Nate's Letter Home - July 30, 2018

Nico = Capo - 30 julio 2018

Another week in Alvarez, and it was a rainy one. It never rained super hard but there was a constant light rain from tuesday all the way until yesterday. There is more mud now than I think I´ve ever seen. Also, the main paved road we take through our area how now become a lake. Like they actually had to block it off, not even the busses can go through. So that has made things difficult. I´m tempted to try to ride through it but it probably wouldn´t end well. If I do I´ll make sure my comp gets it on video so you can see it next week.

You remember Nico right? He´s the 20 year old that Elder Chamberlain and I baptized back in May. Anyway, 2 weeks ago he got called as the new ward mission leader! He is the biggest capo ever! It feels kinda crazy when we meet with him and talk about our investigators, because just two months ago he was my investigator ha ha. Also, he told me more about his past life and it was even worse than I thought. He had gotten himself into some bad stuff. But when he first met me and Elder Nash, his life changed just as quickly, and drastically, as that of Alma the younger.

Remember that new family that came to church two weeks ago in bikes? Well on tuesday we taught them ley de castidad and that before they get baptized, they would have to get married. They were just like, ¨Ok, so how do we get married?¨ I was so surprised I didn´t really know what to say, and I realized that I have no idea how you go about getting married here. So were just told them that we´re going to talk to the members and that they´ll be more than willing to help them. Well apparently on Friday they went into Moreno to see what they needed to do to get married, and the place they went to said that it would cost them like 1,500 pesos or something like that. So when we talked to them yesterday, they said they would have to get married after the baby was born (the mom is 5 months pregnant) because they don´t have the money right now. But according to one of the members there´s a place where you can get married here in Alvarez and it´s really cheap. So we´re going to go visit them with the member and talk about it with them tomorrow. Maybe it´s kinda selfish but I want to see them get married and baptized before I leave.

Anyway, we´ll see what happens. Hopefully y´all have a great week and can enjoy the summer while it lasts!

-Elder Shelton


p.s. Here´s a pic of me and Nico

Nate's Letter Home - July 23, 2018

Overflow - 23 julio 2018

Well I`m glad to hear that the Lake Powell trip didn`t end in disaster. The pictures you sent brought back a lot of memories. The part of Cedar canyon you stayed in looks pretty familiar. It´s also kinda hard to imagine it´s summer there, because it´s pretty cold here. I also didn`t realize that it was already the 24th celebration in Mendon. Sounds like it was a good one. 

This week was a rainy one so it was kinda difficult. On rainy days everyone hunkers down in there houses and it´s hard to get anything done. We try and visit our investigators but almost always there isn`t a man in the house so we can`t enter. Or the man is there but their roof is leaking and they don`t want to let us in and see the disaster inside. So then we try and contact but nobody wants to come out of their house. So sometimes rainy days are a struggle.

So this week we had an adventure with the bathroom. In the center of the room there`s this drain where the toilet, shower, and sink all drain into. Well apparently there was some kind of clog or something. And so sometimes the drain in the center would fill up and overflow a bit. So for like a week everytime we flushed the toilet it was like the scariest thing ever because there was a chance that it would come back up in the center of the room. Needless to say, we saw some nasty stuff this week. We talked to the owner about it, and he called this people to come and pump our sewer hole out. (Here everyone basically just has a hole in the ground where all their sewer goes and you have to get it pumped out over 6 months to a year.) So the people came to pump it out but it turned out it wasn`t even full, there was just a clog. Well, they were able to get it out, so now we can flush the toilet without being terrified. And our pensh smells a lot better.

But anyway, things are going good here in Álvarez. In the pensh it`s now me, my comp, and two Colombianos. So I`m now the only white person haha. There´s a lot more spanish in the pensh now too.

Here´s a scripture I like to share with the people we teach, when they feel like they might not be able to do what the Lord asks them:

Y les dije: Si Dios me hubiese mandado hacer todas las cosas, yo podría hacerlas. Si me mandara que dijese a esta agua: Conviértete en tierra, se volvería tierra; y si yo lo dijera, se haría. 
Ahora bien, si el Señor tiene tan grande poder, y ha hecho tantos milagros entre los hijos de los hombres, ¿cómo es que no puede enseñarme a construir un barco? 

Sé que Dios tiene todo poder para cumplir lo que mande y que siempre nos prepara una vía para que podamos hacerlo. 


-Elder Shelton

Translations:

1 Nephi 17: 50-51: And I said unto them: If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them. If he should command me that I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth; and if I should say it, it would be done.  And now, if the Lord has such great power, and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me, that I should build a ship?

Nate:  "I know that God has all power to accomplish what he commands and that he always prepares a way that we may accomplish it"

Nate's Letter Home - July 16, 2018

Me Quedo

So yeah transfers are tomorrow but I will be staying. I kinda figured I would be so I can finish the training of Elder Duarte. I`m glad too because I really like this area and I feel like there`s still something I need to do here. 

