The Christmas spirit of success...

Dear Family and Friends,

How is everyone? I hope all things are going well and that you are getting ready for an awesome December. We are seeing lots of blessings here in Fabens, TX, that truly are just miracles. This week I had a pretty good week and we were happy to see some people with us at church on Sunday who our Heavenly Father is preparing to be baptized. How amazing it is to see the affects of the spirit on the heart of someone who is willing to change their life to receive the blessings needed for salvation.

I had a few really nice experiences this week.  A great one was that I was asked to confirm Nathan (A recent convert) to the Aaronic Priesthood. It was the first time I have ever done a confirmation.  All of the priests in the quorum I am currently teaching on Sundays stood in with me. Later in the week Nathan went and did baptisms for the dead in Mexico with the youth. I didn't see him till Sunday, but when I did, I could already tell there was something different in his conversion. He was actually dressed in shirt and tie with a sweater vest on instead of just a white shirt and slacks. He passed the sacrament in church for the first time and even though he messed up a little bit he said that he wants to be there early every week so that he is one of the kids who gets to pass the sacrament. Later, I taught the class of the youth because the teacher did not show and I asked Nathan to share the experience he had in the temple. Even though he is really shy, he got up and shared an amazing testimony about how strong he felt the spirit in the temple and that he knew that temples were from God.

We had an appointment this week with the soon to be married daughter and (soon to be) son in law of the Morales family. He had not come to church this week and when we entered the room we could literally feel this tension in the room that was not the spirit. They were sitting across the room from each other with the whole Morales family in the middle and Richie was not saying anything. It really took asking the right inspired questions that got him to open up. The lesson was a really good lesson and by the end, they were sitting together, and he asked the father if he could marry his daughter and then got on one knee and asked if she would marry him. She said yes. When we were planning the date for them to be married, I was expecting it to be later in the month right before the baptism, but they looked at me and said, "Well, we need to be following the commandments, so would it be ok if we got married this Sunday?" WOW!

Anyway, I hope that everything is going well and that you are trying to have some good missionary experiences this Christmas season.

Love you all,

Elder Stewart        

Thanksgiving in Fabens....

Hey Friends and Family

I hope everyone had a great week. I know my week went pretty well. We had a good Thanksgiving this year where we ate at 3 different houses and died once we got home. I have not been so full in a long time. Thanksgiving is basically the same here but they still have tortillas with every meal.

Other than that, this week we started a "40 day fast." from Thanksgiving day to the end of the year there is 40 days and my companion and I were reading a letter written to a missionary by his father (who was a stake president) about how to purify yourself so that you can have the spirit with you as a constant companion. What you have to do is fast to find out a few things that keep you from having the spirit with you fully and then starting the next day you covenant with the Lord that you will do nothing on that list. Every night you sit and talk with Heavenly Father about what happened and areas that you lacked in and every morning you recommit to not doing anything on that list, taking it one day at a time.

So we started on Friday and that night we had an amazing lesson with the boyfriend of a less active member that we are helping to come back to church. We taught to his needs and he accepted a Date and came to church to Sunday.  It was a miracle because the parents of this less active member never thought that he would come around and accept the gospel.

The next time we saw him on Saturday night, he said that he wasn't going to go to church and he did not read because he didn't feel ready for it. It was then that I felt the spirit most and I preceded to tell him that I knew he felt the spirit and that I know he knows it is true, and that all we are asking him to do is read, pray, and go to church so that he can learn from the Holy Ghost. I told him that we can’t give him his answer, that only going through the steps unnecessary to feel the Holy Ghost will he learn.  He understood it, and was at church!

Well I am super happy, I love the area, training, and I finally feel like I can fully express myself in Spanish to the point that I can help these people progress through the spirit. I wouldn't mind staying in this area for the rest of my time here.

Love you all,

Elder Stewart

Zone Conference with Elder Paul V. Johnson...

