Monday, May 25, 2015

Happy Memorial Day!

Hey! 

So I don’t have a ton of time today, I am sorry! But, I will write you a little bit about the pictures!

So the picture of all of us in the district is the random stuff we found doing our P day cleaning today in the house of the other elders haha. We had to clean super well because they are going to white wash the other area! Which means of 4 elders in our ward/district I will be the only one who is even acquainted with the area. Yippee!!

Haha I also did intercambios with Elder Lovo this week, and a crazy old guy gave him a briefcase.

I got super super sick this week bleh!  I have an intestinal infection, but with a bunch of meds I feel better now! But it was good because the day that I was stuck in the house it rained A TON our street turned into a river, so in between trips to the bathroom I made a little paper boat and we dropped it out the window haha.

Then we had a cool stake activity Saturday where we went on splits with a Priest from the stake and here is my comp, Hermano Lopez. He was awesome! But it was so funny he wanted to teach the whole lesson by himself and he finished in like 5 mins and the family was like what? But I learned that my area isn’t as ugly as I thought because we were working more for the center of the city and wow, there was a lot of ugly things going on!

So have a great week, I will write more next week I promise, I love you all!!

Elder Stout







Friday, May 22, 2015

8 months!!!!

Hey all!!

Wow I can’t believe that I completed 8 months yesterday, wow this is really, really flying by! That is already a third of the way through!

Wow so what happened this week? Well Monday came and went, and was just P-day nothing too exciting over here.

Tuesday we had an interesting lesson with the Hermana Dominguez who started off by telling us that she didn’t want to take the lessons anymore, so that was really hard to hear, but after talking with her for a super long time we helped her overcome her doubts, and she is going to stick with it, how exciting!

Wednesday we taught a really hard lesson to the family about a commandment that is going to be really hard to them to follow, and at the time they took it super well and said that they were going to pray about it and that they were going to do all they could to live it, but then on Sunday they didn’t come to church, so who knows if it really went as well as we though it did.

On Thursday I had intercambios with Elder Bernal and he’s awesome. He loves working, is always focused on the work, and he has 22 months so I learn a ton from him in the intercambios with him!

On Friday we had an interesting experience where we got a call in the morning from the zone leaders asking me if I was coming to the training, and I was like what training? Apparently they sent me a text message that I didn’t get because there is absolutely no service in our area!! So I had to hop in a taxi (still in intercambios) and we raced to the stake center across the mission to hit up the second session of the leadership training, but how cool, in this session were all the bros from San Pedro!! So that was pretty cool, we learned a lot about how to motivate people so we will see how that goes, wish me luck!!!!!

Saturday we spent almost the whole day walking around looking for old references that we have received to almost no luck! We didn’t find one of the 10 people that we were looking for that day which was a bummer!

Yesterday nothing too exciting happened because we needed to go to the area of the Zone Leaders to report with them so that takes out like 3 hours of every Sunday! But it was a great week!! I love and miss y’all!!

Elder Stout





Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Happy Mothers' Day

Hey y’all!

So I am going to keep it a little bit shorter today since I talked with my family just two days again, so that I can write some more personal emails today!

The big thing that happened this week was we had our zone conference with Elder Alan Walker of the 70. His name is Alan Walker, he is super white, but he is from Argentina, haha what? It was pretty weird! He is in the 4th quorum of the 70 and is our area 70. He talked a lot about how the most important thing that we can do is to line ourselves and our companions up with the Godhead so that the three of us can work together, it was super cool. He talked about how at all times we need to focus on being full purpose missionaries. That we can’t like focus one week on finding people, one week on teaching, one on baptizing, and one on bringing people back, that every week we need to be doing every one of these things, that was pretty cool! I don’t know, I know that he’s a 70 and everything but I kind of felt like it was just a normal training from our Mission President (that’s saying much more about the quality of our mission president rather than the lack thereof of our 70). But it was still super duper cool!
 
I had intercambios this week with Elder Lovo, he is awesome! Umm we actually didn’t work that much this week because my comp was sick with a stomach infection for two days then we had the conference, and then last of all we called the fam, which was absolutely awesome, I am so glad I got to talk to them and can’t believe how the time flew from Christmas, wow!!

Yesterday was kind of a letdown, I am sure it was because of all of the people who were celebrating with their moms, but we only had like 60 or 70 people in the chapel, and not one investigator came, yikes. But on a high note, because of that my comp talked and I got to bless the sacrament because no one was here so that was interesting!

Well I hope you all had a great week!!


Elder Stout

Happy 5 de Mayo

Hey!!

So first of all 5 de mayo is an American invention! Haha it’s a holiday down here too, but like not big at all, it’s like Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day or something in the states that’s not huge! So don’t have to worry about me!

