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