Sept 28 - Welcome to Disneylejos!!

Hey all!

Well to start off the big news is that Elder Andablo is going home Wednesday! So tomorrow I will have a new companion! I am excited for the opportunity to stay in Topilejo for another change but I honestly cannot believe that i have already been here one change!! It’s crazy!

So there’s not too much to report this week because sadly in his last week Elder Andablo got pretty sick so we didn’t have much of an opportunity to work. But there were two cool Mexican adventures this week worthy of an email note! First of all, this last week started the Topilejo Festival, that goes for almost 3 weeks! Its like a bunch of live bands and carnival games in the streets all day every day! We call it Disneylejos because there are ALWAYS fireworks going off, a bunch of people screaming, and you can take free pictures with Mickey Mouse (that’s actually just what a drunk guy told us his name was, but I think it almost counts)! Haha but we have been keeping super safe, don’t worry. We have had to come back to the house early almost every day this last week, and probably will have to continue doing so next week too, it’s hard to not be working, but I know the Lord wants his servants safe, so it’s alright.

Also, we went to the coolest little town the other day! We had to go to the dentist so that Elder Andablo could get some work done before heading home, and we headed to a little town that’s like built on top of a lake, it’s like a really run down version of Venice! Haha it’s called Xochimilco! I hope that at some point of my mission I get to go over to this area, because it was just a super cute little town! It reminded me a lot of Jackson Hole, and I literally fell in love with it at first glance!

So that’s pretty much all that happened this week, I know a pretty lame week! I will have a lot more to write next week because I will have a new comp and we are going to hit the ground running with him as soon as we get back up to Topi!!

Love and miss you all, hope you have a great week!!

Elder Stout

Sept 21 - One year down, one to go!!!

Hey everyone!

 

Well, I was glad to read that it seems like everything has gotten back to normal more or less back with you guys on the plat!

This week we had another super successful week! The first really cool thing that happened was that on Tuesday President Meacham came to our zone training, and he is just a spiritual giant, I love every time that he talks to us, it’s so awesome! He just taught us again about the importance of obedience and how it’s really helping ourselves to be obedient. He just delivered the message with such power and devotion, just every time that he speaks, he inspires me to be a better missionary and person. I feel like it was really the message that our district needed to hear because I have been a little worried lately with the devotion to the work of the Lord, and the obedience of some of the members of my district, but I think this really helped them.

We got a big announcement, that from now on in our mission we will only be allowed to listen to music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, so if you guys could please put a ton of music from them on my dropbox account because my music library went from like 300 to 50 in one day, but I am really happy because I know it will help us focus on the work even more!

Another cool thing that happens this week was the 16 of September! So everyone in the states thinks that 5 de Mayo is the independence day of Mexico, but it’s actually in September! There was a bunch of cool things all over the city and a ton of fireworks sounding literally all the time, we kept thinking people were shooting at us or something! But, we didn’t get to enjoy it  much because they didn’t less us go out to work during that time because a ton of people just get totally wasted and during their independence day some people don’t really like gringos, but it’s okay! They eat a ton of corn here to celebrate, but they eat it weird! Its corn on the cob with mayo, cheese, and chili! 

 

Last but not least, the thing that we saw this week was the hand of the Lord guiding us to his elect. We had one of the most successful weeks of my whole mission in finding new investigators! One of them is a pretty strange situation, the hermana Elpidia Rodriguez. She got baptized like 5 years ago but she never went to church to be confirmed so she never officially became a member of the church, and she needs to be baptized again, so that’s super weird! I hope we will see a ton of progress with them so I will keep you all updated!

Well, that’s all for this week!

Elder Stout

Sept 14 - Bday week and mission "hump day"

Wow, so this was a super packed week!

First of all, like I said, last Monday we headed to the center of the city and it was super cool! Awesome to see that there are actually some touristy things here in Mexico so maybe someday I will come back and visit it! We spent all day out there, it was super cool to see a bunch of old historical sites. I don’t know what most of them meant because we were just missionaries wandering around the center aimlessly. But, it was super cool! We even found an olive garden there to eat, so I didn’t even miss out on the bday tradition!

