March 8 - best week yet!

Hey all,

Well I like the idea that my mom does to start from the most recent and then write going backwards because I think that makes it a lot easier to remember everything that I have to say!

So I want to start off talking about a leadership council that we had with President Mecham yesterday. We only have them once a month and they are by far my favorite part of my new assignment! There are 23 people that participate in this council, the 14 zone leaders, the 2 assistants, the 5 sister training leaders, and then President and Sister Mecham. This week we just went in praying about ways to help the mission find the people that the Lord is preparing and help them to follow the gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives, and how we as leaders can help the missionaries in the mission to do that better. It turned out to be one of the most spiritual experiences of my life, where we truly learned that if we do all that we can, the spirit WILL be there to testify of the truthfulness of these things, it doesn’t matter if were about to go home and have 23 months of experience, or if we were in our house yesterday, but we have to do our part, of obeying the mission rules, studying, and preparing to teach these people!

Then President just started talking about the vision that he has for the mission, he told us he is kind of scared for the future, of what will happen, because looking around that room, when my generation goes home, everyone else will have already gone home that was on that leadership council. He just started to cry and tell us who much he needs and loves us, and how much he has learned from us. Then he said, you may not have known it, and I can’t say this just to any person, but every single one of you is in my journal, and I will never ever forget you. It was an incredible meeting that helped me just leave ready to serve even better in the work of the Lord! What an opportunity!

Fast and testimony meeting from yesterday. Yesterday was the best Sunday that I have had in my entire mission (and maybe even my entire life), Elder Penrod and I noticed a couple of weeks ago how Sundays are usually super stressful because we have to help all of the investigators that come to church, we usually end up teaching classes, we are helping the bishop, we are worried about all of the people who don’t come to church, we are just always super stressed, so this week we decided to enjoy church. I have never been so uplifted by the testimonies shared as I was this week. Pretty much every deacon (all 3 of them) got up and shared their testimony about the brotherhood that they feel in their quorum. Jose Armando (from the pics last week) got up and bore his testimony about Elder Penrod and me. He just got up there and was like ´´this week Elder Stout and Elder Penrod came by and taught us the coolest lesson on the armor of God, I just wanted to share it with you...I can’t wait to be a missionary, I want to be like them.´´ I was full on crying while he said that, I just feel the pure love of Christ so much right now! I just love every person that we are teaching, and every person in this Ward, the Lord is blessing me so much!

Also, Ana, and Valeria Ortiz Muñoz bore their testimonies which is super cool! This family all got baptized right before I got to this area, and they are incredible (the pic is with them) and Valeria is preparing for her baptism as well (she’s the only one left). This week we had so many people come to church with us! Azul and Tamara and Rubi all are still working towards their baptism dates, and had a great time there. Also, America and her 3 daughters were there! I love that family!!! If all goes well they should be getting baptized next week!:) They even signed up to give us dinner today in church. Also, I included a picture of how Zoe decorated me during church, haha it was awesome!

Last week we had a really cool experience with Tamara and Rubi too. We asked them so like how have you liked all of this so far? And Tamara said, if you had told me all of this 6 months ago, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye or thought twice, But that was because the Lord had not finished preparing me. I am so thankful you two found me, I am so excited for what you have been teaching me, and I just want to do what God has planned for me in my life. This is the most beautiful message I have ever heard and I have felt and know that it is true!

Wow, what experiences I had this last week! I am hoping to have even more this next week!! I hope the best for you all as well!!

Elder Stout

Mar 1 - Short Note

Hey all!

Well just to let you all know that this is probably going to be one of the shortest emails that I have written because I spent a good 50% of our pday writing time just trying to get my computer to sign in, so on top of the fact that I don’t have very much time, I am a little frustrated and am not able to think super well about what happened this week.

So better I will just describe the pictures of the week.

