Dear Family and Friends.
Well, it looks like another transfer has just flown by. Its already week six and I hit my 7th month mark 9 days ago. Things are going well here, except for the extreme heat, dust, and wind that makes it harder to see the road than the worst days of fog in Pacific Grove. The start of the week it was still super hot and our swamp cooler was broken. Luckily though they just turned it back on and so everything is nice and cool in our apartment again. We still live in the ghetto though. There apparently have been 3 car robberies in the last 4 weeks, and there are gang bangers that live on the bottom floor. It was cool though because we knocked into the Rep for the "crime prevention" unit of El Paso, (she told us that we are living in some of the worst apartments in all of El Paso and that we needed to get out because we are too white) Luckily enough we are not too worried because we have better "Insurance" than anyone else in the area, and as long as we are being safe and taking all the precautions we need to like locking the doors, making sure lights are on, and doing are prayers, nothing will happen. But she did direct us to someone in this area who is willing to rent a nicer apartment to the church in a "safer" part of our area and for cheaper than what the church is paying here. We have a year lease here so there is not a whole lot we can do now, but it might be something that the church could look into next January. Even though she doesn’t have any interest in the church, gave us her number and said that if anyone is bothering us that we can call her and she can get them arrested. Which is nice back up for a dangerous situation.
But other than that, the Area is doing good in many aspects.... except church. We have the investigators, the baptism dates, and the time, but we are completing failing in church attendance. We have helped now 6 “less actives” come back into full activity but for some reason no matter hard we push, we cant get them to church. I personally think that it is the lack of fellowshipping that we are doing with the ward that is hurting our progress. So one day this week when I was sitting down and really trying to think of a way to get the ward and the new ward mission leader (who just got home from his mission and so is preparing to go to school. He also spends a lot of time with his girlfriend, so he doesn’t do a whole lot) be more active. I don’t blame him for not helping so much cause I think it is because the ward is so big and there are 3 sets of missionaries with tons of investigators each to deal with. So we thought up a plan that I hope will change the way that missionaries work in this mission, to most effectively use the ward mission leaders, and get fellow shippers picked specifically for investigators so that the investigators feel like they are welcomed, noticed, and wanted. Plus it will make the work 100x easier for the mission leader and the missionaries, have the members know EXACTLY what we want them to do, and hopefully get more investigators to church and enjoy it. More investigators at church= more baptisms of "Real Converts" that will have friends in the ward. We just have to get it started to see how it works. But you can see that I'm pretty excited about it.
We started it a little this week and actually have seen success in the quality of our lessons and the members stepping up to do their job. We have had 5 members come out with us this week for 4 of some of the greatest lessons that I've had on my mission. I never really understood how much of a benefit it was to have members come to lessons until we learned how to use them properly. One example is with a family who we are teaching that has baptism dates but isn’t progressing as fast as they could. and so through the system we are trying to set up, we used the Ward Mission Leader and the Relief Society to get someone perfect for the 20 year old girl we are teaching. After watching the restoration, all three of us bore testimonies and ended with the member who hammered it home. She got the girls number and invited her to institute this Tuesday, as well as offered to pick her up and take her there. That sounds pretty good right? But that's not all. She even offered to the 15 year old brother to take him to mutual on Tuesday night, even though she has nothing to do with mutual anymore. She offered to bring him with another boy with that is his age in the ward. To make a longer story short, it was the best lesson and I can tell deep down that no matter how long it takes, these 2 are going to be baptized someday.
Well thats all my time this week,
Love you all
-Elder Stewart
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