Nate's Letter Home - Sept 2, 2019

return to Castillo - 2 septiembre 2019

Well I guess this is the last one of these.

Thursday afternoon I got to go visit Castillo again. I went with Elder Giraldo, because we lived together there. We stopped by several families and it was really cool. I wished I could have visited even more but there wasn`t enough time. To end the day we visited José and his family and they gave us dinner. It was reallly cool to see them. José showed me his consecrated oil container and told me that he just got the melchizedek priesthood last sunday. His wife Alejandra is now the first counselor in the relief society. Their whole family went to see the Prophet on wednesday. They said that they got to sit in one of the front rows and that it was really awesome. They also told me that they are going to get sealed in march, which will be a year since Alejandra got baptized.




























We got to watch the visit of the Prophet from the stake center here in Moreno. It was really good. Pres. Nelson gave his talk in spanish again, and all the members here loved it.

Well I hope you guys are doing ok and that you can recover quickly. I guess we`ll be seeing each other pretty soon.

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - August 26, 2019

interesting week - 26 agosto 2019

Well, it´s been kind of a weird week. Almost every morning I was with Elder Giraldo in his part of the area until lunchtime, because they don´t know where any of the members live yet, so they didn´t now how to get to lunch. But in the afternoon I got to work with my comp in our side of the area. We found a lot of good people this week, and we thought we were going to have a lot of people in church... but yesterday things turned out a little differently than how we thought they would. We went to I think about 7 different houses looking for people. We ended up empty handed, and when we finally got to sacrament meeting we were about 45 minutes late and got there just in time to hear the last speaker. It was by far the latest I´ve ever shown up to church but we really wanted to at least bring somebody to church. Yesterday was the last chance to bring somebody new to church and have them be baptized this transfer, since they need 2 attendances before they can be baptized. So now our only chances to baptize our people that have already come to church.

Rodrigo wasn´t baptized this weekend because he had to go visit him mom who lives clear out in the countryside somewhere. We are hoping that this week he will finally get baptized. We had lunch with his aunt on saturday (she´s a member of our ward) and she told us that ¨Rodrigo tiene ganas de bautizarse¨, so hopefully he still has those ganas.

Oh yeah, so we got robbed on saturday night, but it was weird because it was super chill. We think that the dude must be new to this whole robbing thing because he seemed pretty nervious. All I did was pull out 200 pesos and I gave it to him and he went away. He didn´t even ask us for our phone or anything and he didn´t take anything from my comp. I don´t know why my comps are always so lucky and I´m the one that loses my stuff haha. 

But anyway, things are going good. I´m trying to enjoy every moment but it´s kinda hard because it feels like time is moving too fast. 

Have a great week!


-Elder Shelton

tiene ganas de bautizarse = wants to be baptized (literally translated:  "has desires to be baptized") 

Nate's Letter Home - August 19, 2019

19 agosto 2019

Alright so this is going to be really short because I don´t have much time. There´s some interesting things happening here in Moreno 3. This morning we got a call from our zone leaders asking us if there´s room in our apartment for 4 elders. We said not really. They called us back a little bit later and told us that 2 more elders were coming to live with us anyway. So we had to scramble around trying to clean the apartment and rearrange stuff the best we could. One of the elders arrived less than an hour ago, so now we are in a threesome. The other elder is going to arrive at like 5 pm. So there´s going to be 4 elders here and we get to divide the area, which will be good because the area is huge. 

We almost had a baptism this weekend but Rodrigo ended up getting an infection or something in his mouth and had to get 2 molars removed. That was on friday. So basically he didn´t end up getting baptized. But if everything goes well he´ll get baptized this saturday.

Anyway, that´s about all I got time for. I hope you have a great week!


