1/20/10 Letter to the World

Hello World!

This week has been pretty good! We taught Manuela almost every day last week! She had her interview on Thursday with our district leader, but then had to have another with the mission president on Friday. Everything went well, and she was baptized on Sunday! She will be confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Sunday the 24th!
With Alejandro, we had an AMAZING experience last week. I think I talked about it last week, but he told us that he would make a decision on whether or not he was going to continue following God. He didn’t know if God really existed. He said that if he was at church on Sunday, he was going to leave behind his past life, but if he wasn’t, he wasn’t going to listen to the lessons anymore. We left him with a part of The Book of Mormon to read, and told him to pray after he read. The next time we went, he said. I have a favor to ask you...do you have an extra pair of Sunday slacks? I’m coming to church with you on Sunday!! He didn’t need until Sunday to tell us, he received his answer, and knows that the church is true. He told us that he’s going to leave everything that he was doing before behind him, like he told us he would. He ALSO told us that he wants to be baptized, and is looking forward to being able to be sealed forever to his brother and to his children. (His brother, Claudio, was baptized in December, and assisted about 1 yr before he was able to be baptized). Alejandro came to church with us on Sunday, and also assisted the Baptism of Manuela after!
Elder Fuentes and I have been working a lot in trying to reactivate members. We have a list of more than 400 people that supposedly are in our ward, but only about 60-80 come every week. In doing this, we have been able to get to know a lot of members, but it has given us the opportunity to get to know a lot of people who aren’t members, and share the gospel with them. We have come into contact with Juan, an 18 year old kid who has passed through a lot of churches before, and also a family of 5. This family has a Dad, Fabio, and 4 children, all old enough to be baptized! We taught the dad and one of the kids a few days ago, and left them with a part of The Book of Mormon to read. We have another lesson planned with them for tomorrow with more of his kids!

I Love you all, and hope that you have a great Week!

Love,

Elder Denton

PS – The mission president just sent out a message to all of the missionaries that P-day was going to change. It will now be on Mondays, except for transfer weeks, which will then be on Tuesdays. Next week is a transfer week.

1/13/10 Letter to the World

HELLO WORLD!
What a great day! We were able to go this morning to play soccor for a few hours! We had a great time, and then we came back to Munro to do our PDAY stuff! This week has been great, and we have a lot of investigators that are progressing!
Claudio y Claudia - Recent converts - Claudio´s brother moved into our ward. Claudio has been preparing him for us! He was smoking, doing drugs, drinking, and doing a lot of other things that he shouldn´t...but he´s cleaned up his life, and Claudio presented him (Alejandro) to the misionaries to teach!
Nicolas - Recent Convert - We found out yesterday that Nicolas proposed to his girlfriend (who introduced him to the gospel!) We talked to them last night, and his girlfriend asked us how soon he can enter the temple so that they can be sealed...!! :D
Manuela - It seems that the Lord knows what he´s doing! We´ve been teaching Manuela EVERY day for the past week, and her baptismal interview is tomorrow. If everything goes well, she will be baptized this sunday!
Alejandro - (Claudio´s Brother) Alejandro is amazing. He has had a VERY hard life, and has changed a lot. He is doing everything that he can to be able to feel that God exists. He has a lot of questions, and there are a lot of principles that are sometimes hard for him to accept. He is working on developing more faith! I don´t think it will be long before he is a member of the church! He has expressed his desire to know that the gospel is true and to be able to be sealed forever to his children and brother.
There are a bunch of others that are progressing, but because we played soccor this morning i don´t have much time.. I hope that everybody is doing great!
Love,
Elder Denton

1/6/10 Letter to the World

Hello World!!

I Hope that the New Year is treating everybody well! I’m still doing great here in Argentina, but it seems like I don’t have very much new and interesting things to say. On New Years Eve there were a TON of fireworks, and as I sleep VERY heavily, my companion was ´kind enough´ to wake me up 5 min after they had started to welcome in the New Year! I would’ve preferred sleep...but hey....what´cha gonna do? This week we’ve continued having difficulty in setting appointments and having the people keep them. We have had some success though! There is a Sister that has been coming to church for a few weeks named Manuela. She is about 70 yrs old, and we thought that she was a less active member who the second counselor of the bishopric had been bringing to church, but found out that she wasn’t a member. We started teaching her, and earlier this week put a date of Jan 16 for her baptism. It’s soon, but we’re putting our faith in the Lords hands to give her the response that she needs to know that this is the Lords true church here on the earth.
I love this gospel, and continue to find scriptures that help me to learn and grow, and that I can share with my investigators to help them too! This last week in my studies I came across Alma 34:31. I know that this scripture teaches the truth. All we need to do is put our life in order, and the atonement of Christ can start working in our lives. We don’t need to wait a lot of time. When God sees that we are striving to live his gospel, he blesses us!

I love you all, and hope that you’re having a great time in the cold! The heat here is impressive.

Love,

Elder Denton