Como Estan? I hope everything is great in this wonderful Christmas season. This week, I had a week that I will remember for the rest of my life. Elder Richardson said that this past week was the best he has had on his mission as well. It was a hardworking week of missionary work that ended up in snow at the end of the week. Yes you read correctly, snow in Texas and Mexico this last weekend, and the temperature right now is 26 degrees. Que Paso? But like I said it was the best week ever.
Now when I said I hardworking week of missionary work, I was not kidding. We taught 32 lessons this week which I think was the most in the mission, as well as finding some new solid investigators to teach. With these new investigators I have had 2 of the most amazing experiences with the spirit that I have ever had. In addition our teaching pool has grown to almost 15 progressing investigators and we have 10 with a date for baptism. Oh man is it wonderful.
So our ward here in El Paso does not do any kind of missionary work. They are one of the leading wards in family history work, but they don’t try to do anything for the living. They seriously call names out in sacrament meeting to go over to the Family History office for the second and third hour of church and do the work over there. Anyway, basically what I’m saying is we have to knock a lot of doors. Richardson doesn’t like to knock doors and constantly reminds people that only 1 person in 1000 doors opened end up getting baptized. And that’s only "Doors Opened" which is less that 50% of the doors we knock. But I have a testimony of knocking with the Holy Ghost. With the Holy Ghost to tell us where to knock, we will always find the people we need to teach. So I’m always the one who picks the Street we will knock.
Anyway the first one was I had picked a street called "Gold" to knock on, but as we where driving up the street we had a feeling like it just wasn’t right. We proceeded to turn the corner and something about this one block on a street named "Silver Street" caught my attention. So we started to knock. On the 7th or so door we knocked and Gloria answered, after our initial introduction we asked if she was interested in hearing more. She said she had actually been looking for a church to bring her grandson "Jordi" to, because he was wondering why they didn’t go to church? So we set a return appointment and when we came back Gloria and her daughter Yani, and Yani's son Jordi was there to learn. We taught a really choppy lesson but nonetheless, the spirit was there and they agreed to come to church the next day. Well they actually came! And I have really become to love them all and specifically Jordi, because it looks like he needs someone to look up to, like a brother. And so I treat him like he was my younger brother. Glori told me when we where at their house again that Sunday to watch the Christmas devo with them that Jordi had told his mom, "I like Stewart" and Yani asked "and why is that Jordi?” And he answered, "I wish I had a dad like Stewart... he actually talks to me and is nice to me."... Apparently Jordi's dad only makes an effort to see him 5 hours a month. This really touched my heart. It’s probably the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me. We are working on a baptism date for them and hopefully we will set one tonight.
After finding that family, we were late for a dinner appointment and Richardson said we should get going to be there on time, but something told me to knock the rest of the doors there, so we did. We ran into this woman who literally just found out she had cancer, and was praying and asking god for help through this time. Then we knocked. She was so overwhelmed by us being there and she started to cry so much, she asked us to come back the next day in the morning. So we went back at 8 the next morning and found out she is from Columbia. She came to America many years ago and has not gone to church in 19 years. We gave her a blessing and then invited her to church. She came with her daughter-in-law the next day and now we are teaching her the lessons as well. She is so excited to learn, and I can tell their family will all once again come back and be active members in the church.
The last one is one day when our appointment fell through, I was asked where I wanted to go. As I was going over the streets, I remembered seeing in my head one came to my mind "Cumberland". Neither Richardson, nor the member we were with had ever heard of that street, but sure enough, it was in the GPS in our area. So we went and knocked, it wasn’t until the last door that we were invited in and taught an amazing lesson with a Grandpa and Grandson named Rene and Fernando. They both set baptism appointments. It was an amazing experience because Richardson is convinced that we have not once, driven past that street. And so the spirit was there once again.
I love you all and I hope everything is well.
Love, Elder Stewart
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