Hey Friends and Family,

How was everyone's week and how are you all doing? I hope you know I love you very much. We had a good week this week and a lot of good things are happening here in Fabens and the Zone. We are still working towards our year goal for the mission and at the start of November we were about 150 off. We have been working hard as a zone to do our part in reaching this goal. I not sure we can do it if the world is going to end in 1 month ha ha. The weather here is pretty cold now, somewhere in the 40's all the time, and so it’s suit season. I actually think I have gotten used to wearing a suit all the time now and actually like it.

We had a zone conference this week that was really good.  Elder Paul V. Johnson came and gave us a few trainings. He is a really awesome teacher and is over all the church teaching programs. We talked a lot about different ways of learning. You can have Facts that you learn by memorizing, Experience by going and doing it, and Examples, meaning seeing it be done or watching. These things are ways we learn and how we teach in the world, but it takes something different to learn spiritual things. Someone cannot learn spiritual truths by using worldly ways of learning, but only through the spirit. We learned that you cannot force someone to learn things spiritually, but only through their actions (faith) and keeping all the commandments can someone learn these spiritual truths. So basically when we are teaching, we should not teach them all the lessons if they are not reading, praying and going to church because it’s only through those things that we can learn the truths of the spirit. It has actually helped us a lot in our teaching. We also had training from President and Sister Miller about teaching as the Savior did. They went over a bunch of examples of how to teaching like the Savior did. I think there is a really good video on lds.org about it. Anyone who wants to be a better teacher should go look it up and watch it.

Well overall we had a good week and the Lord is going to bless us with some success next month. We have Paulette who went to church this week who was going to be baptized a year ago, but right before she was going to be baptized her mom found out and told her a lot of things about the Mormons and forbid her to be baptized. Paulette then had to move to Colorado to live with her mom for a year and then she came back and gave us a call. We have been going over quite a lot and she has a baptism date. We asked her if she still thought the date was right and she said, "Listen, I know this church is true, and I am going to be baptized on that date, and nobody can tell me otherwise." She then came to church on Sunday with her youngest son. At church, the ward mission leader informed me 5 minutes before class started that he could not teach the principals class this week and so I had to. I’m so grateful for all the preparation that the Lord has given me to be able to just go in and teach a class in Spanish on a topic that I just found out I was teaching. After a quick prayer the class was on its way and I was able just to recall scriptures to memory as if I had written them myself. (This is particularly impressive to me because of the ADD that I have that makes me forget facts and things pretty easily.) Towards the end of the class I gave everyone in the room a chance to bear their testimony on the savior. And all the recent converts and even Paulette bore their testimony. The Spirit was super strong and awesome. I decided to try that because one of the points in the "Teach as Christ taught" example from zone conference was that we teach a principle and then invite the people we teach to bear testimony on the principal so that they can feel the spirit through them.

Well I hope that everyone has a good week,

Love you,
Elder Stewart

A Good Solid Week.....

Dear Friends and Family,

I hope everyone is doing well and that they are staying out of the cold. It was 28 degrees this morning and was so hard to wake up on time. Things are well here in Fabens, and I can say we had a good solid week. We had some pretty good experiences this week while looking for more people to teach. This area has a lot of potential, and we have so many connections with possible investigators that we cannot seem to control all of them at once. So we really have the more important ones in focus and the other ones we can only visit maybe once a week.

The Lord is helping us a lot in this area. The goal for the mission is 600 baptisms by the end of this year. We have two more months left and we are short around 150.  So each zone needs to get about 8 a month. At first I was certain that it wasn’t really possible, but I thought I would give it my best shot anyway. I have seen in the last two weeks, the Lord opening up doors in our area that have not been opened for a long time. One of these experiences was with an investigator who a year ago lived in this area, who was taught all the lessons and was interviewed and right before she was baptized she had to move to Colorado cause her mother got really sick. The missionaries in the area told her that they would send the missionaries, but for some reason they never got there. Well she just got back a few weeks ago and as soon as she found our number she called us. This call was in the middle of planning, right when we were wondering how we were going to find some new investigators. It’s great that she didn’t get lost in the year between the last lesson and now. She and her husband will soon be preparing for baptism.