The cool thing that happened in the work this week was finding the Alvarez family. So me and my comp were walking one day and we ran into some drunk guys (way more common than it should be up here in Topi) but usually I don’t like to talk to drunk guys. My comp on the other hand loves it. So he literally starts like Southern Baptist preaching them, screaming at them to repent and quoting the bible and stuff, and I was just kind of saying oh boy to myself in my head. Until the next day we were walking by the same spot, and saw one of the dudes more sober. He told us that he really liked what he heard and wanted us to pass by. We passed by last Saturday, and we taught him, his 2 sons, and his daughter in law. They are super ready to receive the gospel and it was a super powerful lesson with them. They accepted baptism and everything and we are super excited to help them change their lives.

My birthday was awesome! My comp bought me a little cake in the morning and later on in the day two women from the branch both bought me a cake and so I was super stuffed that day! They sang me happy birthday in Spanish, which is a song really different, that I didn’t even know existed so it felt even weirder than the awkwardness of happy bday at home, and I even got to participate in the Mexican tradition of the mordita! That’s where you take a bite of the cake before anyone else, but you take the bite straight from the cake. haha, the only thing is that everyone else that’s there trying to take advantage of it to smash your face in, haha so that happened to me twice, but I guess i am more Mexican now! It was awesome!

 

The last thing from this week was the temple dedication. Saturday in the night time we got to go down to San Pedro to watch the cultural celebration and it was super cool! Cooler than that was staying the night in the house of San Pedro 1bis (my old house) and seeing everyone from the ward! The coolest to see was Abigail Romero Lira, she was the hermana that got baptized my first week here when I was with Elder Lewis. She literally started cry

ing when she saw me and I almost did the same, she told me how hard it’s been these last few months, but how she really wants to get sealed to her husband in the temple soon, and how much it helped her to see me again to remind her of her baptism. It was super spiritual to be able to talk to her, and everyone else again, and see that I really did help people when I was there!

Then yesterday the temple was dedicated by Henry B Eyering and he was here with Jeffery R Holland, they gave some awesome talks about the sacrifices of the temple, and how important it is. I really hope President lets us go again soon!

Well, I hope you had a good week, I love and miss you all!!

Elder Stout

Sept 7 - September!

Wow, this will be my last September in the mission. Haha I still have every other month to do too, but that seems like something at least kind of big, right?

So I am writing super early this week because my comp got permission to head into the center of the city! It’s a super cool place that’s outside of our mission and usually people only go like right before they go home or if their comp is about to go home, so I get to go today! I am super excited to see all of the cool things that are in the center of the city, plus I have heard that it’s like actually super nice and clean over there, so that will be a nice change from the mountains here in Topilejo.

So this week was a good week, probably the best week I have had work wise in Topilejo, which really isn´t saying much haha. But we met a bunch of cool new people to teach this week. One of them is Juan Jorge Sanchez. We contacted him while he was super drunk in the street, but Elder Andablo has a saying that the drunk people always lead to someone. So, we went to his house the next day, and he was actually sober. So, we had a cool lesson with him and he is actually super intelligent like wow, he knew like everything that I ever studied in high school but like from memory! But, then we went back for the second lesson with him, and we had left him a little book about the plan of salvation, and we were like, so how’d it go with your reading, and he literally gave us the lesson on the plan of salvation, he remembered everything!! Wow!

 

Also, we met Alan Mendoza this week. He is 16 years old, and his mom is an inactive member of the church. The kid LOVES electronic music, and at 16 is already organizing big electronic events, like huge ones with like 20,000 people! But, he is super interested in the church because he wants to find a good influence to counteract all the bad stuff he is surrounded by in his electronic events, so he came to church with us this week and he already has a ton of friends in the branch and it was just super cool to see that! I am super excited to work with these two to see how it all goes.

This is a super hard area. To give a little run down on the branch. We have 200 ´´members´´ in our branch, but our assistance is about 70. Of those 70 45 are women, 8 are men, 4 are missionaries, and the rest are youth and children. But I am in love with it!! It is literally the most beautiful area in the mission, the members are few here, but they are so faithful. They are the best people I have met in my entire life, they are just so humble, so loving, so kind. They just love the gospel here, and I am so excited to work with them. I just really want them to have a ward, so I am going to do all I can to grow this tiny branch!!

I hope you all have a great week,

Elder Stout

Aug 31 - One year.....

Well, exactly one year from today is the latest that I will be home, can you guys believe that? I am on the downhill now! Wow! I can’t believe it at all!!