-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - August 12, 2019

elections - 12 agosto 2019

we have Nate's travel plans... he'll be landing in SLC at 10:22 am on September 10th!!  (Rachel will be on the plane with him)

It´s been a pretty good week. We´ve been finding a lot of people to teach. Unfortunately it´s still pretty hard to get them to come to church. But we did get a family to come yesterday, which was pretty awesome. Last monday we did divisions with 2 kids from the ward. I went with Alejandro, who got his mission call about a month ago. He´s going to Brasil and leaves september 25th. Anyway, I was with him when we visited this family for the first time. They had talked with elders before, several years ago. We taught the restoration and it was a really good lesson. They have a kid that plays basketball who I thought was about my age, but then he told us that he´s 15, which was a suprise. He´s as tall as me, so I imagine he must do pretty well in basketball here. But anyway, the dad, Javier, the mom, Andrea, their son Alesandro, and their one month old baby all came to church yesterday. 

Also, yesterday were the presidential elections. Although they weren´t the final elections, which I think will be in october. So I´m not really sure what these elections were exactly. But it was a pretty big deal. For months now there has been a ton of politcal campaign stuff going on. Every day when we walk through the center of Moreno we get handed like 20 papers from the 2 political parties. We always have to tell the people that we can´t vote.

Well, I´m not sure if I have much else to say.

I hope you guys have a great week!


-Elder Shelton

PS:  I forgot to send these. This is from my last area in Marcos Paz. This is the family that we worked with a lot, and the parents are going to get married. We made waffles with them one day. (my comp had a waffle iron)

PPS: And I forgot to mention that before leaving Marcos Paz, I went and visited this family. The daughter, Gabriela, was the first baptism I had in my mission. Unfortunately, the mom was working, so she wasn´t there.

 

Nate's Letter Home - August 5, 2019

we back - 5 agosto 2019

Well I´m back here in Moreno 3. On tuesday when I got here, there was ward council that night and when we showed up everyone was like what the heck are you doing here? haha. It was really cool to see everyone again.

On p-day, Elder Peña, who was my comp when I was here before, came to visit some people here in Moreno 3. So his comp stayed with my comp, and I went and visited people with Elder Peña. We first went and visited Carlos and Micaela, who we baptized. They were really suprised to see us both show up at their door. We went and visited a few other families too, and one family gave us lunch. It was a really cool day and brought back a lot of memories. 

Anyway, things are going good and we´re teaching a lot of people right now.

I hope you have a great week!

-Elder Shelton


PS:  A lot of elders from my group are saying they got their plane tickets today, but mine still hasn`t shown up in my inbox yet... so yeah. Maybe I`ll have it by Pday and I can tell you the details then

Nate's Letter Home - July 29, 2019

Legendary P-Day and...... Moreno 3? - 29 julio 2019

Well it´s been an interesting one.

I think I´ll start out with our P-Day adventure. It all started out wednesday night when my comp and I ordered some empanadas because we were super hungry. We ate them and they were pretty good. Also, the 2 elders from Marcos Paz 1, who live like 5 blocks from us, came and stayed the night because we had plans to do stuff together for P-Day. Anyway, when we went to bed I noticed that my stomach was starting to hurt. I layed there for a long time and at one point I was actually able to fall asleep, but I only slept like an hour at most. I woke up and immediately got up and went into the bathroom because I knew what was coming. I threw up a couple times, and then went back to bed. Not even 5 minutes later, my comp gets up and goes into the bathroom and starts hurling. I was like, well, this is going to be a fun night. So basically we both ended up tag-teaming the bathroom the entire night. We went back and forth until like 11:00 am. I lost track of how many trips I took to the bathroom, all I know is that by my last trip I was so weak I couldn´t even stand up haha. It was a fun experience for all 4 of us. My comp and I felt like crap and were so weak that we couldn´t get out of bed for the rest of the day. It wasn´t until 6:30 pm that I finally got up from my bed, and that was mainly because my back was killing me because my mattress is terrible. So I´d say overall, it was a pretty fun day.

