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

Bienvenidos a Iztapalapa!

Hola!! Well I really don’t have much time today because I have a training for new district leaders on my pday! How awful is that! But I will try to include as much as possible, actually it’s probably better because I still don’t know many people here!

Well my new ward is Olivos, and we are in the stake of Iztapalapa which is known for being a lot sketchier than anywhere else in the mission, especially for us gringos, so just to apologize from the beginning, I don’t know how many pictures I will take and be sending in this area! I am sorry!!

So to start off, Monday we went to ALq Fuentes to say goodbye to them which was hard, it was my last goodbye and one of the hardest too!

Tuesday were the changes, my new comp is Elder Almeida who is from Chile and Uruguay, he still hasn't explained how that works! He is like a freaking super model or something, everyday a bunch of girls yell at us and actually he looks exactly like a singer. Abraham Mateo, you should look it up! But, he is really calm and doesn't talk much, he has one more cambio in the mission than I do, and wow, I forgot how hard it is to learn an area! Bleh!! So our area is pretty huge! But it is all flat so that is super nice after San Pedro hahaha. In Sundays this ward is smaller then up there, but there are way more member they are just all less active here!

We are working with one family that is awesome the Dominguez family that only have been investigating the church for like 2 weeks but are already introducing us to all of their friends, super cool! They are progressing awesomely!!!

So yeah, that’s Olivos! Sorry again for the short email but I have to go to my training!

Love y’all!

Elder Stout

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