Out of San Pedro

Hey!

So First of all I apologize because this is going to be a short email because I have a lot I have to do today! So I got some heartbreaking news last night that after almost 6 months in San Pedro I will be having cambios tomorrow! I can’t believe it! I have no idea where I will be going yet, who I will be with or anything but I am leaving. Wow, I honestly can’t believe it, I never thought I would leave and it is so weird to be not here!

So pretty much the majority of the week was saying goodbye to people! We got invited to eat with like a ton of families because well when someone has been in an area for 6 months they usually leave! So that was the highlight of the week! Haha

So really fast, Tuesday we visited the family Herrera again and they have complete reactivated it was super cool to see how fast they went back to church!

Wednesday we had a lesson with a menos activo and during the lesson a rat ran through the house so we got to kill it so that was kind of cool!

Thursday I had intercambios with Elder Perez who is from Hidalgo which is like just outside of our mission boundaries, and he is really...interesting! But we walked a ton, because no one was home because this week was a national vacation!

Friday the other elders had a baptism and Citlalli and Estefano came and it was awesome, they learned a ton, and right now the mom is struggling because she doesn’t know if she can live up to the commitment of baptism so that is a really good problem to have because she wants to!

Saturday we had an awesome parting dinner with Irma and Alicia, we all started bawling, it was really hard to say goodbye to them!

Then yesterday, we had like 15 menos activos in the church, that was awesome! Then we went and said goodbye to the family GasparLino and they all gave me awesome little gifts which was cool, and then we said goodbye to the family Cruz Alquicira, and they started crying too! It is going to be really hard to leave this area! But I am excited too!!

I hope all is well with y’all!!

Elder Stout

General Confernce

Hey everybody!

First of all, thanks for all of your support with the passing away of Brother Newton back home, I am going to miss him a ton, but thanks especially Mom for talking about how I have a guardian angel with me now!  I got a lot of help this week from general conference especially with this, and I hope that you all did too!!

So I don’t have a ton of time, but on Monday this week we did a contacting spree in the nighttime because all of our citas fell through and it was really good because this is the thing that I need to work on!!

Tuesday we went to our interviews with president and he helped me set some really awesome goals that I can share later on if you guys want! Or I don’t know if that’s like boring? Haha

Wednesday we spent pretty much the whole day in the subway or on buses because we went to go to the offices for a training on family history. Well I pretty much ended up giving the class because of everything that I learned from dad haha also thanks for filling up the tree so I have like no work to do!!!

Thursday we had a cool experience where we were walking down a dirt road up in San Andres and a guy was just like hey you guys teach about Christ right and so we contacted him and he invited us in to like a birthday party for his 13 year old I feel so bad, they gave us cake and then asked us questions for like 2 hours, and completely ignored the kid! Haha but then his aunt also came to general conference this week so that was really awesome!!

Friday we had a cool lesson with a new investigator named Francisco which was a lot like that lesson where he just had questions for like a super long time!!!!!!! But he is really excited!!!

Then we had general conference! It was awesome, they had a room set up for all of us white guys so that we could watch conference it English! It was awesome, I wasn't expecting that at all!! But Saturday in the morning was by far my favorite session!  I loved Boyd k Packers talk and also the talk by Dalin H Oaks (my scripture this week is that you can all listen to this talk and Elder Wilford W. Anderson's talk)! In the afternoon I loved Elder Andersons talk and Elder Renlund as well!! They were really cool messages and then the in priesthood session I really like Elder ballard and Elder Uchtdorf’s talks!! Sunday, how cool is it about Haiti?? That’s all because of dad hahaha then in between the sessions we were watching like the church news and they talked a ton about discovery centers and somebody from dad’s team was on there I think!!

I really liked Elder Holland and Elder Pearson on Sunday!!! Wow, can’t believe we have to wait 6 more months! I hope you all have a great week!!

Elder Stout!

Almost April!!!

Wow!! I can’t believe how fast March went, can you guys??? It flew by way too fast, I am really sorry that a lot of you guys were sick back at home! I actually got sick here too on Thursday so we were all together!!

So Monday nothing really happened of note after writing except in volleyball we played Americans vs Latinos and it definitely got way too intense, but super fun!!

