Week 50 - July 20 - Two Missionaries Walking Down the Street

was a pretty darn good one. We worked hard, had fun, taught lessons, and even got to relive what life was like in my last area about half the time. It goes a little like this:

"Well, nobody´s on the streets. Mejor dicho, nobody sober is on the streets. Dang local festivals."

"We could try knocking doors?"

"Ok" - The portals don´t open, and neither do the doors if/when we do get inside

"Well I guess it´s gonna be walking around until we find someone we can contact."

" . . . . So if you were being confronted by a man carrying a battle axe, what would you use to fight him?"

"A tomahawk. It´s fast. You?"

"Probably a sword and a ... Hola, caballero, disculpe - Solo quería preguntarle una cosa..."

"No no no no quiero nada me están esperando, lo siento chicos."

"Solo un momento señor.."

"Hasta Luego!"

"I forgot where I was... Do you think it was weird for Alma to basically take over the entire country and church after being a repentant man for only like 3 years?"

"I never noticed that... where were you reading?"

"Tail end of Mosiah 29"

"Huh, I´ll take a look. I wanna know where Ammon got his sword... I mean, that´d be the first thing a Lamanite king would take away from a wandering Nephite, and the last thing he´d give back to him. And then all of a sudden we read about him cutting off lots of arms."

And that represents Saturday and Sunday, thanks to our local festivals and complete lack of people in the streets, with an unfruitful contact every once in a while. 

The really fun part came when we got to work with a new Ecuadorian family. They taught us to make Empanadas (which are not even that hard... just time-consuming) and we taught them about the book of Mormon. Janet (the mom) wasn´t really open about her own religious background. BUT. When we explained the importance of reading the book of mormon, she said, "So I need to read from where to where? And then do what? And then we´ll talk about it? When can I come to church?" Which was huge because as a single mom with two kids, she´ll really be the deciding factor in their progression. And what´s even better is that those lessons will be taking place at a members house that ALWAYS gives us good food - and teaches us how to do it, too. 

We also had huge success this week with a man named Asbel. He´d had some trouble with the Word of Wisdom and he´s really trying on the missionaries´ time. But, after a short relapse, he´s been sober for another week! And then he broke his arm, which just made him more humble and ready for our message. The most gratifying part of missionary life is seeing the repentance process up front. I really treasure the fact that, almost every step of the way since halfway through May, we have been able to SEE Asbel repenting - that is, changing. Nothing cooler than that. 

Love, Elder Stew

awesome cookies

Stewart Teaches a Lesson

Week 49 - July 13 - Ada goes to the temple

This week was.... a week. It was hard. We had a lot of time sucked up by transfers, preparing for President Pack´s visit, and so we couldn´t teach or contact as much as we wanted. However, we did have our very best contacting week in terms of how many numbers we recieved.... and the worst in terms of how many of those numbers were real (3. 3 out of 11). And then, Angel didn´t show up to his own baptism and we sat there for two hours waiting for him, me Elder Weiss and Mateo - all the other members gave up after 20m and we had a little more faith, cause with just us three we had enough men and authority to correctly perform the ordinance. Add that to the fact that Ada nearly backed out of going to the temple. 

But, in times like these the Lord answers prayers, probably because they´re a little more heartfelt and have more faith than when times are good. We found out that Angel DID want to get baptized, but he got delayed and couldn´t make contact with us, so we´ll do it this week. We had a SUPER spiritual lesson with an African girl named Mirey and a member named Jessica. And Mirey went back and forth on what she thought and believed, until we started asking Jessica for her testimony. And it was almost visible to see that every time Jessica testified, Mirey believed a little more and had a stronger idea of the truth. I know that the work with church members is so important because I have SEEN it - if Jessica hadn´t been there, we would have made no progress whatsoever. That was a cool experience. 

Another thing that made up for a bum week was what happened on Sunday. Ada, after getting back from the temple, fell asleep in church and started snoring (not the highlight, though pretty darn hilarious - good news is she was wide awake when I started speaking :) We set up a meeting for after church, and we started to ask her about the temple. It´s hard to convey how she felt, but here are some of her comments.

"IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL!! Look at all these pictures I took."

"I can´t wait to go back."

"I love how everyone wears white"

"I feel like that´s what heaven will be like"

"It felt like God´s house"

"I wish I could stay there all the time."

