and I need US stamps if I want to send one.

Alright, now to talk a little bit about my week. I´ll get the most disappointing out of the way first. Our baptism didn´t end up happening. Everything seemed like it would work out. The dad got off work, and we had everything planned for the service. So saturday morning we went to the capilla to clean the font and then fill it up. Now let me tell you, that was not a very fun experience. There was still about half an inch of water left in there from whenever the last baptism was, so when we first opened the door we got attacked my a swarm of about a million mosquitos. We quickly shut the door and ran back to our pension to get the Raid spray. We burst back into the font guns blazing and massacred all the mosquitos. I think I forgot to mention that it was really dirty and nasty in there, and I think it was about 300% humidity tambien. So next, we had to get all the water out. We soaked up the water with a towel and squized it out into a bucket. We completely filled the bucket and the water was so dirty it was pretty much black haha. Then we cleaned out all the other nastiness that was in there, including a cockroach, and then we called it good and started to fill it up. It took about 3 hours or so to fill it completely, so it was a long day sitting in the church. Well long story short, we got a call from the family saying that we would have to do the baptism next week, they couldn´t make it today. They wouldn´t really tell us why. We were obviously pretty disappointed, but luckily the other elders in our pensh had a baptism that day too, so we didn´t fill the font for nothing. We´re definitely going to be passing by the family a lot this week to see qué pasó and to make sure they can actually make it this next saturday.

Also, transfers are tomorrow. Crazy to think I´ve already completed my first transfer in the field. Elder Pietz is staying with me in Mariano Acosta to finish my training. In fact 3 out of the 4 elders in our pensh are staying, Elder Chamberlain is moving over to Mereno. 

I should probably explain that pension means apartment, and we always call it the ¨pensh¨ so that´s why I´ve been saying that.

I think that´s basically all I got. Hopefully this baptism can happen this saturday. I guess the next time we talk it will be Christmas, still have a hard time believing that haha.

-Elder Shelton
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Here´s some pictures.

• The one picture is of my first cup of real mate. I actually really like it and I drink it pretty much every day now.

• The two girls are the little sisters of Gabriela who we are baptizing. Se llaman Abigail y Martina

Nate's Letter Home - Dec 11, 2017

It has been a hot week, I don´t think I´ve stopped sweating for like 5 days straight. Hard to believe you guys are below freezing right now haha. It also definitely does not feel like it´s almost Christmas. When we do contacts we always give them a little Light the World card with our number on it. I always feel weird talking about Christmas with people when I´m sweating and the intense sun is beating on me. The sun here is brutal. Luckily people always take mercy on us. They´ll bring us out something cold to drink and will invite us into the shade if there is any.

However, the past 24 hours was the worst by far. It was fast sunday yesterday, but we had a commitment with some of our investigators that we would bring breakfast to their house and eat with them and then go to church together. We´ve done this a few times because it´s about the only way to get investigators to go to church. So anyway we decided we would start fasting after our lunch we had with members. Well I´m here to tell you that it was not a fun 24 hours haha. We were out working all sunday afternoon and evening and it was a hot one. Pretty much non-stop sweating and walking. We got so thirsty. My mouth and throat felt like sandpaper. The good news is you don´t really realize how hungry you are because you´re so thirsty. I also found it funny that in my personal study this morning I read a little out of Jesus the Christ and happened to be at the part where Jesus fasted for 40 days and was tempted by Satan. After that, we went to our dristict meeting, where an Elder had brought 3 huge plates of the most delicious brownies I´ve ever seen. It was a pretty big tempation and I was reminded of what I read in the morning. We were able to resist somehow haha. Finally when we got back from the meeting and before we came to the ciber for emails we said a prayer to break our fast. I didn´t even eat anything afterwards, I just downed about a liter of water. I´m feeling a lot better now.

Some good news, Gabriela, one of our investigators, passed her baptismal interview on Wednesday and we´re planning on having the baptism this saturday, although it might have to be moved to the next saturday because the parents want to be there and they don´t know for sure if they can get work off this saturday. So if it ends up happening this saturday I´ll try to send pictures next monday. Also she said she wants me to baptize her so I guess I´ll be the one doing it.

