Hey all!!
Well, the rainy season has officially started here in Mexico
City, and I love it! I walk around without a jacket or umbrella in torrential
downpours because it just reminds me of Seattle, haha whenever anyone tells me that
I am crazy I just tell them that it rains like this pretty much every day where
I live. But, I am for sure going to appreciate the rain more when I am home!
First update, working in Espartaco has been a lot harder
than we expected! I have never opened an area in my entire mission, and I have
so much respect now for the elders that have done it. It’s even harder because
well with the circumstances for why the other elders got taken out, they didn’t
leave us with very good records or with many people to teach but we are doing
our best! The other night we were there and we got totally lost! We had to
spend the night in the other elders’ house and we weren’t sure how to get there
so we asked the last hermana that we taught how to get there and she told us
how to get back but the little colony was like a maze! We ended up running in a
complete circle, but it was a fun experience!
Our area is going great! Paco, Dulce and Tomi are
progressing really well but please have them in your prayers because they are
all passing through some hard things right now that might cause them get
baptized a little later than expected! Tomi is having a lot of opposition from
her family! Paco needs to get married and Dulce is looking for a work, but all
of the jobs and all her interviews are on Sundays :(.
But, we have two new people that we found last week that
have us really excited! We have this hermano named Jorge Gomez, who is awesome!
I have never seen anyone so ready to learn, he is always like taking notes
during our lessons, it’s awesome! And this Sunday was his first time in church.
Then yesterday we found the Santiago Sanchez family, and they are super awesome
as well! It’s a family of 6, who years ago were investigating the church but
the elders had changes and they never heard from them again. We had a super
powerful first lesson with them yesterday, and we are hoping big things for
them. Finding them was truly a blessing from the Lord!
Yesterday we had a really cool zone conference on really
helping the investigators to understand the Sabbath Day. We started out just by
calling up missionaries to practice with us as if we were their investigators
without telling them anything. And every single one made it sound like going to
church is just a requirement to get baptized. It’s true, but if we teach like
that we aren’t preparing these people to keep renewing this sacred covenant for
the rest of their lives, so we just did something really simple. After Elder
Crandall and I gave an example of how it should be done and then we just had
them practice for the rest of the conference until every missionary felt like
they could do it well. I really loved it because before we have done practices
but they haven’t been the focus, but we realized that they really should be the
most important thing and that’s what we did! That might be my last zone
conference as a ZL so it was really fun! The assistants and the sister training
leaders put on some good activities too!
Another fun thing from last week is that after a lot of
things going on in the mission and people that were needed in different areas,
and I ended up being assigned with Elder Card, another ZL to go and clean out a
house that we aren’t going to be using anymore. It was super fun; Elder Card is
one of my best friends from the mission! Way back in San Pedro we were in the
same district and it was fun to be able to spend time with him again! We got to
run up and down three flights of stairs with fridges, beds and everything else
in that house...in an absolute downpour! But it kind of sums up my whole
mission, things are never going to go as we want them to go, but if we do our
part, if we do the right thing, and more importantly if we are found in the
service of our fellow beings and our God, even the rainiest day will be an
exciting adventure, a learning experience, a day of laughter, and a memory
forever!
I love the mission so much, I love serving people, and I
love just knowing I am doing His work!
Elder Stout
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