I decided that was one of my most joyful moments as a missionary. I knew Ada before she even decided to get baptized! We´ve been through her trials, her blessings, her good days, the bad ones, given blessings, talks, commitments... And all our work and the work of the spirit came to a head when she told us about the temple. In another 8 months the missionaries can teach her the temple prep class and she can go get endowed! The rule is to always see your investigators in white.. TWICE. Elder Emmet and I had goals for Ada that she would go to the temple after her baptism, and that forward thinking helped. Now Elder Weiss and I are planning for the future, the day when she gets endowed! That was the highlight of the week, and it completely overshadowed the failed baptism. 

Love, Elder Stew

Week 48 - July 6 - Another Transfer in Oviedo

Of all the things I expected at transfers, the last was that I would stay here, with my trainee, as District Leader for a THIRD transfer. I´m really excited because it means I get to stay in Oviedo for the next six weeks (after that it´s pretty much guaranteed I´ll leave) just when things are starting to pick up! 

Angel is going to get baptized this week, which WAS kind of a bummer when I couldn´t be there (he had to postpone the baptism thanks to family stuff in Portugal) and so now I can see that!

And in the last week the work with the members has FINALLY started to pay off - dinner appointments and member visits and the pain that it sometimes is to involve members in the obra misional is a long and difficult effort . . . and sometimes you can´t ever see the dividends. BUT, last week we got two member references! And unlike other references, member references are GOLDEN! TO put it in numbers, 1 in 3 member references get baptized, and maybe 1 in 40 other references get baptized. But to not put it in numbers, both references came from people who said, "You two are really good missionaries. And I think my sister (or in the other case, friends) would be really receptive to the gospel when you two teach it." Genesis and Yanet are both single moms who want the gospel to change their daughters´lives - they see scary things happening to average kids who get in bad situations, and want the gospel to help. We are so excited! If it´s nerve-wracking to have a brand spanking new companion, it´s even more so to teach someone closely related to the members - those are the golden folks you really, REALLY don´t want to screw up. 

We had an inspiring experience last Thursday. On Tuesday, we helped the hermanas with a lesson, which Elder Weiss and I treated as a learning experience. Not to criticize, but to identify where we were also lacking. Anywho, that led to an interesting discussion which shaped the way I planned District Meeting on Wednesday - all about teaching well from the start and asking questions and teaching like the Lord. Just like Elder Packer said, the teaching like the Lord is always better. And when he was teaching like Him, Elder Packer was always right on target. It was funny - this last week on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I really got to love his talks and they way he taught, culminating with a FHE lesson where I taught about mercy and justice using his famous parable of the Mediator. You never really think about it, but that lesson just makes so much more sense after that parable than it ever did before. I was really sad to hear that he died, (incidentally, the Saturday after I had realized how cool he was). 

But anywho, back to the story. We tried to teach like Elder Packer, and by extension, the Lord, after all that had happened on Tuesday and Wednesday. And we had three REALLY spiritual lessons - my companion asked brilliant questions, we taught simply, spurred people to progress, and at the very end, the hermanas asked for our help cause they think we´re good teachers - and we got their investigator to commit to a date!

We also spent the whole week without buying groceries once. How, you ask? I shamelessly told everyone that I probably wouldn´t make it through transfers, and they invited us over for food. We had food Monday night, Tuesday mediodia, Wednesday night, Thursday mediodia,Friday MedioDia, Friday night, Saturday mediodia, Saturday night, Sunday medioDia, and Sunday night. Usually we bat around 2 meals per week, so that was a big deal. And what´s more, I learned that all those eating appointments got a better relationship with these awesome members here, and they trust us enough to give us references. Double dividends. Double blessings. Double work. 

Love, Elder Stew

Week 47 - June 29 - Inspiration and Angel

We've got a crazy p day planned today, so this is being written in the
interim time as we go through the activities - bus time Nd such.

As for the transfers, here's the story. They happen this coming
Saturday. I THOUGHT I was going to stay, because I had some residency
issues to work out and those take time. But now, after too many
useless government meetings, I learned that the only way to fix my
problem is in Madrid. So I called the secretary and made it his
problem, cause he's in Madrid, and then he said that he couldn't fix
it either. So now I have no residency issues and am free to do
whatever the Lord wants.... Except I'm illegally in the country and
best case scenario is just not getting caught by the police the whole
mission. Worst case scenario is getting stopped by a grumpy policeman,
arrested, deported, and I humbly requested that I finish my mission in
either Fort Worth Texas or Cincinnati Ohio. But that probably won't
happen I've been told. Thanks to that craziness,we're pretty certain
I'll leave.

