Sunday, January 31, 2016

Jan 26 - Miracles

Hey all!!

Well obviously this week was not quite as good as last week but it was still a very good week here in Churubsco. We have truly been learning to count our blessings and see the Lords hand working miracles for us everyday. There was a moment in my mission when I questioned the whole miracle thing, I was like yeah that’s all cool and everything but those are things from like Moses´s days not like right now (not to mention that Moroni made me repent as I have read the last few chapters of the book of Mormon) but, this week we are realizing that sometimes things that are very small are actually miracles. Just happening to be in the right place at the right time, in the biggest city in the world that has over 20 million (more or less) people is such a gigantic miracle. The fact that the Holy Ghost will testify to people so strongly that what two twenty-year-old white guys say is true so strongly that they will change their ENTIRE life, is just another miracle. God is a god of miracles and I invite every one of you to look for these miracles every day.

This week I had some fun opportunities to be with the missionaries in our zone! First of all, last week we did intercambios with the Elders from Estrella, the ward right next to ours. Elder Penrod went with the district leader, Elder Merida, and I got to spend the day with his companion Elder Begley. Elder Begley is awesome!!! He’s got like 11 months here in Mexico, and is just a super down to earth guy from Ohio. I had such a fun time with him, and we had the ability to find new investigators together even though we had no one in the plans! Two miracles really fast that we saw together. First, we were looking for a house that was number 14, and here in Mexico the houses never go in order so we were looking forever without any luck whatsoever, so we saw house number77 and we thought hey let’s just knock here and see if maybe it was 7+7, but more of just planning on asking for their help. Well, the guy that answered the door was a man that the missionaries had contacted over a year ago and they had never gone by to his house even though he told them he wanted them to come by. So, we got to be those missionaries.

Then, later on in the day I saw a guy that I just wanted to contact, like really bad, but we were talking with an hermana to put an appointment for another day and when we turned around he was gone, so we went to the guy in the store right there and asked him if he knew who I had seen. He told us yes, and gave us his address, so we went and stopped by, and he told us that his coworker had given him a Book of Mormon a couple of years back, and that he needs God in his life, and was so happy to see us! How cool!

Then we also had intercambios with the APs this week. I got to go with Elder Velez while my comp went with Elder Teerlink. Elder Velez has got to be one of the funniest guys in the mission. We had a great time together. Then last night I went to the district meeting of Elder Gomez, the DL from the Espartaco district, he taught us a great meeting about the power of prayer to find the Lords elect, and I just love that I don’t have to prepare a district meeting every week anymore! Haha!

So to give a little bit more of the rundown on our zone as a whole. We are the center zone of the entire mission, and the biggest one of the whole mission with 29 missionaries. We have 4 districts, Estrella, Coyoacan, Pedregal and Espartaco. We also have more hermana missionaries than any other zone in the mission. Our zone has a little bit of everything, on our side, the east side, we are in Iztapalapa and so its sketchy, but on the other side it’s like the nicest part of our mission where President Mecham lives, so its super cool being able to see a little bit of everything.

Just to give a quick update on the investigators that we are teaching right now.

Adan and America (and their three girls Alexa, Seuy, and Alison) - they are that awesome family that we found a couple of weeks ago but they are having a hard time progressing because we just found out this last week (another miracle to be shared another day) that Adan has been hiding an alcohol problem, so we are helping him fight through that.

Alejandro Pedroza and Mirna (and their kids Fernando, Alex, Fany, and Alejandra) are an awesome family that totally found what they were looking for in the message of the Restoration, but they have a store, and still haven’t been able to build up their faith enough to not work on Sundays:(

Valeria-So the rest of her family of 4 got baptized the week before I got here, but she still isn’t ready to commit to leave behind some things that she thinks will change if she gets baptized, but she is getting closer every day.

Esperanza-We just barely found her, and she has gone through so many hard things in her life, and loves the doctrine of being made clean by the atonement of Jesus Christ.

The Rebels (Mauricio, Alan, Aldo, Alan, Julio Cesar and Javier) - They are like the gang of our area, they are all like 20 years old and all cousins, and known for causing well a lot of problems in the community. But, they accepted to start listening to us, and they came with us last week to do a tour of the chapel and felt the spirit super strong. They are sometimes hard to teach because they sometimes have like a big tough guy attitude, but the fact that they are even listening to us is a miracle!

We have some other investigators, but these are those that are making the most progress right now.

Well, that’s all this week!

Elder Stout






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