A couple days ago we passed by our bishop´s house and he happened to be outside so we talked with him for a little bit. As we were leaving he asked when he could go out and work with us. We were kinda surprised so were just told him whenever he wanted to really. He told us he wanted to on sunday. So yesterday we met up with him and went out and worked. He served a mission in I think Chile, and he definitely knew what he was doing. We contacted a ton of people, and he is really good at telling people how it is. We stopped by this one guy sitting on the side of the street who was high on marijuana. We had a lesson with him right there and the bishop straight up called him to repentance and got him to commit to read the book of mormon and come to church next sunday. We got some new investigators thanks to him haha. He speaks with such conviction that the people can´t deny him. I´m pretty sure he could get anybody he talked with to be baptized. We definitely learned a lot from him.

Like I said, I´ve been reading in Jesus the Christ, and man does that book have a lot of stuff in it. One thing I read in it this week that I found really cool was that Jesus was not born with a perfect knowledge. He had the veil of forgetfullness placed on Him too. He had to learn line upon line, precept upon precept, recieve grace for grace, until He recieved a perfect knowledge of all things. It is the exact same way we learn. We can learn line upon line until one day we too can have a perfect knowledge. It just takes us a lot longer because we stumble and slip along the way.

I feel like I´m forgetting something but I can´t remember what so I guess that´s it. Hopefully you guys don´t freeze to death, and I´ll try to not get heat stroke. And hopefully the next time I write I´ll have had my first baptism.

-Elder Shelton

PS:  Also, could you find the Christmas piano book that has the What Child is This that I played in sacrament meeting last year, and could you scan those two pages and send them to me?  I still have it memorized, but a kid in our ward heard me play it and really liked it and asked if I could teach him how to play it. I told him I could probably give him the sheet music, and he said that would be ok.

Also to answer mom´s question, our other two roomates are Elder Chamberlain from Colorado and Elder Kindt from Utah.

Gotta go to lunch now which I´m pretty excited for because I´m starving.

PPS:  I forgot one more funny story. We had interviews with President on Tuesday. Ours was supposed to be at 6:30, but we got a text that president had arrived late and all the interviews were pushed behind by an hour and a half. So we took a bus to the chapel and got there at around 8. There was still a line of about 8 elders in front of us. So we sat and waited for a long time. I played the piano for quite a while. We were the last ones to go and we didn´t finish our interviews until 11:30 at night. We were so tired. President apologized for having us out so late and he gave us a ride in his car to our pension. Side not, that was the first time I´ve felt AC in a long time. But anyway, he could tell we were really tired so he gave us permission to sleep in an extra 30 minutes in the morning haha.

It was a really great interview though. He is an awesome person, really calm and relaxed, but very enthusiastic about missionary work.

Nate's Letter Home - Dec 4, 2017

It´s been an interesting week. Also there´s going to be some gross stories in here, so... you´ve been warned.

Before I forget, yes, I think I will be skyping you on Christmas, not sure what time yet though.

On Tuesday we had divisions with the zone leaders. I was kinda nervous, mainly because I didn´t know what to expect. It went pretty well though. I was with Elder Allen. He looks really familiar to me and I think it´s because of baseball. He played superleague but didn´t play in high school (he went to Bountiful) because he messed up his shoulder and couldn´t throw anymore. But I must have played against him before because he looks really familiar to me. I forgot to ask him what superleague team he played for though. Anyway, we stayed at their place that night and then in the morning we went with them to zone conference. We learned a lot of things there...or at least I tried to learn a lot of things, sometimes it´s hard to understand. But they gave us a new guide for teaching the restoration by mentioning baptism throughout the lesson in order to lead up to the baptimal invitation. We´ve used this new guide in our practices and lessons this week and we like it a lot. We got 2 more fechas with it. Our mission is really pushing for baptisms this month as I think you know. Each companionship is trying to get ¨Cuatro for Cristo¨. And I think for the whole mission we´re shooting for over a hundred baptisms. If we can find a way to get our investigators to church then I think we can get 4 this month, but that is proving to be difficult haha. 

Anyway after they taught us this they took us to this pretty cheto restaurant for lunch. (Cheto means like fancy or expensive I think, not really sure but people say it a lot) The food was pretty good, but if I´m being honest I probably would´ve prefered going to the Wendy´s that I saw there. Also they gave us both Pepsi and Coke, which is the first time I´ve ever seen Pepsi down here. The pepsi was pretty good but I don´t think it can beat Coke. Mom is probably going to disown me for saying that. Also they gave us some of the best ice cream I´ve ever had. Luckily I sat next to the Hermanas and so when they all didn´t finish their ice cream they gave it to me. On our way back from zone conference we had an experience that I´m definitely never going to forget, but I´ll save that for the end.