We just finished part 1, where we went to gijon and hung around this
cool peninsula. We played soccer, are donuts and had a good time.
Pictures on Dropbox.

I'm really excited this week because our district is going to have a
baptism! His name is Angel, and I think I've mentioned him before. He
is a Spanish schoolteacher, which is not a demographic with which
missionaries usually have success. (Usually almost all latins, cause
there's an unhealthy superstition that spaniards are too set in their
ways.) anyways, when we first met him, he started off by ranting about
how the world is going crazy and the family is being destroyed etc.
etc. So we gave him a family proclamation, and he loved it!! Most
people are really outwardly ok with what that proclamation says, but
on the inside they think other things. They also throw the whole thing
away when you start up with the story of a 14 year old boy and gold
plates and angels.

Meanwhile - back to Angel. He read that, he's at alma 20ish in the
Book of Mormon, and he's really ready for baptism! We had some doubts,
and there's no need to detail why, but I was really unsure what the
Lord wanted from us - is he ready, is he not.... So we taught him what
he needed, had a couple firm lessons, and then came the interview.
He's my investigator, so I didn't do the interview, the zone leader
did. And we had a short chat and then I offered a prayer and left. I
sat down at the church computer with a mind to do some family history
or look up conference talks or something. But before I could, I had a
powerful impression to pray that elder Saltzman could discern angel's
issues and carry out the interview. So I prayed, and I got up to get a
drink, and I felt another strong impression to kneel down there in the
office and pray. When I was finished, I got up and got my drink of
water. And when I came back, I felt a THIRD strong impression to get
on my knees and pray. When I was finished, the interview was over.
Ángel is quitE a chatterbox when it comes to this sorta thing (the
first interview took 1 hour and 45 minutes) so I was surprised. And
everything went great! I am confident that elder Saltzman had the
spirit of discernment and so now we have no doubts about his
worthiness.


More to come! The church is true, the book is blue, and Moroni stands
on a ball - Mateo
Love, Elder Stew.

Week 46 - June 22 - Life is Good and I'm not getting fat yet

Yesterday, the sun didn´t go down until about 10.30. The longest day of 2015 proved to be a great one! I guess it´s all downhill from here . . . The next time a day is that long, I´ll have a month left in the mission! That´s scary. 

We had a great week. My favorite experience came during an intercambio. Like an idiot, I put my companion and Elder Porritt back on the bus to Oviedo after making the switch... and then 20m later I realized I still had the Oviedo phone! No big deal, because when we planned the day before, we only had 1 lesson planned and the rest of the day just finding - contacting and door knocking. I told Elder Weiss something I don´t usually say. I said, "As you´re out doing finding, if you need a short break and you´re by a member´s house, stop by unannounced and ask if you can share a 10m message from the Book of Mormon, get a glass of water, and bounce. It will help them realize our work ethic and you´ll get your water. Kill two birds in one throw." 

So as I was sitting down in a lesson with Elder Saltzman in Gijon, my pocket started buzzing and I realized someone had texted me on that phone. And I looked, and it was Angel, wanting to meet that night! After silent cursing for being that dumb, I said a quick prayer that everything would work out all right and told Angel, yep 7 at the church sounds just fine! Then I called Mateo and an American Exchange student Steve and they both said, sure we can make it over there and resurrect our old teaching skills with an hour´s notice. In the meantime, I didn´t know that my companion needed that drink of water and had passed by Mateo´s parents´ house looking for that drink of water. They weren´t there, because Giacinto is in the hospital and Mateo´s mom was visiting. But then, (this is about 20m after I said my prayer in Gijón) my companion said he felt prompted to go look for them at the hospital, even thoug it was out of the way and wouldn´t help much with finding. They said... "but isn´t Mateo with you? He said he had a lesson at 7 at the church and it was a big emergency." So Elder Weiss ran as fast as he could to the church to help finish off the lesson, and everything went swimmingly. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father took the time to answer a forgetful missionary´s prayer! I know that it helped Angel a lot. 

I was struck this week by the need for an eternal perspective. One investigator has now gone for an entire 10 days without a sip of alchohol!! We are super excited for him. Since our efforts in the past haven´t done much we asked him what had changed. He told us that what we´ve been doing - reading the book of Mormon, teaching correct principles, and helping him apply the atonement - has helped a LOT. (I know it´s helped more than he thinks, but whatever.) But his secret this time is a pill - a pill he takes every morning at 9 oclock with his doctor who makes sure it actually gets swallowed. And that pill, he says, will kill him if he drinks alcohol that day. (Or if he doesn´t die, he´ll spend a couple painful days in the hospital getting his stomach pumped.) I know it sounds a little preachy, but - How different is it when we know and have the eternal perspective that what we do every day, if it´s not right, will kill us in the afterlife? I thought that our investigator´s sucess from the pill was great - and we´re excited to help him meet his baptismal date. But how much different would it be and how much more would he progress if he actually understood the plan of happiness and how this life is a chance to prepare to meet God?? I guess that´s my job.

