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

10/30/09 - Letter to the World

Hello World!
I almost forgot about you all. (Thanks to Dad last week for putting togethera letter to the world for me!) I´ve been trying to get other Emails out, write down recipes, and a whole bunch of other stuff! Life as a missionary NEVER has a dull moment! There is always something to do! Last week for Christmas, we got a call from our Zone leader that we could leave Munro to go to Ballester to play soccer! Our Mission Pres is very strict with the white handbook, and it says that VERY RARELY should the missionaries leave their area....this was the first time that he´s authorized something for us to get together! I had a great time! We were about 10 missionaries in all, and played for about an hour before Elder Fuentes and I had to go home to shower, change, and run over the the house of our most recent converts to recieve our phone calls and eat lunch! I don´t think you all heard about the baptism so...Claudio Martín Bentancourt and Cecilia (Claudia) Bentancourt were both baptized on the 19th, and confirmed on the 20th. Claudia asked me to baptize her! It was an amazing experience to be abe to perform an ordinance for the salvation of one of God´s children! It was also a nice early Christmas present! (for my companion too...the baptism was his first week here!) Last week (the 27th) in church Claudio recieved the Aaron Priesthood (Priest)! As far as the other investigators...we´ve pretty much dropped everybody that we had. Nobody has given us the time to go and teach them, and Elder Fuentes and I are realizing that the Lord has people ready for us to teach right now, and we can´t waste our time on people who aren´t ready to hear the message of the gospel right now. This week is going to have a HUGE focus on finding new investigators through our members, contacts, and any other way that the lord wants to bless us!
I love this gospel, and i am so glad that i was raised knowing what i know. I hope that everybody can come to know this message, and LIVE IT in their lives. True joy only comes from knowing and living in accordance with the commandments that we have been given.
I hope that everybody has a GREAT New Year!!
Love,
Elder Denton

12/25/09 - Christmas Call to Elder Denton

Cody used skype to call Elder Denton at noon on Christmas day at $0.02 per minute. Nice! Elder Denton answered the phone and we weren't sure if it was him until he started speaking a little more. He has been told recently by other missionaries (and we can confirm this) that his English is terrible! On the plus side, Cody and Chazz say that his Spanish is very good now (I'll have to take their word for it). Cody spent a lot of time translating to English what Elder Denton was trying to express. He told us many things about how they celebrate Christmas in Argentina and seems to be doing very well with his new companion, Elder Fuentes. He loves to work hard and gets aggravated if something prevents him from living the mission rules. In the picture from last week there was a question whether or not he had baptized the couple that were in the picture (Claudia and Claudio). Elder Denton did baptize Claudia and the other man baptized Claudio. The Sutherlands were visiting from Oakley and listening/participating in to our conversation too. Kyle let us in on another Argentina fact...the bidet is the preferred method for cleansing oneself. That one caught us all by surprise! George Denton

We were not going to hear from Elder Denton until Christmas day, but due to a mistake all the missionaries had to find a family in the ward willing to let them use their landline so we could call them in Argentina and then email the information to their homes. Apparently they were set up to use mission cell phones, but then somebody found out that it would cost the mission a ton if all the missionaries used them to receive calls from out of the country. He didn't have very much time to put together anything, but following are some highlights that we discussed in a few quick emails back and forth before he had to go:

I don´t have time to write a letter to the world...but just wish everybody a VERY Merry Christmas!

He gave us the phone number for Claudia & Claudio and asked us to call them asap to make sure we had the proper country code, etc. Cody (Elder Denton's brother) came home from one job just long enough to make a call and was able to speak with Claudia for a few minutes (which was not planned...waiting to find out what that is going to cost us!). She had many good things to say about Elder Denton, that they and the ward loved him and that they are taking very good care of him; and that they had seen some pictures of him before his mission and said that he was now very skinny. She told Cody that Elder Denton would not even eat a piece of her wedding cake when they got married this past week. I was amazed at how easily Cody was able to speak to her, as she doesn't speak English at all. Incredible! We are set to make a call around noon on Christmas day using Skype, which Cody is working on setting up for us. He uses that quite often to speak with his Spanish speaking friends from other countries.

Because he was in such a hurry, he didn't say anything about the pictures that are attached. We are curious to know if Claudia and Claudio were also baptized this past week...we'll be speaking to him about that on Christmas day for sure! He also asked for another care package that included things mostly for other people...recipes, gum, etc.

Have a Merry Christmas,

George Denton

12/15/09 Letter to the World

Hello World!!
I don´t have much time...sorry. My new companion is Elder Fuentes..he´s from Chili.
This last week has been great, and next week will be great too!!...Claudio y Claudia, a few investigators that i´ve had since i got here are finally getting married this week!!! Jueves van a casarse y el sábado van a bautizarse. It should be GREAT! It´s a bit sad for elder poteet, but a great gift for Elder Fuentes! Yesterday, the last thing we did for the day was visit a contact from the street. His name is Javier. He is married (por la ley!!!!!) and has a child of about 3 years. We taught him the first lesson, and he accepted a baptismal date for 8 january 2010!!! We have a few other investigators that are progressing well also...Fabian is doing well, and we have an appointment to teach him later this week.
Nicolas, who was baptized a few weeks ago went with us para hacer divisiones. We went saturday morning for about 2 hours with him, and today we have an appointment with him to start a list of friends y conocidos para empezar a trabajar en la obra, y traer otros a cristo.
Yesterday in the house of a member who has internet, while eating lunch we were able to see part of the first presidency christmas devotional. Elder Uchdorf and part of Elder Eyring. WOW. IF you haven´t watched it...you should!!! Amazing!
I Love you all, and hope that you have a great Christmas...
(My next pday isn´t until next friday, Dec 25th....president changed it for christmas)
Argintine Fact - Christmas is celebrated here the 24th. There is no preperation beforehand, so everybody is going to be buying stuff on the 24th, and then they have all of the celebrations at night.
Sorry for the partial spanish...no time for me to change and translate...i just write what´s on my mind!
I will try harder next week....cody...do your magic! ¡gracias che! [Note: Cody is at work so there was nobody here to translate before I sent this out...george]
Hasta Luego! Love to all!
Elder Denton