On thursday, our p day, I got sick. My stomach hurt all day and so after we did the stuff we needed to, like go shopping, I just layed in bed most of the day. I knew I was going to throw up, I was just waiting for it. Finally at about 3, I threw up. I felt a little better afterwards, so at 5 when P day ends I got dressed to go out. But I got super sick again and felt like I was going to pass out so we decided to stay in for the day. It was pretty rough, I didn´t have anything left in my stomach so I was dry heaving for the rest of the night. Well that night my comp started to feel sick too, and he felt really bad the next day as well so we didn´t get much done on friday either. Luckily we´ve all recovered now.

So yesterday we went to visit a reference that the bishop gave us. It was an inactive member named Cristian and his girlfriend and little kid. His girlfriend isn´t a member. So we had been talking with them for quite a while, not entirely sure what about to be honest, when I started to hear this weird noise. I quickly realized it was coming from the little kid on the mom´s lap. There was no mistaking that sound. That kid had just messed his pants, and it was definitely diarrhea. Well the mom reprositions the kid onto her shoulder and then grabs for the towel that was on the table. I´m like, oh no it must have gotten on her, but she just sets the towel on her lap and we continue on our conversation like nothing happened. Then the smell hits me. It was terrible haha. I´m trying my best to keep a straight face at this point, my comp is doing all the talking. Finally, after quite a while she decides to do something about it. She starts ripping off paper towels, and I´m thinking, is she gonna clean the kid right here in front of us? But no, she was cleaning herself. It had apparently ran right through that kids diaper and all over the mom. It was on her shorts and had run down her legs. She uses the paper towels to wipe herself off. Keep in mind that she doesn´t stop talking during all of this. Like we´re still having a normal conversation while she´s casually cleaning herself off. After she wipes it all up she finally takes the kid into another room and cleans him up. After all this we finally start lesson 1. During the lesson she breast fed the kid several times, but that is normal really, it happens during a lot of our lessons. Anyway, despite all this is was actually a good lesson and she was really open to what we were saying, and we now have a date set for her in January(because they still have to get married, which takes a long time.)

Alright, to get back to what happened Wednesday after zone conference. To be honest, some people might not want to read this. We were on the train that was headed to Lobos with 6 other elders. A ways into the ride, when we had just got up to full speed, we suddenly came to a hard stop. Everybody was confused because we were inbetween towns, definitely not at a station. A bunch of the passengers started saying something and then suddenly everybody was getting off the train. We were pretty confused, and at first my comp thought the part of the train had disconnected or something. We got off the train and saw that the train was still in one piece so it couldn´t have been that. That´s when we saw the big crowd that was gathered a ways back on the tracks. We went to go see what was up. I think at this point we realized what had happened, but we went anyway. When we got there most of the people had already left, and there were police cars there. If you haven´t already guessed, someone had been run over by the train. We were pretty close and got a view that I will definitely never forget. I won´t describe the details and you probably don´t want to know, but it was pretty bad. I didn´t sleep very well that night.

Well I probably shouldn´t have ended this on a bad note, sorry. But I´m doing great down here and we´re going to have another great week. Hope you guys have a great week as well. Thanks for the music btw, keep it coming. 

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Nov 27, 2017

Writing the date just made me realize that it´s been two months from today that I got on the airplane. Crazy to think about, the weeks have flown by.

We´re coming off of a bit of a spiritual high from yesterday because we were able to get 3 new baptismal dates. The first two we got were these people named Ricardo and Maria. They are in their forties. They were a reference from a recent convert. They were really friendly with us, invited us in, gave us some Coke. We talked about lesson 1 and the BoM with them. It was a really good lesson, they asked us a lot of questions and talked to us about a lot of stuff. Near the end my comp looked at me and gave me the nod, except I didn´t know which nod it was. He mouthes the word baptism to me and I´m like oh crap, he wants me to invite them to be baptized. I was pretty nervous but I have the invitation memorized so I was able to do it. They thought about it, and their first reaction was obviously that they don´t feel ready yet and they want to know more. We explained that we knew they weren´t ready yet but we also knew they could be ready by the 23 of december. They agreed to prepare themselves. That night we met with an investigator named Franco that a member had brought to church the past two weeks. He had a lot of questions for us, some of which were really hard questions, and we tried to answer them the best we could. We taught him lesson 1 as well and gave him a BoM. We asked if he would be baptized on the 30 of december, and he also said he didn´t feel ready yet. But we assured him we would help him be ready and so he agreed to prepare for that day.

