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"