So first of all, I just wanted to send my love to everyone in my family for the loss of Grandpa Bob, it was really tough news to hear this week. I know that he is in a better place, and I truly have seen the comforting and revealing power of the Spirit in the last few days since I found out. It has been really different for me. When Nauni passed away, I kind of knew inside of me that she wasn’t going to be there when I get back, but I never thought that about Grandpa Bob. But as I told Dad on the phone Saturday, everyone should read Alma 40 about the spirit world and know that Grandpa is doing an even better work there, and that’s what the Lord called him to do.

This week my experience that I would like to share was the talk that I had with President Meacham. After talking with dad on the phone, President turned his chair back around to face me and was sobbing. Afterwards he just shared a bunch of things with me about the power of God to help us have our eternal families. And he testified to me how Grandpa will be a support for me the rest of the misión. All of this he did while crying and just helping me realize that there is nothing better that I can be doing right now than this work. He told me a lot of super cool things about what the Spirit has told him about me and my work, and the reason that I was sent to a hard area with a hard district. I learned a lot of things that missionaries probably never get to hear in their missions and it was a super cool experience. Afterwards we went to a Chinese buffet.

 

I am sorry that I don’t have much to share, with all of the preparations for my comp to go home we have to travel a ton and really aren’t working that much because we have to go from one side of the city to another, and it’s kind of difficult!

But I love and miss you all!

Alex

Aug 24 - TOPILEJO!!!!

Wow, so the big news of the week is that we had changes.

I am now in the Topilejo branch of the Tlalpan stake, its literally right up the hill from San Pedro where I started the mission, and so I see a ton of people that I knew there and there are a ton of family members, so it’s really weird seeing all of these people! But wow, it is so different to be in a branch! Our area is freaking HUGE! And there’s like no body, it’s actually really tough, we are barely even in the City anymore, when we reach the edge of our area it’s the mission of Cuernevaca. It’s been a really different experience thus far. But, the views are absolutely awesome! That’s the cool thing so far, but I am going to be learning a lot here, I don’t have a lot to say about the people that we are teaching up to right now because well, first of all we don’t really have any and second, those that we do have, I don’t really know still.

So my new comp is Elder Andablo from Tamulipas, Mexico. he’s my first Mexican comp which is pretty cool! He has 23 months in the mission, so I will have a new comp this change because he’s going home, but this change like the majority of the mission is going home, 34 people of the 180 that we have! In my district there is also Elder Chavez and Elder Bautista, both Mexicans too. The thing with them is that they closed Topilejo 2 for 2 changes so they are opening a huge area right now and it has been super tough for them, I feel really bad because there’s not even maps for our area because we are just out here in the country but little by little they are getting by.

Well with all the things I have had to do with changes that’s really all I have to say this week, but I love and miss you all!

Elder Stout

Aug 10 - The Dragon!

Hey!

So the majority of what happened this week happened Tuesday. We had a special training, where President started off by telling us that Elder Hamilton had an announcement that was going to absolutely change our mission. Elder Hamilton got up to tell us that we are going to be allowed to take investigators to the temple open house over these next three weeks! I don´t know if I have ever been so excited for something in my life, we just got super excited and are working so hard to literally invite everyone that we possibly can to go with us. It is going to be such an incredible experience, where everyone will feel the spirit so strong. I am really hoping that we can get everything to work out this week because we have changes next week and it would really suck to go to another area and not get to go with all of the people that I have met here. So fingers crossed that we will be able to go!

The second big thing that happened Tuesday was something that’s fondly called by missionaries here, the double headed dragon. I won’t go into too many details, but pretty much, while the zone leaders were training us, I started to feel super dizzy and started to sweat A TON! Like buckets, like I felt like I had just played basketball in Arizona an entire afternoon. Luckily, Elder Hilario noticed and was like dude we gotta go, so we left, and just in time. To save your imaginations, I am just going to say I spent the next hour in the bathroom sitting on the can with a trash can in front of me. I have never felt that sick in my entire life, there were literally moments that I thought I was dying or that I must have some sort of parasite and so that they were going to send me home, I felt so bad. I finally regained my composure enough to be able to take a taxi ride home, and I limped/crawled into my bed. But weirdly enough at 5 o clock I woke up feeling a little better, and I just wanted to go out and work, and so that’s what we did. Only later on did we figure out why. So, we are doing our 40 day fast thing, where everyday someone fasts to help us. Our ward ym president, Jose Canela was fasting this day, and I kid you not, to the minute, he started his fast when I felt good enough to leave. What a cool testimony of the power of fasting.

