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