Tuesday we once again discovered the curse of Maria de Los Angeles, she is only ever home when we do not have any plans to visit her! We were just walking by and I was like hey, we haven’t seen her in weeks, and so we taught her and boom she wants to get baptized! Then later that day we taught Abril, the new investigator from earlier that week and after the first lesson she asked us when she could serve her mission, how cool is that?? Then in the night we visited the Bishops mom, and she asked us what the atonement was and the spirit took over and we taught just a super cool object lesson about mercy vs justice and it was such a cool lesson!

Wednesday the weather was just straight up wack!!! It was hailing like huge pieces of ice, and then a little bit later it was super hot! We had another lesson with Abril, but the primary president who just got back from her mission to the temple talked about the temple for like 30 minutes and we were just like "Hermana, we aren't sure if she remembers the name of Joseph Smith" But after that it was a really good lesson! And she already knows the book of Mormon is true!! Then in the night, I got to do divisions with Daniel Chavez again and I love doing splits with him, he is super funny and super powerful too!!

Thursday, I started off by making my companion run with me, which was fun but I am super out of shape! Then not long after, I got sick so we were in the house all day long which sucked! It was because of the food that we ate on Wednesday because my comp didn't feel good either and both Elder Kleinman and Elder Peterson were both sick!!

Then on Friday we broke the curse of Maria de Los Angeles and had a super good lesson with her, she wants to like introduce us to all of her friends! So we are going to teach her in the house of one of her friends next week! Then we went to our lesson with Citlali and she told us she has been thinking about us all week and just how weird it is that we are serving missions but how we must know what we are doing is true if we are going to spend this time. She totally loves the book of Mormon! Haha I can’t believe that I am probably going to be gone after this change because we are finding so many amazing people!! Also the video Because He Lives came out, and it is super cool!! You all need to watch it, it’s just as cool as Because of Him and He is the Gift, I love these videos!

Then Saturday the weather was just absolutely terrible and all of our appointments fell through, like every single one of them, it was a pretty awful day! It was raining a ton! and bleh!!! I am just going to pretend that day didn't happen haha!!!

Yesterday after church we got to watch the movie the restoration at two different family home evenings and we got to do outside blessings just like when I was a priest so it was a pretty cool day!!!

Elder Stout

6 Months, really this time!

Wow! I am officially 6 months in! Can y'all believe it? That’s like over a quarter of the mission! It flew by super fast!! This week too, I am starting to have a really hard time remembering what to write on Mondays because so much has been happening!! But it all blends together like mom says!!

So Monday after P day we went over to Alquicira lane and we were trying to teach a ton of them because we didn't have our district meeting this week but no one was home! Like almost no one! The only family was Armando and Nancy (included picture) So we did an fhe with them and taught about the importance of family! It was a really awesome lesson!!

Tuesday we had another zone conference! We are having them a lot, like every 3rd week but they are awesome! Then we had intercambios and Elder Segovia from Ecuador who is our new district leader came over with me, and he taught me a bunch of really cool lessons! But, he also likes to talk a lot in the lessons so a bunch of our lessons fell through because we were still in other ones! Sad thing happened too, the Tapia Santiago family told us they don’t want to pray about our message because they don’t want to receive an answer because they are comfortable in their church right now so that was kind of hard to hear! But we gave them their option!

Then Wednesday we had our first lesson with a Hermana named Citlalli and it went really well! She was one of the people that we contacted in the street and she is super interested as well as her 12 year old son! We tossed around a football for like 5 minutes and was amazed that I can actually throw because he said that no one here can play sports with their hands hahaha that was funny. We also had a cool experience because her 19 year son just wanted to fight with us, he was just asking super dumb questions to try and confuse us, but we saw the scripture fulfilled that said we will not be confounded because we were able to answer every one of his questions and by the end the 15 year old other brother said just stop you are contradicting yourself and we all know that they are right, not you! Haha it was awesome!!

 

Thursday we had a lesson with Guadalupe who came to church again this week and we were planning on inviting her to baptism again but definitely the opposition did not want us to because there has literally never been more chaos in the entire world! Every 15 seconds and I am not joking 15 seconds something happened to chase the spirit away, it was the worst lesson I have had in the entire mission, and we literally accomplished nothing in the lesson!

