Week 57 - Life is good - Good Comp, Great Bishop, Good Investigator, Great Mission President's wife

t´s been a great week! 

I gotta start out with this - Obispo. He just gets better and better. We have an excellent relationship with him, and twice this week he woke us up with text messages saying, "Buenos dias, campeones" and "Animo con el día". It´s good to know that Obispo will back us up, because he´s such a huge part of the ward. Also it´s good to have him around because the hermanas seem to be at our throats these last couple days. More on that if it becomes necessary. I´m doing my best to be a good leader, but it´s tough work. Seriously exhausting some days. 

This week we had an interesting lesson with a man named Jesus. He´s an old spaniard and, like many, makes agonizingly slow progress. He faithfully reads and prays and comes to FHE, but getting him to change 30-year old habits is like hammering nails with a pumpkin. (Joseph Smith made a smiliar comparison, and I thought it was great.) The other day we spent an hour teaching about prayer. Firstly, I had a GREAT experience testifying about this. I´m haven´t always been the best pray-er, and I never seem to get answers to my prayers like anyone else I read about or meet. But, as we taught the lesson, I really felt the spirit and need for constantly improving our personal prayers from one phrase from a talk. "If you were to record your personal prayers, what would they say about your relationship with your Father?" I thought about that. The whole purpose of life is to "know the only true God and Jesus Christ", and we do that through prayer. We realized Jesus´ progression would be improved if he understood who God was a little better. 

Sometimes I´ve had it up to here with this guy, and this time topped everything. About halfway through the lesson, he goes, "About 3 months ago, I decided that an improvised prayer was too hard. So I wrote down a prayer with the most important things, and that´s what I always use. And that´s better than your way, because this way I hit everything and I don´t struggle for lack of words or ideas." We teach this lesson in English, which is really tough for me (I´ve actually started praying for the gift of tongues in my own language now..) and so sometimes my words are super fuerte cause Spanish is just different. I said, "Jesus, you are missing the entire point of prayer." And we explained how prayer is a conversation, and he goes, "You realize, in a conversation there´s two parts. Prayer is only one man talking." Oh, that comment made my day. It was a good lesson, but we´ll see if nos hizo caso. 

In other news, we had an EXCELLENT Zone Conference last week. Sister Pack is a true Southern woman, and she is just solid. I´ve decided to start calling her the "Presidenta" because she just knows what´s up. She gave a great message about being a "full-purpose missionary" - that is, understanding the BIG picture and working towards it. I´ve noticed that it´s easy to get bogged down in the details, but she was looking for us to step up. Oh, and then we finished off watching "Conocer a Los Mormones". Excellent.

We also had an intercambio, I was with Elder Peña de Ilo, Peru. (Ben´s mission). He´s a convert of two years now and he´s been on his mission for one of those. My favorite part was when we went to the Ecuadorian member´s house and as the conversation died down, I looked at Elder Peña and then the member and said, "So.... what do the Ecuadorians think of the Peruvians?" And he says, looking straight at Elder Peña, "Son las róbatierras. Y tambien, una vez intenté pedir un bocadillo de gallina, pero me dijeron que no se come carne peruana." And then the Chileans and Argentines in the group started in and we just had an excellent Latin American discussion. "Son todos contra Chile!" "¡¿Que va?! Son todos contra Peru!" Great dinner :)

The work is going great. I am so lucky to be here, and I´m happy with all my progression. What Elder Bednar said is true - A little more weight on the back makes for more spiritual traction. (Actually, we´re sharing that with Jesus tonight.) I´m learning a lot, BECAUSE OF (not despite) the stress of what imperfect, learning people sometimes do. My companion is such a great worker and we do great in all we do. We had really no period of adjusting beyond day 1 - we just fell into rythym and things are getting done. I love working with Elder Aussant. This work is true, and I am one lucky guy.

Elder Stew

Week 56 - August 31 - typing on an ipad - short letter

We usually use the computers, but short email because I'm on the iPad
today. I can't thumb peck  long emails on these things. They turn out
like that letter dad dictated to me.