 

This Saturday we also had an incredible day, where we saw the hand of the Lord leading us. We only needed a few more lessons to be able to get to the 40 again, and we just had the best luck, just like last time! I included a picture of Jaime, who when we were starting to lose hope, ran up to us yelling HERMANOS HERMANOS and he really needed us right then, so we taught him a lesson to calm him down. He is a member who is sick, and slowly his mental capacity is declining, but he loves to talk to the missionaries to help him feel peace again, he told me that I am his favorite missionary this week and it literally brought tears to my eyes, to see how this message that I bring, really can help everyone. We finished off Saturday with an incredible baptism of Yareli Dominguez, Rafas sister! She was super super nervous of water, so she didn’t think that she was going to be able to do it, but she and I said a quick prayer before entering the water and I saw the fear just fade from her face, it was such a cool experience! 

Wow, what a week, I am so happy with the progress that we have made here in this area, we are now one of the few companionships in the history of the mission to have reached the 40 lessons and baptize in the same week. I feel so blessed, and it has taught me a lot about faith and hope, to come into a dead area like this and to see that when we want to work, the Lord is going to bless us with work. I am starting to really hope that I don’t have changes next week.

Elder Stout

Aug 17 - Hasta Luego Olivos, 11 months and Mexico City Temple

Wow, so this was an action packed week!!

We pretty much spent the whole week figuring out how we were going to the temple because we knew it would be such a great experience for all of the people that we are teaching. And literally every obstacle got put in the way, and last week I asked my family to pray that we would have the chance to go and I am sure that you guys did it because everything just worked out.

First of all, we had absolutely no support from the ward, like nothing. It was really disappointing to see that, they didn’t want to have anything to do with it and they said they didn’t understand why we all wanted to go together and they think it would have been better for just individuals to go together, even after we received a letter from the area presidency of Mexico saying otherwise. So, we did literally everything for this trip, it sucked up a lot of time from our week, calling everyone, arranging everything, but somehow we managed to get it done, until we got to Thursday night before going and realized that we were going to have to pay for our bus, we literally went pale the 4 of us when we realized because we don’t get much money monthly. But then one of the people that we invited (he is awesome, super active, and super spiritual but I wont say his name) called us up and asked us how much the trip was going to cost, we said 1500 pesos which to give a rough estimate, is only 100 dollars, but it goes a lot farther in Mexico, that’s more than we receive to live every month, and he was just like, don’t worry about it, I will pay it. We tried to say no no no but he wouldn’t take no for an answer and that was a super cool blessing to see.

 

We ended up going with a group of 30 people with a ton of investigators and even some people that hadn’t started to talk to us yet, and during our tour of the temple there was just an incredible spirit that penetrated every single one of us, it was a testimony building experience to be able to go back to the temple after 10 months.

The coolest was the reactions of the children who came. We had two teen aged boys, probably like 8th grade and Sophomore age, that we could tell right from the beginning that they only came because their mom wanted them to, they weren’t excited at all. But, after the actual tour inside of the temple, something changed and when we left, they started to take pictures of the temple and post them to Facebook and Instagram and one of them even said to his mom I think that I am going to be Mormon.

Also, Jenifer one of our investigators brought her two daughters, Kitzia who’s 10 and got baptized back when I just got here and Victoria who is 1. It was so cool to see the peace that they both felt and how the spirit worked within them. Victoria started to cry when we left the temple, and Kitzia asked me what she has to do to be able to go back to the temple, I am so happy that the Lord has given us this opportunity to bring blessings into the lives of these people.

The other big news from this week was that last night we received the call that I will not be spending more time in Olivos, that tomorrow I will go to another area. I am really happy with all that I have learned here and all of the blessings that the Lord has poured out on me here, I will be very sad to leave all of the people behind that I have come to know and love but I am excited to embrace the challenge that the Lord has planned for me in my mission.

That’s all for this week,

Elder Stout

Aug 3 - August!

Howdy all!

Well I can’t believe that its August, how weird is that??

Well, we had a pretty incredible week! But for some reason it’s getting harder and harder every week to remember what happens! I feel like Mom who always writes me and says well Thursday happens but that’s all I remember haha.