Oh yeah, so unfortunately Juan and Carolina still don´t have a wedding date. Last monday Juan didn´t go because he was sick. And then, when we visited them on friday, Carolina told us she had gone to the registro civil that morning, but when she got there she realized that there was a ¨paro¨, or a protest, so there was nobody working there. It would seem we don´t have the best of luck.

Alright, now for transfers. We actually never got the transfer call, because we still don´t have a phone, so the elders from Marcos Paz 1 had to come tell us what was happening for transfers. I will be returning to Moreno 3. Which if you don´t remember, that´s where I just came from. I will be with Elder Perez, he is from Colombia. It wasn´t really a huge suprise to me, because of what President told me in my interview last week. I guess I´m pretty excited to go back. 

Well that´s about all I got.
Have a great week!


-Elder Shelton 

Nate's Letter Home - July 22, 2019

22 julio 2019

Well this is probably going to be short.

This week was pretty good. If everything went well, Juan went to the registro civil this morning to get a date for their marriage. We couldn´t meet him there because we don´t have a phone and we didn´t know what time he would go. But anyway, hopefully they have a marraige date now.

On friday we had our interviews with President. From what was said, I will probably be leaving this area for my last transfer, but I´m just going to leave it at that until I see what actually happens. This saturday is when we get the call.

This week we found a pretty cool family that used to recieve the elders about 2 years ago. They seem pretty promising and this week we are probably going to be doing service for them with the elders quorum to help with the house they´re building in the back.

Yesterday, a lady from Peru that we´ve been teaching for a few weeks came to church. If everything goes well, she´ll be baptized this saturday, but we might have to wait till the next week. We´ll see.

Anyway, I think that´s about all I got. I hope you guys have a great week in Lake Powell.

Oh yeah, and happy birthday to Mom and Rachel!


-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - July 15, 2019

rip blackberry - 15 julio 2019

Well it´s been another week.

On wednesday we had divisions with the zone leaders and on friday we were at zone conference all day, so we lost 2 days of work. Thursday night a storm came out of nowhere and it rained insanely hard. I was just out there in a short sleeve white shirt haha. Within about 1 minute I was completely soaked from head to toe. We ended up walking for like 45 minutes in the pouring rain until we got to Juan´s house. He is a recent convert, and we´re teaching his girlfriend. They have 4 kids and aren´t married yet. It´s a long story as to why he´s baptized. But anyway, we are trying to baptize his girlfriend Carolina, but obviously they need to get married first. We visited them 3 times this week and literally all we talked about is marriage and families every time. I feel like we´ve almost convinced her. Juan wants to get married, because he wants to be able to get the priesthood. We´ve just been trying to convince Carolina. She came for the first time to church yesterday, so that was good. I feel like at this point we just need to drag them to the registro civil and get them to sacar fecha. We´ll see what happens.

We had 3 investigators in church yesterday. One was Carolina, who needs to get married. Another one was this dude named Oracio, who also needs to get married, and the other was this lady named Liliana, who also needs to get married......... so yeah.

There´s also this dude named Lucas who has been inactive for quite a while, but about 3 weeks ago starting reactivating himself. He has 2 kids who are 9 and 11 years old and they want to be baptized. So we started teaching them. But saturday night one of them like fell down the stairs or something and had to go to the hospital, so they couldn´t come to church. So that was unfortunate.

Oh yeah, so we have a Blackberry phone and now it doesn´t work at all because it was in my pocket when I got soaked. So now we are truly primitive and don´t have any way to communicate with anybody. It´s been a struggle.

Well, I´m not really sure what else happened this week.

I hope you guys have a great week!


-Elder Shelton

"registro civil" = country clerk (basically)

"sacar fecha"  = make an appointment

Nate's Letter Home - July 8, 2019

el frío - 8 julio 2019

Well it´s already monday again.

