A Great Time in Roca!

Buen Dia Familia!!!

This week was super great! i had the chance this week to go to Roca for a few days to be able to work with some of the Elders that are there and it was great! i had a lot of great experiences this week, one of the greatest experiences that i had this week was with an investigator named Aimara. She is super prepared! she has been reading a lot of the book of mormon and i swear she knows more than i do. but she said that she hasnt felt yet that she needs to be baptized, she knew it was the right thing to do but said that she just didnt feel it. we were able to have a very spiritual lesson with her where we bore our testimonies and taught her the doctrine that she needed to know. at the end she couldnt stop saying thankyou because she said that she felt the same way that she did when the missionaries first taught her! (that was Elder Lloyd!! ) and she said she would prya to know when she needs to be baptized! i then got a call last night from the Elders and she is going to get baptized this friday! it was a great time there in Roca! i am back here in Nequeun so we will see what happens this week! Have a great week! Love you all!

Elder Stuart

Ps. my next pday will be on saturday due to transfers!

Prepare for General Conference!

Whats up family!?

This week was great! The investigator that i talked about that the members wanted us to go to their house to teach him, Rigoberto, came to church this week!! He is doing super well and is reading the book of mormon and praying a lot. the family that lives next to him really is helping us a lot and doing a good work with keeping him reading and praying! It is awesome because we passed by to go visit him one day and when we got to the door we could hear music coming from inside, and he was listening to hymns!! He is doing great and progressing well, and he is super excited for the conference this week! I hope you all are getting ready to hear the words of the Lords living prophets and apostles. I hope we can all prepare ourselves and have questions ready to be answered. This week is going to be great! Thank you all for everything! Love you all!

Elder Stuart

Look for the Miracles of Every Day

Hello Fam!

This week was super great! We finished up the conferences in the south and made our way back to Neuquén! Things are going super well, we finally got back with the Familia Melo, and they are doing good. You can tell that their honeymoon took out a little of the excitement to get baptized... but they said they would pray to see if they need to be baptized this coming week. Please pray for them to recieve their answer! They are so great! We also had a miracle happen on Saturday, we were walking along and i took a Book of Mormon out of my bag to show Elder Ortiz something and then we saw a man working in his car and we asked if he needed help and he just said ¨no, but is that the book of mormon you are carrying?" we were so surprised and he told us he found one one time and started reading and really liked it, but had never talked to missionaries. His name is carlos and we have a cita with him this week!! We hope he keeps progressing!! Things are going well and we are seeing many miracles in our mission right now! i love it! All is well and i hope you are all doing well and know i pray for you all every day! Have a wonderful week and look for the miracles of every day!

Love,

Elder Stuart

Buen Dia Familia!

Buen dia familia!

This week was great! It was full of conferences and a new missionary got here so that was cool!  

In the conferences this week it was really cool to see old comps! The thing that stook out to me this conference was the reality of the life we had with our father in heaven before this one. In doctrina y convenios 138 we learn that when we were there we learned all that we needed to be able to help others receive salvation through Jesus Christ. It is so important that we apply the atonement in our lives daily so that we can be humble enough to receive those same lessons through our diligent study and personal revelation :)

Also this week we had a really cool experience while working in our area. We were contacting this lady and she told us that her sister in law is a member and she has actually been interested in what it is that we share with the people. So we were able to teach her about the Restoration and the book of mormon, really fast becasue she was working... hahah! but she was super excited to read the book of mormon and it was such a testimony that the Lord really has people prepared for us to teach, we just got to look for them!

This week was great! I love this work :) Todo bien aca en Argentina! Love you all! Have a great week :)

Love,

Elder Stuart 

Service

Hola! This week i have learned a lot of things! First. If you are going to give lunch to the missionaries for them to cook... give them something easy.... not just a full raw chicken. hahaha this week that happened to us! A family couldnt have lunch with us so the night before they just gave us this chicken to cook. We dont have an oven so we couldnt cook it like that... so Elder Elwood just looked at me and said ´well i guess we arent eating tomorrow!!¨hahaha it was so funny, but we ended up making something and it was actually delecious... kinda.. haha! But that was a skill that we learned this week! THis week i have also learned a lot about service. We have been in kind of a slow patch here in Godoy trying to find new people to teach and help them along. We decided to change up our methods, because if something isnt working you need to change it until it does. So we decided to look for more ways to do service this week. And it worked so well!! Matias is now progressing so much better because we went and helped him with some things he was building and cleaning up in his yard and we just created a bond and he opened up even more with us. We were just trying to do service where ever we could and we found a lot of people through that! When they see that we are normal people and that we are here to help and not just talk about Christ, they are more willing to open up and let us talk about Christ becuase they feel more comfortable. Makes me think of what we learn in Mosiah 2 how when we are in the service of our fellow beigns we are only in the service of our God. It is so true!! Go out and do some service this week! It is great!

Also this week i feel like all the other churches had a ¨bash the Mormons about Joseph Smith´week. Because we had more people than ever talking bad about him and yelling at us and stuff like that. I just want to testify to you all that I KNOW that he was and is a Prophet of God. Just like it says in Doctirne and Convenants. He did more for mankind than any other person save Jesus Christ himself. I am so greatful for Joseph Smith and all that he did for us and all we have today becuase he was brave and humble enough to fall on his knees and ask God. Now we have the book of Mormon and i can learn more about my Savior and how i can be more like Him. I am so greatful for that. I will defend him, and my Savior forever. (rant of the week over. haha) 

I love this gospel. I love my Savior. I know this is the truth and it can change lifes. Have a great week everyone. I love you all!!!!

Love,

Elder Stuart

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.

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.

MTC Life

Hey family!! This week was also really good!! I love it here in the MTC, but the only bad thing is it makes you so anxious to actually get into the field and teach real people. I can't wait to actually get out there and be able to teach the people of Argentina! I get my Flight Plans on Friday!!! I am so excited! I will leave monday september 21 so i am super excited for that! Hopefully my Visa comes... haha!! We can't check to see if our visa comes until after we have our flight plans so that kinda sucks... so hopefully i have mine! Oh and we found out that I can get letters in argentina, just not packages.

last Thursday I finished the Book of Mormon while being here at the MTC. It was such an amazing experience to be able to read it while I have been here. I had a testimony of it before I left, but I have an even greater testimony of it now. I love it so much!!!! It truly answers any question that we have, we just have to go into reading with a question in our mind and read and pray about it SINCERELY. I promise that if you do this you will receive an answer to your question WHEN Christ is ready to give it to you. He works on His time, Not yours. Always remember that. He will always answer, just when the timing is right. 

On monday we got to do a Skype lesson with a member from Neuquen Argentina!!! It was so cool to be able to talk with and teach a native! I loved it!! it made me so excited to be able to get there and serve the wonderful people of Argentina! 

Lastly, I have come to realize even more in the mtc that without God we truly are nothing. He is our strength. He is our power behind all that we do. And if we pray and invite Him to be with us at all times, then He will be there to help us with anything. If you are going through hard times, don't think He is not there, He always is. We just have to search for Him. 

Another great week down here at the mtc, and less than two weeks left!! I am so excited. I love and miss you all so much. Hasta Pronto.

Con Amor,

Elder Stuart