Last Post From Several Categories on Index page

I am trying to make my index template so that it showes the last article from say category 1, 3 and 8 in seperate sections and I have read over the loop and multiple loops but half the time I barely knew what they were trying to say let alone trying to do. I also searched around here but most of the articles were either an internal server error or were for an older version of WP and pointed to a category plugin mookitty.co.uk that isnt there anymore. Does anyone have an example of this being done or an article on it they can link me to. Preferably an example because I should be able to figure it out from their if I can see it working.

Thank you.