Another blessing from the Lord happened last night. It was about 8 o’clock and I wasn’t sure who to visit, but I felt like going by and visiting this less active member family who has a daughter of 11 years but was never baptized. The missionaries in the past have said that they have tried and that the family doesn’t want to come back and no one in the ward has any idea why they don’t want to. So we got there and we sat down with the father and after in little bit of chatting we asked if we could talk to the daughter. She came out and we decided to teach a first lesson. We taught to her needs instead of teaching all the points and basically just taught about the Holy Ghost, Joseph Smith and Baptism. When we talked about the Holy Ghost I turned and asked the father when a time he felt the Holy Ghost was and what did it feel like. He told a story were his mother was about to pass away and so his dad gave her a blessing. After the blessing she healed rapidly and lived many years longer. It was then where he began to cry and said that it was in that moment, that he knew without a doubt this church is true. We found out that the reason they have not been coming to church is because the wife lost her testimony. We set a date for the young girl to be baptized and will be talking with the mother next week to try to help her gain a testimony back.

I had a cool experience this week with the Morales family where we dropped by their house and the daughter and son-in-law was there. The son-in-law is not a member and the daughter had been less active for over a year. To give some background information, the mom had lost her eyesight about a year ago from not controlling her diabetes very well. She’s not completely blind, but let’s just says she can’t really see our faces and she can’t read books. Anyway she was not feeling very well and so I offered to give her a blessing, she accepted. In the blessing I remember saying stuff about how she was felling and then something about how her sight would be healed if she tried to read the Book of Mormon every day, even though she can’t see the letters very clearly. Well a week later I found out that she has been trying to read the best she can every day, and on Friday she went in for a checkup and was planning on setting a time for another eye surgery because after the first one, it only got worse. They were surprised to tell her that she wasn’t going to need it because for some reason her eyesight was healing at a faster rate than was expected even after the first surgery? I have a feeling that the daughter will soon be coming back and that we will have another person to teach. Its moments like these that make my testimony grow of how powerful the Book of Mormon is and how the priesthood is real.

Well that is all for this week. I love you all.

Elder Daniel Stewart

El Dia de las Brujas…

Hey Everyone,

How are you all doing? I hope you week went well and everyone had a safe Halloween. Things over here are doing really well. We are still working hard and the training is coming along.  This week we are focusing on the plan of salvation and practicing it together. We had a zone meeting last week and there are a lot of things happening in the field of missionary work. Sister Miller's brother-in-law is now the new MTC President and she says that there were 8000 new calls going out the weeks following Conference and over half of them are young women. And that the MTC is freaking out because they have nowhere to put them. We got news that the max amount of missionaries for our mission went up from 170 to 250 missionaries and that starting next year they will be opening up 41 new areas in the mission. They are saying there will be 2 sets or more missionaries in every single ward or branch in the mission. He said that a lot of us will be trainers probably several times. I just think of all that greenie fire coming in.

Well I don’t know too much about the election but the change in the missionary ages points to me that God plans to have Romney win. I would bet all the money Romney has that somewhere in his patriarchal blessing it says something about a presidential call and that he is not just doing it because he wants to. If he gets elected I have a feeling that he will have a lot of success making friendships with other countries, especially the ones that we do not currently have missionaries in. That is just my thoughts, not any doctrine, but I also have been noticing some parallels in the Book of Mormon. Reading through Mormon this week we see that even though the people where wicked, God put Mormon at the head of the armies, even though he had already resigned from the position once. This was right before the end of the Nephites, within 30 years of them being wiped out. But I won’t spoil it for you. Read through Mormon and you will see for yourselves.

Well this week has been kind of slow. We had Halloween and we had a party with the district because we are not able to go out past 6 o’clock. We are teaching this new family called the Ruiz family. We found them knocking doors and the story is pretty funny. It was Elder Keddington's turn to knock and he knocked on this door and out came their 20 year old daughter who had just signed a modeling contract for 4 years. And he froze before he could even get out a greeting. After a minute or so I took over trying my hardest not to laugh and she said that we could come back. So the next night we went over and sat down with the whole family of 6. We watching finding faith in Christ and didn’t say anything about the restoration yet. But I did tell them that we had a lesson to teach them and they said we could come back. The next time we went back I was with our district leader on exchanges and just completely knocked them out with the spirit. A few days later we found out that the mother was so affect by the story of Joseph Smith that during her lunch break at work she made the mistake of looking him up on Google, wanting to know about his life. I knew something was up when they didn’t call us back to confirm the appointment. So we went over there anyway. Even though she had read some horrible stuff on Joseph Smith we saved the lesson and that family and committed them to read and pray.

