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
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