First of all there is a picture of me with a young man from the stake because there was a big stake wide young men’s activity where they split up all of the YM on divisions with missionaries from the entire zone to spend one day in the life of a missionary. It was a really cool experience, my comps name was Alam Rojas, and it was cool to be able to answer questions that I forgot that non missionaries might even have about mission life. Another cool part of the whole thing is that President and the APs asked me to share my testimony to get the whole thing kicked off. It was such an incredible experience to be able to share my missionary with those youth and the zone about the importance of preparing the next generation of missionaries. If there are any youth of mission age, or almost there, reading this and thinking about serving a mission, I invite you to serve now. Not for you, but because the Lord truly needs you, he has prepared you to be in the best generation for missionaries that the world has ever seen; every generation is better than the last. I know that this is a work that will continue going onward, but the Lord needs our help!!

Another picture was of a family that accompanied us to a lesson, the family Morales Rangel. They only got baptized a year and a half ago, but the dad is the Elders Quorum President! They are an incredible family. About halfway through the visit I realized that the son, Jose Armando had just been ordained a deacon like Jake, so as we left I asked him when his bday is and he told me the 3rd of February, just one day after Jake. It was a special moment for me to think that he is practically the same age as my little brother and it made me feel really close to him.

Elder Penrod and I have had the bad luck of losing signal pretty much every night this week, but we also have the responsibility of reporting with the missionaries at night, so here is a picture of us when we had to go out at night to find service and report by the side of the road.

Lastly, we have made it a Monday tradition to run up to the top of the cerro de estrella here in our area, so here is a picture from the run this week!

Well that’s the weekly rundown, once again I am sorry that it’s so short, I hope that you guys all had a great week!

Elder Stout

Feb 23 - Heat Wave!

Hey all!

So first of all I feel like there is a heat wave going on...My comp keeps telling me that we are max in the high 70s but I am dying! I think I got way too used to the mountain life in Topilejo, and the heat is just wearing me out! But, I guess I will get used to it eventually!

This week went super well! First of all, we had some awesome intercambios with Elder Galindo and Elder Noguerra in their area. I got to sleep in a hammock because they didn’t have 4 beds, but it was awesome! Like the best night of sleep, I have had in my whole mission. Elder Penrod and I both life the intercambios still feeling a little iffy, not knowing if we really helped them. That is until the night time when they called us super excited to report on the progress of the people that we had contacted with them, and the people that we had visited, so that was a super cool phone call. Their district leader called us after that too, and was like, what did you guys do in the intercambios?? I have never seen them this excited to work, so that was a cool phone call to hear, really an answer to our prayers because we were just trying to jumpstart the work in a hard area.

The rest of this week was a blur because well it was a week of only 6 days...But, we saw a lot of progression in two of our investigators this last week. Tamara and Rubi and doing so well!! They just love the gospel, they just want to learn about it as much as possible, and that is so fun to see as a missionary. They can’t wait to be baptized, and Rubi is even talking about serving a mission someday! They also told us this last week that Rubi used to have some problems, like not being able to sleep at night and stuff like that, but that ever since we started coming all of that has changed! So that’s awesome! Also, Azul Morales has got to be the smartest 9-year-old girl that I have ever met! She learns faster than the majority of our 40-year-old investigators, but she as well cannot wait to get baptized, a sad note on that family to respond to Dad is that their Father isn’t present in their life:/ so that would be awesome to have a family member do it, but it looks like it won’t work out.

A cool activity we did this week was on Saturday night we took Tamara and Rubi to the Ortiz Muñoz family’s house to watch the Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration movie, and it was an incredible experience. I have seen that movie multiple times in my mission with investigators, but the spirit was just so strong this time. It really strengthened my personal testimony that Joseph Smith was called of our loving Heavenly Father to restore the same gospel that was established by Jesus Christ, and this work cannot be stopped! I hope that you all have a great week,

Elder Stout

Feb 17 - 17 months!

Wow, so I finished up 17 months here on the 17th of February, what a coincidence! The time is absolutely flying, I can’t believe how fast this last month has gone. I feel like I just got here to Churubusco but I have been here for 6 weeks already! The weeks are just flying by too!!