Well that is all basically for this week.

-Elder Stewart

Getting out of the ruts...

Hola Friends and Family,

How is everyone doing? Hope everyone is doing well and is active at church and visiting the temple as often as possible. I have heard that there are some pretty crazy things going on in the world right now and I want you all to know that I pray for you and that the support and letters you send me really do help. I had a pretty good week this week. Not a ton of things happened as in progression of our investigators, but I feel like I made another step this week on my own progression.

The President asked me this week to teach something to the young men ages 15-18 that were getting ready to serve missions. I had about 7 boys, 3 of them that where sure about going on a mission. We had a really good discussion and I actually learned a lot from the Holy Ghost myself. The fact of the matter is that we are going through, right now, the time period right before the coming of Jesus Christ. There are prophecies made in the Bible right now that talk about how the Church of God will be persecuted for a time before Christ shall return and if what some of the members here are telling me is true, The Church of Christ is getting torn down all over the media. Now I’m not here to talk about the theories of the end of the world, but I learned and talked to the youth yesterday about what it is going to cost nowadays to make it to the Celestial Kingdom. One of the points that came to my head while talking is that in our days You Need to Go on a Mission. You need to go, why do you think the ages were lowered? It’s because the testimony that someone attains on their mission is what it’s going to take to stay loyal throughout your life. So to all the parents who are raising kids, and to all the youth (Young Men and Young Women) SERVE A MISSION or do anything you can to get your kids there. I hope that my sisters will serve missions.

I talked to them about some of the reasons why they don’t want to go. They said that either 1. They didn’t know enough about the church or the Book of Mormon. Or 2, They don’t know if they can do it or if "It is for them." If there is anything that I can tell the youth right now is Do Not Let Satan put those things in your head. If you don’t know enough and you don’t start learning now, you will NEVER know enough to survive the last days. The other two to me are ridiculous, Jesus Christ promises you protection, power, knowledge of what to do, where to go, and what to say. Ill you have to be able to do is be obedient. At the "It is not for me is the biggest lie that Satan has ever told you. If you want to live with God, Jesus Christ, and your family forever, then the mission "IS FOR YOU."

I don’t say this as to try to make people feel bad for not wanting to serve a mission, but I do this because I really do care about you. I love it here, the people I have met, the things I have learned, and the Testimony that I have gained. I love my mission. I know that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and the Son of God, that he died for us, and that he lives! I know that the Book of Mormon is true, and therefore the Church of Jesus Christ is on the earth again. 

I love you all. Haz lo Justo!

Elder Daniel Stewart 

Another Good week here in Texas....

Hey Everyone,

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the fall weather. Things are going really well here and the weather is just beautiful. This week it was between 70-85 degrees. We had a pretty good week this week where we spent most of our time trying to find new investigators and get some referrals from the members. Since we have baptized almost all of our current investigators, we have needed to start looking for more. Marsha was given the Holy Ghost this week which alleviated my fears of her not receiving it and falling off the path. I was super happy and relieved that it went through.

This week we had President and Sister Miller come all the way down here to Fabens, for interviews. They do interviews in the apartments during October and it was nice to have them in ours. They said it was very clean and that the Spirit could be felt there. Part of the reason we keep it so clean is due the cockroaches that we have that freak me out. We have a lot of them and have been battling to kill them all the past two weeks. I caught some bigger ones and keep them in this jar. I know, it’s nasty, oh well.

Well my companion has made some big steps this week. He for his first time had menudo (I had to make him eat it) and Chi Charon which is pig skins that idk if I told you about. He absolutely hated it. I don’t think I have laughed that hard in a while when I first saw his face with the first bite of cow stomach/ intestine. Training a greenie brings back so many memories, and also makes me realize how different I am now. How much I know and how my interests have changed.

