ME VOY!!!

Welll... Im outta here! Headed from Godoy to Chos Malal! I am so excited for this new oportunity that i have to serve the Lord in Chos Malal (it is in the north part of our mission, the very tip. I leave here at 1 in the afternoon and should get there about 11 at night! ) I am so excited!!! I am going to miss the people that i ahve met and grown to love here, but i am excited for the oportunity now to go help others come untio christ and grow myself. 

 

Also Matias got Baptized!!!!! I am so happy that i was here to be apart of this change that he has made in his life! He went from a not so great kid to one of the best converts i have ever met. When he came out of the water he couldnt stop smiling and when we got out of the font he asked if he could go back in because he felt so good, so clean, and so free. It was AMAZING!!!! He also bore his testimony the next day in sacrament meeting! and it was such a powerful testimony! I am going to miss him.

 

Not much time today, but all is well. I love the mission. and i love my Savior. I love you all and hope you all have a great week!!!

 

Love,

Elder Stuart

"Faith Leads to Power"

This week was amazing! We got to watch a broadcast with Elder Bednar who came and talked with all the missions in the South America South area! It was so cool to see and I learned so much! He taught us a lot about the Faith and how we can better apply it in our mission and in our lives and the lives of our investigators. He emphazied how faith leads to power. He taught us that in our prayers we could pray for hours and never recieve what we want becuase we are not acting. We need to act to recieve the power, we dont recieve the power to act. I loved it!! I have also seen this in the life of my investigators. Our investigator Matias taught me this same thing. The other day we were with him and he was talking to us and told us that whenever he wants to smoke he prays and then something comes to his mind that he has to do and it takes his mind off of it. That really is an example of what Elder Bednar taught us. Matias showed his faith by praying and then acting and has recieved a huge blessing and that is the ability to stop smoking. He is progressing so well and came to church again! We have his baptism set up for this week so i should be here because this is the last week before transfers and i think i will go! I am glad that he has made this decision to come closer to Christ and that I will be here and have been here to see the change that it has made in him. I love this work and i love this gospel. It is amazing what it does to the lives of anyone who will acept it. I know that the power of Prayer can help us accomplish anything we set our mind to. Just like in Moroni where we learn that anything we ask in prayer with faith believing that we will recieve (and act on that) we will recieve. I love prayer. It can help us so much and bring us closer to our father in heaven. I have seen how just a few simple prayers daily can change the life of someone, because it has changed me and brought me closer to my Father and Saviour as well. I love you all and hope you 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

6 MONTHS!

Wow i cant believe that i have already passed the six month mark! Time is going by way fast! This week was so good!!!! We were walking down the street and an old investigator that i was teaching with Elder Rose, but we dropped, passed us and told us to come by his house sometime. His name is Matias and is 18, when we were teaching him he told us he really didnt believe in God but just liked talking with us to be friends, so we just bore testimony and told him to pray and ask and if he needed anything to just ask. Well he did this week! We went to his house and he said he prayed and got an answer, he said when he was praying he felt an overwhelming feeling of love and peace and he knows that God is there now!! The power of prayer is so strong!!!!! It was such a miracle! He now wants to change his life around and be baptized! He even came to church this sunday so that was a miracle! It was amazing to see how such a little things, as one little short prayer with our father in heaven changed his life forever. Such a miracle. It makes me think of Alma 37:37, we should pray in everything we do!

 

Things are so great here, the people are amazing, and i have seen that when we push through our trials the Lord will bless us in ways we never thought. I never thought this would be the investigator that started to progress so fast, but God knows us all personally and has a plan for each and everyone of us. And if we never give up and trust in him, we can find that plan. Goes to show that getting your feet wet really works!! ;) haha I hope you all had a great week, and have an even better one this week full of the love and spirit of our Heavenly Father. 

 

Love,

Elder Stuart

Baptisms!

Hola familia y amigos!

This week was a really great week! We had a training with the assistants at the biggining of this week and we talked a lot about living baptism. Because if we go into lessons and the investigators don´t know that we are there to help bring them closer to Christ, but to just to chat, then they aren´t going to progress. But if they know why we are there, then they will start to progress more. We have really seen this in this week!! We have three people set up to be baptized this week and we have two others that can be prepared if they work really hard! It is so cool to see the gospel change their life and bring them so much joy. I love helping people come closer to Christ :) Brian and Guadalupe, the two miracle investigators we have, are such Capos!!! They are so cool and progressing so well, they tell us how much more joy and happiness they have in their life since they have been meeting with us. They are going to get baptized this saturday! I am so excited for them :) 

 

This week we had a fun experience! We were on the way back from a lesson and on to another investigator, Matias, and on the way to his house we found him on the side of the road and his car broke down. We ended up pushing his car for half a mile up a dirt road to his house! Hahahah it was so tiring but it was so much fun and a great way to do service!! I loved it! He is progressing pretty well, but he is 18 and doesn´t like some of the things about the gospel because he feels restricted... but we are working with him. But i think i got my exercise in for about the next month!! 

This week i really have been studying 3 Nephi 18:19-21 about prayer and how important it is to pray ALWAYS and with our families, and when we do this we will receive so many blessings. I really have such a strong testimony that prayer is the best thing we can do to come closer to our heavenly Father because we are communicating with Him. And when we pray in our families so many miracles come from that. We have seen some many non active member families start to come back just by sharing this with them. I love it.

This was a great week. Thanks for all your love and support! I love you all and I hope you all have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Stuart

Photos!

These are from his first transfer in Villa Regina with the Trio and 2 other Elders in his apartment.

Elder Batres, Elder Pacheco, and me

Making cookies with our investigators Elder Batres, me, Matias, Elder Pacheco, Hugo, (then in front with me) Aron, and Danilo

This is our home, on the other side of the room we have a bunk bed, and Elder Pacheco's is under the bed and he pulls it out at night, we have three in our room, then another room for the other two. and then our kitchen and we have a tiny bathroom too! But I get my new apartment today, so pics of that next week.

 

 

These are photos of his new area with his new companion, Elder Rose.

Elder Stuart and his new companion from Missouri, Elder Rose

Elder Stuart working on the farm planting tomatoes

A look at Villa Regina!!