But the coolest thing that I got to do this week was go on intercambios with Elder Alamilla our zone leader! He’s about to go home and he is a little bit trunky but he is a really good missionary and a super hard worker! I don’t want this to sound bad, but I loved being able to teach with an experienced teacher! Because my comp is new I still sometimes feel like I am teaching the majority of the lesson and I am doing all the direction, but with Elder Alamilla we could really feel the spirit moving through us and we taught some pretty crazy awesome lessons together! He is also a basketball fanatic so we got up super early in the morning to go run to the church and shoot some hoops for a little while, it was absolutely awesome! I cannot express enough how much I love being a missionary!

Also, this week we had a cool experience with Leonardo the guy who came to church last week when we didn’t expect he would! Well last week he got kind of mad because the teacher was trying to make an interesting class and he was all like, the word of God isn’t a joke and stormed out, I left that part out last week haha but then this week he just walks in, alone! We didn’t think he would want to come again so we didn’t even ask anyone to pass by for him and he just shows up. Then we met up with him after church and we put a baptismal date and everything, there are still some things that he doesn’t like, but we talk the scripture that Moroni wrote about how the mistakes are of men and not of God and he loved it!

Saturday we had an Elders Quorum activity and wow.....it was...the only word I can think to use is apostasy! Our President starting talking about how he want to pass a hat around the Elders Quorum to collect money for people who need it and we were like the church already has a way to do that, and he just got like super mad...so we have a pretty interesting Elders Quorum!

Well I am running out of time! Until next week,

Elder Stout

 

July 27 - Boringer Week

Hey all!

Well by my lack of pictures from this week, I guess that it was kind of boring! Huh! It’s kind of the same old here in Olivos! But to explain the pics really fast, I made myself an awesome Fettucine Alfredo lunch last Monday! And then on Wednesday my comp got something stuck to his shoe and he couldn’t get it off all day haha we got a really good laugh out of it. I love my comp, he is like one of the funniest people I have ever met, and we are always laughing!

So I don’t have a ton of time this week because we went to go suit shopping today! But the highlight of this week was our training this Friday. President came, and wow, I don’t know how he can be so powerful with very little command of the language. He just taught us very powerfully the reason that members are so important in the work, and how everything that we do has a purpose to strengthen the wards where we are serving and if we don’t do that then we are failing! Wow, it was a super big help to make us focus on the things that are truly the most important!

Then that night I was kind of uptight and stressed because we had a lot of bad luck finding new investigators this week, all of our appointments fell through or something happened and it was just awful, so I really prayed to our father in heaven and discussed with him what I could do to be better, discussed why I wanted to have this and even presented situations that we could find new investigators. Literally the next day, I saw one of these come true. While we were teaching the Dominguez family, one of their friends just showed up, wanted to listen to us, and now has a baptismal date, how cool!! Then the next day, we went to go visit an hermana and she couldn’t receive us because there was no guy home, so we decided to contact in her street all the guys to see if one of them would sit in with us. We met a man named Leonardo and he loved the message, and even came to church this week! What a bunch of cool blessings for the prayer of faith!

Well, I know it wasn’t a lot, I am sorry! But have a great week,

Elder Stout

July 20 - 10 months and President Meacham

Hey all!

So there was three really cool highlights this week! The first of which was that for the first time in my time here in Olivos, Elder Hilario and I reached the 40 lessons. That’s really big because when I got here it was absolutely dead, President told me it’s one of the harder areas in the mission and that I was going to have my work cut out for me. We started out with about 15 every week, but I never once lowered my goal from the 40. We have received a promise from the Lord, that if we do all we can to reach this goal and help as many of his children as is possible that he will open doors and pave roads for us in the work that we have never imagined possible. I am super excited for this, because even though I think I will be leaving the area this change when my comp finishes his training in 3 weeks, I am so happy to be leaving this area with blessings of the Lord so that this ward can continue growing. Working hard has truly helped me develop love for a very very hard area.

The coolest part of this was Saturday. We started Saturday with 31 lessons, and after many fervent prayers by my comp and me, we saw how much the Lord wanted us to reach this goal as well. Everyone was home, like literally everyone, we were running around all day to try and teach 9 lessons and the Lord just paved the way! We even contacted a guy in the park and were like so when can we pass by, and he was like how about we talk right now on this bench, and we were like, since when does that happen??? But it was so incredible, and just an awesome experience to feel the spirit really strongly as we accounted to the Lord that we had reached his goal, nothing better than that!