One of the things we focused on this week is revelation through the Holy Ghost. We had a district meeting this week on helping our investigators receive their answer through the Holy Ghost and how to recognize an answer given to them. We had one lesson in particular with an investigator named Lily. We had been trying to get her to read the Book of Mormon and she has said that she just hasn’t had the time to read it or they have been really tired lately, or that they forgot. But when people say that it is because they don't fully understand how to use it or what it can do for their lives. So we sat down with her and talked about how important receiving an answer would be for her life. We read Moroni 10:3-5. And then all of a sudden she says "I wanted to ask you, what is the Holy Ghost." that’s when it hit me that most of the time we just assume that they know who the Holy Ghost is. Growing up in the church we were always taught what it is and what his job is. We then started asking if she knows or has ever felt what the Holy Ghost feels like. We then were able to pinpoint a moment in the past where she did; she was so excited and is very excited to look for that same answer when she reads the Book of Mormon. I felt like it was a huge turning point him her conversion.

Anyway that is all for this week,

Love you,

-Elder Stewart

1st week of fatherhood....

Hey Friends and Family,

I hope everyone is doing good and enjoying life. I had maybe one of the longest weeks of my mission this week. I don't know if it is because I am training now or if the week that I had was above normal in craziness. At times it seems overbearing with the amount of stuff that is going on over hear, but my faith is strengthend each time I tell my self that God will never give me more than I can handle.

Well my sons name is Elder Keddington.  He was born in ‘93, super young! He is from Centerville Utah; I knew I was going to get a white boy from Utah before he even came. He’s pretty cool, super humble, perhaps being overly humble because it’s coming off as a lack of self-confidence. One of my goals this transfer is helping him build his confidence up as a missionary. He has an awesome testimony, and even though he doesn’t understand what anyone is saying he is really willing to learn. One of the members here said that they knew he was going to go far as a missionary because of how badly he wants to learn and be involved. He is such a greenie, one night I went to bed at 9:30 and he got in bed too, then I decided to read my Book of Mormon for a little bit, and so he hopped right up and got his, then at 10:20 or so I got down to pray and I heard him follow, and lastly I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came out he was outside the door to go right after me. It has made me ever so aware of my actions. I know that he is watching my every move and that how I act now will probably set up how most of his mission is. I want to try hard to set the example for him that I never had. But I will tell you something, it makes me so proud when I see him use something that we learned in studies or that he learned from when I was teaching, in a lesson. Is that what child raising is like?

Like a good father I had to play a prank on him, but he turned out to surprise me. At one of our investigator's homes we planned to play this prank on him with a Habanero. The member ate one with him and he ate this hot, hot, hot chili in two big bites. The member, who is used to eating them, was super worried cause he thought that he was only going to take a small bite. His face got sooo red with sweat pouring down his face. Then his eyes started to water. He tried to play it off like it wasn’t hot, but finally accepted a glass of milk. It was one of the funniest moments of my mission; I was worried at one point though.

Well other than that, we have had to deal with so much this weekend. There has been a series of issues going on with the main family we are teaching. Marsha was baptized this last Saturday. Which was so nice. But the battle to keep the family from fighting along with the other problems that I cant tell anyone about due to privacy is really weighing me down. I feel so bad for Elder Keddington to have to go through all this in his first week. I have been in the field 13 months now and have never had to deal with the things that happened.

Anyway Marsha was baptized and she asked me to do it. Because of some things that happened in the past, she had to be interviewed by one of the counselors in the mission presidency. Apparently in the interview, he did not ask a single one of the questions that are asked in the baptism interview. She was surprised and at the end of the interview she asked why he had not asked her any of the questions that we had prepared her for. He said that he didn’t need to, that he could feel the repentant spirit that she had and knew that she was keeping all of the commandments. He also told her that he feels or "knows" that she will have a happy forever family one-day. It was an awesome experience that I am so happy that Heavenly Father allowed me to be here when she was baptized.

Well I didn’t have much time today to email, I will make sure I have some more time next Monday.