As for the new comp, he is great. He is a great worker. He's from
Canada, which makes my fifth companion not from Utah. He's really
diligent, which is always wonderful to have - if there's anything
taxing, it's inconsistency. We're having a lot of success here, and
we're really trying to prep the area because we both get the feeling
some big changes are headed next transfer, and we want the area to be
stable.

We met lots of members last week, which was really fun. In this ward
is a stake patriarch, several born-in-the church RMs, and a former
Seventy. Very different from my last two branches. The bishop even
quoted PME to us the other day! We randomly met a woman who had been
less active for years thanks to her husband our first week here. And
Saturday, by a passing-by miracle, we found her again! She is going
through a really hard time and understood that the church could give
her and her kids some stability, because her life is all up in the air
right now as she's divorcing her husband. Instead of something I
usually do, Elder Aussant helped me to just listen a little more and
be a little less fuerte in the commitment invitation. And they
committed to come to church after a little, and they came! And we
followed obispo's excellent instructions and made them to sit up
front, far away from where the apostate excommunicated man sits. And
the great thing about this ward is that there was a strong YW group
who could help the young daughter feel welcome! What an excellent way
to start off. I see serious things happening!

More stuff occurred, but it seriously takes forever to type. Know
we're happy, healthy, working hard, building testimony, and declaring
repentance.

Elder Stew.

Week 55 - August 24 - Wow! A Real church building with a functioning Bishopric and Elder's Quorum

Is GREAT! It´s very different, but I love it. 

First big difference. THERE´S A REAL LIFE CHAPEL! I haven´t seen one of those for a year. Pictures coming. It´s one of the oldest church buildings in all of Spain, because apparently there was an American air base once upon a time. In Telde and Oviedo, we were in little bajos, and now there´s a parking lot and futbol field. In church on Sunday there were nearly 100 people! And a pianist who wasn´t a missionary and a bishopric! With functioning counselors! The only problem is to learn everyone´s name, and I´ve decided to give myself 3 more weeks to do it. On Sunday we filled up about 3/4 of the ward. And in Spain, the whole country takes the month of August off. Anything that isn´t a convenience store or a restaurant is closed - mechanics, post offices (half day), hardware stores, all non-essential things are shut down until the country wakes up again. This means that, come September, those empty seats are going to fill by themselves and I´ll have to learn everyone´s name again. 

On Sunday, the Bishop (more on him in a sec) got up and said, "We will now hear from the new missionaries in our ward. They can come up and introduce themselves now." With about 30seconds notice, I got up while the hermanas stay seated (I got chivalry comments later on:) What´s great about studying the gospel every day is that I had no lack of ammunition - it was just odd to be standing in front of what was a large group of people. I shared Moroni 10:4-5 and Ether 4:11 In my old areas, I could count endowed members on my two hands - here, we had a high priests group AND an Elders´ quorum. In my old areas, the Branch Presidents had 2 and 11 years of activity in the church. Here, there was an entire bishopric of men who had been serving in priesthood leadership positions for their entire lives. Not a good or a bad thing - just a wild change. 

The bishop here is a spiritual giant. Day 1 he looked at me and said, "Thank you for sharing such nice scriptures about the Book of Mormon - we needed that. Your first job here is to meet me. Why haven´t you done that yet?" I told him that he had stolen my chance, and we had all the missionaries in for a nice talk. He told us that he was determined to give us the most work we could possibly imagine - that it would be coming out of our ears (a saying I didn´t know translated into Spanish.) He promised meetings and references and my favorite part was that he said, "And if I don´t like your work or if I don´t like how prepared your investigators are, I´ll tell you. I once told a missionary in all seriousness, "Tengo ganas de verte ir." " He really expects a lot of us and expects to work a lot with us, which is nice because I do not like working independant of the ward one bit. He´s also really funny - Being Valenciano, he speaks spanish really fast and pretty clear, and working in the MTC, he tries to make himself very expressive in his gestures and language. I met him there and he was one of the first people I could understand. 

Well, that´s all for the week. Pictures coming if the Ipad decides to work.

