Nate's Letter Home - Aug 21, 2018

The Dream Team - 21 agosto 2018

Well it´s been another week. They always pass by really fast. Yesterday was Día del Niño, which it turns out is actually a thing. It was actually a pretty big deal, a lot of places were closed and there was an activity in the church for it.

I guess the good news is that we have a baptism this week. A 13 year old girl named Mariané. She´s already been to church 3 times and wants to get baptized really bad. So luckily we´ll be ending the transfer on a good note.

On Wednesday we had divisions with our zone leaders in Rodriguez. It made me realize that I´ve been in Alvarez a long time because all the members of Rodriguez already know me because I´ve done divisions there 4 times now. We did service in the morning to help some members move some dirt and bricks because they´re building a house. The lady recognized me because my first time in Rodriguez I helped build part of her dad´s house haha.

Well on saturday, the elders quorom hosted a stake soccer tournament here in Alvarez. They asked us to participate, so we made a team of us four elders and Nico. Nico ended up not being able to come so we had to draft one of the young men to come play with us. I played goalie because I´m a lot better with my hands than my feet. I thought we would get wrecked but we actually did really good. We ended up in second. We only lost one game, and it was against our own bishopric. I surprisingly did pretty well as goalie. Halfway through the tournament, the bishop of Rodriguez was trying to recruit me for his team.



Anyway, hopefully nothing crazy happens and the baptism actually happens. This will probably be my last week in Alvarez. I don´t think it´s really hit me yet.

I had completely forgotten that you were going on a cruise to Alaska. Hopefully you have a good time.

Hasta lunes,
-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Aug 13, 2018

the struggle bus - 13 agosto 2018

Well... another week without bikes haha. Luckily, the guy that has our bikes finally called us last night and said he´s going to bring them tomorrow morning. So hopefully we´ll be able to get a lot of stuff done this week.

Last monday, we got a call from the APs that we would be having divisions with the zone leaders of Moreno. So right after district meeting, we packed up and took the train to Moreno, where the zone leaders were waiting for us, then we took a bus with them to their area in Mariló. Which is also the area of the APs. So we did divisions with them monday night and all of tuesday. I was with Elder Ledezma from Mexico. He´s a capo and we had a good time. We didn´t get back to Alvarez until wednesday, and since we still didn´t have bikes, it was kinda hard to get a lot done this week. We were still able to have a bit of success though. If everything goes well, today or tomorrow Mariela and Hector (the couple that wants to get married) will ¨sacar turno¨ to get a wedding date. Sometimes the waiting period is only like 10 days, but sometimes it´s a lot longer, so we´ll see what happens.

We are teaching this 14 year old girl named Nahiara. She seemed pretty promising, she said she wanted to get baptized. So we told her we would come to her house sunday morning so we could help her get to church. Well we got to her house sunday morning, and the mom came out and said that Nahiara was still sleeping. So we asked her if she could go wake her up for us. She came back after a minute and said that she tried to wake her up, but she said she didn´t want to. Well, that was pretty disappointing. We went back last night at like 7 to try and talk to her. Her little brother whose like six came out and said she was still in bed. We were like, she´s still in bed? He was like yeah, she went to a party last night and came back at like 3 am, and now she´s been throwing up all day. So yeah, we kinda put 2 and 2 together and we decided that we should probably teach the Palabra de Sabiduría next lesson.

Luckily la familia Lorenzo came up big in the clutch yesterday. (La familia Lorenzo have been going to church for 4 years now, but still aren´t baptized because they haven´t been able to get married yet.) Anyway, they brought 3 friends of their daughter with them to church. And after church we went to their house and taught them and it went really well. They liked church a lot. Hopefully we can recieve permission from their parents and baptize them next week.

Anyway, that´s about all I got for today.

¡Que tengan una semana asombrosa!

¨Aunque el pecado inevitablemente nos aleja de Dios, la debilidad, irónicamente, nos puede conducir hacia Él.¨ - Wendy Ulrich

Although sin inevitably distances us from God, weakness, ironically, can bring us closer to him

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Aug 6, 2018

On foot again... 6 agosto 2018

Well it´s been a bit of an interesting week. Last monday, my comp´s bike broke and we had to drop it off at the bike shop so we had to work the rest of the day on foot, which is not an easy thing to do in Alvarez because our area is pretty big. And all of our investigators live very far from our pensh. Tuesday morning, my comp´s bike was still getting fixed, so we had to go on foot again. We got his bike back in the afternoon, but then about 10 minutes after, my bike broke. So, we went on foot yet again. Long story short, on wednesday, the mission offices sent a member from Ramos Mejía who is good at fixing bikes to our pensh. He came and took all our bikes away so he could fix them. Well, we still don´t have our bikes back, so we´re still walking everywhere. It´s been hard to visit our investigators since they live so far. Like remember the couple that wants to get married? Well we found out that walking from our pensh to their house at a fairly fast pace takes 55 minutes. And we have investigators that live even farther. But, at least one thing good about walking is that it´s easier to contact people. So we got a lot of good contacts this week. Hopefully we get our bikes back though.

As for the couple getting married, we haven´t been able to make much progress. We were only able to visit them twice this week. But we did talk to them about getting married here in Alvarez and they were all for it. The trick now is helping them get into Alvarez and actually doing it. We´re going to have to mostly rely on the members to help them out though, since they actually know the process. Plus it´s kinda hard for us to do anything without our bikes.

Most likely, I only have 3 more weeks here in Alvarez so I´m trying to make the most of it. I´ve been here so long it´s starting to feel like home. We´re going to be having some baptisms before I leave.

Oh, I almost forgot. So saturday night we visited a less active family. The dad served a mission and is a high priest, but they haven´t been to church in almost 2 years. I think it is due to some arguement or problem they had with some of the members back then. But anyway, we sat down with them and I felt like I should share a story from the book of mormon that I had been thinking about a lot recently. So I opened up to Alma 24 and read the story of the people of anti-nephi-lehi burrying their swords. We talked about it with them and I told them that whatever ¨swords¨ that we have that get in the way of us following the Lord, we should burry them. So I invited them to burry their swords and come to church on sunday. It was a nice surprise sunday morning when we saw them coming through the doors of the church. It was their first time coming in about 2 years.

Alma 24:15

-Elder Shelton