10/28/09 - Letter to the World

Hello Family, Friends, and EVERYBODY!!

This last week has been great! As you probably already know, last week Elder Poteet and I had the opportunity to go to the temple! It was a great experience! This week has been full of lots of stuff. Finding, teaching, and everything else we do as missionaries! Our main focus for this last week has been Marité and Lucho (luis). Luis was baptized about 10 yrs ago, and has basically forgotten everything that he learned when he was baptized. He is living with Marité and they have 2 kids together, but are not married. On Monday, we went to their house, and comitted them to set a date to be married. Things for marrige work a little different here, but this Monday, they are going to go to the registro civil (like a city hall...ish) and sacar turno (basically tell the city hall place that they are going to be married a month from Monday) because it´s required to sacar turno 30 days before they are married. If all goes well, and they have all the papers that they need to sacar turno, we are going to set a date for Marité to be baptized! She already has a testimony, and has told us that she wants to get married, so that she can be baptized, because she know that our Heavenly Father has many blessings in store for those that keep his commandments!
That´s basically my story this week...thanks for tuning in!!
(if you have any questions that I could answer about what I do every day...what it´s like...etc...you can send an e-mail to my dad at george@printing2impress.com, and he will forward the questions to me!) ....don´t worry..it´s ok to send it to him, because if he doesn´t want stuff sent, he would have erased this paragraph!) ..thanks Dad!
ok...this is the Fun fact from Argentina!
The keys here are....interesting. There are basically 3 types. 1 type is like what we have in the states...just a regular key to get into the hose. There are other types of house keys here also...one is like the keys that we always see in old movies...I don´t really know how to explain it. The OTHER kind is pretty cool...I don´t know how it works, but there are indented holes in the shaft of the key, and somehow it works! I´ll try to attach a picture through a word document to this e-mail!

I Love you all!
Love,
Elder Denton

10/21 - Letter to the World

WORLD!!
OH my goodness...I´m so sorry. I have been going so fast trying to write to my mission pres and answer the e-mails from my family that I just about completely forgot to write to all of you. I think I´ll just leave you with a quick hello, and a ´Fact from Argentina´....this one is to complete last week´s...to collect the garbage, there is a garbage truck that drives down the street, but like at home, where there is an arm that grabs the garbage cans, here, there are 2 men that run behind the garbage truck grabbing the garbage out of the metal baskets up on poles that are on the side of the road, and then throw it into the back of the truck!
I Love you all, and I´m sorry. The Temple in Buenos Aires closes on 1 NOV, 2009...in about a week....and my companion and I went today to do a session...that lasted for a LONG time. That´s why I didn´t have too much time to write.
I´m sorry again.
Love,
Elder Denton

10/14/09 - Letter to the World

[I'm sorry for being so slothful and posting a week late...I'll have his post from yesterday up in a few minutes//george]
Hello World!
This week, there hasn´t been anything big, huge, new happening. We did recieve one reference from the church offices that came from a member that lives in Texas. The investigator is Maxamiliano! He´s great! The member has already been talking to him about the gospel for a little while, and he is really interested! We had the first lesson with him last Friday, and then he had to go out of town for the weekend. He works for ESPN and is in charge of transmissions for Argentina. We had a lesson set with him yesterday, but he called us in the morning and had to change it, so we´re going to meet with him again Friday!
For all of you out there that would like a little bit to study, I read this scripture this morning in my studies, and absolutely love it! Moroni 8:25-26. I love that it has all of the principles of the gospel, and tells us that if we´ve been baptized, repented, had the holy ghost with us, we already have a bunch of the attributes that christ had. At the end we read that we need dilligence in prayer to continue until we are with our Heavenly Father again! Read it! Love it! :D
I Love you all!
Love,
Elder Denton
Argentine tidbit - Garbage bins are permanant fixtures on the side of the road. It looks like a pole that you would have a mailbox on, but instead of a mailbox at the top, there is a metal basket sort of thing. Bags of garbage go inside, and then to pick up the trash...well....I´ll save that for next week!