Love, Elder Stew

Stewart with Elder Dussant

Stewart's a Grandpa

Week 54 - August 17 - Transfered to Alcala de Henares

Well the information came, and I was right :) Elder Weiss is taking
over Oviedo, and he'll be training a brand new missionary! He's been
in the mission for 4.5 months, all of them with me, and now he'll take
over the area. I'm super excited cause he is SO ready.

As for me, I will be headed to Alcalá de Henares, a pueblo in Madrid.
It's in the East zone, but I don't know much more than that (haven't
seen the map yet). All I know about my new companion is that he's
Canadian and he'll be going home the same time I am, but I don't know
him because he visa waited. In other excellent news, in Alcalá live
TWO senior couple missionaries. I am now three for three in areas with
senior couples. I've been told that they'll give us food, which can't
be a bad thing. I've also been assigned to be District Leader again,
which will be great - I have learned a lot in that position, and I'm
excited to keep helping out.

Our last week in Oviedo was great! We did our best to finish the
transfer strong, and the week ended, of course, with a ward party. It
was the fiesta del sombrero and we danced to a bunch of music I
couldn't recognize and Elder Weiss and I wore these big sombreros like
in the Three Amigos. We were the life of the party, even though we
didn't dance with any girls. (Rules, etc. They don't prohibit dancing
en sí, though) And while we were there, we had a really cool
experience. An awesome returned missionary, Taily, brought her younger
sister and her younger sister's boyfriend to the party. And I
introduced myself and my companion, and he was a cool kid. All we knew
at that time was that his disbelief in God had been affecting
negatively on the girl, and she was confused and wasn't sure about
meeting with us because of him. So Elder Weiss started chatting about
life and Switzerland and stuff and getting to know him - show that
we're real people, you know? Which is always important. But then,
Elder Weiss slowly and surely started directing the conversation
towards our missionary purpose.

I was in and out, because I was waiting for transfer info and I had to
call the district and talk to the APs about being district leader and
such, so all I heard were bits and pieces. Part the conversation went
something like this:

"Do you believe in God?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I believe in people - in myself and what I can do, in like how man's
spirit is unconquerable. I really only think about science." (Typical
teenager answer)
"So what do you think - why are we here? Where did we come from?"
"Well............"

And then Elder Weiss started from the beginning and explained exactly
where man's spirit comes from, why it is unconquerable and why we need
Christ to become perfected. From what I heard and what he told me
later, it was a discussion worthy of the scriptures as someone
previously hard in the mind started to wonder and then, at the end,
ask questions. I know it sounds cheesy, but I was so proud of him! I
hardly helped, and the guy gave Elder Weiss his number to meet later
this week! Which is good, cause we still suffer for the need to find
new folks to teach.

We had a couple other funny teaching experiences that go in similar
vein. A man stopped us late
at night when we were running late to get home and said,

"Do you believe in Dios Todopoderoso"
"Yes"
"Will he save us?"
"That depends on whether or not we want to be saved."

I was going to continue and explain what I meant by that, but then he
patted me on the back and said, "You answered correctly" and then he
disappeared around the corner. And then there was Enrique, who told us
all about the five elements, (air, fire, "la nada", earth and
watermelon), went on about how all religions worship God so why all
the fuss, and closed his crazy rant about science and molecules and
anti-facism with the following: "I guess all I'm really trying to get
at is that, if we're God's children and all, he should have a plan for
us to become like he is!!" After stunned silence that THAT was where
he was going, I explained that was the crux of our message, and he
gave us his number. If you wait long enough and listen with intent,
there's usually something about which you can testify. But still
pretty weird. Almost as weird as the lady who looked my companion in
the face as we were walking down the street and said, "Y si te
crucifico yo a ti, ¡¿Que!?" Like a water off a duck's back, he just
gave her a thumbs up and a big smile.