This week was actually pretty cold. My comp was basically dying the whole week. He is not used to the cold. I don´t know if I´ve even mentioned my new comp yet. He´s Elder Tovar and he´s from Lima, Peru. The cold doesn´t bother me that much, just my hands, which are basically frozen all the time. Literally everytime I shake hands with somebody they freak out like they had just touched dry ice or something. The people here don´t handle the cold to well. They usually just hunker down in their houses all day. It´s kinda hard to contact because nobody wants to come outside. We clap a ton of houses but not very many answer. We´re teaching this lady from Peru, who went to church a couple times there in Peru. She is progressing pretty well and if she comes to church this sunday she will be baptized the next saturday. We also have several people right now that are coming to church, and literally all they need to do to get baptized is to get married. Sometimes it seems like it´s impossible to get married here, but then I remember that there are people that are married, so it must be possible somehow.

I forgot to mention that last week a member gave me a pair of shoes that he didn`t use anymore, so my other 2 pairs have officially gone into retirement. Which is probably a good thing because they were being held together by a prayer and a few threads. 

The ward here is kinda struggling. The average attendance is like 50 or 60. We´ve been talking a lot with the bishop and we are going to be visiting a lot of inactive families, and most of them are part-member families, which means that not all of their family is baptized, so we will probably find a lot of baptisms in the process. 

Yeah I was gonna call on the 4th but things got kinda complicated. I don´t want to sound like the boy who cried wolf but I will most likely call this thursday.

Have a great week,


-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - July 1, 2019

1 julio 2019

Well somehow it´s already July. Time goes by really fast.

This week was pretty good. We worked pretty hard but only found a little bit of success. It´s pretty dang cold and rainy. The peoples´ hearts seem to be pretty cold too haha. Also our area is all dirt roads so we walk through some serious mud all day. The highlight of the week was probably that Mario came to church. We visited him several times during the week and we kept inviting him to come to church and he would always say ¨I´m not going to promise you guys anything¨ which here basically means a flat out no. But on saturday we visited him again and he opened up and started telling us that he was having a really hard time because of his son, who had gotten into drugs and had started to rob. We shared the story of Alma the younger with him and we told him that through his good example, faith, and prayers, he could help his son change. He was like, ok, I´ll come to church tomorrow. And he came. He said he really liked it. He was really impressed by the 5th sunday class, because he said he felt a love between the members that he had never felt in the other churches he went to. So anyway, he is now progressing pretty well.

We are teaching quite a few other people but we´ll have to see if they progress. I feel like I had more to say but I´ve forgotten everything. I´ll try to call on thursday, since it´s been a while now since I´ve called.

Have a great week!

-Elder Shelton


p.s. Here´s a pic of some service we did with some members building a house. As you can tell, my shoes are in great condition.

Nate's Letter Home - June 24, 2019

goodbye moreno... - 24 junio 2019

There has been an unexpected turn of events.

Wednesday night at about 10:30 the APs called and told me that I was getting transfered over to Marcos Paz 2. It was unexpected and I was pretty upset. I was also kinda mad. But anyway, I packed up everything that night, and then in the morning we went and visited Micaela and Carlos real quick so I could say goodbye. That was pretty hard. Then at about 11:00 the guy the mission offices had sent to come pick me up got to our apartment. So I loaded up my stuff into the car and he took me over to Marcos Paz, and well, now I`m here. My comp is Elder Tovar, from Perú. He´s from my goup so we have the same amount of time in the mission.

Elder Peña, my last comp, called me saturday night and told me that María, the grandma of Micaela, and the mom of Carlos, got baptized. I was glad to hear that but also pretty disappointed I didn`t get to see it.

Anyway, I`ve been missing Moreno 3 the past few days, but I`m getting over it, I think. I`m sure some good things are waiting for me here in Marcos Paz.

I`ll try to call on thursday.