On Tuesday we went out to Rio Legre, which is the part of our area that is more out in the sticks. We found several new investigators out there. But we clapped this one house which was really more of just a shack looking thing out in the middle of nowhere. After we clapped we saw this guy open the curtain he used as a door, with a huge knife in his hand. He doesn´t say a word, only gestures with the knife for us to come in, then walks back inside. Me and my comp looked at each other for a second, then we just shrugged and decided to go in. I remember as I saw my comp walk through the curtain to the house, I had the thought that there was probably a 47% chance he was going to get stabbed. Well, we didn´t. Turns out he was just cutting up some tomatoes and onions. He had a movie with Matt Damon in it blaring on his TV, so we could barely hear each other. But we tried to talk to him a little about the BoM. I´m pretty sure there was about a 90% chance that he was super high. Either that or he was just a super chill guy, hard to tell. Anyway, I found the whole experience kinda funny.

I should probably tell you about Friday. I think it was about 4 in the afternoon, we had come back to our apartment to change so we could do some service. But we got a call from the person and she told us we would have to do it next week. Well that´s not really important to the story, but anyway I was running up the stairs to grab something. I don´t remember what. There is tile on our top step, and that´s the one I slipped on. I landed on my right shin right on the edge of the stair. My comp was down in the bathroom and he must have heard the thump. He asked if I was ok and I told him I´d be ok. I paced around our room trying to walk it out, it felt like it was bruised pretty bad. After a while I noticed my pants were sticking to my leg, and so I rolled them up and saw my leg was bleeding everywhere. I went downstairs and my comp came out of the bathroom and helped me clean up the blood. The wound looked nothing like I was expecting. It´s like a circular hole in my shin, kinda looks like a bullet wound or something. I have no idea how, we went and looked at the stairs and didn´t find anything that would have done that. Anyway it wouldn´t stop bleeding so we just taped some gauz (no idea how to spell that) to my leg and called it good. We had a lesson to get to. Well when we got back at the end of the day after walking a ton, the gauz was soaked so we took it off, and we put some rubbing alcohol in it, which stung, and then put another bandage on it. The bleeding didn´t really stop until today, although it´s still oozing a little. But it is getting better. I got some pretty good pictures of it, looks like I got shot or something. 

Thursday night, a little while before we went to bed my comp reminded me that it was Thanksgiving. I had completely forgotten. I decided to eat one of the bag of Hi Chews I still had to celebrate. They were really tasty.

To answer mom´s question, I´m not supposed to recieve packages. There´s a good chance they´ll never get here, and if they do then I have to pay for the value of the stuff inside or something like that. Also, to answer your question about how much I cook, the answer is not much. The members here are amazing. They pass around a calendar each sunday to sign up to have meals with us. We have lunch pretty much every day with members. Some days we even have dinner. Breakfast is usually the only meal we have to worry about each day. I´ve mostly been eating eggs, probably too much eggs haha. I´ll usually scramble up about 7 eggs to eat each day. I eat cereal quite a bit too. 

I already know I´ve forgotten to write some stuff but I need to be done. Hope you have a great week.

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Nov 20, 2017

Hey fam,

I´m writing a bit later than usual today because the ciber we use for emailing was full so we went and ate lunch and did our weekly planning and then came back. Also, a few minutes ago we got interupted by the power going out. I´m not sure if it´s related but while the power was out we heard a bunch of guys yelling really loud and then the ciber owner went to see what was going on and ran back in and called the cops. I guess there was a fight or something. Anyway, a few minutes later the power came back and now I´m writing this.

It´s been another week of meeting a lot of amazing people, hearing a lot of spanish, not understanding much, lots of walking, and unfortunately a lot of appointments that have fallen through. Schedules don´t really exist here so it can be hard to catch people at their house. Although, some good news: we got a baptismal date. It was probably the easiest baptismal date I´ll ever get, but I´ll take it. We visited this family that has been inactive for a long time and they have a 9 year old daughter that hasn´t been baptized. We went there to talk a little about baptism but before we could ask her anything she flat out told us that she wanted to be baptized. We were like, well that was pretty easy, and we set the date for the 9 of december. I might be the one doing the baptism so I´m pretty excited for that, although we still have to teach her a few of the lessons and it´s a little difficult because her parents have to be there and they work a lot.

