Well, can´t believe I´m not in training anymore. I´m officially done with my first 12 weeks in the field, and they certainly flew by. Transfers are tomorrow, I´ll be staying here and my comp is leaving to Junin. We didn´t even know where that was so we had to look it up on the map haha. It´s clear out in the middle of nowhere in what they call ¨el campo.¨ My new comp is going to be Elder Abrahms. I already know him a little bit because he was in the same pensh as the zone leaders and he also did divisions with Villa Posse so I saw him then too. It was kinda a relief for me, because about 2 weeks ago in my interview with president he said that he thinks I´m ready to train and that I might be doing it this next transfer. And also our district is going to be only us 2 elders with 4 hermanas, so if I would have trained I would have had to be the district leader also. That definitely would have been a challenge haha.
This week felt like a long one, because I had to spend Monday through Thursday in the pensh all day because my comp was sick. He had a really bad fever and cough. There is not a lot to do in our pensh accept for study so that´s basically what I did. I´m now already mostly through Alma in the book of mormon. I also read about 200 pages in Jesus the Christ, and I went through a good chunck of my spanish grammar book too. I always like reading, but by the end of thursday I was starting to lose my mind haha.
Gaston´s baptism didn´t happen, but it definitely will, probably in about 2 weeks. I went out with one of the zone leaders wednesday night to do his baptismal interview, but turns out he needs to have an interview with president. (something to do with question 4). So we´re going to set up an interview this week for him and hope to have his baptism in about 2 weeks.
We were able to get Karina confirmed yesterday, so that was good. Also, on saturday we had lunch with the bishop and I shared the scripture at the end. For some reason Mosiah 26:31 popped into my head so I decided to share that. It´s about how we need to forgive others to recieve forgiveness. Bishop really liked it and he said he had been looking for that scripture for a while and he decided he wanted to share that in sacrament meeting the next day. So that´s what he did haha. He gave the last talk in sacrament meeting and shared that scripture along with some others from chapter 26 and basically chastized the whole ward because I guess there´s been problems with that.
The language is definitely coming, although some days are better than others. I´m finally starting to understand most of what people say, and it´s a good feeling. Although there are definitely still times where people ask me questions and I have no idea what they asked me haha. But after listening to people talk day after day, slowly it starts to make more and more sense. A lot of times I don´t know the words they are saying but I know what they are saying, if that makes sense. Anyway, it´s definitely starting to come.
Hope you guys have a great week, we´ll see how this week goes with me having to lead the area.
-Elder Shelton
Monday, January 29, 2018
Monday, January 22, 2018
Nate's Letter Home - Jan 22, 2018
Well I´ll start out with the good news: Karina got baptized! She is super capa. Last monday when we visited her she was already asking us how she could pay diezmo. We told her that she doesn´t really have to pay until she is baptized but she said she wanted to start paying immediately. She also invited us over for dinner Friday night and it was super good. The baptism was awesome. It´s easy to see that she truly has been converted, and that she will become a strong member of the church. There is no better feeling you can have as a missionary than that.
On to the bad news, although really it´s not the end of the world. She has not been confirmed yet. Right after the baptism she told us that she was going to for sure be there at 9 am for church. We had a hectic morning as usual getting some of our investigators to church, and we figured we didn´t have to worry about her. But then we found out that she didn´t show up to Relief Society and so we started to panic. We called her a bunch of times and even went to her house but she wasn´t there. We later found out that she had left for her mom´s house in Merlo early in the morning. We figure it must have been some kind of emergency, because it is definitely not like her to not follow through with her word. But anyway, it´s not the end of the world because she is definitely going to come next Sunday.
Also we are planning on baptizing Gaston this Saturday, but we´re not sure if we´re going to be able to. First of all we still need to have his interview. Also the zone leaders told us today that saturday there is a stake meeting that all the bishopric of each ward is going to so we might not be able to have baptisms that day. So we might have it on Friday, which is going to be even harder for us haha. But Gaston is awesome. He has done a complete 180 with his life. Not long ago he had a lot of problems with drugs, drinking, smoking, and a ton of other stuff. But not long ago he was in a car crash and basically it´s a miracle that he´s alive. Basically one sunday he just showed up to church and told us he wanted to be baptized and change his life around. So that´s what we´re doing. When we taught him the word of wisdom he accepted it instantly because he wants to be more healthy so he can train to be a boxer. Also we taught him law of chastity two visits ago and he said it would probably be hard for him to follow it because of his girlfriend. We told him that to be baptized he would have to follow this commandment, and so he agreed to try his best. Well when we visited him last night he told us that he had broke up with his girlfriend, so it definitely seems like he´s committed to be baptized. He is a really funny dude and he makes us laugh all the time. Yesterday when we were teaching him he asked if he could come with us when we go back to the States. Then he asked if we had any sisters. We said we do and then he asked how old they were. My comp said he had one that was 26. He was like, oh that´s perfect, I can just marry her then haha (he´s 25 by the way). But then something dawned on him and he was like, wait, do they speak castellano? My comp said no she speaks english. I said I have a sister who speaks castellano but unfortunately she´s already married haha. He was pretty bummed. I would tell you more of the funny stuff he has said to us but I got to keep this email somewhat appropriate.