Love,

-Elder Stewart

13 Months and training a greenie......

Dear Friends and Family,

How are all of you? How did you all like conference? It was awesome here in Fabens, Texas. It’s amazing though how many members don’t put much of an emphasis on watching general conference. Maybe its because conference is not quite as good in Spanish as it is in English, but still. I remember when it wasn’t much of a big deal to me, or when I would only listen when President Monson was speaking, but something has changed to the point where I look forward to listening to them talk. I mean, to think, what would I give to hear a talk or hear the testimonies of a Living Peter or John, or Paul, and here we have 15 men who have the same calling and authority as they do. I just love it. Anyway I hit my 13th month mark yesterday, and now have 11 more months in the mission, scary huh?

This week I got a call from President Miller to be a Trainer. I am going to have a son! I’m pretty excited for the opportunity and am excited to see whom I get and how the Lord blesses the area because of him. We had a meeting for trainers and one of the things they shared was this video about Fleas and training them.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlpjA-QgmQM I think it was pretty cool. Well this means that my companion now will be leaving. He is not too happy about it cause this is his first area. I told him he would get used to change, like me. I’ve gotten a new companion for the last 4 transfers in a row, which is pretty rare.

I really love conference this weekend, and actually went into the session looking for some specific answers, to some problems we are having with our investigators right now, and also what it is I need to do with my new greenie coming in. And I can report that it actually works. People always told me it would but I still didn’t really try to look for the answers that come by the Holy Ghost, because they really do. Some of the things I really liked are:

·       President Uchtdorf's talk about how living the principles of the gospel can help us live a life that we won’t regret later. Like spending more time with our families. How we need to stop focusing on what we think or want to become in this life and start to focus more on becoming the person God intended for us to be. Good intentions are not enough.

·       M. Russell Ballard's about the honeybee and how the church needs to be like a beehive.

·       D Todd Christofferson about our duties in the priesthood. Being men that women, children, and God can trust.

·        President Eyring spoke of how blessed he felt when he learned that he had the spiritual gift of being a peacemaker. He then taught that we each have a spiritual gift. (It says in D & C 46:11 "...That to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.”) Pres. Eyring also encouraged us to identify which spiritual gift(s) we possess. You may have a Spiritual gift highlighted in your Patriarchal Blessing or you can pray to know which gift you have been given.

·       My favorite though was David A. Bednar's talk on Testimony and Conversion. How a testimony alone will not be enough to save us in our times and we need to work towards being truly converted to the Gospel. "Testimony+Conversion" brings the strength we will need to stay firm and steadfast. And that we need to set aside our weapons of rebellion.

Anyway I’m really excited for the next few transfers. Thank you for all your love and prayers.

   

-Elder Stewart

Fabens blessed with another baptism...

Hey Friends and Family,

I hope everyone is doing well and loving life like I am, because its a wonderful thing. There's a secret, and its called the gospel of Jesus Christ. Anyway, I had an amazing week this week. The Lord did some amazing miracles through us over the past few weeks, and my testimony of putting names in the temple grew so much. On Saturday Marsha and Armando got married. It was another one of those times where someone is so willing to follow God's precepts that they change their natural and comfortable lifestyle to make the huge commitment of marriage. The ceremony lasted 20 mins and there was no dress, rings, fancy appetizers, or flowers. Just the Spirit of God. Thats what it is about. I hope my wife will get it. I'm not saying I don’t want rings or a dress for her. But I don’t want to lose sight of what its all about. Marsha is preparing to be baptized next sunday in between conferences.

Sunday the Lord blessed Fabens with the baptism of Nathan, Son of Marsha and Armando. He is such a good kid. He was having some problems at school, and it was causing a lot of problems with his parents. When last Sunday he asked us more about the Holy Ghost and God. After a little explanation he told us he wanted to be baptized as well. We had been teaching his mom for 3 weeks now and Nathan never joined us, so we went over there everyday for the whole week and taught him all the lessons and he read the Book of Mormon everyday by himself. He had his interview, and I was honestly scared that he wasn’t really ready and that he would get nervous and not remember anything. When our district leader came out, he told us that we did an amazing job teaching him, he knew everything, and is more prepared than anyone he gave an interview to before. It really made me think about teaching though. We only taught him for 1 week, and he is only 15 years old, but he understood it all.

