Nate's Letter Home - Mar 25, 2019

me quedo - 25 marzo 2019

Well transfers are here. They called us saturday and we found out that Elder Mendez and I will be staying another transfer here. Elder Lunt and Elder Williams are both leaving though, which was a big suprise. So two new elders will be coming here tomorrow. 

So monday night we all had to go to Chivilcoy for a zone meeting with President, and for our interviews with President. Well, the elders in Chivilcoy that we stayed with didn´t have any extra mattresses so we just had to sleep on the tile floor. It was pretty rough. I think my body is still recovering. Also, we didn`t bring pillows or anything so I just put a plastic bag that had my towel in it on the ground and I used that for my pillow haha. I wouldn`t recommend it.

As for teaching, I guess things are going pretty good. Malvina is most likely going to get baptized this week, but we´re not not entirely sure yet. Things are still a little bit complicated with her husband´s surgery that happened a couple days ago. Also, on friday we found this awesome lady named Juliana. She came to church yesterday with her two little kids. She has a baptismal date for the 6th, but that is Conference so I´m not sure exactly what´s going to happen there. 

Yeah I didn`t call on thursday because I needed a haircut pretty bad, and you can only do stuff like that in the morning because everything closes for the ciesta in the afternoon. 

Well I think that´s about it. I´ll probably have more to say on thursday.

Have a good week!


-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Mar 18, 2019

zapito - 18 marzo 2019

Funny story. I got done showering today, and as I was drying off I saw something move from under the curtain and land near my feet. I couldn`t tell what it was because I didn`t have my contacts in, so I bent down to see better... and it turned out to be a little frog! haha. I hurried and dried off and then went and got the other elders and told them to come see this frog. But when we all entered the bathroom it had disappeared somehow. We have no idea how it vanished so fast haha.

Anyway, it was a pretty good week. Malvina came to church again yesterday, and will possibly be baptized this saturday, but we will have to see. I think I told you on thursday that her husband is going to have surgery on wednesday, and so she´s going to have a pretty busy week, so we´ll have to see how everything works out. Javier and Andrea (the house I´m always at when I call you) weren´t able to come yesterday, but they promised they´d come this next sunday. Mainly, they just need to get married. They want to, but like most Argentines, they´re not in much of a hurry to get it done.

The other family I´ve been telling you about weren´t able to come yesterday either. The dad had something come up so he had to drive to Bragado sunday morning, and so the mom and daughter had to stay to tend the store. So that was unfortunate. They´re still really awesome tho and they´re reading the book of mormon. They gave us some pizza last night. A couple days ago the mom took a selfie with us and her kids and put it on Facebook. I think she tagged me in it, so maybe you saw that. We also found out that the parents aren`t married, which actually really surprised me because they seemed like they were married. I mean, they´ve been together for 20 years and have 3 kids, so you would think they´d get married by now. 

Anyway, I think that´s about it. This is the last week of the transfer, so on saturday we`ll found out what´s going to happen with transfers. 

Have a great week!

-Elder Shelton


p.s.  Aggies are going all the way!!

"Sapo" = toad  (Nate mispelled it as "Zapo" in his message subject text.  The "ito" ending is just a slang thing)

Nate's Letter Home - Mar 11, 2019

11 marzo 2019

Well I´d say it´s been a pretty good week.

So you remember the family whose house I always call you guys from? Well we convinced them to come to church yesterday. The dad stayed to tend the store, but the mom came with their two kids. The mom liked it a lot. I´m pretty sure we´re going to be able to convince them pretty soon to just close the store for 2 hours so they can all come to church. The biggest thing now is they just need to get married. Although I´ve been hearing rumors that it´s super easy to get married here in Chacabuco, so hopefully that is true.

Oh yeah, and this week we found another cool family that happens to own a store as well. They live right next to Malvina, the lady that came to church last week. We just went up and started talking to them and we ended up giving them a Book of Mormon. That was on tuesday. And when we went back on thursday, the 15 year old daughter had already read 8 chapters. We committed them to come to church. Just like the other family, the dad said he would have to stay to tend the store, but that his wife and kids would like to come. So we called them sunday morning and they said they were already getting ready to go. So we were waiting for them at the gate, but then 10:00 came and we had to enter because I had to play the piano and my comp had to bless the sacrament. Well, they didn`t show up. We visited them in the afternoon to see what happened, and they told us that they DID come. They said they showed up at like 10:05 and the gate was closed and it didn`t really seem like anyone was there so they thought it had been cancelled or something. So ya, that was really unfortunate. Although it was pretty encouraging that they at least made it to the gate. Hopefully next week they can actually enter. Also, it´s possible we might have a King Lamoni/Ammon situation on our hands because I think the parents were low-key hinting that they want their daughter to marry one of us.

Malvina was sick so she couldn`t come to church yesterday. She´s still progressing really well though, so we´re pretty excited about her still.

Anyway, I think that´s about all I got for now.

Have a great week!

-Elder Shelton

Nate's Letter Home - Mar 4, 2019

camping - 4 marzo 2019

Well so we moved thursday. It was kind of a pain but at least we got it done. We just had a old guy from the branch help us. He brought his truck. It was a pretty small truck, so it took a bunch of trips, but at least we had something.

Ya so we don´t have power in our new place for right now... So since thursday night we´ve just been getting by with a candle that we bought. We´ve been trying to get the power installed for like 2 weeks now but it`s been a disaster. The first time Elder Mendez and I went to the power company place and they wouldn´t let us do the paperwork because the contract was in the name of President Resek. So Pres. Resek had to send us an official letter that gave us authority to do the paperwork for him. But then we had to wait for the offices to send us money because it costs like 1000 pesos to get the power hooked up. And then we tried to do it on monday and tuesday, but there was some kind of protest in the government going on, so the place wasn´t open. long story short, we weren`t able to do the paperwork until friday morning, and apparently they didn`t have time to come out and hook us up that day. And they don`t work on saturdays or sundays, and today and tomorrow are holidays... so basically we won`t have power until wednesday. The water heater is electric so we´ve been taking some real cold showers. Also we can`t really buy food because we don`t have a fridge. So basically when we get back to the pensh at night we just sit down in the dark for a little while, then we got to bed haha. It`s kinda been a struggle.

The good news is that the lady I told you about, Malvina, came to church yesterday! I sent her a text saturday night asking her if she was going to be able to come to church in the morning. She told me no because she hadn`t been able to convince her husband to come. I was just like, ¨¿y si viene sola esta vez?¨ and she was like ¨bueno, a que hora es?¨ And so she came by herself. 

Also, I blessed the sacrament yesterday for the first time in my mission. It was 10:00 and literally the only people there were me and my comp, the branch president, the hermanas, the quorom president, a recent convert, and our investigator. So the branch president asked me and my comp to bless the sacrament. Luckily, a lot more people showed up as the meeting went on.

Also, we just started teaching this couple from Venezuela. They´re really awesome. In fact, we just ate lunch with them today. Also the good news is that they´re married! Hopefully we can get them to church.

Well, I´m sure I am forgetting stuff as usual, but I think that´s about all I got to say for now.

Have a good week!


-Elder Shelton