Nate's Letter Home - April 30, 2018

Me mordió un perro, la lluvia, el barro

Well I think this is going to be a good transfer. Elder Chamberlain is a capo. It´s easy to see that he has a lot of time in the mission and has a lot of experience. He teaches really well and speaks perfect spanish, and I´ve already learned a lot from him. He still knows the area perfectly too. The first thing he said to me when I saw him on transfers is that we´re going to get 12 baptisms this transfer. I said that´s what I like to hear. We´re definitely going to get a lot, we have a lot of people that are ready, we´re just waiting on one more asistencia. He´s from St. George by the way, I don´t think I told you that last week.

A couple days ago we passed by familia Lorenzo, who´s this couple that comes to church all the time, but they´re not married so they haven´t been baptized. Elder Chamberlain taught them when he was here before so they already know him really well. Well he told them that he only has 6 weeks here, and that he wants to see them get baptized before he leaves. Well the guy called us the next day and told us that he had called the lawyer about his divorce (he has to get divorced first) and he had gotten things started with that. It´s still a ways away, but we might actually get to baptize them. If we do we will basically be legends, because all the elders that have served here know this family and haven´t been able to get them married. We have a ton more that are really close to baptism, some from me and Elder Nash, and some of Elder Chamberlain´s old investigators from before. 

Well on Friday I got bit by a dog. We stopped by this investigators house and I got off my bike and turned to say something to Elder Chamberlain and out of nowhere I felt some teeth bite into my leg. Luckily it wasn´t too bad of a bite but it did bleed a little bit so we had to call the mission nurse. She told us to go ask the owner if the dog had been vaccinated and so we did but she just said no tengo ni idea. That´s what we figured she´d say. So basically the next day I had to go into Ramos Mejía to get it checked out. This lady looked at it and told me it wasn´t deep enough to need the vacuna de rabia, so they just gave me this antibiotic cream instead. I haven´t started going rabid yet so I think I´m good. 

The rain arrived saturday and sunday. Just in time to make so that nobody could come to church. It seems like that happens about every week. Elder Chamberlain told me that this is the muddiest area in the mission. This week was especially bad though. It poured and poured and the streets were completely destroyed. Last sunday, which was dry, there were about 100 people in church. This week there were 28. We were still able to have 2 investigators in church, which was a miracle. They have a fecha for the 10 de mayo and they are pretty much seguros. We´re really hoping it doesn´t rain this weekend. 

Well I think there was something else that I wanted to say but I can´t remember. I should really start writing this stuff down beforehand. Anyway, espero que todo esté bien y que disfruten su semana.

¡Chau!

-Elder Shelton





Translations:  (seems like half of the letter needs translation ☺)

"me mordio un perro" = A dog bit me
"la lluvia" = the rain
"el barro" = the mud
"capo" = I don't know, but context implies it's slang for a hero
"asistencia" = attendance (at church)
"no tengo ni idea" = I have no idea
"​vacuna de rabia" = rabies vaccine
"fecha" = date, in this case, baptismal date
"seguros" = golden contacts, sure baptisms..
"​espero que todo esté bien y que disfruten su semana" - I hope all is well and that you enjoy your week

Nate's Letter Home - April 23, 2018

Me quedo:

Well this email might be kinda short because it seems like it`s been a pretty tranquilo week.

Transfers are tomorrow though and Elder Nash will be leaving, which was pretty surprising to us because this was only his second transfer here. He`s going out to a small branch in Bragado. His new comp is the branch president and I think he will probably be one of the counselors, so that will definitely be an experience. Elder Chamberlain is going to be my new comp. This is his last transfer so I will be ending his mission. He started his mission here in Àlvarez and now he`s gonna finish it here, which is pretty cool. He had a lot of success while he was here, so hopefully we can have some more.

Last night we had a big activity in the church about family history and using FamilySearch. We had been inviting people to it all week during our contacts and there was actually a ton of people that came. It was pretty cool and made me wish I would have used familysearch when I had more time.

As for Mother`s Day, we haven`t heard anything about it yet but I`m sure we`ll be able to call. We`ll probably be hearing more about that pretty soon.

I`m glad to hear that the Jazz are doing well. They had an amazing end to their season and hopefully they can make something happen in the playoffs. Basically as long as the Cavs don`t win the Finals, I`ll be happy.