I think that´s about it for this week. Hopefully we can get another baptism this week, but we´re going to have to wait and see how it turns out. I have a picture of us and Karina at her baptism, but I´m going to have to send it next week. The computers we use aren´t the best and the one I´m using right now has a whole where the SD card slot usually is. It´s also running Windows 98 haha. So sorry about the pictures, hopefully I´ll be able to send them next week.
Hasta la próxima semana,
-Elder Shelton
On to the bad news, although really it´s not the end of the world. She has not been confirmed yet. Right after the baptism she told us that she was going to for sure be there at 9 am for church. We had a hectic morning as usual getting some of our investigators to church, and we figured we didn´t have to worry about her. But then we found out that she didn´t show up to Relief Society and so we started to panic. We called her a bunch of times and even went to her house but she wasn´t there. We later found out that she had left for her mom´s house in Merlo early in the morning. We figure it must have been some kind of emergency, because it is definitely not like her to not follow through with her word. But anyway, it´s not the end of the world because she is definitely going to come next Sunday.
Also we are planning on baptizing Gaston this Saturday, but we´re not sure if we´re going to be able to. First of all we still need to have his interview. Also the zone leaders told us today that saturday there is a stake meeting that all the bishopric of each ward is going to so we might not be able to have baptisms that day. So we might have it on Friday, which is going to be even harder for us haha. But Gaston is awesome. He has done a complete 180 with his life. Not long ago he had a lot of problems with drugs, drinking, smoking, and a ton of other stuff. But not long ago he was in a car crash and basically it´s a miracle that he´s alive. Basically one sunday he just showed up to church and told us he wanted to be baptized and change his life around. So that´s what we´re doing. When we taught him the word of wisdom he accepted it instantly because he wants to be more healthy so he can train to be a boxer. Also we taught him law of chastity two visits ago and he said it would probably be hard for him to follow it because of his girlfriend. We told him that to be baptized he would have to follow this commandment, and so he agreed to try his best. Well when we visited him last night he told us that he had broke up with his girlfriend, so it definitely seems like he´s committed to be baptized. He is a really funny dude and he makes us laugh all the time. Yesterday when we were teaching him he asked if he could come with us when we go back to the States. Then he asked if we had any sisters. We said we do and then he asked how old they were. My comp said he had one that was 26. He was like, oh that´s perfect, I can just marry her then haha (he´s 25 by the way). But then something dawned on him and he was like, wait, do they speak castellano? My comp said no she speaks english. I said I have a sister who speaks castellano but unfortunately she´s already married haha. He was pretty bummed. I would tell you more of the funny stuff he has said to us but I got to keep this email somewhat appropriate.
I think that´s about it for this week. Hopefully we can get another baptism this week, but we´re going to have to wait and see how it turns out. I have a picture of us and Karina at her baptism, but I´m going to have to send it next week. The computers we use aren´t the best and the one I´m using right now has a whole where the SD card slot usually is. It´s also running Windows 98 haha. So sorry about the pictures, hopefully I´ll be able to send them next week.
Hasta la próxima semana,
-Elder Shelton
Monday, January 15, 2018
Nate's Letter Home - Jan 15, 2018
Well, it might be somewhat of a surprise to you that I had a baptism on Saturday. It was to us as well haha. Last monday night, we visited familia Flores again (the family of Gabriela). They were much better this time. The parents were really calm and we had a nice talk with them. Then out of nowhere, they asked us when we were going to baptize Gabriela. That definitely shocked us. We told them to pick any day and we´d baptize her then. They said that Saturday would be the only opportunity where they both were off work so it had to be then. It wasn´t ideal for us because usually the ward likes us to anounce our baptisms in sacrament meeting the sunday before, and we still had to plan everything and find clothes for her, but we were not about to turn down an offer to baptize her.