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - June 17, 2019

blackout - 17 junio 2019

Well it rained basically all week, and it still continues to rain. Yesterday when we woke up the power was out. We found out later that it was basically a nation wide power outage that affected Uruguay and parts of Brazil too. I don´t know how that´s possible, but it´s what we´ve been told. Since there wasn´t power, we only had sacrament meeting yesterday. And despite the power outage and the fact that it was raining a ton, we still got 2 investigators to church.

During church President Resek sent out a text saying that as soon as we got home from church that we needed to go buy 20 liters of water, and to buy a ton of food because apparently the country was in a state of emergency or something like that. But the power ended up coming back later that afternoon, and we still have power, so for right now everything seems fine. 

We are hoping to have a few baptisms this weekend. One of the people that came to church was Rodrigo, an 18 year old kid whose aunt is a member. We´ve been teaching him and he wants to be baptized, but he feels like this saturday is too fast, so we´ll have to see what we can do. He is a capo though. Also, the grandma of Micaela wasn´t able to come yesterday, but our zone leaders told us that President will probably give us permission to baptize her this saturday anyway due to the craziness that was yesterday.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention transfers. So my comp and I are both staying, but they are sending us another elder so we are going to be in a trio. I have absolutely no idea how 5 elders are going to live in our pensh. There is no room for anything. The other 2 elders that live with us don´t even have a wardrobe thingy to put their clothes because there isn´t room, so they´ve been living out of their suitcases this whole time. The new lady in charge of  the apartments for the mission called us today and told us that they were going to be bringing over a bed for the new elder, but we told her that there is nowhere that we could put a bed in our appartment. So it will be interesting to see what happens. 

Anyway, I´m pretty happy I´m staying though because this place is awesome.

Have a good week!

-Elder Shelton


p.s. Happy Father´s Day yesterday!

Nate's Letter Home - June 11, 2019

cuatro. por. Cristo. - 11 junio 2019

It`s been a pretty crazy week.

All 3 of our baptisms ended up happening, but not the same night. So we spent most of the day thursday getting ready for the baptisms that night. Carlos, Micaela, and the rest of their family showed up about a half hour early. Then Carlos took us in his car to go look for Beti, the old lady that was getting baptized that day too. We got to her house and no one was there. We rang the doorbell a ton of times but she never answered. We tried calling her too but her phone was turned off. So we ended up just going back and having the baptism of Carlos and Micaela. It was a really cool baptism though. A lot of members came, and afterwards we ate some pizza and cake. 



The next day we were able to find Beti and she told us that she had been really sick and had went to the hospital. Luckily, since the weekend was stake conference, there was a big baptism planned on saturday for the whole stake. So she was able to get baptized and confirmed saturday afternoon right before the adult session at 7. Carlos and Micaela came early sunday morning and got confirmed before the meeting started. Elder Clayton was at our stake conference. Turns out he speaks spanish really well because he served his mission in Peru and lived in Argentina for 4 years while he was the Area President. We also met as an entire mission yesterday and he came and visited us. That`s why I`m writing today.

Carlos and Micaela are so cool. Carlos is preparing to recieve the Aaronic Priesthood. We also started teaching the grandma, María, and she wants to get baptized too.

Anyway, this is kinda rushed but we gotta send in 3 baptismal records today so I gotta get on that.

Have a great week!


-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - June 3, 2019

an exciting Domingo - 3 junio 2019

Alright so yesterday was awesome to say the least. Patricia came and got confirmed, which was a relief. Plus, we had 8 investigators in church! Micaela, and her parents Carlos and Nancy came. And they brought Micaela´s grandma with them. We got some members to bring Beti to church again. I think I mentioned a little bit about her last week. Micaela, Carlos, and Beti are all getting baptized this thursday. The daughter of Patricia, Noelia, who´s been inactive for a really long time, came and brought one of her friends, who brought her 2 daughters. This other guy came too who is super capo and wants to get baptized, but he has to get divorced, and then married... so yeah. 

