First Week of 2013......

Hey Family and Friends,

Happy New Years! I hope everyone had a good last few days of the year and that you didn't stay up too late. We had transfers last week and I stayed! I'm super happy to be staying here and am looking forward to another transfer here in my favorite area. My new companion's name is Elder Flint. He is from Washington State and has been out on his mission for 17 months a little longer than me. The first week has been kind of difficult.  He is a good funny guy, but because he is older than me, i can tell that he is kind of upset that I am the senior. Apparently, a few transfers ago was not very obedient and so he spent 1 transfer with the Zone Leaders and now is put over with me to make sure he stays consecrated. However, I know that Heavenly Father has put him here for a reason and that I truly am supposed to be learning something from him. I just hope I learn it soon.

For New Years Eve we spent it with the Delgado family, who I consider to be my family as well. They make up like 70% of the branch and all 60 of them get together every Sunday. I truly have gained the friendship I have wanted with them and know I will be going back frequently to visit them. There is a Mexican tradition that every year there is a cake made and inside they put a bunch of little plastic babies. Everyone cuts their own piece and the first person to find one in their cake has to throw the party the next year. I was the last one to get the baby so technically I don't need to throw one, but I think I will come back to throw a party anyway.

This Sunday, President and Sister Miller came down and visited our branch's sacrament meeting, even though they don't speak any Spanish they came and sat in the back. When Elder Flint and I got up to share our testimonies they got up too and asked me to translate for them. It was the first time that I have ever done anything like that and so I was super nervous. I messed up 1 or 2 words, but everyone in the ward told me I did a wonderful job so that made me pretty happy. President and Sister Miller were able to talk to some of the branch's recent converts and were very impressed with the retention and conversion they saw in them.

As far as investigators, we had Ayline at church this week again and she is super close to baptism. She is reading, praying, and is coming to church all by herself. We did a lot of finding this week. We found some really solid new investigators. One of the ways we found investigators this week was kind of funny. So we got this media referral from salt lake and turns out the lady doesn't at the house but rents it out to the family who lives there now. well, they could not give us an exact address on the house the lady lived in but she told us that the landlord that we were looking for live in the area behind the school and that she had a blue trailer with a blue dumpster in front of it. So in the dark we went looking for this blue trailer with a blue dumpster. well we ended up spending 1 hour knocking on every blue trailer possible at 8 o'clock at night. We didn't find her but we did get a bunch of return appointments for next week so lets see what happens.

Anyway, I love you all and have a good week!

Elder Stewart