So this week went really well but still not as much going on as in San Pedro! So Monday we ate pizza as a district here because the families don’t feed us on p-days which is kind of lame! Then I taught my first district meeting in the evening, and it went super awesome! I taught about how when we ask for references from the members that we need to have more faith in the way that we ask, and we need to know that the Lord is preparing them so I stressed that, and it was super successful!

Then Tuesday the highlight was that we spent most of the day doing service for a family that this last week went to the Verzcruz temple to be sealed, so that was a cool opportunity to help them! They are the Incisco Rodriguez family!

Wednesday I had intercambios with the Zone Leader Elder Alamilla, I was in charge of our area for the first time in intercambios and it was pretty frightening! But I got us through all of it, and we taught a bunch of lesson which was awesome! He is super awesome, and really helped me see how we can help the members of our district as a district leader!

Thursday was intercambios part 2! Elder Bernal came over to my area and he is about to finish up his mission, he has 22 months! Wow, he knows a ton! So I focused my training with him on helping those other missionaries learn the things that he has learned in 22 months and focusing on his legacy in the mission! We set a lot of goals this week to help them start to teach more lessons!

Friday we hit the Iztapalapa curse! In my old zone, an appointment that was set, was set. Here there is still about a 50% chance that these people won’t be in their house, and wow was that true Friday! We spent a good amount of time walking around, but it was all in good fun! Or something like that! My blisters might disagree but oh well!

Saturday, baptism!! We baptized a little girl named Kitzia, her and her mom have been investigating but her mom can’t get baptized right now because she can’t get married but is living with her boyfriend. But, president gave us permission to baptize her! Wow, it was awesome, Elder Almeida did the ordinance, and it was super cool!

Then Sunday she asked me to stand in the circle with the bishopric when she got the Holy Ghost! That was super cool! I taught the Gospel Principles class this week in church and that is way harder than teaching a lesson, wow, there’s is always room to improve! Then for the first time I had to have kind of a scolding talk with my district because two of them skipped priesthood class, and I just told them, we are here to support the ward, that’s not supporting the ward, and if we act like this we aren’t going to gain their trust or receive their help, so I hope that helped them see the why of the rule not just the rule!

So to give a rundown of investigators:
 
We have Jennifer the mom of Kitzia.

Mauricio Trueba, he’s married to an inactive sister, but he is super interested and has a baptismal date and everything but is prideful and doesn’t believe in Christ....so we will see!

Rafeal, Minerva and Jahreli Dominguez. They are AWESOME!"!!! They are progressing so fast! The only thing is (I won’t go into full detail right now) they are going to have to jump through some hoops to get baptized because of some things in their past that are hard to repent of, but they are so awesome and I know they can do it!

Lastly we have the Chaparo family who we have come to know over the last 3 weeks. There are 23 of them! Wow! It is super hard to teach them because there are always different ones that are in the lessons, and then it’s like teaching a class, but we will find a way!

Hope you all have a great week, say “hi” to your moms for me!


Elder Stout





Happy Birthday Dad and Grandpas!

Well first of all a big happy birthday to Dad, and my grandpas this week! I hope that you all celebrate your days and have a great time!

So this week I learned the difference between areas here in the mission. I love something that dad said that some are Spirit Paradise and some are spirit prison. We literally walked around the entire week this week without teaching practically anyone! Like almost zippo, and we didn't even get like scolded by the ZLs because they know how hard this area was, so that was really hope inspiring especially since I am probably going to be here for a while!

So I guess everyone also forgot to tell me about the hot season before the rainy season because I have been dying this week! It has been like an oven! Which made walking around even worse! Bleh!!

The two bright spots this week were the family Dominguez, and the family Chaparo. The Dominguez are all progressing a lot and already love the gospel which has been awesome, but they have a ton of questions every lesson so we aren’t moving through the lessons in the way that we would like. But they introduced us to the Chaparo family and wow, they have a ton of people living in there house! We went on Tuesday and there were 9 of them, and then we went again yesterday and there were 7 new ones! And apparently we are still missing at least 7! Wow! But they are awesome, we gave like half of them blessings and we dedicated their house and the two lessons were both just super spiritual and they are just super excited to keep learning and to talk with us!!
 
Wow, that’s pretty much all that happened this week, I didn't do a day by day this week because we literally had days where nothing that happened, I am hoping more will happen in the weeks to come!

Oh we had a baptism, kind of. It was a ward baptism but Elder Almeida baptized her so that was cool, but we wasted a lot of time organizing it even though it wasn't



our baptism! I had intercambios with Elder Lovo this week from Honduras, he is awesome!!

Hope y’all had a better week than me!!

Elder Stout