Then after church, Micaela invited us over to eat lunch with her family. They made us ¨matambre a la pizza¨ which is something I´ve always heard about but never had the opportunity to try. Basically it´s a pizza, but instead of the crust being bread, it´s a huge slab of meat. I will attach a pic. It was really good. 



Well, hopefully everything goes well and we have 3 baptisms this week.

Have a great week!

-Elder Shelton


PS: here´s a pic with Micaela, her parents Carlos and Nancy, and her grandma María. It turned out pretty blurry, so I´ll try to get a better one with them at the baptism.

Nate's Letter Home - May 27, 2019

miracle pending - 27 mayo 2019

Well this week we had some unexpected turn of events. We did have a baptism this weekend, but it turned out to be none of the people I mentioned last monday. It was Patricia, a lady who has known the church for years but never got baptized because she smoked. She had dropped from smoking like 2 packs a day, to only 4 cigarettes a day. But she said she wouldn´t be ready to completely stop smoking until May 29th, which would be exactly one year since her husband died. So we were planning on baptizing her on June 1st, so we had the zone leaders come on thursday to do the baptismal interview. Well during the interview, she was just like, you know what, I´m done smoking. I want to get baptized this saturday. So it was kinda a scramble to get everything ready by saturday, but we did it and she got baptized. But the unfortunate part of the story is that sunday morning, she got really sick and was throwing up, so she couldn´t get confirmed.... So we´ll have to wait till next sunday.

Micaela and Nancy came to church again this week. I don´t remember if I mentioned them in my email last week, but Micaela is this girl that used to go to an evangelica church but she said she realized that it wasn´t the true church so she just showed up with her mom Nancy at church the sunday before yesterday. We have been teaching them and also Nancy´s husband Carlos. He really likes us and wants to be baptized too, but he is a bus driver and had to work the past 2 sundays. He told us that he was going to ask for sundays off in June so that he could come to church. He also invited us over to have lunch tomorrow. If he is able to come next sunday, then we will baptize them together on June 8th. 

Also we´re teaching this older lady named Beti who lives by herself. She came to church for the first time yesterday, and she also has a baptismal date for the 8th of June. 

These people are really promising so we´re pretty excited for June. Well I don´t think I have much else to say.

Happy Memorial Day!


-Elder Shelton


PS:  you cannot get any more Argentine than this... Boca jacket, drinking mate, with my electric kettle

Nate's Letter Home - May 20, 2019

clutch findings - 20 mayo 2019

Well we had some pretty cool experiences this week. 

Last monday we were walking down this street and I saw this house and I was like, we should contact that house. So I stopped and clapped and it turned out to be the house of an inactive family, and they have 3 kids who are 14, 10, and 9 years old and they aren´t baptized. And it´s likely that we will be baptizing them this saturday. We just need the permission of the parents. The mom is really nice and wants them to be baptized, but the dad seems a little bit cranky, so we´ll have to see what we can do.

Also, on tuesday in ward council the primary president told us that her younger sister just seperated from her boyfriend and moved back in with her dad and that we should go see her. She´s been to church several times and never got baptized. So it is also likely that she will get baptized this saturday.

On saturday night we visited the family that speaks english. We made chocolate chip cookies with them. They were super good and it was the first time I´d eaten chocolate chip cookies on my mission. Then afterwards we taught the whole family lesson 1, the Restoration. It was really cool and they committed to start reading the book of mormon. We still weren´t able to convince them to come to church though, so we´re going to have to find a way to do that. They already like us a lot. They own 2 apartments behind their house and they told us that we could move in there if we wanted haha. It´s honestly kind of tempting, because we are looking for a new place, but they live a little bit far from the center of Moreno, so that would be kinda hard. 

On sunday this girl about our age showed up to church with her mom. Nobody knew who they were. The girl said that she is a member, but that her mom isn´t and it was her first time coming. So that was pretty cool. We have an appointment with them today so hopefully that goes well. 