Stewart's new area NE of Madrid

Dress ups - Missionary Style

Week 53 - August 10 - Thoughts on ingrown toenails, being an Eagle Scout, and speaking spanish

This is most likely the last time I write from Oviedo - if patterns hold, I´ll be on a train headed to Madrid all day next Monday. I could try and postpone this til Sunday night, seeing as we have maquinas that let us write a little the day before P-day, but I´ll be packing and making phone calls to folks headed home. So may as well do it now. I´m grateful to have missed all the heat in Madrid, and the cold up here apparently - Old Asturian folks say that fall starts right around the middle of August, when the rains come back and the temperature drops again. 

Before I continue, this necessary story about my zone leader. He has been told to wear one flip flop and one church shoe thanks to the very stinky, pus-filled, red and problamatic ingrown toenail he has. He´s got a minor surgery planned for tomorrow to fix it. But anywho,on Sunday, he gave a talk inviting all the members to do more for the missionaries. And to prove his point that missionary life is hard and being on the streets 8hrs a day isn´t effective, he took his foot, lifted it to the side of the pulpit and showed everyone his nasty toe and sandal DURING SACRAMENT MEETING, saying "Yeah, life is hard and I have an ingrown toenail." I got this report from the sister missionaries in his area and I honestly have no idea what to do about it. In all forms, the branch just laughed because Elders can do no wrong in the members´ eyes. 

Yesterday, we had a ward BBQ. (pictures to come). And, nobody here was ever a boy scout so I got really trunky building a fire with 1 match and carefully getting the coals ready to cook some delicious meat. Seriously - the last time I built a fire was really, really long ago. And I still got it! Then we played some soccer as I cooked everyone´s meat and won some brownie points with the ward. Nobody here was ever a boy scout - completely foreign experiences. I said the following sentences at least 30 times (directed to mostly small children)...

"No, don´t throw plastic in the coals!" (actually, that was to a grown man)

"We can´t start a fire with wet leaves..."

"That stick came off a tree? Nope, no good." 

"No, fanning the fire will NOT blow it out."

"Do not throw anything in the fire unless I say so - we´re trying to cook here."

Other than that, we had an intercambio, taught some lessons in the streets, wandered around looking for people, and had excellent sacrament services. We met a man named Nacho who explained that the doctrine of the Catholic Trinity was such a mystery that we could never understand it - and that is a beautiful thing. (Funny note - I had read a talk THE DAY BEFORE saying that beauty and confusion are opposites :)

Oh, and I´ll close with this - Elder Weiss is getting a LOT better at Spanish. It´s been fun to see him grow over the past 4 1/2 months. The other day, I explained the whole origin of the book of mormon - large plates, small plates, zeniff, Words of Mormon, translation, scribing, 116 pages, the whole works (it took us about an hour - he had a lot of questions.) And then, yesterday, we went to a member´s home. And as I helped in the kitchen cleaning and cooking (more on that in the future) he sat on the couch and coherently explaioned for an entire hour what I had explained to him, without entirely losing the attention of his audience or needing to stop every 3 seconds for a translation. It´s fun to look back and see that sort of progress, especially in someone I had the privelege to train. 

Love,

Elder Stew

P.S. Someone stopped me in the grocery store this morning to ask where the Aluminum Foil is. I said I had no idea and went back to selecting my fruits, until I realized, turned around, and explained - "Señora, no trabajamos aquí."

One Year Anniversary

Week 52 - August 6 - The Work Goes On

We´re a little pressed for time this week, the haircut guy wanted to chitchat. Which would be great, but as soon as I started to ask him about the church he clammed up. We made a goal this week to speak up more about the gospel in quick, awkward situations - at the grocery store, at a stoplight, in the haircut place, and as I tried to fulfill my goal he just kinda stopped talking to me. Oh well, we´ll be back in a month to get haircuts again. 

It was a really great week! The zone leader got a debilitating ingrown toenail (he can´t even walk straight) and his companion was puking, so we´ve planned some intercambios to help them not get depressed. We´ll see how that goes. 

