Año Nuevo - 31 diciembre 2018
Well we had some ups and downs this week. Disaster struck and Edén did not get confirmed... I´m not really sure what happened. On wednesday, we had a lesson with him and everything was great. He was excited to come to church and recieve the Holy Ghost. But then, the next day we got a text at about 5 saying that he had to leave for Jujuy at 6, and wouldn`t be back until like the middle of January. I was like you can`t be serious. We tried calling him and we went straight to his house, but no one was there. We haven`t heard from him since. We´re guessing that he´s on guard or something, but supposedly he was on a 4 week break from the army, so we´re not really sure what happened. I guess we just got to wait and see.
I´m not sure if I mentioned Abril last week? I think in the video call I talked about how a girl came running after us to ask what time church started. Well anyway, she came again yesterday to church. She was pretty close to being ready to be baptized. But then she suddenly left during the middle of sacrament meeting. And she sent us a text explaining that she was sorry for leaving early but she didn`t like the meeting at all because she is in favor of abortion (which was mentioned in one of the talks). And in the other talk plural marriage got mentioned for some reason and she said she was confused about that. Sooo.. I guess we`ll see if we can explain all of that to her this week.
Other than that the week was pretty good tho. We got 5 people in church yesterday, which was good. They all have different stuff that´s keeping them from being baptized though, so we´re gonna have to pull off some magic.
I guess I forgot to mention that transfers were on saturday, but I´m staying a 4th transfer here to finish the training of Elder Hill.
Anyway, Happy New Year!
Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? - James 2:22
-Elder Shelton
Monday, December 31, 2018
Monday, December 24, 2018
Nate's Letter Home - Dec 24, 2018
and all the elements combine to hedge up the way - 24 diciembre 2018
Well it has been an absolutely insane past 3 days. To be honest, I don`t even know where to start.
I guess I`ll start out with what happened to Edén. Like I said last week, he was a ¨seguro¨ for this saturday. Everything looked good during the week, we planned everything with him and the ward, and the baptism was going to be at 6 on saturday. Well the elders in Castillo 1 were also going to have 2 baptisms on friday, but due to a long story that I don´t really want to type out, they had to cancel it and so they just replanned it for saturday so that we could have the baptisms together. Then saturday morning, we were out contacting and happened to run into Edén in the street. He was excited for his baptism, and he said that he didn`t have work or anything all day so it was going to be a really chill day for him. Well, the baptismal font takes about 4 hours to fill up, so right after lunch at about 2 we went to the church to start filling it. Then at about 5, I went with Elder Ramirez to go pick up the 2 kids they were going to baptize. Well, we got to their house, and like always, there were a few problems, and we didn`t end up getting out of their house until like 5:45. Then, I get a call from Elder Covey, who was still at the church, saying that Edén still hadn`t shown up. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. So I gave him a call, and he answered, but of course there was this dog like 2 feet away from me barking as loud as he could, so I basically could understand like 0% of what he was saying. Although I got the feeling like something had happened and he was no longer here in Castillo. I finally just hung up and called him again when we got to the church. I called him like 30 times but he didn`t answer. By this time it was already past 6 and everyone was asking where he was. Finally, at about 6:20, I got a text from him that said there had been some kind of emergency with the national guard and they had called him in to the Capital. Well, I had to be the guy that broke the news to all the members that were there that Edén couldn`t come. Luckily they were pretty understanding.
Alright so I`m just gonna skip a bunch of details to this story because I figure I could just tell it all to you tomorrow in the Skype call. But basically, we baptized Edén yesterday afternoon. So it was a pretty happy ending, although we will have to confirm him next sunday in sacrament meeting.
I´ve got a few more good stories from this week, but I think it will be easier to just tell you them in the call tomorrow.
Hope you have a great Christmas!
-Elder Shelton
Well it has been an absolutely insane past 3 days. To be honest, I don`t even know where to start.