I`ve been getting pretty excited about the World Cup that is in a couple months. Fùtbol is life down here and I`m sure it`s going to be crazy. Hopefully Messi and Argentina can go all the way!

Well I think that`s about it. I`ll have a lot more to say next week with all the changes.

Hasta luego,
Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - April 16, 2018

Lions and Tigers and Bears (oh my) - 16 abril 2018

It´s been a pretty intense week. We had divisions with the zone leaders on Tuesday, which is really cool. I was with Elder Austin Smellie. He´s from Preston so we talked about cache valley quite a bit. He´s really good at basketball, I think they won the state championship his senior year. He goes home really soon and he´s going to play for Idaho State. He used to play for Cache Valley Elite, but he´s a year older than me so I don´t think I ever played against him. To make a long story short we ended up having to do servicio from 10 until about 2. We helped this guy lay concrete for the floor in his new house. We had to mix it up the concrete with shovels and then put it in buckets and carry it over to the back of the house. It was pretty tiring. It was a really good day though, we taught some good lessons and had some good contacts. I always learn a lot from the zone leaders.

On thursday for Pday we went to the zoo in Lujan. It was actually pretty impressive. I got to touch some lions and tigers. I´ll try and send some pictures, I have some pretty good ones.

Yesterday I gave my talk in sacrament meeting and I think it went pretty well. It was on la obediencia. I didn´t feel that nervous but I kinda forgot all of spanish when I was up there. I hope I made a little bit of sense haha. 

We´re kinda struggling investigator wise. We have a ton of great investigators, but they´ve all sorta hit a wall and aren´t progressing. We have a lot who just need to get married. Like they are basically already a part of the ward. They come every week and already know basically all the doctrine. This one couple is super awesome, we watched the Testaments with them one night because it´s their favorite movie, but they can´t get baptized because the guy is still married to a woman that lives in Perú that he hasn´t seen in like 30 years. And apparently he would have to go all the way back to Perú to get a divorce and they don´t have the money to do that. Estamos ahí. We´re in the process of finding new investigators, so hopefully we can find some that are going to progress.

Oh, I almost forgot. On saturday, we built a bridge. We stopped to talk to this lady and asked if we could help her out with something. Long story short Elder Nash and I are building a little bridge over the ditch to help her get to her house easier. We did not have good wood to work with, but we made it work. All things considering, I think we actually did a pretty good job. I´ll send some pictures of it. 


Well I´m kinda pulling a blank on what else happened this week. A million things happened but I can´t seem to remember them right now.

Espero que tengan una buena semana.


-Elder Shelton​

Nate's Letter Home - April 9, 2018

El Barro - 9 abril 2018

Well it´s been a really wet past couple of days, especially Friday. We got dumped on. Friday was our p-day this week because we had zone conference on thursday. Zone conference was pretty cool, we learned a lot of stuff. The AP´s challenged all of us to start introducing ourselves to people as a bautizador instead of a misionero. It seemed kinda weird to me at first but I actually like it a lot more because people would always get really confused when we said we were misioneros, due to the fact that there is a province in Argentina called Misiones, and people from that province are called misioneros, and so some people thought we were saying we are from Misiones, which they obviously knew wasn´t true because they can clearly tell we are yankees. But anyway, now soy un bautizador de la Iglesia de Jesucristo.

Friday was an adventure. We took the train with our bikes early in the morning to Rodriguez to get haircuts with the zone leaders. They have a member in their ward that does it for free, and he actually does a really good job. So we rode our bikes with them clear out to this guy´s house out in the middle of the campo. Right when we got to his house it started to rain really hard. It was still raining really hard when we left so we got absolutely soaked. We also had to ride through about a mile of straight mud which was really difficult. We finally got back to the main part of the city where the roads are paved to see that the roads had been replaced by roaring rivers. I think we invented a new sport called underwater biking, because that is basically what we were doing. I didn´t see my tires until we finally got back to the train station. We were completely drenched from head to foot. My clothes are shoes still drying to this day. Our hair looks good tho.

It rained more Saturday so that was another adventure. Basically we spent the day riding through miles of mud. Our tires got stuck so many times, and I also lost my shoe to the mud several times. We did not find a lot of success haha. When we were coming back to the pensh that night we had a pretty funny experience. We had finally made it back to the paved road, which was now a river. At some parts it was so deep that our tires completely submerged. Well of course right when we´re at the deepest part a bus comes flying down the street towards us, and I kid you not, it was literaly casting a wake. Elder Nash was in front and so he got hit by the giant wave first got knocked off his bike. It was probably one of the funniest things I´ve ever seen. I was somehow able to ride out the wave, but I got completely soaked in the process. Basically, it´s been an adventure. And it´s going to continue because it´s supposed to rain today and Wednesday.

