Nate's Letter Home - Feb 26, 2018

Note from Todd:

Shortest letter so far, but the best sentence I've read in 5 months...  I'm still crying as I type.  I may be biased, but Latin people are the best.  

Here's the translation:

"You know that we are not kings?"

"Yes, but WE are brothers."

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The weeks are definitely flying by. There´s only two more weeks in this transfer which makes me sad. I really like it here in Mariano Acosta and it´s going to be hard to leave. (I don´t know yet if I´m leaving but most likely I will.) I´m also going to miss Elder Abrams. He is an awesome dude and we´ve had some good times together. And don´t even get me started on all the members, investigators, and especially our converts. Definitely some of the most awesome people in the world live here in Mariano. Like last week we were eating at this member´s house for dinner. He´s the only member in his family and basically he´s just a capo. He gave us one of the best meals I´ve had here and afterwards he showed us his garden and literally gave us like half of his garden to take home with us. Then he brought out some mate cocido and a platter of cheese and some alfajores. It also happened to be chilly this night for the first time in about forever, so he brought out some jackets and put them on us. Basically, we felt like kings. My comp asked him, ¨¿Sabe que no somos reyes?¨ And the dude responded ¨Sí, pero somos hermanos.¨ It was a really simple thing to say but it has really stuck with me. And that basically sums up why Argentina is awesome.

That´s crazy that Cole Larsen is already home. I remember playing a lot of xbox with him and Keith (aka Ryan Baker). Those were definitely some good times.

Do you guys know Jake´s email? Is it just the regular jacob.clark or is it something else? I want to know how New Zealand is treating him. I´m sure he´s having a good time.

Tell Manda she should apply to be may queen. The Mendon blood runs deep in her veins haha. Tell her good luck with the ACT as well, that thing is always fun. Also, how is MC baseball looking this year? I´ll definitely want to know how things go.

Well anyway, I can´t remember a lot that happened this week to be honest. Everything is kinda starting to blur together. I´m going to try and be more diligent in writing in my journal so then I can actually remember and have some stuff to email about.

Disfruten la nieve,
-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Feb 19, 2018

Alright so I´m pretty pressed for time so I´ll try to make this quick. We had to send in two baptism fichas and had to walk down the street a few times to find service so we could make some phone calls so we lost quite a bit of time. But before I forget, my comp is from Vernal. Actually, he lived most of his life in Salt Lake and he went to Olympus high school. But the last two years before his mission he moved out to Vernal so that´s where his family lives now. His dad is a dentist so they have a really nice house.





The good news is that we had another baptism this week and it went well. It was kinda hectic because we had divisions with the zone leaders on friday, so saturday morning we had to hurry back to Mariano to fill up the font and everything before the baptism at 11:00. Luckily we were able to pull it off. 

Unfortunately the two baptisms we had lined up for the 24th had to be pushed into March. Argentines move at their own pace haha. So sadly it looks like we won´t be getting cuatro por Cristo this month. 

My comp has a guitar that he got from one of his old comps that finished his mission and it´s pretty awesome. We play it every once in a while when we can find time, usually right before bed. I´ve definitely missed playing guitar so it´s pretty nice.

Alright, sorry this is so short but I´m fresh out of time. I´ll definitely try to write more next week. And I´ll try to send a few pics right now before I go.

Tengan una semana fabulosa
Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Feb 14, 2018

Well you might be wondering why I didn´t write on Monday, and you can blame Carnival. Everything was closed the past two days for it. Carnival was kinda a disapointment though, we were expecting it to be crazy. Sunday night there was this huge concert thing in the streets with music so loud it shook the earth and people dancing and basically just going ham. We had to walk through it to get back to our pensh and it was pretty intense. So after that we expected monday and tuesday to be even more crazy but they were a let down. Everything was just closed and it was super tranquilo.

We baptized Gaston and it was awesome. He is such a capo. The night before his baptism we found him riding his bike in the street and he asked if we were hungry and then bought a pizza for us and we ate it with him. He shows up to church every week on his own, which is amazing. By the way Karina is still doing awesome, she always invites us over to have dinner with her.