I guess I`ll start with the disappointing story. We had this 17 year old girl we were teaching named Rocío. Everything was going pretty good. We were teaching her, she had a fecha bautismal, and she came to church. Also she said she was reading in the book of mormon and one of the verses made her cry. Then one day she was like, yeah so one of my friends invited me to his evangelica church so I`m going to go with him to see how it is. Well, we weren`t able to find her in her house for like a week and a half. We finally were able to find her. We were sitting there talking to the family, and I saw this little pendant keychain thingy with a picture of Jesus on it sitting on the table. So I picked it up to look at it, and when I turned it over I saw a picture of Rocío in white and it said, ¨Mi Bautismo¨. I could not believe it. She literally had already gotten baptized in the week we didn`t see her. It was pretty disappointing. I´ve lost too many investigators to the evangelica church. Speaking of that, María and all her kids randomly showed up to the church Wednesday night when we play soccer. We hadn´t visited her in over a week because we basically had to drop her. But she showed up and she gave me and my comp a 12 empanadas because she knew it´s my favorite food from here. So I don`t know, maybe she´s starting to change her mind. We´ll have to see.

Yesterday we saw un milagro. We found this new family on friday, and set up a cita to return saturday morning. So we went back on saturday and basically just taught them about the book of mormon. I read Mosiah 24:13-15 with them, which is one of my favorite things to read with investigators. They liked it a lot and we invited them to come to church and they said they would love to. (I´ve heard that about a million times, so I wasn't expecting them to actually come.) Well Sunday morning at about 9:50 we get a call. It was the mom, and she said sorry that they were running late but that they were going to arrive in about 10 minutes. I could not believe it haha. I forgot to mention that this family lives clear out in the boonies of our area, about 30 minutes in bike from the church. I figured they would be taking bus to get to the church. So it was a huge surprise when I saw the entire family come around the corner in bikes. I don´t think I´ve ever seen such commitment to come to church from any of my investigators. The parents will have to get married but I feel confident this time they will be willing to do it. They want to get baptized really bad and they liked church a lot.

Also we´ve kinda been having water issues in our pensh haha. We aren´t allowed to drink tap water so we have to buy the big jugs of water from people that come to our house and sell it. Well for some reason they haven´t passed by in like 3 weeks. So we haven´t had any drinking water for that long. We´ve been surviving off boiling water for maté for a long time. A couple days ago we went to the store and bought a 2 liter bottled water and we all drank it and it was like heaven. Never thought regular water could taste so good. 

Anyway, things are going good, and hopefully we´ll be seeing some baptisms here soon. Hopefully you guys have a great week in Lake Powell! Don´t shred too much of the gnar!


-Elder Shelton

"me quedo" = I'm staying here
"fecha baptismal = baptismal date"
"un milagro" = a miracle
"cita" = appointment

Nate's Letter Home - July 10, 2018

sorry - 10 julio 2018

So long story short, yesterday was Independence Day in Argentina so we couldn´t write. So we came to Rodriguez today to come to the ciber and write, but both cibers were completely full. So we came to this store called Nerdland, because we became friends with the girl that owns it by talking to her about Pokemon, Yugioh, and Star Wars. She let us use her two laptops, but there´s four of us here, so we have to share haha. So I´m not going to write much this week.

This week was pretty interesting. We got cursed by an Umbanda, got gifted sticks that contained opium, found the Willie who has been haunting my companion´s dreams, I wrecked and flew over the front of my bike onto the pavement, among many other things. If you want more details to some of those things you´ll have to ask next week. 

The good thing was that we found a great family, a mom and her six kids. Hopefully everthing goes well and they can come to church this sunday.

Well I got to go, have fun at Lake Powell!


-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - July 2, 2018

France too good - 2 julio 2018

Well since the last time I wrote Argentina went from pulling clutch to completely choking. Also I´m currently fasting, about to hit 24 hours​ ​so we`ll see how this letter turns out.

But yeah, the game against Nigeria was awesome. We were in the streets, basically just wandering around because there was not a single person outside. All of the sudden we hear the entire neighborhood start screaming at once. I´ve never heard anything like it. People were yelling from miles all around. And after a few seconds we heard explosions, fireworks, and what sounded like cannons being fired. We were like well, I guess they scored. Eventually we just decided to go to an investigator, Juan Lorenzo´s house because we knew he would let us in. When we got there he was really upset because Nigeria had just scored off a penalty kick and tied it 1-1. So we watched the last part of the second half with him and it was intense. I was so nervous because I knew that if we tied, we were out. But they pulled clutch in about the 85th minute with a money cross to score the game winning goal. Everybody went nuts when it went in. Juan gave us both a bear hug.

Unfortunately the defense completely fell apart against France. We heard the screaming twice while we were in the streets, so we knew they had 2 goals. Eventually we decided to go to Juan´s house again to see how the game was going. When we got there it was 2-1 for Argentina and everyone was happy. But we got there just in time to see the defense fall apart harder than the Roman Empire. We hadn´t been there more than 10 minutes and France had already scored 3 goals to make it 4-2. We figured we were bad luck so we left haha. We heard later that they almost pulled off the impossible to get 2 goals in stoppage time, but it didn`t quite happen. Everybody was pretty disappointed that day. Portugal lost that same day, so the two best players are already done. Also, you probably heard that Germany didn´t even advance out of groups, which was a huge surprise. Basically everyone thought they would win the whole thing.

But anyway, as for missionary work, things are going pretty good. We had a lot of disappointments in June, but we´ve been finding a lot of good new people recently and we´re hoping to have more success with them. There was something that happened this week that I wanted to write about but my mind is pulling a blank right now. I´ll probably remember what it is right when I sign out haha.

Hopefully you all have a great week. I just realized that it´s the 4th of July this week, do you have any plans? Also I hope Dall can recover from his surgery in time to shred some gnar at Lake Powell.

Hasta lunes,
-Elder Shelton

p.s. I don`t really have anything in specific for you to say in your report. I´ll leave it up to you.