A Mighty Change of Heart

Hey Everyone,

How are you all doing? Hope everything is well and that you are having a good summer. Well this week was kind of slower. We still taught a fair amount of lessons but I feel like nothing out of the ordinary happened. Apparently as you start getting older and older in the mission, you start running out of things to write home about because the usual "Spiritual Experiences" happen so often that you start to not recognize them as well. But we will see how I do.

 So the best thing that probably happened this week was the party on Tuesday night for Father’s day, and basically the whole ward was there. This ward seriously throws the best parties of any ward I have ever been in. No offense to the English wards back home, haha. Anyway we had some less actives show up and also Maribel, Bernie, and Lorenzo. I honestly was so surprised when they came by because it’s not something that they would normally do, but they where there and we were able to fellowship them really well. But the best part is that the Bishop had the chance to talk to them about the law of chastity and marriage, and how she cannot be baptized unless she gets married to Bernie. And she accepted! It’s so great to see the kind of drive that an investigator has to change completely their way of life to be in accord with the will of the Lord. Even to the point of obeying the word of wisdom, tithing, and the law of chastity. One of the things I thank God for every morning was the opportunity I had to be born in the church and receive a testimony of it at a young age, because if I honestly think about it, I know that I would have such a hard time accepting the church, and stopping all the things I know I would have gotten into. I feel like God knew that before I came to earth and for some reason (either by righteousness in the life before or I won the lottery in heaven) I was put in a place where I would be able to grow up in the truth. Anyway, she and Bernie are going to get married by the Bishop this upcoming week and she will be baptized soon after.

We are teaching these 2 Cuban guys that live in our same complex and they absolutely love us. I think I talked about them last week having accents that are so difficult to understand. Anyway, we had the chance to talk to Adrian on Wednesday or Thursday this week, and talk to him about faith. We really had the feeling that we needed to go over our purpose as missionaries again and talk about Faith needing actions. It went really well and Adrian knew what he needed to do after reading the scripture in Mosiah 18. He told us that if he was going to be baptized, it wouldn’t be for anyone else but himself and the Lord. And that the last thing he wanted to be is one of those "Sunday Christians." You know the ones that go to church on Sunday and act super perfect and then throughout the week they completely forget about God and do whatever they want. So we were able to set a date with him and his roommate Horacio came to church on Sunday and loved it. We are planning on setting a date with him as well and having them both again at church next Sunday.

Other than that nothing real exciting happened this week.

Love you, thanks for everything

-Elder Stewart

Happy Father's Day.....

Hey Everyone,

I just want to thank real quick the good Fathers in this world, including my father, grandfathers, Uncles, Cousins, and Great- Grandfathers. You are amazing and mean the world to me. Please continue to give your family and also the world an example of what it means to be a father. Here in El Paso it is so much different, the idea of a "Father" is so twisted. It's not "Cool" here to be 16 and not have a baby or one on the way. And 70+% of the fathers here have either already left, or are abusive and drunk all the time, or just don’t care about the kids. I hope that this isn’t what the world will be like some day because it is so sad. So join the fight and stop this from happening.

This week was a good one. Elder Vallejo and I are getting along really well and have a lot of fun together and are still able to be obedient. Because of it, we have seen a lot of progression this week in our investigators. Maribel came to church again for the 2nd time and is obeying the commandments, still preparing for her baptism on the 7th of July. We are having almost daily contact with her to help her progress in the right path. She is really excited to get baptized and we are really looking forward to helping her there. On Sunday she found someone she knew in the ward from school and also we set her up with one of the ward missionaries in the ward and they have become good friends. It’s always a relief off your back when the ward steps up and fellowships your investigators at church.

Other than that we are teaching these 2 guys from Cuba. It’s really hard for me to understand a lot of what they are saying because in Cuba, they drop the entire "S" in almost every word and shorten many words or phrases. It’s like in English trying to talk to someone with a crazy accent, speaking super fast, and English is not your first language. Elder Vallejo has to talk most of the time, especially outside of lessons, because during the lesson when the spirit is super strong, he lets me know what their needs are and gets the message across. But outside of that. It’s too difficult. I know without a doubt that they are one of the reasons Elder Vallejo is in this area, because it would be too hard for someone who is not a native to teach them to the standard needed for conversion. We are having a family home evening with them tonight with an active family to help them get fellowshipped and excited to come to church. We will see how that goes.