So yesterday the stress all was over because we had the zone conference! It was a huge success; I feel like the Spirit was really there to bless us. All of the people who spoke had the spirit very strong and gave exactly the messages that the missionaries in our zone were needing. President talked a lot about how obedience is the first law of everything. The Sister Training Leaders of the mission gave a cool training about how to get along better with our companions and why it is so important that we always look for a way to get along. Then Elder Penrod and I focused on how to have better studies. We talked about how the Lord gives us three hours every morning to prepare us for the work that He has called us to do, and how the focus of our studies should not be on us, but should be on the people that we are teaching because for two years they are our priority. In preparing it and applying it I have learned so much and changed the way that I personally study as well, but it is helping us so much in the lessons that we teach! Elder Penrod and I are learning so much every morning that we use that day as we teach these people and that is the vision that we have for the zone as well.

 

We had a good week with our investigators as well!! The Olivares Puebla family came to church this week and also put a date to be baptized! One super successful thing that we have been doing since the conference that we had with Elder Peiper is that we are having the investigators put their own baptismal dates, because then it is a goal that they really want to get, and it has been so successful to just explain to them why it so important and let them set their own goal with God, because it’s between Him and them, not us. So we were super excited about that!

We also found a new part member family the family Morales, they are awesome! They all know so much about the gospel because it is a huge part of their home life, but for some reason they haven’t gone to church in two years...So we will have to find out why exactly and help them to overcome it. But, Azul, one of the daughters never got baptized, and when we got there she was just super excited and asked her sister if this means that she can finally get baptized because she’s been waiting for a long time!

Another family that we found was Tamara and Ruby. They are such a cool story because we asked the Pedraza (other investigators) family if they knew anyone who lived close by who could benefit from hearing a message about God and they told us, you NEED to go visit Tamara, she will never accept you because she wants nothing to do with God or religion, but she needs it. So, we went and knocked on her door and well we found out that just that day she was praying that God would help her, she didn’t even know if he existed but she wanted help, and then we knocked on the door. They are progressing SO fast! They told us the 2nd time that we went back that they had already received a testimony from God that the Book of Mormon was true, and when we invited them to go to church, they were about ready to cancel a trip that they had planned because they wanted to go so bad, but we told them not to worry about it and that we have church every week, so it was all good! But, they are an incredible family, and we are so excited to be working with them! The Lord is blessing us so much, there is just nothing else I could ask Him for, I am so grateful to be a missionary, and to have been blessed to be here in this area right now, I just want to keep looking for ways to do His will here.

 

Last but not least, we had an awesome Valentine’s day haha our Valentines were Alexa, Zoe, and Alison Olivares. We made them little cards with chocolate, and they brought us they big chocolate hearts. I love their family so much, I find myself praying for them multiple times throughout the day because I just want what’s best for them.

Love you all!

Elder Stout

Feb 9 - On top of the world

Hey all,

This week was a great week as always! Not that much happened it seemed like, even though it was an 8 day week from the last time I wrote, (Side Note: NEXT WEEK MY PDAY WILL BE WEDNESDAY, I am sorry for all of the changes but we have a zone conference next Tuesday, and so the Assistants told Elder Penrod and I that we could change our pday to Wednesday so that we have more than like 2 hours to do everything). So first of all, please be praying for me, because I am pretty nervous to give the zone training, we are going to be there for 6 hours, and we are in charge of all of it. We asked President and the Assistants to teach as well, but the majority of the time we are going to be teaching, and well it’ll be a lot different than giving a one hour district meeting to 4 people, so please be praying for me, especially next Tuesday so that the Spirit can be with us, and we can give the message that the missionaries in the Churubusco zone need.

So the coolest part of this last week for work was Sunday. Elder Penrod and I have talked about how pretty much the whole mission Sunday has been one of the hardest days for us, because there are always so many people who say that they are going to come to church, and well so many of those promises are empty because we just sit there in church waiting and waiting and well the majority never come (that’s how we know who the Lords elect are, but it’s still hard). But this week, we had a ton of investigators there at church! America and her daughters (in the picture) came and actually beat us to the chapel. Also, Alejandro’s son, Alex came with us, and his parents wanted to be there so bad, but they were dealing with sick kids at home. Valeria was there (and also told us that she feels like she is almost ready for baptism). And a new investigator was there named Jaqueline!

