Argentina Time!

Hey Family and Friends,

Well it is finally here! I am leaving for Argentina this afternoon! I am way stoked! I leave at about 3:30 and got a long flight ahead of me, but I am way excited! Things were great here in Katy Texas and I learned a lot here! This past week was really good, one of the really fun things was Andres wanted to take me and Jorquera bowling and have a lesson there and so we did that and it was a lot of fun! He is like professional and taught us a few tips! It was awesome! He is progressing well and we hope to baptize him in November! Things are great and I can't wait to get to Argentina! I don't have much time, but know how much I love you all! Have a great week everyone!

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

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.

Photos!

Me and Elder Bliss in Texas!

Me at the Houston temple! SO pretty!!

Elder Jorquera in our apartment studying on the floor!

First Week in The Field!!

Hola familia y amigos!

Hi mom:)

Well it is my p-day today, time goes so fast out here!! I got to Houston safe and it has been an amazing experience so far! I can't wait for all the adventures that are to come! My mission president here is President Mortensen and he is amazing!! He grew up in Bountiful so that is pretty crazy! He really is an amazing president, and this mission is going so well because of Him and his leadership. I met my trainer on Thursday, Elder Jorquera!! He is an amazing trainer and I know that he is definitely one of the reasons that I was sent here to Houston. I have already learned so much from Him. He is so smart and knows a lot about the gospel, and teaching and I really am going to learn a lot. He is originally from Chile but now is from Colorado Springs. So it is awesome because I have a native companion and I feel like my Spanish is going to grow a lot because of it!!

After i got my trainer we got our area's, mine is Katy, Texas!! However, our apartment wasn't ready yet so we had to go room with two other elders. We spent two days there waiting for our apartment, staying in their little apartment and sleeping on the floor. hahah! I was a little upset because I wanted to get to my area. But it turned out to be a miracle! So many great experience happened while we were staying with those Elders. One was, the first day me and Elder Jorquera didn't have much to do because it wasn't our area, so we just went knocking. And the first door I knocked on in Spanish, they let us in and we taught them and set up an appointment for two days from then to teach them more! Elder Jorquera said that never happens to Greenies!!! I was so pumped and we continued to have success that day and so many miracles happened. We had to turn over our little Cuban family to the Elders in the area when we left, so that kinda sucked. But it was still awesome!

On Saturday afternoon we finally got to move into our apartment. It is so nice! However, we have no furniture so we are still studying, eating, and sleeping on the floor! Preparing me for Argentina!! haha so lets just say i haven't slept in a bed for about a week. But the floor is way comfy! I feel like patcha... :) We got all settled in and planned the rest of the day. Then we had church the next day, and it was my first day all in spanish! It was so cool, even though i didn't understand it all i still felt the spirit like crazy. I love the ward here. They are all so nice and ready to help the missionaries. As members that is our job, to help the missionaries, whether it is going out teaching with them or feeding them, that is how we do our missionary work, and they are really good at it!

It has been an amazing week, and I can't wait to learn more about this work and this area. Keep up the good work back home, and find ways to help the missionaries and be a missionary! There is nothing like the joy you get from it! Love you all!!

-Elder Ryan Stuart

Oh!! Dad is going to love this so add it to the email!

We went and ate with members, the Rocha family, on Sunday and they made us fish! and I actually really liked it... So we will see if I like fish now! haha! 

I love and miss you all so much. Got to go now. Talk to you next week :)