Jordan's May 24, 2010 letter

Dear Family,

Hey there family! I´m happy to be writing!! Thanks a MILLION for all the wonderful letters and all the awesome pictures that you sent me this week!!! I loved the pictures with Carson and the cats. Man, I miss my cats! They look like they are very fluffy and happy, so I´m very happy about that. I´m glad my family is taking good care of my mangy cats! Give them lots of pets for me today :).

Today is a holiday in Argentina - I´m writing this letter inside of Carrefour, a big Walmart-like (or Target-like) store. They have way nice computers! The only bummer is that we can´t print stuff out, so I guess I´ll just have to go somewhere else to get that done. Because it´s a holiday NONE of the stores or internet places we tried to go to were open - and tomorrow is like Independence Day of Argentina. It´ll be their 200th anniversary of being a country. Wow!! Yeah, it´ll probably be a little tough to work, but I´m excited - there will be a big church activity the whole day long and we´re allowed to go, and it sounds like they´ll have lots of fun things going on and really yummy food...yay! It´ll be a happy Elder Jordan day :).

I´m so happy for Carson!!! Man, he rocks!! From what you guys wrote me it sounds like he got the coolest award out of all the kids there at scholarship night - that´s amazing!!! I´m sure happy for him. I love him and I´m glad he´s having so much success in his life. It´s what I´ve been praying lots about lately and I know Heavenly Father is blessing him!! I´m way happy for him - good job Cars! You are the man!!!

I´m so glad with all this great news you guys gave me - it really has lifted my spirits up more. This week, (and the week before), have been extremely difficult to work here. I´m trying to work hard and I´m trying to teach, but it just seems like everyone has been rejecting us lately. I want to teach but man, it just seems like nobody wants to listen at times. I was kind of depressed last night while we were working, because it seemed like everyone was just mad at us, didn´t want to listen, it had been raining a lot all day, etc. There was one person who was really nice to us, so I´m grateful for her. We´re going to pass by her house tonight to see if we can get a lesson in. I´m just really frustrated with how things are going right now. I´ll just pray for more strength and not to lose faith, because man it looks really easy to give up right now. I´ll keep working though, for sure.

Yesterday was District Conference (that´d be like Stake Conference). It´s different here - it´s way long! It started at 9 and ended at 1. I told some members how it is in the states and they were amazed. I thought to myself, "Yeah, it´s nice - a mini church meeting is nice to have once in a while- ha ha… lucky us!" It was a good experience though. President Benton and his wife were there, so it was fun to get to chat with them a bit.

No news on the package yet - I imagine it´ll come soon. I´ve also been discouraged with the offices a little bit lately - we haven´t received any pamphlets of the Restoration for like three weeks, and man it´s hard to teach other lessons without somewhere mentioning Joseph Smith, especially the Book of Mormon. I hope those guys get me those soon!! I also need to buy the church videos to show to people - they´re really cheap though, just 3 pesos each one (dirt cheap). Yay! I´ll be getting those soon I hope too!

There´s a girl named Diana from Paraguay who wants to get baptized. Yay! She is 8 years old and living with a member family - none of her "real" family are members, so we´ll need to teach her everything. We´re going to do it real simple, maybe even like draw pictures or something, to teach her the lessons. I asked my Zone Leaders and they told me the same thing - she´s so young we need to teach everything primary-level, so it shouldn´t be too bad to teach her. I´m excited though!!!

Miguel, the guy who was going to get baptized, doesn´t want anything to do with the Church right now. He answered us very frustrated and said we´re always welcome to pass by and teach his wife and daughters (who are all members), but that he´s not interested at all right now. From what it looked like, I think it´s probably because his new grand-daughter who was born just recently died. I´m not 100% positive, but I think that´s the reason. We´ll give him some time, because I still have hope that he´ll pull through ok eventually.

Thanks for all your great letters! I love you all very much and I will write to you again soon!

Love,
Elder Nuttall