Well I think that´s about all I got.

Have a great week!

-Elder Shelton


p.s. Here´s a pic with the family that speaks english

Nate's Letter Home - May 13, 2019

english - 13 mayo 2019

Alright so I guess I´ll basically repeat every thing I said yesterday.

I really like it so far here in Moreno 3. It feels different being in a ward again. The members feed us lunch everyday, which is nice. 

On saturday this family let us into their house. Turns out they had lived in Boston for like 11 years, so they all speak english really well. So we had a pretty long conversation with them in english, which was really weird for me. They are all really, really nice and they were really interested as to why we are here in Argentina and what we do as missionaries. So we talked to them for quite a while about what we do every day, and they seemed pretty amazed. We explained a little bit about the book of mormon and we gave them one. As we went to leave they started giving us all kinds of stuff. They gave me a bunch of cold medicine because they could tell I´m a little sick. The mom also saw that my shoes were destroyed so she gave me some shoe glue. (Side note, I actually used it to glue my shoes last night, and it seems to have worked pretty good, so we´ll so how long that will last.) And also the dad gave my comp a Patriots Super Bowl Champs jacket. They also gave us their phone numbers and told us to call them if we ever had any problems or if we ever needed anything. 

We´re teaching quite a few people right now that literally the only thing they need to be baptized is to get married. And most of them are willing to get married, but it´s like the hardest process ever to get married in Argentina and it´s really annoying. So hopefully we can get a few people married soon. 

I can´t remember what else I said so I´m going to call that good.


Here´s some pics from my last weekend in Chacabuco.

Nate's Letter Home - May 6, 2019

Do you believe in miracles? - 6 mayo 2019

Alright so this has probably been the craziest weekend of my mission. 

First off, we got the call early saturday morning and found out that both me and my comp are leaving. It was a huge surprise for everyone. I thought I was staying without a doubt. I´m going to Moreno, (Moreno 3rd ward). I´m still pretty surprised, and I´m kinda sad to be honest. I wasn´t prepared to leave at all. I had a lot of time in all my other areas so I basically knew already that I was leaving when those calls came, but this one was a lot different. I wish I could stay one more, but it´s alright I guess. It´s always hard saying goodbye.

But yesterday had yet another surprise in store for us. So we all had to meet up at 7 AM at the church, and from there we were going to the district conference in Bragado in a bus that the branch had rented out. Anyway, we got to the church a little before 7, and a member family was just showing up. We noticed that there was a lady with them that we didn´t recognize. We started talking to her and we found out that she lives in our area and she told us that she had attended church several times in the past, and had been taught by the elders for a long time, but had never been baptized because she wasn´t married to the guy she was living with. But she told us that she had seperated from him now and that she wanted to be baptized. I just kinda sat there like, am I actually hearing this right? This lady just showed up at the church at 7 AM and said she wants to get baptized haha. Then Elder Starr and I started talking, and we were like, wait a minute, she can get baptized this very day, because there was already a baptism planned in the afternoon when we got back from the conference for 2 girls that the hermanas are teaching. The only thing she needed was an interview, so Elder Starr interviewed her in the church while we were waiting for the rest of the members to show up. He said the interview went really well, and that she already had a strong testimony of the book of mormon and of the Church. So we talked to the branch president when he showed up, and he was ok with it, and then when we got to the conference we talked with our zone leaders and they were ok with it. So right when we got back from the conference, we had the 3 baptisms, and we confirmed them all right there, since there wasn´t sacrament meeting this week. It was pretty awesome. Estefanía (that´s her name by the way) was so happy that she started to cry a little bit during her confirmation. 



Anyway, it was pretty crazy that that happened, to say the least.

I think that´s all I got. We leave tonight so the next time we talk I´ll be in my new area.

Also, I have no idea if we´re going to call for mother´s day... so I guess we´ll see what happens.


-Elder Shelton