And yes, I forgot to tell you last week that I got the stamps you sent. They got here in like only a week and a half, which is way faster than any other letter I´ve gotten.

Last thursday we had zone conference and it was crazy hot that day. It got up to 41 degrees, which if I still know how to do math is, is well over 100 degrees F. Basically, it was just too dang hot. And because of zone conference we had to wear suits, so it was even worse. When we got back to our pensh, my comp´s thermometer he has said it was 100 degrees in our room. Luckily we didn´t have to do studies that day. We usually do all our studies except personal during siesta, and usually the thermometer says it´s about 93 degrees in our room when we do studies. Most of the time we study in only our garments and we still sweat a ton haha.

Anyway, this zone conference was kinda a let down because nothing exciting happened like my last two. If you remember, my first zone conference was when the guy got hit by the train. And last zone conference we saw a dead body at one of the train stations on the way to Ramos Mejía, and also while we were walking to the mission offices in Ramos we saw a lady get robbed right across the street from us. Two guys came on a motorcycle, one guy jumped off, grabbed the lady´s purse and all her stuff and then jumped back on the bike and they drove away. It all happened in like 3 seconds and we couldn´t really do anything. So anyway, I was expecting to see something like that this zone conference but it was pretty uneventful.

You guys are probably tired of me talking about mate but it is like the best thing ever. You definitely need to try it. My comp and I had gone a few days without drinking it and so when we did our comp inventory during weekly planning we set a companionship goal of drinking more mate. We´ve been able to keep that goal pretty well this week. There´s something about drinking it too that makes you feel closer to the people and the culture and it´s a pretty cool feeling.

Anyway, I´m loving it here in Mariano Acosta. We have 9 investigors with a fecha right now, and I´d say 6 of those are for sure going to get baptized. Also I don´t know if I mentioned that we have another baptism this saturday, a 9 year old named Martin. His parents are members but of been inactive for years. He´s a capo and is really smart, he always remembers everything we teach him.

Well that´s about it, hope you have a great week.

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Feb 5, 2018

It´s been a really good, but really hot, week. Luckily I´ve been able to lead the area pretty well and find everything I´ve needed to. I really like Elder Abrams. He is from Utah and has about 7 months in the mission. We are going to baptize a lot this transfer. We are working really hard. We found 13 new investigators this week, which is a new record for me. My old comp left me a pedometer he had, and I´ve been using it this week. Wednesday I got 25,537 steps. Thursday 19,473. Friday 20,852. Saturday 27,974. And Sunday 26,392. Basically we walk a lot and my legs are always tired at the end of the day.

Gaston passed his interview with President this wednesday and we will be baptizing him this saturday. We also have people lined up for the 17, 24, and the first saturday in march. We plan on baptizing a lot this transfer.

On our p-day we recieved some bad news. Victor, one of our investigators who I´ve talked about before, passed away. We couldn´t believe it when we got the phone call. Just the night before we had a really good lesson with him and he said he would pray and ask what date he should get baptized. He had come a long way, and made a ton of changes in his life. He had started to repair some of the damage he caused in his family. I hope that one day somebody will go to the temple with his name and that he will accept his baptism.

Also, another sad thing. Last week my comp wanted to get some photos off of my sd card, and when he plugged it in some kind of virus got on it and now all my photos are gone. It really sucks. Hopefully you still have the ones I´ve sent you, but the ones from Karina´s baptism are gone and I´m really sad about that. I´ll try to get a picture with her again so you can see her. I guess from now on I know to always back up my photos on Google Drive.

The spanish is definitely coming. It´s such a great feeling to understand what people say. I´m still really struggling with rolling my r´s though. Do you have any advice? My tongue does not seem capable. I´ve asked a bunch of the latino missionaries how to do it but they´re not really any help because it´s just natural for them. I´m determined to get it one day. Also the subjunctive still confuses me a little, when I should use it and when I should use indicative. It´s slowly starting to make sense though. It seems like the natives don´t really understand subjunctive either haha.

Sorry I don´t have photos this week, I´ll make sure to get some for next week (and save them on google drive). Hopefully when I write next we will have had another baptism.

-Elder Shelton