Jacqueline was a miracle this week. We have been teaching her family forever, they are all less active members, well her in laws and her husband. And they came this week to get their new baby blessed, and it was the first time they had come in years. Afterwards, they commented to us, the powerful spirit that they had felt to hear the words of a blessing from the Lord, and her family said they won’t miss another Sunday, and she, with tears in her eyes, asked us when is the soonest that she can get baptized. Please pray for the Heredia family so that they can keep these feelings with them and keep coming to church.

A cool thing at the end of church, America comes up to us with a tithing envelope and asked us, “what do I do with this?” We started explaining to her what tithing is and stuff like that, but she said, no no no I already know that, after the testimonies, I looked it up in the scriptures. This IS my tithing, I want to pay it. What an incredible testimony building experience for me, to see how the spirit is touching her heart and converting her to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Another cool thing that Elder Penrod and I did, was one morning we got up super early, and instead of our normal exercise we ran up to the top of the Cerro de la Estrella, one of the best known hills in Mexico City, its right behind our area, and took us almost an hour to get up, but it was so worth it!

Well that’s a wrap!

Have a great week,

Elder Stout

Feb 1 - THe Mexico City Water Crisis

Hey!

So the first two big things from tis week are that well there are two big announcements for Mexico City. So first f all it used to be like Washington DC where it was a district that wasn’t officially like a city or a state or part of a state. It was called the distrito federal or the DF but apparently this last week there was a vote here and the DF officially became a state, called La Ciudad de Mexico. Which for us is pretty funny because our mission call says that we are serving in Mexico City but I have literally never heard that my entire time here, but now that’s our official name.

Also, on another unrelated note, the Mexico City government decided to just shut off water to the entire city for a week to do repairs. So Elder Penrod and I are living out of buckets to shower and wash dishes from water theat we stored up last week. Reminds me of living back in Topilejo haha but it’s all good.

Also, we got the changes last night and Elder Penrod and I are staying together here in Churubusco. Our zone is going to go down from 29 missionaries to 27 and we will be getting 7 missionaries new to the zone, so I am excited to see who they will be tomorrow when we go to the changes to help President with everything! Elder Penrod and I realized too that he is entering into his last two changes in the mission so that freaked him out like a ton!

So this week wasn’t nearly as exciting as the last two weeks but we had an awesome week. One thing that we have been focusing on as mission is truly uniting together with the members and having more lessons with member present to the investigators because having that friend, and that extra testimony just helps SO much when someone is just beginning to know the gospel of Jesus Christ. This week was the most successful I have had in my entire life working with members here. We worked with 11 different members this week and reached the mission goal of having 20 lessons with member present this week. We also had more lessons this week than I have had in my whole mission with 46 (and that with the fact that we had a lot of things to do to help President this week like go to every session of stake conference even when all the other missionaries only go to one...) So there was a lot of success in all of that this week. We saw the fruits too! America and her daughters got picked up for church by one of our recent convert families and came to stake conference and had an awesome time, the girls are so excited to go to primary next week! We have a lot left to do to be able to help Adan but with time the Lord can change his heart. Also, with Alejandro and Mirna, we brought a member who is very very wealthy with us and he just bore to them the strongest testimony about how his family depends on him, how 15 employees depend on him, but he closes every Sunday because he knows that without the blessings of the Lord for his obedience it would be impossible to provide for them. We didn’t even have to say anything afterwards, they just said, well next week we are going to close the store! WOOHOO! I love this. Finally, Valeria received a lot of help from her sisters this week to be able to put a baptismal date. We had some super powerful lessons with her about repentance and the atonement that really strengthened every person in the lesson (I think especially Elder Penrod and I). It was a work filled week, and a hard one, but a rewarding one.

 

The zone had a great week as well. We had the opportunity to work with a district leader from Espartaco this week. I went with his companion named Elder Sanchez and it was super cool. He is newer to the mission, but is super excited to be here and get the work done as the Lord wants. Yesterday we had a special meeting where Elder Penrod and I trained all of the district leaders from the zone about how to give better district meetings to really make them an environment of learning through the spirit. We focused on the difference between teaching like a school teacher, and teaching like we should as missionaries, it was a spiritual experience for us, I am so glad that the Spirit directed us to do that, we didn’t know how it was going to turn out but it was definitely worth it.

Well that’s all from here this week,

Elder Stout

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