I had a super funny experience this week that I think you would get a laugh out of it. So we were walking home from an appointment a few days ago and this African-American guy and his girlfriend are walking towards us in the opposite direction. As we get close, I wave and say hello to them, and the first thing he does is throw up a "Peace" sign and said "Mormons go to Hell." Being super shocked I said "Oh, we do?" "Yep." And thanks to my good attitude that day and self control I turned and said "well then, I hope you have a wonderful day" he replied "you to" and then we both continued walking until about 20 steps later he turned around and said. "Hey, I really like your tie by the way!" It was super funny, and I hope he has a better impression now of Mormon missionaries. I learned how important it is to try to act as Christ would in all situations, especially in the street where you get a lot of confrontation and people yelling at you cause you never know if it could shut the door for some people on learning about the true gospel or open the doors wide open and help people prepare to receive it. And yeah even though it is hard to just take it and go on your way, it’s so much easier just to be nice and laugh about it later.

Well that’s all for this week, Thank you all for everything you all do for me and I hope you have a good week.

-Elder Stewart 

Knowing Spanish = Progression

Hey Everyone

     Hope everything is going well and that everyone is finishing up school strong and are getting ready to leave for vacations. This is the start of my 6th transfer in the field and total of 9 months in the mission. The year mark is only 2 more transfers away. Man how time flies. I got a new companion this week and it is my first time being called to be "Senior Companion" technically (but I really consider last transfer as my first, seeing as I did almost all the teaching and planning by myself) But what can you do?

His name is Elder Vallejo and he has been out 3 transfers so far. I am his 3rd companion so in mission terms I'm his "Drunk Uncle." I could not have gotten a better companion though. He is from Guatemala and we are almost exactly the same, personality wise and also mission focused wise. The only real differences is that I'm white and do not speak fluent spanish and he is dark and grew up speaking it. We get along so much better than all my other companions. I'm not saying they where bad companions or anything but either I don’t really mesh with people very well or I just don’t have the best luck when it comes to that. But he is super in tune with the spirit and is also obedient to all the rules, while at the same time he can be laid back and cool about it. Its a really nice change because in the past my companions have either been just blatantly disobedient to the rules or they followed them because they had to, but with Elder Vallejo its different. Together we obey all the rules because we want to, and more because we enjoy receiving those blessings that come with being obedient. I could have not gotten an easier companion to be senior companion to.

     We been blessed this last week. There has been a huge difference in the last week than in all of last transfer in terms of progression. Not that Elder Humphrey and I didn’t do a good job in the area, but I'm beginning to see why Elder Humphrey and I where put in this area. Yeah we weren’t not able to teach anyone fully well enough for them to be baptized, but what we did do, is help prepare these people to receive the Gospel. All of the investigators we have loved a lot and built relationships with a lot of them that will last forever. They just eventually stopped progressing because we couldn't fully answer every single doubt they had, but we gained such a personal relationship with them that when Elder Vallejo got here, together we can fully get these people back to progressing. We have seen some great miracles this week.

     The hardest thing for us this week though is that the Stake has just put its foot down on teaching people that want to come to the ward but live out of the ward boundaries. They more made this move because down here, there are so many people that choose that they want to go to a different ward than the one they are currently in because someone offended them, or they have more friends in the other one. Which I don’t agree with at all. We don’t go to church to be social, we go to show love and worship our God, and being together as his children to support each other. But they are also applying it to investigators as well. Maribel, (who has a Baptism date) and is progressing well to that day, has introduced us to her family who is super Catholic, at first they wanted nothing to do with us, but on Thursday morning we helped them move and her mom and 2 younger siblings got to know us pretty well and saw that we are really good people. They started asking a bunch of questions and asked if they could come to the lessons with Maribel and to church with her so that they could learn more. We where so excited about it until Monday when the Zone Leader told us about the new rule. It's a little difficult to accept the rule seeing as we are a church of families and that they will probably not come to church unless they go with Maribel. But we will see what our mission President says, and follow that.