Our sacrament meeting yesterday was a total home run. We were able to participate in a baby blessing, which was really nice. The baby cried the whole meeting EXCEPT those 3 minutes when the ward mission leader gave the blessing. (The dad is a recent convert and we´re preparing him to get the Melchizidek Priesthood). The youth returned from FSY with testimonies on fire and brightened up the whole meeting with stories about how their prayers had been answered and they had felt the spirit - two very simple parts of the gospel that sometimes we forget about. it was great to hear their testimonies because it was exactly what our investigators needed - a simple testimony.

That´s always an interesting thought for me, teaching to what the investigators need. Because we come out here armed with the scriptures and a good knowledge of doctrine, with PME and knowing just how to explain why a restauration was necessary and not a reformation and why Adam had to fall and the five steps of repentance. But not all of that is always necessary. The other day, we had an interesting thing happen when we taught a recently converted family. We were planning on teaching about the priesthood - but as we sat down and started to chat we realized that they needed something much more simple, applicable, and that would help them immediately. So, we explained and invited them to have FHE every Monday night. A primer vista, I know some people might get all up in a fit because that´s not really something we can check off our teaching record etc. But, I know that in that moment, they needed us to help them re-evaluate their priorities and testify that modern prophets had consecrated monday night to help them with edifying their family. And I felt the spirit, so I know they´ll do it. (But in all forms, we´ll be back on Tuesday to make sure they actually did do it).

In other news, I had an intercambio last week with Elder Malolo (new missionary with 3 weeks in Spain, waited for a visa 3 months in Utah). And he wasn´t doing too hot, so I wanted to really pump him up with excitement. Wednesday morning we forgot to set the alarm... and woke up at 11. Our room is really dark. Boy oh boy we felt like sinners. And then we called the district to let them know the meeting was going to be at12:30. Incidentally enough, I had given an assignment to read a Neal A. Maxwell talk on patience hahahahahahaha. And as I called the district n a partail panic, I called Elder Saltzman the zone leader who was with my companion and he said, "well, uh... we just got up too." So there was sinning all around. But that´s ok, the work still goes on. Even if I screw up He doesn´t!

Elder Stew.

Oviedo at Night

Week 51 - July 27 - We both woke up puking

This week was another tough one. We didn´t have much stuff going on, and then we went to Zone Training on Thursday, which was a GREAT meeting. We went home, the sisters´ investigator didn´t show up to the baptismal interview I was supposed to give, and then we had a failed lesson or two and went home. 

AND THEN. Friday, we both woke up puking. That is the worst. An old missionary once told me that hell is sickness and a chapa - the need to be outside and the need to be in bed at the same time. Well, he was right. We went back to bed and I ministered to my worse-off companion while puking myself. I now have a LOT more respect for moms who help sick kids while being sick themselves because been there done that for a companion. It´s a good thing I remembered some stuff like "don´t drink milk" "drink gatorade" and "go to bed". We slept probably 30 hours in two days, which would be really disobedient if it hadn´t been necessary. 

We did make it out of the piso enough to teach the FHE lesson friday night - we talked about commandments, and the whole world LOVED my object lesson. I did the same thing you always do in beginning math classes when you start to talk about proofs - Write instructions to make a PB&J, and then laugh as the person quite literally follows the instructions without any outer thinking, and then deliberately tries to make things wrong. The instructions said, "Take out the bread slices" And Elder Weiss dumped out the entire bag of bread and said "uh oh." The end of the lesson was that, just like only consistent and specific and detailed instructions will get us the same PB&J every time, only consistent and specific and detailed commandments will help us change the way we want. The whole "Be a good person" that the world thinks Jesus taught does me just as much good as as  "Make a PB&J" because they both forget the important "How?" I stole the spiritual part from an Elder Maxwell quote. 

There wasn´t much more that happened this week, pretty tranqilo and then we got sick and then we tried to heal ourselves with various random things from home and members. And then my companion got a big ol package of Swiss chocolate that puts hershey´s to shame (except the significant lack of Reese´s) Needless to say, we´re still on the mend. But life is good and the gospel is still true - I asked my companion what sort of sinning we did to bring the wrath of God down upon us, but he said - "No. God is testing us, like Job. We need to have a good attitude and do what we can." Which is pretty darn correct.

Elder Stew