Second, I had the opportunity to lead an initiative in our ward. After talking with the bishop, I got to give a talk yesterday to explain fasting and announce that starting August 2nd for 40 days we are going to do a 40 day fast for missionary work here in the ward like we did back at home! This was my idea on how to get the ward excited for what we as the missionaries are doing because too much we have the missionaries, the investigators, and the recent converts on one side and the rest of the church on the other side, I really want to help us become more unified!

Thirdly, I got to have an interview with President Meacham this week, it was our trimesterly? interview, no idea if that’s a thing in English. But it was just so powerful! He just spoke right to me, right to my soul even though we have only talked like 5 times before! One thing that hit me was he was talking about his calling to serve in the stake presidency that he received while he was serving as bishop and that he just cried all night and said I know that this means I have finished my service with them, but I still need them, I don’t want to leave them behind, even if I don’t have anything to offer them, I still need what they’ve given me. I want to have this attitude from now on in my mission. I don’t care if it’s the hardest area, the hardest ward, the hardest comp in the mission, I want to be truly and genuinely sad to leave them behind. This is a new goal that I have from now on! 

I love being a missionary, I am so excited to work with President Meacham, and will someone please tell whoever is controlling the time on this whole mission thing, to slow down!! There’s no way that I have 10 months already, I think the watch broke or something!

Haha Love you all, and miss you!

Elder Stout

July 13 - Hey y'all!!!

Hey!

So this was an awesome week!

 

First of all the big news, Rafa passed his interview and got baptized this Saturday! He asked me to do it which was really cool! I don’t know if you guys have noticed but this is my first male convert! I don’t know why it has worked out that way, but it’s just how it has! So I finally broke the running joke of our zone leaders that every time that I saw them they would always say (of course like the only phrase in English they know) Flirt to Convert. Hahaha I guess that they didn’t realize that all my converts have been like 40 but, finally I won’t have that nickname in the mission! Haha but it was a cool baptismal service! Apart from the fact that there were like 10 people there and that everyone showed up an hour late, it was super cool!

So one of the pictures that I sent was a super cool fruit that I ate this week! It’s called a Nanche, and it is like a huge grape inside of this spiky shell! But super yummy!

I also had intercambios this week with Elder Walker! Haha he is a redneck from Idaho who loves country music, and football just like me! We get along super well! I like intercambios with him a ton, except for after about 20 mins we somehow end up speaking English again....oops! But, he is finishing his mission super strong, and I am learning a ton from him!

A cool miracle that we saw this week! We occasionally visit an hermana named Eva, and she has a son who is inactive and has been for years and wants nothing to do with us or the church. But this week we found him in the street and we started to talk to him, and he was like hey why don’t you guys pass by so I can ask you some questions, so we set up an appointment with him and headed on over. When we got there he introduced us to his nonmember wife, and we taught a super powerful lesson about families. The spirit was so strong! He told us, I still don’t understand a lot, but I want what you just taught us, and his wife accepted baptism! It was super cool!

I forgot my planner today that’s why I didn’t give a day by day run down, but I think I outlined the highlights, hope you all had a great week!

Elder Stout

July 6 - Happy July

Hey all!

I hope you had a great week! I am really sad that I wasn’t able to spend 4th of July with you all, it was kind of a letdown, Elder Walker and I both forgot that it was that day! But I made my comp sing the star spangled banner with me in the night time haha it was awesome, but I am pretty sure that he doesn’t like Americans but I am going to help him to love us! Don’t worry! Haha but this was a pretty chill week, not much happened, so I will give some highlights!

First of all we got to meet our new president, President Meacham! He is awesome! He is from a small town in Utah and he made doughnuts for his job. He served in Costa Rica....a really long time ago... He came home from his mission and met his wife and they got married even thought she was only 17! Haha and she knows even less Spanish than he does but she seems so nice! She just kept saying Les Amo Les Amo again and again while crying! He tried to do the whole training in Spanish even though he doesn’t really know it, and even though it was hard to understand we all felt the spirit so strong! I left with a renewed desire to divulge my time studying the scriptures and in fervent prayer, it was such a cool spiritual experience!

 

Then later on in the week, I actually got to spend some one on one time with President! I did a baptismal interview for Elder Walker and Elder Vasquez and I wasn’t sure if the Hermana was ready so I called President and he came and did the Special interview for her, so I got to spend some time talking to him, Elder Fillmore and Elder Hamilton (the assistants) which was fun. I also got to talk with President that night about one of our investigators who needs a special interview for serious sins committed in the past, and it is just so cool to see how much he already cares about us and our investigators!