     This past week I had an awesome experience with knocking doors. The 2nd day that Elder Vallejo got here, we where riding bikes to someones house and a apartment complex behind some houses caught my attention. I brushed off the feeling at first, because they where like hidden behind trees and houses and there is only a little alleyway leading in and out of the parking lot, but something told me to go there. Sadly, I just continued on my way to the next appointment. The next day we where on our way back from an appointment and they caught my eye again. The feeling came back and I decided to call our next appointment and reschedule it for the next hour. To my amazement they said they where actually not home yet and was about to call and see if they could move it. I took this to mean that we needed to knock them right then. So we knocked and knocked and we didn’t really get anything on the first floor and so we went up and started on the second. On the very last door, a lady opened up, and started crying. Opened the door and we found out that she had received a blessing from mormon missionaries 20 years ago while in the hospital, she doesn’t know who sent them or why they where even there, but they gave her a blessing as she prepared for surgery. After waking up from the surgery there was a group of doctors standing around her bed. Turns out she was fully recovered. The doctors told her that they had no idea what it was but told her it was witchcraft. She told us that she didn’t believe them one bit and knows it was a blessing from God. She never saw or came in contact with the church or missionaries again. After the lesson she told us that the night before and the next morning she was really confused and lost and was praying for guidance. We knocked her door a few hours later. She said though tears that she knows we were angels. There's not exactly a way I can describe what It is I felt that day, but it was joy. Joy seems to not be enough to describe it, but I really liked it, and my testimony was strengthened because of it.

     Well I don’t have much time left, so I will end it here. There was so many miracles wrought this week that if all of them where typed out "this email would not be able to contain it."

I love you All!

-Elder Stewart

Get Baptized Maybe?

Elder Stewart.....every day. :)

Love, Emily

Pictures

Kali Kids- Sister Gomez and I

 Blue Steel- Elder Montgomery and I

The district

I made this while waiting for a member

Super Power Used for Good

May 29, 2012

Hey Friends and Family.

I hope everything is going well. Since yesterday was Memorial day, the computers where closed and so I had to wait till today to email. And to be honest, I'm sitting here and can't remember a whole lot that happened last week. It seems like last week was so long ago now that it is Tuesday, but I do want to talk about 2 of our Investigators.

So remember Lorenzo Ortiz? Well a lot of really good things have come from him. Not only are we teaching his daughter-in-law, but his brother and his wife, his other son and his wife, his nephew, and also Maribel's mother, are starting to take the lessons from either us or other missionaries. So here we see that miracles come from God, through hard work and diligence, without getting discouraged. I wanted to talk specifically about Maribel though. We had 2 lessons with them this week. and they accepted the restoration really really well. She set a baptism date and is super excited to be baptized. But when we saw her Thursday she was going through a really hard time because her grandpa was dying (died on sunday morning) and said she didn’t want to talk to anyone right now, just be alone. I ended up offering a blessing of comfort which she accepted. After the blessing she stayed and talked to us and opened up. It was a great experience.

My parents have always had this joke that I have a super power, I have been blessed with the power of being very convincing and smooth with speech. Which makes me feel good of coarse but then I remember someone who had that character trait as well in the life before this one... and things did not work out to good for him. One of the last things they told me to do was use that power for good not evil. I'm just starting to see what an affect that it can have, when combined with the spirit, and obviously the Book of Mormon when teaching. But not only to investigators, but with other missionaries and my companion. My relationship with my district and my companion have grown a lot this week, even though we have many many differences. Instead of just holding in whats bothering me with them I made it a goal to talk to them about it. Every time I talked it out with one of them it always ended well. I really consider it a blessing to have this gift or whatever you want to call it and look forward to the GOOD effects I can have on people in the future.

Until next week,

-Elder Stewart