Friday we visited a lot of people like Ana, and Roberto, but we had a super cool lesson with the President of the Primary, la Hermana Taide who just returned from her mission in the temple of Veracruz! We learned a lot from her so that was really cool!

Saturday we did divisions with our ward mission leader Ramiro and his brother so that we could hit 40 lessons again! We ended with 12 lessons in the day and 42 for the week! It was awesome!!! And we saw the blessing right away because Sunday morning the Hermana Taide told us that someone just moved in next door to her and she wants to get baptized, and she came to church and everything! Her name is Abril! That was a super cool blessing that we received!!

Then last night we had a cool fhe with Taides whole extended family and we shared the family a proclamation to the world and it was just super awesome! Hope your weeks were good as well!

Elder Stout

6 months!!!!

Wow! 6 months down, can you all believe it??? I for sure can’t!!

So this week flew by! Wow I don’t even know what we did on what day or anything but I will try! So Monday we taught the niece of the bishop Carina and her husband Felipe and they are really nice, but they aren't married and have trouble going to church, so that’s going to be the hard thing with them!

Tuesday nothing really spectacular happened except that we are starting to really get the trust of the bishop and the other ward leaders because we went to his house that night and we taught him a lesson and he gave us like a big long list of people he wants us to visit so we are doing all we can to go and visit those people for him!

Wednesday I am not going to lie, I got a little upset in a lesson, I really hope it was the spirit, but I kind of scolded Irma Garcia...She was talking about all the blessings that they’ve had in their house because of Alicia’s baptism so I just like came out and was like you do know that she can bring blessings in for you, but she will never be able to replace your own saving ordinances and she just got really quiet but I hope she got the point! But on the high note, they got a pet hedgehog so that was fun to play with!!

Thursday I got to see a really cool side of my comp, he was made to talk with inactive members of the church, we went to this house and he was just like hey how are you doing and he invited himself in and stuff but then he was super friendly so they didn't get mad haha I could never be that assertive but it worked with these two women named Elouisa and Alejandra and we just taught about eternal families and they want them so they said they would come to church! So

Friday we did service for the first time for the hermana Guadalupe, and I guess it worked because she came to church too! She is an investigator who has been for like forever because she never goes to church, but she came! But she fed us tacos after and they were really sketchy like we were pulling out bones and stuff from them...so that afternoon I got really sick and we had to be in the house for the afternoon! But when we went back out because I didn’t feel awful anymore we had the random impression to go to the Relief Society President’s house and teach her about Christ and she said she had been praying for angels and that she couldn’t believed that we had just showed up, so that was a really cool experience!

 

Saturday we had a really cool experience where we were walking to the GasparLinos when a car randomly pulled up beside us and there was a woman crying and just said that she needed to talk about God, so we went to her house and we taught her, and besides the fact that she doesn't believe in religion just God, it was really good. Her name is Georgina, but she thinks she is going to get an answer to her prayer, so that is awesome, because that means that she will come to know it’s all true! Then in the afternoon, we did divisions for the first time, and I went with Daniel Chavez who is a returned missionary from the ward, and he is awesome, super funny!!! We taught a bunch of really awesome lessons and then we went to a noche misional in the night and it was super spiritual about the Book of Mormon!!

Yesterday was pretty awesome as well! We randomly decided to visit a house of a member last night where I had never been and we found out that living in their same complex were about 25 inactive members, so we got to know a ton of people and we gave out 4 different blessings in the space of an hour! Wow it was great! Well I hope you all are doing great, and just remember for every email so far, there will only be 3 more!! haha!

Elder Stout

Cambios!!!

Hola!!!

Well we had the cambios and my new comp is Elder Alvarado from Guatemala City! He has 9 months in the mission but I got assigned to be the senior comp which has been a huge change, but it is pretty cool!!!

So Monday was our last day together for Elder Hansen and me, and just like the 4 days before it, we spend it in the house! But we went to his dr appointment in the nighttime and it is right next to that really fancy mall, and since it was p day we got to go to DQ!!!!!!! It was so good because ice cream does not exist down here, so it was the first ice cream I have had in like 4 months!!