Life is good and I´m not getting fat yet.

Love,

Elder Stew

Men can get nearer to the Lord, can have more of the spirit of conversion and conformity in their hearts, can have stronger testimonies, and can gain a better understanding of the doctrines of salvation through the Book of Mormon than they can through the Bible. … There will be more people saved in the kingdom of God--ten thousand times over--because of the Book of Mormon than there will be because of the Bible.”

Bruce R. McConkie, quoted by Pres. benson. 

I like this simple little poem: 

 All the water in the world 

 No matter how it tried 

 Could never sink the smallest ship 

 Unless it got inside. 

 All the evil of the world 

 And every kind of sin 

 Could never damn a human soul 

 Unless we let it in.

I know it might seem like I'm preaching to my family from across the ocean, but really I just find cool quotes and hit the share button. These maquinitas are pretty darn cool! I love you. 

Elder Stew. 

A member made this for me because of I'm not sure why.
The American flag because I love making jokes to my foreign companion
about how America is the promised land and showing him patriotic talks
given at conference.
The very complex picture of the temple because we gave her a temple prep class
The Asturian bagpipe for obvious reasons.
The "siblings forever" because a somebody else told her it was the
best way to say "hermanos para siempre" it's not, but whatever.
The words, "oh chacho" because it's something common I say thanks to
serving in the islands.

Anywho, that's pretty cool, right??

Week 45 - June 15 - Another week - and it was a good one.

Let Our Voices Be Heard

". . . Fighting the family makes sense to Satan. When he wants to disrupt the work of the Lord, he doesn’t poison the world’s peanut butter supply, thus bringing the Church’s missionary system to its collective knees. He doesn’t send a plague of laryngitis to afflict the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He doesn’t legislate against green Jell-O and casseroles. When evil wants to strike out and disrupt the essence of God’s work, it attacks the family." 

 - M. Russell Ballard. 

That's right. I'm writing this from an iPad right this very second.
The coolest things it can do is our new planner which is fast, easy,
and a time saver. But.... The church's lawyers are still working on
making it legal to store that kind of information on the cloud. So no
planner. We have a lot of restrictions for obvious reasons. So that
means that I have a $500 quadruple combination and general conference
talk e-reader. What's really fun is on that gospel library app I can
share things with people as a read them - so awesome quotes get saved
as drafts and then I send them out Mondays. It's only wifi capable, no
3G or anything. But if I get a wifi connection, I am allowed to read
my emails - just no responding until pday. So I can read your emails
every day now! It's kinda pain to write, so apologies in advance if
this letter is short. The hermanas and my companion (but less) are
addicted to their new toys. It's like the screen turns on and just
sucks in their soul - there's no getting them out. I made a personal
goal to not use it when there were any actual humans who needed my
attention, which isn't very hard because like I said the only cool
thing I can do is read conference talks - and dictate emails instead
of writing them.

We had interviews, and I'm pretty sure that will be the last time I
see pres. Jackson as my mission president. He is such a good man. He
has been a great example to me in his work ethic, priorities, and
desire to share the gospel. He just ... Knows. The new president and
his wife will get here July 1, and then we have transfers July 6.
We'll see what happens. After that, they're planning on doing a tour
of the whole mission, so I bet I see President Pack near the end of
July. He seems wonderful - President Jackson said they sold their
house so they could be mission president and wife.

We had a good week this week. We played the "password" game for fhe,
which turned out nice. It was new, and everyone got into it. We also
spent a lot of time teaching temple prep this week. It's technically
the ward's job, but no one was doing it so we did. We read through the
manuals, thinking we were going to have to be very careful to not
discuss the sacred things we don't discuss, but the whole thing was
straight out of preach my gospel! Just the plan of salvation, the
commandments (tithing, etc.) what the words "covenant" and "ordinance"
mean, what it means for something to be symbolic (ie wearing white at
a baptism, going completely under the water, etc) and then Come back
to the temple. It was just everything we usually teach, but on a
slightly higher level. Definitely a perfect job for the missionaries,
and I learned a lot about the temple in the process - and I didn't
even go in!

