Nate's Letter Home - Oct 29, 2018

Well it seems like the weeks are passing by way too fast in my opinion. Monday mornings is when we do our weekly planning and I always wonder where the week went. Today for comp inventory we combined with the other elders and did it as us 4 together. Anyway, basically we decided that we had been slacking on our exercises, and so we decided that we´re all going to start waking up a little bit earlier, like at 5:50, and go running. So we`ll see how that goes this week. We play soccer every friday night at the church, and it makes me realize I`m out of shape because it always wears me out. Although it appears my soccer skills have somewhat improved in the past year, because I actually score a lot of goals. They are always surprised to see a Gringo score a goal haha.

Well this week was a little bit tough. We tried to focus on finding new people, and so we contacted a lot. But unfortunately that did not bring much success. So this week we`re gonna be on the same grind because we need a lot of new people. There are a lot of people to be found here, but it takes some diligence and patience.

Hasta Lunes,
-Elder Shelton

PS:  here`s an argentine asado that we had on saturday

Nate's Letter Home - Oct 22, 2018

22 octubre 2018

Well I think I´ll be pretty brief today since we got to talk yesterday. Oh, and since I had to end the call pretty quick I forgot to tell mom ¡Feliz Día de la Madre!

Well my birthday was pretty chill. Like I said, my comp made me a cake, and so did two other families, so basically I ate more cake that day than I have in my entire mission combined. Made me kinda sick. I forgot to tell you last week, that I was pretty sick one night and threw up several times. I still felt a little iffy in the morning so I called the family that we had lunch with to tell them that we probably weren`t going to be able to come to lunch. That was when they informed me that they were having an asado. Well, I´ve never been someone to turn down an asado, so we decided to go. It was really good, even with an iffy stomach.

Well things are going pretty good here in Castillo, but unfortunately we haven`t seen much progress in the people we´re teaching. So basically right now we`re in the process of finding new people. It`s always pretty easy to find people that want to listen, but the hard part is finding people that are willing to change. Hopefully we can find a few of those this week.

Que tengan una buena semana,


-Elder Shelton

"Que tengan una buena semana" = Have a great week

"¡Feliz Día de la Madre!" = Happy Mother's Day (which is was in Argentina yesterday - Nate got to call us)

Nate's Letter Home - Oct 15, 2018

Veinte - 15 octubre 2018

Well I guess it´s my birthday tomorrow. I knew it was really close but I didn´t really realize it was tomorrow until I was just reading the mission newsletter and I saw my face in the birthday section. I´ve had about 6 families invite me over to eat for my birthday, so I don´t know how that´s gonna work out.

Well my comp and I are getting along fine, although sometimes the communication is definitely lacking haha. He only has 5 months in the mission, and he still has a really thick accent, so sometimes I have no idea what he says. He knows a few phrases in english, which really only makes things worse because when he says something to me and I don´t understand it, I have to sit there and think, ok, is what he just said spanish? Or maybe it was english? And if it´s neither of those two then I usually come to the conclusion that he was speaking Portugues haha. But despite that we´re still doing good.

Yesterday we had a kind of emergency Stake Conference, because our Stake President is moving to Moreno or something, so he needed to be released. He had already been stake president for like 7 or 8 years, so it was basically time for a new one anyway. So they announced the new presidency and we also got to hear from the Area Seventy. Although to be honest I didn´t hear much because I sat next to Lautaro and he talked with me a lot. Well we didn´t actually ¨talk¨, but you know what I mean.

I think I forgot to mention that last week I finished el Libro de Mormón, for the first time completely in spanish. It was a cool experience. I remember when I started out in first Nephi it took a lot of effort to understand each verse, but in not much time it became a lot easier, and even reached the point where I could read basically just as well as I could in english.

Oh yeah, and I also learned last tuesday that my district got changed. Instead of just having the elders from Los Pinos, I now have Los Pinos, the hermanas from San Justo, and the zone leaders in my district. Which is a way bigger district than I´ve ever had. It´s kinda crazy at night with all the numbers and making sure they all get home. Today we have our first district meeting with the new district so hopefully it goes well.

I think I´ll end with a scripture that Lautaro shared with me yesterday during stake conference. He kept signaling 3 numbers: 1,4, and 7, and I had no idea what he was talking about. I finally figured out that it was a page number in the book of mormon, page 147. So I opened up to it and he pointed to Jacob 4:6. Here´s what it says in english:

¨Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea.¨

And I also like verse 7:
¨ Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things.¨

Hasta Lunes,

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Oct 8, 2018

Bautismo, Conferencia, y Confirmación - 8 octubre 2018

I guess I´ll start off with transfers. I will be staying here and getting a new comp, Elder Pariera, who´s from Brasil. And I´ll remain líder de distrito.