I guess I`ll start out with what happened to Edén. Like I said last week, he was a ¨seguro¨ for this saturday. Everything looked good during the week, we planned everything with him and the ward, and the baptism was going to be at 6 on saturday. Well the elders in Castillo 1 were also going to have 2 baptisms on friday, but due to a long story that I don´t really want to type out, they had to cancel it and so they just replanned it for saturday so that we could have the baptisms together. Then saturday morning, we were out contacting and happened to run into Edén in the street. He was excited for his baptism, and he said that he didn`t have work or anything all day so it was going to be a really chill day for him. Well, the baptismal font takes about 4 hours to fill up, so right after lunch at about 2 we went to the church to start filling it. Then at about 5, I went with Elder Ramirez to go pick up the 2 kids they were going to baptize. Well, we got to their house, and like always, there were a few problems, and we didn`t end up getting out of their house until like 5:45. Then, I get a call from Elder Covey, who was still at the church, saying that Edén still hadn`t shown up. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. So I gave him a call, and he answered, but of course there was this dog like 2 feet away from me barking as loud as he could, so I basically could understand like 0% of what he was saying. Although I got the feeling like something had happened and he was no longer here in Castillo. I finally just hung up and called him again when we got to the church. I called him like 30 times but he didn`t answer. By this time it was already past 6 and everyone was asking where he was. Finally, at about 6:20, I got a text from him that said there had been some kind of emergency with the national guard and they had called him in to the Capital. Well, I had to be the guy that broke the news to all the members that were there that Edén couldn`t come. Luckily they were pretty understanding.
Alright so I`m just gonna skip a bunch of details to this story because I figure I could just tell it all to you tomorrow in the Skype call. But basically, we baptized Edén yesterday afternoon. So it was a pretty happy ending, although we will have to confirm him next sunday in sacrament meeting.
I´ve got a few more good stories from this week, but I think it will be easier to just tell you them in the call tomorrow.
Hope you have a great Christmas!
-Elder Shelton
Monday, December 17, 2018
Nate's Letter Home - Dec 17, 2018
Carne y Huevos - 17 diciembre 2018
Alrighty well it was a pretty good week. We are pretty hyped because we have a ¨seguro¨ for this saturday. A seguro is somebody who already has everything he needs to be baptized (2 church attendances, all the lessons, interview, and desire to be baptized). Remember the guy I talked about last week that came to church in his army uniform? Well he came with us again yesterday, and we did the baptismal interview last night, so he is now considered a seguro. So unless something completely unexpected happens, we will be having a baptism this saturday.
So here´s something I found pretty funny. We were teaching this new couple in their house, and we started talking about the Plan of Salvation. I started it off, and then I turned it over to my comp to teach the pre-mortal life. Well he did pretty good, until he said that ¨Dios tiene un cuerpo de carne y huevos.¨ I was trying so hard not to laugh, but the look on the investigators face killed me. We all ended up laughing when my comp realized what he said haha.
Well I just got some good news. Remember that huge family of 9 that I found in my last area? Well Elder Duarte (the elder I trained) just told me that the parents got married and the kids got baptized. I am pretty shocked to be honest. It´s really good to hear though.
Well I can´t really think of much else to say. Christmas is coming really fast, and I kinda forgot about the video call thing so I´ll try and get on that this week so we can find somewhere to do it. It´s definitely starting to get really hot here, which is unfortunate.
Anyway, have a good week!
-Elder Shelton
Alrighty well it was a pretty good week. We are pretty hyped because we have a ¨seguro¨ for this saturday. A seguro is somebody who already has everything he needs to be baptized (2 church attendances, all the lessons, interview, and desire to be baptized). Remember the guy I talked about last week that came to church in his army uniform? Well he came with us again yesterday, and we did the baptismal interview last night, so he is now considered a seguro. So unless something completely unexpected happens, we will be having a baptism this saturday.
So here´s something I found pretty funny. We were teaching this new couple in their house, and we started talking about the Plan of Salvation. I started it off, and then I turned it over to my comp to teach the pre-mortal life. Well he did pretty good, until he said that ¨Dios tiene un cuerpo de carne y huevos.¨ I was trying so hard not to laugh, but the look on the investigators face killed me. We all ended up laughing when my comp realized what he said haha.