We had a zone conference this week about becoming a "Master Teacher". The training was that we are striving to become master teachers. and what I got out of it is that a "Master Teacher" has little to do with talking skills, or you teaching really at all. A master teacher is in how someone prepares to teach. There are a few points that I came up with of how we prepare before we teach:

1. Be Obedient and do morning studies so that the Spirit can be at the lesson

2. Understands fully the principles that are going to be taught. (examples, scriptures, concepts, questions, and commitments)

3. Practices with a companion so that you have the courage to "Open your mouth", share ideas and promptings, and teach in unity.

4. When it comes to the lesson, "gets out of the way"

Like 2 Nephi 33:1 says, It's the "spirit that carries it to the heart of the children of men" not my smooth talking abilities.

The baptism was beautiful this sunday. So glad I have the opportunity to be here.

Love,

Elder Stewart

A visit from my good friend, D. Todd...

Dear Friends and Family,

I hope you all had a good week this week...  because mine was sooo good. I don't even know where to start. On Saturday we had the opportunity to have D. Todd Christofferson here to visit the mission. The meeting with all the missionaries was at 9 am, and all the missionaries in the mission came down to El Paso. It was the first time I had seen all of the missionaries in the mission, and since I have been down south the whole time, I didn’t know half of them. Anyway, my companion and I were so excited, we got there 2 hours early to make sure we got seats, and we sat in the closest possible seats for missionaries, cause the sisters of coarse got put in the front no matter how late they where, but it’s ok. The first thing he did was to invite all of us up to shake his hand and tell him where we were from. It was one of the coolest experiences. Someone said "That hand probably has shaken the hand of the resurrected Christ himself." lol that gave me the chills.

The meeting was pretty good, we had Jim L. Right of the 6th quorum of the 70 and Elder Hallstrom of the presidency of the 70 there as well. They taught some really good things.

Some of the things that I remember are:

1. Often times we think of repentance as a huge deal where we have to repent of huge sins we committed, but repentance at its core is changing something in our lives to be more in line with the teachings of Christ.

2. That when we love our Heavenly Father, we are entitled to his love. And that love is reflected on the rest of his children.

3. Christ's main drive was Charity. Charity never faileth. He says there were times in the garden when he is sure Christ doubted and thinking there had to be some other way to accomplish the goal, but the answer to his prayers was "No". So he finished what he came to do because of His love of the Father that reflected to all of us. (I began to think about what it must have been like for Heavenly Father while he watched his son go through what he went through. I begin to think about what my parents would do for me if they saw me in pain or suffering and realize that have to let his son be, and tell him no, must have brought him to tears. Somewhere in the galaxies out there, I’m sure this moment pained the most powerful man we know to the core.)

4. That we were in debt to our Heavenly Father before coming on our mission, and a quote from Christofferson himself " Some missionaries come home from their missions and say, "Alright, I have served and done the work he asked me, now he owes ME." He smiled and said “If I hear any of you go home and say that ill strangle you myself" and everyone laughed really hard. We are more indebted to the Lord after our missions for all the blessings he has given us on our missions. 

Well there is more but I don’t have time to put them all. 
We got to hear from him again that night, just the El Paso missionaries got to. He talked a lot about reading as a family is the most important thing we can do and that when we testify to our kids, the spirit is what will teach them and change them. 

We also had a baptism yesterday. His name is Angel. He is 19 and now he is preparing to serve a mission. He had been investigating for a while and went through a bunch of missionaries, I’m glad that I was able to help him take the decision to. We have another 2 this weekend. I love the branch, the area, and the work. Thank you all for the prayers, I hope you can feel mine.

I love you,

-Elder Stewart

Bad week before the Temple....