So some more sad news. I don´t remember if I told you that the mom of the big family with 7 kids was pregnant with number 8. Well we find out friday from the bishop that the mom was in the hospital and had lost the baby. We went and visited the dad and the kids that night and it was pretty sad. They all went to the hospital on sunday so we will have to postpone the baptisms until they get their second attendance.

Well I think that´s about all I got. Hopefully everything is going well for you guys. The four of us are all talking in church next week, so I´ll have to find time to write a talk I guess. Hopefully it goes well.

-Elder Shelton

P.S.

Could you send me some more pictures? I don´t really have any particular pictures in mind, just some I could print out to show to the people here. The members always ask to see pictures, and we show our pictures a lot when we contact people, so it would be good to have some more.

Also, sorry that I haven´t sent pictures in a while, I don`t really have any pictures of the past few weeks. My comp got robbed about 2 weeks before I arrived, so we are pretty careful about what we carry with us. I think we´re going to the zoo this pday tho so I should get some good pictures from that.

Nate's Letter Home - April 2, 2018

To start off, yes, I watched all of Conference (including Priesthood Session), and it was amazing. We watched it at the church building. They had a TV set up in the chapel for everyone to watch. We were going to watch it in there with everyone else, but then the bishop told us we could go in the secretary office and watch it in there. So my comp and I got to watch all 5 sessions in english. Our mission president gave us permission to watch Priesthood session, even though we didn´t get back till after 11. Elder Nash´s mom is in the choir so we got to see her quite a bit. President Nelson kept dropping bombs, we could hardly keep up. The members were so hyped that they announced a new temple in Argentina, even though the one in Buenos Aires is way closer than Salta haha. It was a really cool conference. We were able to get the huge family of 9 to the first session on saturday. We went by their house at about 11:30, walked to the train station with them, then took the train with them back to Francisco Álvarez and then walked to the church with them. They liked it a lot.

Also speaking of them, the relief society has visited them, and so did the bishop with the elders quorom president. The relief society has already given them a bunch of clothes, and the elders quorom is going to be helping fix up their house. Everything is going super well with them and we will be baptizing the 2 older kids pretty soon.

So on Pday I met Elder Hansen who is brand new to the mission and I asked him where he´s from and he said Arizona, and I was like oh I´m from Cache Valley. He was like, oh my dad grew up in cache valley, in a little town called Mendon. That definitely caught me off guard, I haven´t met anyone on my mission who has heard about Mendon before. I can´t remember his dad´s name, but do you know any Hansen´s from Mendon? I think he might have said his grandpa´s name is Mike, but I could be wrong.

On saturday in between the afternoon session and the priesthood session we played some basketball with some of the young men and an investigator of the other elders. It turns out my shot is like fine wine and only gets better with time because I could not be stopped. I made 4 threes in a row once and they wanted to ban me from shooting more. It was pretty surprising because I thought I was going to suck since I haven´t played basketball in a long time.

I see that Kansas didn´t make it to the championship, which is what I expected, but is still disappointing.

Oh, I got the stamps you sent by the way.

I can´t remember which talk it was but something that hit me pretty hard was about the sailor who prayed for help to get through the storm. He did not ask to be delivered through the storm, but he asked what he could do to get through the storm. This struck me pretty hard. Instead of asking for God to bless my investigators, maybe I should ask what I can do to help and bless them. ¿Qué puedo hacer Yo para ayudar y bendecir a mis investigadores, físicamente, y espiritualmente? Creo que eso va a ayudarme bendecir sus vidas mas que nada.

Pero bueno, que tengan una buena semana, y éxitos con todo!

-Elder Shelton

PS:  Address to the church in my area:
Finochieto 1970, Francisco Álvarez

I still don´t know the address to the pensh, addresses are pretty hard here.

Translation of above by Todd:

"What can I do to help and bless my investigators, physically and spiritually?  I believe that this will help me bless their lives more than anything else.   

Well, have a good week and have success in everything!"   (that last part doesn't translate perfectly, but that's the jest of it)