However, more drama was to follow. On Friday we had divisions, and my comp and Elder Jones visited them that day. Apparently they showed up to the house just after the parents had a huge fight and the dad left in a rage. The 17 year old daughter also left too. Anyway, the mom and the kids were pretty upset, but she told my comp that no matter what, we are baptizing her daughter on saturday. Well saturday finally came. I didn´t really know what to expect, I figured it would probably only be the mom and the younger daughters who came to the baptism. Well 3:45 came, the baptism was supposed to start at 4, and they hadn´t showed up. So we decided to walk to their house to look for them. We were about half way there when we saw their whole family (except the oldest daughter) come around the corner. That was about the greatest sight I´ve ever seen, and a huge relief.
Anyway, the baptism was really awesome. It was a really special feeling to be in the water with Gabriela and see a smile on her face and the faces of her family. Also right after the baptism, I went with one of the zone leaders to our investigator Karina for her baptismal interview. She passed and we are going to baptize her this saturday.
Sunday was an even crazier day. We had to make sure Gabriela came to church to get confirmed, and also that Karina came, because she needed her second attendance to be able to be baptized this next saturday. Also we needed to find another ride for Victor, our investigator who is on crutches. Well we went and clapped at Gabriela´s house and saw another one of the greatest sights I´ve seen. The dad came to the window buttoning up his white shirt and told us that they were on their way. We were really excited about that and immediately after we started walking to Karina´s house to make sure she was coming. I need to mention that Sunday was a more chilly day, and it was raining in the morning. So when we clapped at her house someone came out and told us that she couldn´t come today because of the weather. We told her we had umbrellas she could use but the person said that Karina was worried about her two little daughters getting sick, one of them is about 5 or 6 months I think. Well we didn´t really know what to do, and we were already a little bit late, so we walked back to the church. We were really disappointed on the walk back because if she didn´t come that meant that she couldn´t be baptized this saturday.
By the way, our sacrament meeting is at the end now. We have elders quorom first, then sunday school, and then sacrament meeting. We basically missed all of elders quorom because we went with our ward mission leader in his car to get Victor. While we did that we tried texting Karina to see if we could come pick her up in a car, but we didn´t get an answer. So we just got Victor and came back to the church in time for sunday school. We were in gospel principals with just, us, Victor, and the parents of Gabriela. We were pretty disappointed that Karina didn´t come. Then halfway through the class I hear the door swing open and someone say ¨Permiso¨ and Karina walked in with an umbrella and her two kids bundled up like it was the dead of winter. It was yet another of one of the greatest sights I´ve seen. It was such a great feeling to see that she was dedicated enough to bundle her little kids up and walk 20 minutes in the rain to come to church.
Well, we were able to get Gabriela confirmed in sacrament meeting. It was definitely a cool thing to see their family together in church. I think it´s been about a year since their parents have attended. We´ll be baptizing Karina this saturday, and now also we will be baptizing a guy named Gaston on the 27th. We are also hoping to baptize Victor on the 27, but he is saying that he doesn´t quite feel ready yet. We´ll see what we can do with him. We really want to meet our goal of 4 baptisms this month. We´ve put in a lot of work, and we are seeing literal miracles in the lives of the people we teach.
Hopefully all is well at home, and the next time I write I should have another baptism to tell you about.
I attached some pictures. You can blame my comp for cutting off my head in one of them haha. Also the third one is some mate that we made using a watermelon. It was some good stuff. We´ve experimented with a lot of different stuff while making mate haha. I pretty much drink mate on the daily.
-Elder Shelton
However, more drama was to follow. On Friday we had divisions, and my comp and Elder Jones visited them that day. Apparently they showed up to the house just after the parents had a huge fight and the dad left in a rage. The 17 year old daughter also left too. Anyway, the mom and the kids were pretty upset, but she told my comp that no matter what, we are baptizing her daughter on saturday. Well saturday finally came. I didn´t really know what to expect, I figured it would probably only be the mom and the younger daughters who came to the baptism. Well 3:45 came, the baptism was supposed to start at 4, and they hadn´t showed up. So we decided to walk to their house to look for them. We were about half way there when we saw their whole family (except the oldest daughter) come around the corner. That was about the greatest sight I´ve ever seen, and a huge relief.
Anyway, the baptism was really awesome. It was a really special feeling to be in the water with Gabriela and see a smile on her face and the faces of her family. Also right after the baptism, I went with one of the zone leaders to our investigator Karina for her baptismal interview. She passed and we are going to baptize her this saturday.