We have a few investigators that have some obstacles to overcome before we can set a date with them. This one guy Alfredo is a total capo (capo basically means stud). He reads from the book of mormon everyday, we had to give him this giant copy because he had trouble seeing the small one. The only problem is his smoking. He smokes a ton each day and he hasn´t been able to quit. He´s cut his smoking down a lot ever since he got the word of wisdom lesson, but he hasn´t been able to fully quit. I hope we can help him to. 

It´s crazy how fast your shoes get dirty here. I remember the first day I got to the area and saw all the shoes in our apartment I was like wow, these guys must be veterans. You could hardly tell what color the shoes were they had so much dirt on them. But after the first day of walking my shoes looked exactly the same haha. That reminds me, on wednesday it was really hot and there was a bunch of wind. Since all the roads are dirt and straight, the dust can get insane. We couldn´t see very far in front of us and it didn´t take long before we were covered in dirt. I definitely chose the wrong day to wear contacts, that´s for sure. It was pretty painful. Anyway, later that same day, clouds came out of nowhere and it dumped on us. I didn´t have my jacket or anything so I got soaked. All the dirt that was on me turned to mud, it was a mess haha. I´m glad it rained though because the temperature finally cooled off. The first part of the week was crazy hot. We were sweating the minute we left our apartment in the morning and didn´t stop until we came back at night and took off our clothes. I thought maybe I was just being a wimp but all the natives were dying of heat too so it must of have been hot. But ever since it rained it cooled down a lot and has actually been a little chilly. In fact it´s raining right now as I type this. 

On P day I finally did some laundry. We fill up a bucket with hot water and put some detergent in it and wash our clothes in that. Then we hang them out back to dry, which takes forever. Not sure how good of a job I did, but my clothes smell good now at least.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, I was able to pull my money out this time. We took the train into Merlo this time and pulled out money at some ATM´s there. I pulled out a bunch of personal money too.

Also, on friday we had to go into the capital for tramites, or paperwork. It was a bunch of waiting in lines, handing people papers, waiting in more lines. Kinda like the DMV. It took several hours but I think I´m finally legal now. While we waited for the train back to our area me and my comp had lunch at this pizza place. It was probably some of the best pizza I´ve ever eaten. We also got a glass of coke and that really hit the spot. Never thought I´d say this in a million years, but I have become a coke lover. It just tastes better down here for some reason.

Anyway, hope you guys have a great week. Sometimes the spanish can be rough, but I love it here. I don´t understand a lot of what they say to me but I know it will come with time. Right now I just try to say what I can and my comp helps out with the rest. 

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Nov 13, 2017

First Week in the Field

It seems like like a long time since I´ve written and a lot has happened. I already know I´m going to forget to say a lot of stuff.

We left the MTC tuesday morning and went to the mission offices. There we had lunch with Presidente and Hermana Resek, and we got told a bunch of stuff that I don´t really remember too well. Finally we got to meet our trainers. My trainer is Elder Pietz, he´s from Louisiana and has been out for about a year. He is also district leader. Some dude came and picked us up in his car to take us to our area. By the way our area is called Mariano Acosta and our zone is Marcos Paz. Anyway my comp was talking to this dude the whole way there, it was about an hour drive. We found out that he wasn´t even a member so we talked a little about what we do as missionaries and the book of mormon and what not. When we dropped him off we gave him a book of mormon because he seemed kind of interested. I´d already made my first contact before we got to our apartment. Anyway, I put my stuff in the apartment and then we immediately left because my comp had appointments. Next thing I knew we were in the house of an investigator teaching a lesson. I hardly understood a word they said but I was able to say a few things. Also later that night we went to the church to give a blessing to this lady who was having health problems. My comp gave the blessing and I realized as I put my hands on her head that this would be the first time I´d use the Melchizedek priesthood. It was a cool experience.

The next day was full of making contacts, teaching lessons and meeting members. We clapped (I´ll explain clapping later) this one house and met this young couple and an older lady who I assume is the guys mom. They let us come in and we talked for quite a while with them. We found out that this guy had really bad problems with being nervous and so he took medication to help it. But people kept robbing their house for the medicine because I guess if you take it when you drink alcohol it makes you really high or something like that. Anyway these people had a ton of hard problems and so we talked about the book of mormon with them and gave them each a copy and they were really excited and grateful. 