10/7/09 - General Conference Report

Dear Friends, family, and others!,
How´re ya´ll doing! Did you all LOVE conference?!? Wow...I don´t think I´ve EVER wanted so bad to stay, or that 2 hours has ever passed by so quickly in four instances! WOW. Ok...my Dad sent me a bunch of questions to answer for this week about the conference... so, here we go!
1. Who of your investigators were able to show up, what was their favorite talk and what did they think of General Conference?
We had at the conference Inez and Ricardo (he´s a less active member baptized about 10 yrs ago, she´s investigating), Marite (her husband also was baptized about 10 yrs ago, and she is investigating), and Carlos. We found Carlos last Thursday, and he is amazing! He prayed after the first discussion, and recieved his answer immediately! He tried to go to the first session of conference, but got lost and was looking for the church for about 1 hour before he went back home. We had a lesson with him on Monday, and found out that he had shared his testimony with his brother and sister-in-law, and we´re now teaching them also!!! Things are going good! As far as their favorite talks and such, they don´t usually remember much, but they all said that they felt the spirit!
2. How much of conference did you get to hear/see and who was your favorite speaker?
We got to see all four general sessions! Saturday, we had to listen all in Spanish, because the stake pres forgot to set up an English room! But...I understood just about everything. (I hope...Elder Poteet and I were talking about the conference Saturday night, and he quoted something said and I said ´wait....who said that...when´...I just miss some things!) Anyways, Sunday morning we watched all in Spanish also exept for the last talk, President Monson. And the last session we watched all in English! (Thank goodness, because that session was excellent!) I think that Elder Holland´s talk was my favorite!
3. What was the best message, in your opinion? ...or your favorite message, as they were all good!
Through the conference there were a LOT of good messages, but the main topics that were REALLY strong were:
A. Learn to rely on the spirit, recognize promptings, and write down the promptings that you recieve.
B. LOVE! Love is the center of everything that we do in the gospel and out!
And as C., part of this also was the importance of our testimonies. We should share our testimonies even in our families. I would challenge everybody reading this that in their next Family Home Evening, as the lesson, or as an addition to it: Have a testimony meeting, and give everybody a chance to share their testimony!!! I know it´s scary, intimidating at times, but at the same time, it´s the gospel!!!
4. What hit you with the most power?
Elder Holland´s talk!
5. Did you make the priesthood session and hear the talk about the rowdy boys who sing terribly (but now sing better many years later!)?
In Utah, Priesthood session starts at 6pm, so, here...it starts at 9pm. The missionary rules are that if we don´t have a lesson to teach, we have to be in our apt. by 9pm...sad.
6. What did you think about Elder Jeffrey Holland's empassioned talk about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon?
This really was the highlight of conference for me...but for a reason more than the passion that Elder Holland has when he talks. I started reading The Book of Mormon from the beginning again in the MTC, and finished it Sunday morning. When I finished, I prayed, and asked Heavenly Father to help me to know for a surety that The Book of Mormon is true....and then Elder Holland talked!!!!! WOW the power of his message was a strong answer to my prayer!
7. What did your investigators think about seeing the prophet and his apostles?
Um....I´m not quite sure. As investigators they know that they have these titles, but I don´t know if it really means as much to them as us. Carlos did comment to us that he thought it was interesting that there were prophets and apostles, because he couldn´t remember any other church that he´s investigated before that has had a prophet AND apostles!
Overall, the week has been great, and I´m excited as ever to see what the next week has in store for us!
Love,
Elder Denton
Fact from Argentina - (and I just found this out today)...there are NO vending machines here. CRAZY. They might have those little stands that you put coins into to get little prizes/treats, but I´ve never seen one of those, and Elder Poteet has yet to see (in his 22 months here) a vending machine.

9/30/09 Letter from Elder Denton

Family, friends, neighbors, conocidos, y todos otros:

I´m really sorry that you didn´t have anything to read last week, this is what happened. I wrote a fantastic letter to the President, saved it in a word document to send to him, but saved it in a folder that doesn´t exist on this computer....so I had to re-write the whole thing, and ended up with no time for ya´ll!

These last 2 weeks have been good! The mission has been working for the last year, and had a goal to double the number of baptisms they had the year previous. This last weekend was the last one that we had to achieve this goal, and we did it. I can´t remember what the exact number was, but the number that was the goal was exactly the number of baptisms that we had!

I´m WAY excited for general conference this weekend! I don´t think I´ve ever been so excited to go, listen, and take notes! This is how it´s going to work: Since the time is different from Utah and here, the sessions are going to be from 1-3 in the afternoon and 5-7 as well, both Saturday and Sunday. We will be in the stake center to watch. We will watch it in Spanish with our investigators if we can´t find members to sit with them, but if we do, there is another room set aside where they show it in English, so that we can get all that we can out of the messages that the Prophet and his apostles have for us! We have a number of investigators that have already commited to attend at least one session of conference, including Hector Webber! Hopefully he´ll be able to get work off soon, because otherwise it´s going to take 3 sessions of conference (1.5yrs) to baptize him....and there just isn´t enough time for that! I can´t remember if I mentioned Alejandro, but he´s still progressing well! We found him as we were walking in the street, and he is in a congregation of people who know that their respective churches are in apostacy, and are looking for the truth. (enter Elder Poteet and Elder Denton!) He´s read through about half of 1 Nephi, and is continuing well! He, also, will be at at least one session of conference!

I mentioned to Whitney (my older sister, for those of you that don´t know her!) in my letter to her that I´ve been reading through the Book of Mormon, and am currently in Mormon! I started in the MTC, and was reading through strong, and then when I got here to Argentina I slowed down a little because I was also studying all of the lessons that we have to teach, but about 2 weeks ago I started from Alma 9 again, and picked up where I left off. WOW!!! I love the Book of Mormon! There is so much in there, and so many experiences that we can apply to our lives, whatever is happening! Read it! Apply It! I know that it will help anything that you are going through, whoever you are!

Argentina Fun Fact - To sell a car here, all you have to do is put some sort of jug on top. I don´t know where this came from, but any car that has a jug, empty bottle, full bottle, etc., on top of their car...is selling it. I put a picture in with the others in the document that I´m going to attach!

I Love you all!

Love,

Elder Denton