By the way, our sacrament meeting is at the end now. We have elders quorom first, then sunday school, and then sacrament meeting. We basically missed all of elders quorom because we went with our ward mission leader in his car to get Victor. While we did that we tried texting Karina to see if we could come pick her up in a car, but we didn´t get an answer. So we just got Victor and came back to the church in time for sunday school. We were in gospel principals with just, us, Victor, and the parents of Gabriela. We were pretty disappointed that Karina didn´t come. Then halfway through the class I hear the door swing open and someone say ¨Permiso¨ and Karina walked in with an umbrella and her two kids bundled up like it was the dead of winter. It was yet another of one of the greatest sights I´ve seen. It was such a great feeling to see that she was dedicated enough to bundle her little kids up and walk 20 minutes in the rain to come to church.
Well, we were able to get Gabriela confirmed in sacrament meeting. It was definitely a cool thing to see their family together in church. I think it´s been about a year since their parents have attended. We´ll be baptizing Karina this saturday, and now also we will be baptizing a guy named Gaston on the 27th. We are also hoping to baptize Victor on the 27, but he is saying that he doesn´t quite feel ready yet. We´ll see what we can do with him. We really want to meet our goal of 4 baptisms this month. We´ve put in a lot of work, and we are seeing literal miracles in the lives of the people we teach.
Hopefully all is well at home, and the next time I write I should have another baptism to tell you about.
I attached some pictures. You can blame my comp for cutting off my head in one of them haha. Also the third one is some mate that we made using a watermelon. It was some good stuff. We´ve experimented with a lot of different stuff while making mate haha. I pretty much drink mate on the daily.
-Elder Shelton
Monday, January 8, 2018
Nate's Letter Home - Jan 8, 2018
I´m a little late writing this because we attempted to get a rabies shot today after district meeting, but we failed. My comp got bit by a dog a couple days ago and the mission nurse told him he had to get the vaccine. So she gave us the address to this place in Marcos Paz, and we went there today but basically they told us we could only get the rabies vaccine in Merlo. At least that´s what we understood, but we´re not entirely sure. Anyway, he might be getting a shot soon.
Yesterday we ate lunch at a members house, and the guy showed me some highlights of the Spurs game where Ginobli scored like 26 points or something like that. That dude is a beast! I can´t believe he´s still playing at age 40 haha. It was pretty big news here, is he Argentine? That would make sense if he is. He also showed us some of the videos of the eastern US. It looked crazy. Hopefully Rach and Ian don´t freeze.
It´s looking like we´re going to get some baptisms this month. Hopefully I didn´t just jynx it, I don´t want to cry wolf again haha. But we have Karina and Victor for the 20th. To get baptized they have to have two asistencias (attendences? that looks wrong to me) so they both had to attend yesterday and next sunday in order for them to be baptized. It was quite the ordeal getting them both to church yesterday, but we were able to do it. They live on the complete opposite sides of our area, and Victor is on crutches, so we had to get help from one of the bishop´s counselors who had a car. We did it somehow. In fact, we had 5 investigators in church this week. For the 27th, we have a 18 year old called Fernanda. It might be difficult to baptize her so soon though. She works pretty much all day, including sunday, and I don´t think her family likes that she is talking with us. Both times we´ve taught her we´ve had to stand outside her gate on the street. But she is really nice and we´re going to try our best with her.
Then we have Gabriela. She´s the nine year old we should have baptized several weeks ago. Things just got a lot harder though. On saturday we went to their house to try and talk with their family and set a new date for her baptism. It definitely did not go as planned. We were aware of a lot of problems that the family was having, but we learned a lot more. We were sitting outside with all the kids ( they have four girls) and we could hear the parents arguing about something. Then the dad came out and it was pretty clear he was drunk (We did not know he drank). The mom came out too, and long story short, we listened to them yell at us for about an hour about all their problems they´re having with each other. It was unbelievable how different the dad was. Usually he seems like the nicest guy ever. He always welcomes us in, gives us a lot of food and talks to us. While he was drunk it seemed like Satan was able to gain control, he was not the same person. I definitely learned about the power Satan can have over people. The family seems like it´s being ripped apart, and it is a very sad thing to see. I pray for them a lot.
Also, about a week ago I finished the Book of Mormon. Only took me about 3 months. I´ve started it again, as well as the New Testament. Each day I am able to feel the power of the words in the Book of Mormon, and it helps me be able to declare my testimony of it to the people we meet.