It feels like I´m in a different world down here haha. We walk all day on dirt roads. There are a few paved roads, like the road we live on, but most are dirt. The houses blow you away when you first seem them. The houses look worse than probably the poorest areas of the US. At least the outsides do, some of the insides aren´t too bad. Our apartment is actually kinda nice though, at least nicer than I expected. We have a toilet that flushes(sometimes) and a shower with warm water(sometimes). We got a fridge and a stove, it´s actually a pretty nice place and I´m happy with it. There is another companionship with us so four of us live there.

So the neiborhoods here are all on a grid system, which I like. And every house has gates in front of them. I use the words gates loosely, sometimes its just like a barb wire fence, but still, everyone has a gate. So there is no knocking on doors here, instead you stand outside the gate and clap. Its kinda weird but thats just what they do down here. 

On P day we took the train into Marcos Paz so we could pull out my money, but when we got there, there wasn´t any money left. So I´ve been basically living the life of a begger the past week. Luckily my comp loaned me about 300 pesos and I was able to buy some cereal and milk and bananas. Hopefully there´s money next p day so I can have some. Also the other companionship in our apartment bought some shin guards for me so I could play soccer with them. We went to the church by our apartment that has a concrete court for basketball and soccer and we played there.

Friday we did some service for a lady in our ward. We cut her ¨lawn¨, which was really just a bunch of waist high weeds, with machetes. Yes, machetes. It was actually kinda fun. I don´t think you can say you have become a man until you cut down a field with a machete. 

On sunday, I had to introduce myself in sacrament meeting. I got up, said my name and where I´m from and shared a simple testimony, it wasn´t too bad. It was also their primary program, and that was something to behold. There was only about 15 kids total. Also I don´t think anyone in the ward can play the piano so they used a boombox for all their songs. And the congregation sang all the hymns acapella, and it was not pretty. The kids were pretty crazy too. Some of them were running around the stage or down into the congregation during the songs.

The members here are amazing tho. We have lunch with them almost every day, and sometimes dinner too. The people here are really generous. They always invite us in and give us a cold glass of coke during the day when we´re hot and sweaty. These people don´t have much but they are always willing to help and talk. We´ve clapped a lot of houses and people are almost always willing to come out and talk to us about religion, even if they´re not interested in joining our church.

Well, we don´t have any fechas right now but I think they´ll be coming soon. Usually the hardest part is to get people to come to church which is at 930. People usually are working or just don´t go to bed until like well into sunday morning, or they just don´t sleep at all saturday night. Another problem is marriage. Most people don´t get married cause it´s a hard process and for some reason takes about a month. Another big problem is smoking. A ton of people smoke here. We have a few investigators with these problems but hopefully we can get past them so they can be baptized.

Oh i forgot to mention that yesterday while we were clapping a house, i saw something i can say i´ve never seen before. There was a dog right next to me as we were standing at the gate, and I looked down and the dog was gnawing on this massive severed pighead. Yes, an actual pighead. It was pretty nasty, it had a bunch of flies and whatnot crawling on it. It was pretty hard not to be distracted by it as we talked to the guy that came to the gate.

Well there´s a lot more i could say but i don´t have the time. It´s been a fun week and I hope we can have some more success this week. Hope everythings going well back home.

-Elder Shelton

Nate's arrival in assigned mission (Buenos Aires West) - Nov 7, 2017

Dear Family and Friends of Elder Shelton,

 We are writing to inform you that your missionary, Elder Shelton, has arrived safely in the Argentina Buenos Aires West Mission. We have enjoyed becoming acquainted with him and are excited to be serving together. 

 Thank you for the sacrifices you are making at home to have a missionary in the field. We know the Lord blesses and cares for the families of the missionaries.

 Please, find attached some pictures of him and some guidelines of the mission which will be useful to know.  You should also be getting an email from him next Monday.

 Warmest regards,                          

President and Hermana Resek

Nate's Letter Home - Nov 2, 2017

Week 5?

This will be my last letter in the CCM, which is crazy to think about. Time has flown and I hope I'm somewhat ready for the field.

