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
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
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.
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. EstefanÃa (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