Well, that was it for this week. I love you!

Elder Stew

Stewart, Companion, President and Sister Jackson

Week 44 - June 8 - "A man convinced against his will remains his own opinion still"

Thursday this week, I did something crazy. Because my companion is so new, I end up planning most all of our activities. But, because Ipads are coming on Wednesday, we haven´t been able to get any more daily planners, even though we desperately needed them last transfer. So I plan our days, and my companion loyally writes it down in our one planner. My trainer had a planner and just didn´t use it, so it´s like history is repeating itself as the trainee learns about planning through being a secretary. Oh well. 

So on Wednesday I got a call that on Thursday I would need to go to the local Spanish government and complete part of the process to start legalizing myself. Insert mental groans because I remember what it took to get a summer job with American local government and this could only be 30 bajillion times worse. And as I looked at the plans, I realized that in one day I had planned the three most long, frustrating, and occasionally boring events missionaries do: 

9.00: Visit Government

10.00: Teach Jehovah´s Witnesses

11.30: Start Weekly Planning.

The only thing that makes me want to run out into the streets and contact like CRAZY (which is how I´ve started to respond to less-than-desireable activities) would if that were also high council sunday - Even in Spain those talks are dry. 

The government visit went just fine for a government visit, and weekly planning that day was actually really productive. But teaching the JWs.... The only reason we were there was to make sure they never came back to visit the member, we were worried that they were hurting her testimony. I was hoping it would just be a regular old lesson where we share a high number of bible verses (I usually don´t use the bible at all: It sets us apart and lets people know we´re NOT protestants. I feel like it´s in harmony with the teachings of President Benson). But about 5m into the lesson, they started bashing. HARD. It was all I could do to not laugh at the ridiculous spin they put on the scriptures and even harder not to resurrect the high-school-debate Stewart which would not have been a pretty sight. I could´ve (and did) win, but what good does that do? Like Captain Bob showed me in a book, "A man convinced against his will remains his own opinion still." We just testified and testified and testified and at the end, the JWs got up and left. Everything they told us and the scriptures they showed were almost the same as the beliefs in 2 Nefi 26-29 and Mormon 9. No more miracles! God doesn´t speak! Put away these foolish doctrines. I felt proud to stand and testify in the same place as Joseph Smith. I know that Holy Ghost can reveal me the truth, and I know that God knows. Afterwords we had an actual lesson with the member and she said "I don´t think I´ll let them come over anymore. I´ll tell that I´ll call them" (Which is what uninterested folks do to us ALL THE TIME haha). 

We also went to the Cathedral today for P-Day where I met the Cathollic saint of throat diseases. Most interesting part was the focus of all the art: The main altar wall had 23 wooden sculptures showing the most important parts of Christ´s life. And all of them focused on the mysitc, the unkowable - the uselss. There was a lot of emphasis on Christ´s suffering - and, in my opinion, not enough on his teachings or what the atonement meant. There are amazing ways to represent the Savior´s mission through art, and all they depicted for thousands of years was death and blood. Of those 23 "most important" images, four of them were obscure facts about Mary, 1 was unscriptural, 5 of them depicted gross suffering, and there was NOTHING about the resurrection. That´s not to rag on the Catholic church (I can find loads of Spaniards ready to do that). I just feel so bad for these people who lack so much when it comes to the knowledge of the MOST IMPORTANT PART of Christ´s mission - the Atonement. And what it can do for us. Makes our message change when I realize what it is that these people lack in their lives. Not one could care any less about modern prophets because they don´t like church organization. ALL of them fail to understand who Christ is and THAT is the knowledge that changes lives. I met one lady on the street who said, "I have enough faith. Why would I need any more? With the faith I have I´ll get to heaven." That makes me sad - but only sad enough to get back and start working. 

Love, Elder Stew

P.S. So as District Leader, it´s my job to organize and direct the meetings we have every wednesday. I had a really cool experience this week as we talked about time - I did some math on the board to boil down exactly how many hours we had to proclaim the gospel of Christ. And then we had a discussion about when to stop teaching those who don´t progress and when to continue, about the need for effective goals and plans, and then we read DC 60.13. What´s fun is I always turn it into a discussion, so we can take more notes and get more out of the meeting than if it were simply talks. (This is the part where I can brag about myself a little) Afterwords, Hermana Seegmiller called me and said, "That was one of the best District Meetings I ever had. Thanks." THAT WAS SO COOL!! 

Oviedo District

Patron Saint of Throat Diseases