So last Saturday we went street contacting again, this time with my normal companion, Elder Tanner. The area was a lot harder this time around compared to last time, and by that I mean no one would listen to us. We got dropped off in a pretty busy part of the city. There were tons of little clothing shops, lined up one after the other on several blocks in our area. It made it hard because it was pretty loud and busy and no one had time to listen to us. Eventually we decided to go to the other side of our area, which was more residential and less busy. We had a few good conversations with people but still struggled a lot. The people in the city are really good at ignoring. Like when you're passing someone on the street and say hola or Como estas they'll either just completely ignore you or they'll wait till they're pretty much past you to respond so then you can't stop them. So anyway we hadn't had much success at all by the time Ciesta hit, which isn't good because it gets really hard to find people during ciesta. It's crazy how the entire place just shuts down right in the middle of the day. When we went back to the crazy busy shopping area again it was like a ghost town. All the shops were closed and they all lower down these garage door-looking things and lock them up so the entire place now looked like abandoned warehouses. The streets are pretty much empty so it was hard to find anyone. Despite this our best experiences happened during ciesta.

We came across this one teenage kid sitting on the side of the street, I think he was waiting for a bus. He had a crazy nose piercing and looked like the kind of kid you didn't want to talk to so we thought he would just ignore us. But we got talking and turned out he was a really nice kid and was willing to listen to us, even with our bad spanish. We found out he had a friend that was Mormon so he knew a little bit about us. We talked about a bunch of things, can't remember a lot of it. We explained about the book of mormon and gave him one and challenged him to read 3 Nefi 11. He then told us his friend had already given him a BoM so he gave it back, but he said he would read it when he got home. We also gave him one of our pamphlets (That's probably not even close to how you spell it, I struggle to spell stuff in english now) about the Restoration and wrote down the address to the nearest church.

Quite a while later, we were starting to feel pretty worn out. Everyone we had tried to talk to in about the past 45 minutes had either ignored us or flat out refused to talk. We just kept walking though, and I was kind of zoned out trying to think of a way to get someone to talk to us. I almost didn't even notice this guy that walked right buy us. Luckily he stopped us and asked us something. I wasn't quite sure what he said, but we were glad to have someone to talk to. This was the first time someone had started a conversation with us. This guy turned out to be really awesome, like a golden investigator. He was from Peru and had just recently moved to Buenos Aires. He had an uncle that was Mormon, and he had learned a lot about our church from him. He was very patient with us luckily because there was a few times that we had no idea what he was saying. He had stopped us because he had a question but it took us quite a while to figure out what he was asking. We were finally able to figure out he really wanted to go to our church but didn't know where any of them were in Buenos Aires. Luckily we had the address of the nearest church with us so we wrote it down for him and he was very thankful. We also found out that he had read some of the book of mormon with his uncle and he said he loved reading it, but he didn't have a BoM now that he was living here. So we gave him our BoM we had with us and he was even more thankful. One of our district goals that our teacher set for us was to invite people to be baptized, so I asked him if he would commit to being baptized. He said he would like to, once he goes to church and reads more from the book of mormon. We wrote down his contact info too for missionaries that actually serve in that area. 

When we were waiting for the bus, we went into a store and bought a Coke. It was the most refreshing Coke I've ever had in my life, although that's not really saying much because I've never really liked it. I've heard that we might be drinking it a lot in the field since our drinking water isn't that clean.

So the first floor bathroom has finally been finished remodeling. Before, every Elder was using the bathroom on the second floor (my floor) and it was crazy crowded. Sometimes there was a line of about 15 people for the showers. Last week Presidente came in and saw how bad it was and decided to change things up. So we had to all wake up earlier at 6:15, and people in shedule A would shower then, and people in schedule B(me) would shower at 6:45. It kinda worked, but it was still crowded. Well anyway, the other bathroom opened up and we thought that would solve all the problems. Except for now, anytime someone is showering downstairs, there is no water pressure upstairs. If you put it to ice cold, then there's enough pressure for water to actually come out, but if you try to turn it a little bit warm, the pressure completely dies and only drips come out. Needless to say, us on the second floor have been taking some cold showers. 

It's crazy to think I'll be leaving this place on Tuesday. I still feel like I don't know much spanish, but hopefully I can figure it out on the way. I don't know when I'll get to write next, it might be a week and a half because I think P days are on Monday in the field. I'm sure I'll have a lot to say by then. I hope Amanda feels better and you have a great week.

-Elder Shelton 

Nate's Letter Home - Oct 26, 2017

Another Week:

Weeks seem to fly by when you look back on them. It's hard to believe that in 2 days it I'll have been here for a month. It sure doesn't seem like it and I hope I will be ready in less than two weeks now when I leave.