Tuesday was really hard to say goodbye to him but Elder Alvarado is awesome, the only way I can think to describe him is that he reminds me a ton of Ian Kahng haha so that is just kind of how he is! It is really different but we are getting along super well and I am learning a ton from him!

Wednesday I found out that my weakness is my comps strength-contacting! We contacted a ton of people the whole time that we were walking in the street! We set up a bunch of appointments with those people too! Wow!! So cool!! Also, I had this cool idea of setting a daily goal every day for our companionship so I have been doing that and we have been seeing a ton of success because of that!!

Thursday we saw our work pay off in a different way! Every single one of the appointments we put through contacting fell through but the Lord blessed us because every member we taught that day brought a friend and we had 7 new investigators! Wow! It was so cool!!! The family Martinez Salazar are relatives of Alquicira and have a lot of things going on in their lives that we can help with! The other family is super super nice! They are friends of Alicia, but they are super strong in their church, but super interested by Jose Smith so we will see how that goes!!

Friday, we had an appointment with an hermana that is teaching us how to make pastor meat!!! Yum!!!!!!! So I will be able to make it for yall when I get home!! In the night time we had a lesson that was pretty rough it was with an investigator and a menos activo family. The thing is that this investigator isn’t going to church because the family isn't so we kind of called them to repentance!

Saturday we had a super awesome lesson that just clicked with Marcelina! She is finally progressing again, and Elder Alvarado and I just taught really awesome together and followed the spirit muchisimo!!! It was so cool!! Hope all is well with you! Paz Fuera del DF

Elder Stout

Transfers!!!!

Hey everyone!

So I will officially be spending my fourth cambio in San Pedro Martir!! Elder Hansen is leaving tomorrow for another area, but I am staying, wow I didn't expect that at all!!! So this week was really boring because of the surgery that Elder Hansen had on his toe, but I will try to pick out the highlights.

Monday we were in the house sick all night so we didn't do anything haha.

Tuesday well we started off by going to the doctor for the checkup and actually we thought we were going to have the surgery but it was just a checkup which is annoying because the hospital is an hour away from our house! And lucky for us right as we got home they called us and told us that we had to come back because Elder Hansen had more forms to sign, so that wasted pretty much our entire day. Ummm Tuesday night, so I am just going to say that we ended up spending the night at the house of the San Pedro 2 elder’s house and that I can’t say anything more but that I am completely fine, and it just had something to do with the government!

Wednesday I got really worried in our lesson with Alicia because we just didn't have the spirit and she was supposed to have her baptism this week and we just left and were like, have we prepared her? We were just super worried.

But then Thursday we had a super awesome lesson with her, and we just felt the spirit so strong, and we walked out and just knew that she was ready and it was so cool!!! So Friday was the day they scheduled for the surgery and we started off by getting a call from President saying Elder Hansen pack your bags, Elder Stout pack for 3 days, after the surgery you are coming to stay at my house and then Elder Stout you are going back to San Pedro in cambios on Tuesday and Hansen you will be going to your new area. So we started to flip because we never thought that, we always thought I would be going, but it was kind of cool to find out our cambios a few days earlier!

So the President and his Wife came to all of Elder Hansen’s surgery and it was like 3 hours long!! They pulled out two huge pieces of nail that had been ingrown and it was so gross!! Haha not gonna lie, but after hearing the advice from the dr Presidente told us that we could actually just rest in our house, so that was awesome that we could just come hang and spend our last couple days together!

So Saturday was the baptism and sadly Elder Hansen couldn't go so we did inter cambios, but for the pics I wore his name tag so it was like he was there!!:) It was such a cool service! I got to do the ordinance, and I had to do it twice, because apparently she has a second last name that she never told me about! But I know it worked the second time because she was crying the second she got out of the water! In her testimony she talked about how she had dreamed about her baptism and how this was the exact same feeling that she never wanted to let go. She also said that in the dream she didn't know who it was who baptized her but that when it happened she knew it was me, so that was really cool to here! She is so awesome, and wants to serve a mission!!

Then yesterday we couldn't go to church so the Zone Leaders brought us the sacrament which was a huge blessing and we just spent all day watching the Doctrine and Covenants videos and reading haha kinda boring! I am really going to miss him though!!

Hope y'all had a good week!!

Elder Stout