Other highlight, for my first time here in Olivos, and Hermana gave us money to go out and eat instead of giving us food in her house, so we went to a Chinese restaurant that looked super sketchy but it was super good and no one got sick! I felt like we were eating at Yokos again! I included some pictures!

Then to explain one of the other pictures...I was on intercambios with Elder Vasquez and they had a baptism so we went to go and clean the font, and we got there and well there was something that was on the inside and it was just super-duper gross! Haha I had to include the picture, and guess where it came from? From the faucet! Don’t worry I only drink store bought water down here!!

Oh, also I almost forgot that cambios are tomorrow, but I don’t have to worry about anything because all 4 of us in the district are staying, and our zone leaders are staying too which is super awesome because they are awesome, and I have really grown to like them!

 

Well that was our week here in the DF, hope next week will be more interesting!

Elder Stout

June 29 - Almost July

Howdy all,

Well I can’t believe that you are going to be celebrating the 4th of July this week, how crazy is that?? Well the big news this is week is that today is officially the last day of President Valadez and his wife, as I am typing this President Meacham is probably arriving, wow, this is going to be so weird, I learned so much from President Valadez but I am super excited to get to know President Meacham too! So, with the change of mission president, our mission office is changing too, so if you would like to send me anything, do itat the following address:

Elder Scott Alexandre Stout

Misión México Ciudad de México Sur
Cerro de Jesús # 115
Colonia Campestre Churubusco
Delegación Coyoacán, México, D.F.
C.P. 04200

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Well this week was a long week again! Haha we walked a ton, not as much as a couple weeks ago, but it wasn’t nearly as successful as last week was for us! So Tuesday was a lot of walking but the one bright spot was a lesson that we had with Arturo Politron, an investigator, he is the husband of a menos active and he hasn’t been really progressing recently so that has been a little bit of a bummer for us, but randomly for this lesson I felt the need to teach about why we get baptized that it’s actually a commandment from God as well and that for every commandment God promises us a blessing, and then he accepted to be baptized which was pretty cool!

Wednesday we started trying to look for a lot more people to teach but we were out of luck because literally no one was home, I think it was some sort of holiday because there was also a ton of like tents in the street and a ton of people were having parties and stuff, but who knows? Haha but a rougher day.

Then Thursday we had a nice surprise when we went to the Rodriguez Inciso family’s house, because they introduced us to their aunt and cousin who are both interested in learning more about the church so we got to teach them too! They are awesome and we are looking forward to teaching them again!

Friday I got to have intercambios with the zone leaders, Elder Tapia from Veracruz came to my area and he worked with me! We had an awesome lesson with our investigator Ivette and we helped her realize that she has been feeling the spirit this whole time, and that its been answering her prayers but she just hasn’t realized it! Then in the nighttime we had a super contentious lesson with a less active family who were asking us why they couldn’t get tattoos and then just repent afterwards, it was an awful lesson to teach, the Spirit wasn’t there with us at all, and I just wanted to leave as soon as possible.

But, I had a cool experience that night with Elder Tapia, he just sat me down and was pretty blunt and said you do this this and this well, but you really need to work on this and this, and it was kind of a confidence blow to hear that from the zone leader, but right afterwards, he was like so to fix that we are going to practice right now, so I had like an hour of 1 on 1 seeing examples from one of the greatest teachers in the mission to help me get better, which was a pretty cool experience! Also, to see how the hand of the Lord worked in my life, that I was struggling with how to help this ward, how to love these members, and realyl missing my first area, and Elder Tapia trained me on how to truly be an asset to the ward, and how to change our attitude, and he doesnt know it but that was exactly what I needed to hear! That was cool! Haha then Saturday we had an awesome lesson with Mario Aladino who has been investigating the church forever but just recently accepted our baptismal invitation, we talked about the importance and the blessing of eternal familias and invited them to get married so he could start living the law of chastity before being baptized and he accepted! It was awesome to see how ready he is, and how much he has been prepared for this as well!

Yesterday was so boring! After church we had to go to the area of the zone leaders to report on our week, and usually it’s a 40 minute bus ride both ways, but there was a ton of traffic so it turned into 2 hours both ways and that was literally the only thing that we did yesterday.

Well, have a fun 4th! Love and miss you all!

Elder Stout