Hello friends and family,

Another week has gone by, the weather is cooling down, mosquitoes carrying the west Nile virus are out, and the work of the Lord moves on. This week however was particularly hard for us. This week Satan worked harder than I have ever seen him work before in trying to discourage me and stop the work in Fabens from progressing. Last Sunday we had 7 at church and all 3 of our families where progressing towards baptism. And to be completely honest, there were a few minor things that we were slipping in when it came to the white handbook. Nothing super serious, but breaking rules is breaking rules. Well I suggested to my companion that we start cleaning up the rest of the stuff we are doing wrong so that we can have the spirit strong for these 9 people that we are teaching that were progressing. At first he wasn’t to sure if he wanted to, but on Friday our zone leaders challenged us that for at least this month, we follow 100% to the rules in the white handbook. That’s what got him motivated. So we started to do EVERTHING the Lord asks of us and prepared to enter the temple this week. 

Well that is when Satan really turned it on. We first went over to see Angel who was going to get baptized on Saturday, and we met his mom for the first time. She was super nice to us and we had an awesome lesson with her and she told us to come back. Well after we left we got a text that we shouldn’t go back to the house and that Angel would need to be meeting us somewhere else for a while. She was being fake to us the whole time and after we left, she had a huge fight with Angel. So he was not baptized. Later we were kicked out of a less active's house because they asked us to break a rule to do a favor for them. When we told them we could not, They got angry and kicked us out of the house. Then with the other 2 of the families, there started to be a lot of contention in their homes all over again, and when we went by for our appointments, they fell through because they didn’t want to let us in while they were fighting. I had a really hard time this Sunday when 1 person came to church. 

I had a question, Why does it seem like when someone is not completely obedient to the rules, they get so many baptisms in their mission that are just handed to them and nothing seems to go wrong with their investigators, but someone who is completely obedient has very few baptisms and everything seems to go wrong?

I got my answer pretty strong in the temple. The spirit told me that Satan, does not work as hard on those who are being taught by "Apostate missionaries" because he knows later in their lives he can give them some challenges, and they will go inactive, and like the scripture says, it would be better if they never knew the gospel at all. Where as missionaries who are fully obedient to the rules can teach more with the spirit and bring "Lasting Conversion." So even though their investigators go through so much before they are baptized, they are usually so converted that they and their generations after them stay active in the gospel. Which actually brings "more" baptisms than the missionaries who just baptize many during their mission. I can feel that this is true, and I am comforted in knowing that these challenges that my investigators are having only meaning that true and lasting conversion is on the way and a big part of their success depends on my obedience.

I love you all,

Elder Stewart

1 Year as a Missionary...

Hola Friends and Family.

I hope you are all doing well. I’m doing pretty well. I’m happy, and we are still being blessed down here in Fabens. I hit my one year mark on Friday, and now I’m in limbo mode because I will be on a plane home Sept 11th next year. (you really serve for 2 years and 4 days) so after today I will have exactly 365 days left. It’s kind of sad because It seems like too short. But then again I’m excited to see everyone again. On Friday night a member took us out to a place to eat called Cattleman’s Steakhouse. It is probably the most expensive place to eat in all of el Paso. This Steakhouse is in the middle of the desert and has its own Zoo. But it’s not like any normal zoo. It has long Horns, Ostriches, and buffalo. Huge animals that could kill so easily. My companion and I had the biggest and most expensive thing to eat on the menu, a 2lbs Steak with french fries beans and coleslaw. The members did not believe that I could finish it because I only weigh about 170lbs. But I finished it all and out ate my companion, who is up there at 280lbs. I can eat so much food. but the thing is I’m not able to exercise like I used too. So, I’m still gaining weight. Oh well though. I can always lose it later.

Well we have been having lots of success in our area as of late. We had 7 investigators at church on Sunday, which I think was one of the highest in the mission, and we have been preparing them for baptism. We had a fast Sunday with one of our investigators named Angel this week, and he is set to be baptized this Saturday. It has been a long process with him but we are all excited to see him take that step. Other than that we are still working with the people we have as well and trying to be extra obedient for the next few weeks to come. With the temple trip and the Apostle, stake and general conference, there will be lots of time to receive some inspiration for the area and our investigators.

Anyway, I am happy and doing well, thanks for all the support and love you all send.

Until next week,

Elder Stewart