Well I just got some good news. Remember that huge family of 9 that I found in my last area? Well Elder Duarte (the elder I trained) just told me that the parents got married and the kids got baptized. I am pretty shocked to be honest. It´s really good to hear though.
Well I can´t really think of much else to say. Christmas is coming really fast, and I kinda forgot about the video call thing so I´ll try and get on that this week so we can find somewhere to do it. It´s definitely starting to get really hot here, which is unfortunate.
Anyway, have a good week!
-Elder Shelton
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¨Dios tiene un cuerpo de carne y huevos" = "God has a body of meat and eggs"
- "carne" is the equivalent of either "flesh" or "meat", kind of depending on the context
- "huevos" = eggs
- "huesos" = bones (so you can see why the greenie mixed these up)
Monday, December 10, 2018
Nate's Letter Home - Dec 10, 2018
Santa´s comin´ to town - 10 diciembre 2018
Well I´d say it`s been a pretty good week. We got 5 people in church yesterday, and only 1 of them has to get married, so we have 4 people that could be baptized very soon. This old lady named Laura came last sunday, and yesterday, so we potentially could baptize her this saturday. But she wasn`t home like at all last week, so we still need to teach her a few things... We`ll see what happens. We actually got 6 people in church, but one of them showed up after sacrament meeting, so it doesn`t count as an attendance. His name is Eden and he`s a capo. He`s in the army, and he had to go to some kind of training saturday and sunday morning. He left as soon as he could, rode like 2 hours in a bus back to Castillo, and made it to church just in time for Elders Quorum. He didn`t have time to change out of his uniform or anything. After the class, a bunch of members came up to him and started chatting. It seemed like he hit it off really well with all the members, which was good to see. He kind of has a crazy schedule, so we`re hoping that he`ll be able to come next week.
Well I´d say it`s been a pretty good week. We got 5 people in church yesterday, and only 1 of them has to get married, so we have 4 people that could be baptized very soon. This old lady named Laura came last sunday, and yesterday, so we potentially could baptize her this saturday. But she wasn`t home like at all last week, so we still need to teach her a few things... We`ll see what happens. We actually got 6 people in church, but one of them showed up after sacrament meeting, so it doesn`t count as an attendance. His name is Eden and he`s a capo. He`s in the army, and he had to go to some kind of training saturday and sunday morning. He left as soon as he could, rode like 2 hours in a bus back to Castillo, and made it to church just in time for Elders Quorum. He didn`t have time to change out of his uniform or anything. After the class, a bunch of members came up to him and started chatting. It seemed like he hit it off really well with all the members, which was good to see. He kind of has a crazy schedule, so we`re hoping that he`ll be able to come next week.
Do you remember me mentioning a deaf couple a couple of months ago? Well they came to church the sunday before yesterday. We visited them thursday night, and I told them they needed to get married. They said ok. Luckily, there`s a member in the other Castillo ward that speaks sign language, and she is going to go with the couple to the registro civil and help them with all the paper work and stuff like that. So in about a month, I think we`ll be having a wedding! Hopefully I`ll still be here to see it.
So on wednesday, Elder Ramirez and Elder Covey had just got done saying their prayer to end daily planning, and Elder Ramirez suddenly gets up and is like, ¨I just recieved revelation.¨ We asked him what it was and he was like ¨We need to all buy Santa hats and where them when we go proselyting.¨ I kinda thought he was kidding so I laughed, but he was actually serious. So the next day on Pday we went and bought ourselves some Santa hats haha. We have already seen the benefits. We basically don`t need to contact people anymore, because they contact us.
Well, hopefully you all have a great week!
¡Cuídense!
-Elder Shelton
"Cuidense!" = "Take care (of yourselves)"
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PS: My comps mom sent socks for each of us haha
Monday, December 3, 2018
Nate's Letter Home - Dec 3, 2018
La Casa del Señor - 3 diciembre 2018
Well I think we had a pretty good week.