Well that´s about it, hopefully we can get some baptisms this month. Cuatro por Cristo!
-Elder Shelton
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Nate's Letter Home - Jan 2, 2018
Well it´s 2018 I guess. And with the start of the new year it´s always a good time to make some goals. Presidente Resek has asked us in particular to set two goals for ourselves. The first one was to commit to be obediente con exactitud in the year 2018. And the second was that every missionary should have the goal of baptizing 48 converts this year. That´s a pretty hefty goal but I believe it can be done. Enero should be a good month for us, we´ve 3 people with dates, and if we can get one more than we´ll be on track.
But holy cow was this week a hot one. Friday and saturday were especially brutal. There is never a time when you´re not sweating. People always ask us what where are doing walking the streets in such heat haha. The people we contact can see the sweat dripping down our face so they´ll usually bring out some water for us and a paper towel to wipe our faces off. We aren´t suppose to drink the tap water but we usually just don´t ask where it came from and hope for the best. A few times it has definitely been tap water haha, luckily we haven´t gotten sick yet. When we do our studies we usually put the fan right next to us and put frozen bottles of water on the back of our necks to keep from dying. There´s been a few nights where we´ve had to put ice on ourselves to fall asleep. Luckily the rain finally came sunday so it has been a little cooler the past two days.
On saturday my comp and Elder Kindt (one of the other elders in our pensh) had to go to a leadership meeting because they´re both dristict leaders. So I was with Elder Kindt´s companion Elder Hammon for most of the day. It was kinda scary because it was the first time I had to take the lead in my area. Luckily I was able to find all the houses fairly easily and we made it to all our citas. While I was with him we got two new investigators that were a reference from a member. They were a really awesome and receptive old couple and I definitely think we can baptize them.
We also started teaching a guy this week and he now has a fecha for the 20th of this month. He had a girlfriend and had a few kids with her, but his girlfriend started taking the lessons from the missionaries and wanted to get baptized but he didn´t want to, so basically his girlfriend kicked him out so that she could be baptized. I guess for a few months he got really depressed. He drank a lot and basically was so depressed he never went outside and he lost all the strength in his body so now he can barely walk. In our first visit with him he told us he wanted to change his life around, which is exactly what you want to hear from someone when you´re a missionary. I don´t think it´s any coincidence that the people we teach seem to be going through the most difficulties. God has given them these things to prepare them to recieve our message. ¨Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be heirs to the kingdom of heaven.¨ (Forgive me if I just misquoted that, I might have just mixed up two different beattitudes)
-Elder Shelton
But holy cow was this week a hot one. Friday and saturday were especially brutal. There is never a time when you´re not sweating. People always ask us what where are doing walking the streets in such heat haha. The people we contact can see the sweat dripping down our face so they´ll usually bring out some water for us and a paper towel to wipe our faces off. We aren´t suppose to drink the tap water but we usually just don´t ask where it came from and hope for the best. A few times it has definitely been tap water haha, luckily we haven´t gotten sick yet. When we do our studies we usually put the fan right next to us and put frozen bottles of water on the back of our necks to keep from dying. There´s been a few nights where we´ve had to put ice on ourselves to fall asleep. Luckily the rain finally came sunday so it has been a little cooler the past two days.
On saturday my comp and Elder Kindt (one of the other elders in our pensh) had to go to a leadership meeting because they´re both dristict leaders. So I was with Elder Kindt´s companion Elder Hammon for most of the day. It was kinda scary because it was the first time I had to take the lead in my area. Luckily I was able to find all the houses fairly easily and we made it to all our citas. While I was with him we got two new investigators that were a reference from a member. They were a really awesome and receptive old couple and I definitely think we can baptize them.
We also started teaching a guy this week and he now has a fecha for the 20th of this month. He had a girlfriend and had a few kids with her, but his girlfriend started taking the lessons from the missionaries and wanted to get baptized but he didn´t want to, so basically his girlfriend kicked him out so that she could be baptized. I guess for a few months he got really depressed. He drank a lot and basically was so depressed he never went outside and he lost all the strength in his body so now he can barely walk. In our first visit with him he told us he wanted to change his life around, which is exactly what you want to hear from someone when you´re a missionary. I don´t think it´s any coincidence that the people we teach seem to be going through the most difficulties. God has given them these things to prepare them to recieve our message. ¨Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be heirs to the kingdom of heaven.¨ (Forgive me if I just misquoted that, I might have just mixed up two different beattitudes)
-Elder Shelton
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