Holy Crap!!!

Dear Family and Friends,

Holy crap! I leave for Argentina in a week from today!! It came so fast! I am so excited to go, but it will be sad to leave all the amazing people that I have met here. It has been amazing and I can't wait to see what Argentina brings me! 

Another holy crap, the rain we have gotten in the past two days is ridiculous. With the Hurricane we have had down pour rain here for about the last two days straight. Lots of the streets were flooded, and there has been a lot of damage here in Houston. Luckily pretty much everything in my area is ok, we didn't flood too bad, but it was a little flooded in some of our area. But the rain has been crazy! So crazy that church was almost cancelled... so that was weird! But this week in church was the Primary Program. The Hispanics go all out for these things! They all had matching outfits, it was kinda weird for me haha. Oh. and it went for almost two hours... church starts at 11 and we got out of sacrament meeting at 12:50.... it was soooo long. But it was good since it was the Primary Program and they are all so cute. But still way too long. The other ward almost busted in to take over!! haha! 

This week has been really good. Things are great here, Everything is well. I hope all is well back home and thank you for all your love and support. I love you all!!

Forgot a huge part of my week!!

On Friday we had a ward Halloween party! and when we showed up they had a DJ and were playing all the songs from back home, "Whip", "Wobble", etc!! Hahaha it was so cool and threw me back! Then lets just say I was pushed in and showed them how we white people (and Brookie ;)) Did it back at Woods Cross!! It was so sick, and it was so good to dance again just for a few seconds. But i loved it. I needed my "musical theater crew" though!! I miss you guys! 

Love,

Elder Stuart

Photos!

Me and Elder Jorquera with one of the kids of a family in our ward! He is so cute!

 

Investigator GOLD MINES!! hahah! and me and Elder Jorquera knocking doors!

Howdy Y'all!!

Howdy Y'all!! (Yup. Thought I might as well throw a little southerness(is that a word??) into my letter!) haha

This week has been really good! On wednesday we had a exchange with our zone leaders and I was with Elder Sirstins for the day, (and english Elder). I was excited for this exchange until I remembered that we had our lesson that night with our new family, the Avila family.So basically it was me and an English Elder going to teach a new Spanish family for the first time... Elder Sirstins speaks absolutely no english. Luckily I found a young man to come with us who spoke spanish, but didn't really know the lessons or the gospel that well, so I told him that the game plan was that if they said something and I didn't understand that I would look at him and he would tell me what they said and then I would answer unless he felt confident answering, which he kept telling me that he didn't want to talk. hahaha so we went into the lesson and it went so well!!! I was able to understand almost everything and only had to use Pedro once for help with what they were saying!! We have a return appointment with them this week and they were supposed to come to church but they got caught up with family stuff so they didn't come :/ but they were way excited to meet again and to read the Book of Mormon!! So that was an awesome experience, and I know that I couldn't have done it without the help of the Lord, and the preparation that Elder Jorquera and I have done.

Another cool thing that we have been doing is that we really having been working hard with the Young men! We have been getting to the know them, taking them out with us, and inviting them to play basketball with us on P-days! Things have been going really well, and we now have three of the 19 year old young men who weren't planning on serving missions, working on their papers!!!! We are working with one more and we hope to get him started on his papers before I leave. It is amazing what love and actually showing an interest in people will do. Elder Jorquera has really taught me that, and as we have done that, we have helped young men get excited to serve missions.

Those are just a few cool experiences I had this week! I hope all is well with all of you. Everything is great here! Thanks for all your love and support!! I love you all!

 

Love,

Elder Stuart

Oh!!! And I forgot to say this!! We found Andres at English Class on thursday!!!!!!! He has just been really busy with work, and He broke his phone so he hasn't been able to contact us, but we are meeting with him this week and hope that goes well! Esteban is still nowhere to be found.. so that sucks.

Photos!

Study time! Me and Jorquera Studying.

Our zone

back: Elder Parkinson, Corn, Jorquera, Mariner, Sirstins, Fa'a, Jones, Pace, Tidwell, Sister Reese, Bohn, Bussell, Ita

Front: Me, Pigott, Boulinger

Food Trucks!!

Hola familia!!

It was another great week here in Katy!! We had a great opportunity this week to do some service at our favorite food truck! Oh and by the way we eat at these ghetto Mexican food trucks all the time and they are so good! They are just in random parking lots! This one is called "La Cabana" and it is so good! They are members, and so we go and do service for them and we get to eat there for free!! And the food is so good! This week we got a call from two other Elder's in our zone to come help them with service at the food truck. So we went over there and we had to paint the top of the truck with a sealant because it was leaking. So just picture four missionaries on top of this food truck (while it is in business) painting the top! It was really fun, and way funny! hahah so that was awesome!

Our two investigators, Esteban and Andres, both have gone missing! Esteban was sick and just texted us back so hopefully we can meet up with him this week. However Andres hasn't replied or answered to anything from anybody for the past week. Nobody knows where he is. So that kinda sucks, and we hope he is ok! We are hoping to hear back from him and find him soon.

We found a little family of four last week that we are going to meet again with this week and start teaching, so hopefully that goes well! Things are great here in Katy and we are doing our best to bring people to the Gospel. 

I hope you all know how much you mean to me and how much all your support means. Keep up the good work at home, and know that I love you all. Have a great week Everyone!!

Love,

Elder Stuart

Photos!

First time shopping by myself haha!

So many long horns here. 

Pretty cool sunset here. 

General Conference

Hola familia!!

What a week it has been!! We are so lucky to be able to listen to our wonderful Prophet and Apostles, I absolutely love listening to them speak to us because if you go into it with a question you can always find an answer if you listen closely. My favorite talk this time around was from President Uchtdorf in the saturday morning session. He talked a lot about keeping the gospel simple, and not over complicating it. In the scriptures we read a lot that the Lord delights in the plainness of the teachings. That is something that really stuck out to me, because as a missionary we really have to learn how to teach basically so that everyone can understand. The basics are the most important parts of the gospel. Nobody needs to know all the deep doctrine to have faith in Christ and be baptized, they just need to know the simple loving doctrines. So I have been really trying to work on being able to teach simply and with power. That is one of the reasons that I loved that talk!! It was awesome!

Here in Katy, it has been a really busy week because we just opened this area, so we have been trying to get everything set up and organized. But we found two pretty solid investigators!!! Andres, and Estaban. They are both amazing and me and Elder Jorquera really feel good about them and are planning on setting baptismal dates this week!! Andres taught me something that was so special. At the end of our first lesson with him, we gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to read it, and when he found out that it was his own, free copy (he really liked that part hahah), he got so excited and you could just feel the spirit fill the room because one of God's children was that excited to read His words. That made we look back and wonder if I had that same enthusiasm when I read. I think as members we become "numb" to all of these things because we do them so often, ie. read, pray, go to church, and we don't see that these simple things are so significant and bring so much joy. So I am trying to be better at finding the joy and happiness in these things, that I would have it was my first time. I really loved that lesson with Andres.

All is good here in Texas! Things are going great and I love the people here :) They are all so sweet, well the Hispanics are... the Americans not so much. haha! but it is awesome. Thank you for all you love and support that you all show me, and know that I pray for everyone back home daily. I love you all so much! Have a wonderful week!!

Love,

Elder Ryan Stuart

ps. mom I forgot my camera so hopefully i can send pics later sometime.