On P-Day we went to the temple, which turned out to be an adventure. It was my first time going to the temple since I left the MTC, so I was pretty excited. The zone I`m in right now is basically the only one that has permission to go to the temple because we are pretty close to it. Well turns out we picked the wrong day to go, because apparently it just happened to be the day when like every president from every country in the world(including Trump) was coming to Argentina. By the way, the temple is really close to the airport. So we were on the bus to the temple, when all the sudden the driver was like, ¨turns out they have the airport completely blocked off and we can`t even get close to it, so you`ll have to get off here.¨ So we got off the bus in the middle of this freeway and we had no idea where we were. We asked this old dude that got off with us if he happened to know where the temple was and he was like, ¨¿la iglesia mormona? está por allá.¨ And he pointed in a general direction. So we just started heading in that direction a couple of miles. We ended up walking through a neighborhood, and then a huge wheat field, and then somehow we ended up finding the temple. By the time we got there a session had just started, and we didn`t have time to wait for the next one, so we just ended up doing initiatories. In the distribution center they had the new Saints book, the one that`s about church history. It looked sweet and it was only 41 pesos (like 1 dollar) so we all bought one.
Also, we found out that there`s a ¨Tex Mex¨ restaurant in Ramos Mejìa and we could hardly believe it. We went there after getting back from the temple and it was like heaven. It had been way too long since I`d eaten mexican food.
We found some really good people this week and we wanted to get all of them in church. We left the pensh sunday morning at 7:45 so that we could pass by like 8 houses before church. We passed by everybody we possibly could to try and wake them up and tell them to come to church. We did that until about 9:20 and then finally we went to church and got there right when it started at 9:30. Unfortunately, after all that, we only had 3 investigators in church. Two of which are a couple that have to get married... But it was still good I guess.
Anyways, hopefully we´ll be seeing some baps pretty soon.
Have a good week!
-Elder Shelton
¨¿la iglesia mormona? está por allá. - "The Mormon church? It's over there"
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This pic was sent to Sue via facebook. We have no explanation to go with it.
Well I think we had a pretty good week.
On P-Day we went to the temple, which turned out to be an adventure. It was my first time going to the temple since I left the MTC, so I was pretty excited. The zone I`m in right now is basically the only one that has permission to go to the temple because we are pretty close to it. Well turns out we picked the wrong day to go, because apparently it just happened to be the day when like every president from every country in the world(including Trump) was coming to Argentina. By the way, the temple is really close to the airport. So we were on the bus to the temple, when all the sudden the driver was like, ¨turns out they have the airport completely blocked off and we can`t even get close to it, so you`ll have to get off here.¨ So we got off the bus in the middle of this freeway and we had no idea where we were. We asked this old dude that got off with us if he happened to know where the temple was and he was like, ¨¿la iglesia mormona? está por allá.¨ And he pointed in a general direction. So we just started heading in that direction a couple of miles. We ended up walking through a neighborhood, and then a huge wheat field, and then somehow we ended up finding the temple. By the time we got there a session had just started, and we didn`t have time to wait for the next one, so we just ended up doing initiatories. In the distribution center they had the new Saints book, the one that`s about church history. It looked sweet and it was only 41 pesos (like 1 dollar) so we all bought one.
Also, we found out that there`s a ¨Tex Mex¨ restaurant in Ramos Mejìa and we could hardly believe it. We went there after getting back from the temple and it was like heaven. It had been way too long since I`d eaten mexican food.
We found some really good people this week and we wanted to get all of them in church. We left the pensh sunday morning at 7:45 so that we could pass by like 8 houses before church. We passed by everybody we possibly could to try and wake them up and tell them to come to church. We did that until about 9:20 and then finally we went to church and got there right when it started at 9:30. Unfortunately, after all that, we only had 3 investigators in church. Two of which are a couple that have to get married... But it was still good I guess.
Anyways, hopefully we´ll be seeing some baps pretty soon.
Have a good week!
-Elder Shelton
¨¿la iglesia mormona? está por allá. - "The Mormon church? It's over there"
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This pic was sent to Sue via facebook. We have no explanation to go with it.
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