Well, Lautaro ended up getting baptized this week! Which I wasn´t really sure was gonna happen. But it definitely wasn´t easy. On wednesday we taught him all of the commandments, which wasn´t easy because we have to have our friend Marcos translate for us. (Did I mention that Lautaro is deaf?) So we had to teach everything very simply. He was so excited to get baptized, I don´t know if I´ve ever seen anyone get so excited for baptism. He wants to bless and pass the sacrament really bad too, and serve a mission. But we told him that there is an order to things. We used our fingers to count out 5 steps, and then acted out each one: 1. Bautismo  2. Don del Espíritu Santo  3. Sacerdocio  4. Partir la Santa Cena  5. Elder/Misión. He´s really excited to do each one haha. But after we taught him everything he got really sad and told us that him mom wasn´t going to let him get baptized. That really surprised us because we´ve talked to the mom several times and she never had any problems with us. So thursday we went to see what was up. She told us that she wasn´t going to allow him to get baptized right now because he wasn´t ready. He had only been to church 2 times, and she thought it would be better if he just kept going to church, and maybe in a couple of years, when he was really sure, then he could get baptized. I´ve had this problem a lot in my mission so I already had some stuff ready. I shared the story in Acts 8, about the man that asks ¨what doth hinder me to be baptized?¨ And in Acts 22 ¨And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and washaway thy sins¨. And also a little bit about how faith is not a perfect knowledge, and that if we don´t get baptized, we are only stopping ourselves from progressing onto greater things. Well, pretty suprisingly and miraculously, we somehow convinced her, and she signed the ficha and we had the baptism the next day. We confirmed him in our capilla in between sessions on sunday, with our bishop and a few other members. (Which we had recieved permission from our President and bishop to do).

As you know, Conference was very good. I watched all the sessions in english in la capilla in Ramos Mejía with several other missionaries, except for the sunday morning session, which I watched in spanish in the house of obispo, because we had to confirm Lautaro right after. Watching it in spanish made me realize how much I´ve really learned in the past year, because I didn´t have any problems at all understand it. Which is definitely a lot of progress from a year ago haha. Elder Holland´s talk was very good, even in spanish.

Well I´ve already run out of time so I guess that will be all. Have a great week! And enjoy the 3 hours of church while you still can! ;)

-Elder Shelton

Maybe these are obvious, but just in case, here are the translations for Nate's 5-step program 

1 = Baptism

2 = Gift of the Holy Ghost

3 = Priesthood

4 = Administer the Sacrament

5 = Elder/Mission

"ficha" = baptismal slip

"capilla" = chapel

"obisbo" = bishop

Nate's Letter Home - Oct 1, 2018

Mi cumpleaños, y un fin de semana de milagros - 1 octubre 2018

So friday I hit the one year mark, which was pretty crazy. I read the entry in my journal from my first day in the MTC and it was hard to believe that that was really a year ago. I still feel like a new missionary haha.

It was an amazing weekend for the mission, with 80 baptisms and confirmations. Which made in total 167 baptisms in september, which is by far the most I`ve ever seen. The unfortunate part is that for Rafael Castillo 2, the weekend was a real downer. The worst part is that it started out looking really good. We had Mauro, who we considered a sure baptism. Then we had Guadalupe, who already had been to church twice. We finally were able to teach her for the first time on tuesday. We taught lesson 1 and lesson 3, and then invited her to be baptized on saturday. Everything went perfect and she was really excited to get baptized. Also we had Lautaro, who wants to get baptized really bad, we just need to teach him a few more lessons. So, in the middle of the week, it looked like we were going to have 3 baptisms, and achieve the highly coveted 4xCristo in september. But then things got interesting. It started off on thursday with Guadalupe. She didn`t show up in the church for the cita we had planned to teach her what she needed to get baptized. So we called her friend who`s a member to ask if she knew what happened with Guadalupe. She said that Guadalupe talked with her mom about getting baptized, and that her mom isn't going to let her get baptized, or even come to church anymore. So that was disappointing.

Then we kept passing by Lautaro`s house so that we could teach him, but nobody was ever home. We found out through one of his friends that Lautaro´s little brother, who`s like 5, got mauled by a dog in the street and got cut open pretty bad and was in the hospital. So basically, we weren`t able to teach Lautaro this week. And just when we thought it couldn`t get worse, on friday we got a call from our bishop. He said that he, the bishop from Los Pinos, and the parents of Mauro had been talking, and that they decided to postpone the baptism for about a month, because they have another kid that´s about to turn 8, so they want to baptize them together. So we ended the week without a baptism, which is not what we were expecting. 

But at least we got some lined up for october. Hopefully we can line a ton up for the 13th, since we can`t confirm this week due to Conference. I don´t know if you can tell in this letter, but my english skills seam to be weakening. I´m kinda forgetting how to spell some words. We had our interviews with President this week, and I talked in english for the first time in quite a while. It was almost impossible to talk without saying a spanish word, so I gave up and basically spoke Spanglish with him.

Anyway, that´s about all I got. Hopefully everyone has a great week, and a great Conference Weekend.


-Elder Shelton

"Mi cumpleaños, y un fin de semana de milagros" = my year mark and the end of a week of miracles