So this Saturday we are going proselyting again. I'm both excited and nervous. We are going with our normal companions this time, so I'll probably have to do most of the talking because my comp is still struggling with his Spanish. I know it'll be great though. I've felt a lot different about talking to people since I've been here. I've probably talked more in my District in these 4 weeks than I did my entire high school experience. I also haven't had too hard of a time talking to complete strangers, like at the temple or during proselyting, which before would have made me very uncomfortable and would have scared me to death. What a difference having the Spirit makes with your confidence. 2 Timothy 1:7 "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." and D&C 121: 45 "...then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God."
I have felt the confidence of the Spirit and I know we are helped when we go forward with confidence to declare his word. It's the only way I would be able to do it.

Something funny: My district (Moroni) and the other older district (Mormon) decided to play a prank on the younger kids when they got here. We told a few people about how last time we went proselyting Elder Porter (who is completely made up) got stabbed and had to go home to recover from his wounds. We waited a couple days and let the rumor spread, but most of the people didn't really believe it. So then we got one of the teachers, Hermano Anuarve, in on it. He isn't our teacher but he really likes our district and he comes and talks to us a lot. He loves pranks and also quotes the Office like everytime we see him. But anyway, we got him in on the joke. So later that day the new kids had an initiation meeting, which was in spanish but the english people had on headsets and would listen to Hermano Anuarve translate for them. So the guy that was giving the lesson was explaining why we don't have ipads and stuff like that in our missions, and when Anuarve translated it, he added: "yeah, we can't have ipads and stuff like that in our missions, you don't want to end up like Elder Porter." He said the look on their faces was priceless. He said he saw a bunch of them look at their companions and say stuff like "I told you it was true". Anyway when he told us this story we all thought it was hilarious and laughed forever.

Another funny story happened during one of our IP lessons (Progressive Investigator). We have two teachers, one in the morning and one in the evening. We switch off teaching lessons to them everyday like they are progressing investigators. Our morning teacher is "Beatrice" and our afternoon teacher is "Natalia". So yesterday we had to teach Beatrice. I knew this lesson probably wasn't going to go very well when my companion started it off by saying "Como se dice" instead of "Como esta". Well we got passed that mishap and asked if she had read the chapter we asked her to and all that jazz, then my companion gives the opening prayer. In this prayer, he asks to please bless Natalia, who is our other IP. I had to try really hard not to laugh during the rest of the prayer. And then later on during the lesson we were talking about the Atonement and my companion was trying to say we can overcome our sins, but instead said something like "podemos superar nuestros pescados" which translated is "we can overcome our fish." At that, both me and our teacher couldn't help but to laugh. Considering all this it wasn't too bad of a lesson though.

My comp and I have started doing serious pushups. We've been trying to do at least 50 every day, but somedays we do a lot more. Like yesterday, we did 70. We hope we can crank it up to 100 soon. Maybe I'm just imagining it but just two weeks of doing push ups has made me feel a lot stronger, and my upper body feels bigger. We do a lot of ab workouts too, but I doubt with the way we eat that we'll be getting a six pack anytime soon. I've also remembered how much I love basketball and baseball. Elder Lassen from my district brought to mits and a ball. The mit is for right handers but I put it on my right hand anyway and I'm still able to catch with it. Playing catch is really relaxing and brings back a lot of memories. Most days though we play basketball. We do 3 on 3, first one to 3 points, and the winner stays on. Whenever me and Elder Lassen are on a team, we dominate. We get tired from being on the court for so long.

I don't know if I already told you this but I got a haircut here about two weeks ago now. It's looking pretty fresh. The guy is crazy fast, each haircut lasts about 2 minutes.

We get to go to the temple again today in about 2 hours... in spanish of course. I'm looking forward to it, it's always nice and relaxing. Also I forgot to mention that our district has already done two musical numbers in sacrament meeting. Two sundays ago we were combined with another district and we sang the Sister of Zion and Bring the world his truth melody... in spanish of course. And this last sunday we only had like a one day notice so we just decided to sing a hymn. We sang For the Beauty of the earth in spanish. They both went pretty good.

Still haven't figured out my SD card but I attached two pics that got sent to me by our afternoon teacher. She is studying to be a photographer so she took some pictures of our district for fun and took the group photo of all of us that will be leaving next transfer.

The one in front of the flag is our district, District Moroni. The Elders in my district are awesome and some of the coolest people I've ever met, and also some of the best friends I've ever had. If you don't know, my comp is the second from the left, with the glasses and you can only see his head.

Anyway, hope everything goes well and you have a great week. I'm sure it'll fly by again.

-Elder Shelton