Sunday, December 15, 2013

Good Start for December

Hello Family!  How y´all doin? (That one´s for you Matt)  Hope you all are feeling the Christmas Spirit!  And some of you are gonna have a really white Chirstmas from what I hear!  Well, not here in the Land of the Eternal Spring!  Although the weather here´s not that great nowadays.  It´s just cold, without the snow.  Joy.  But what can you do, right?  Right.

     After a bunch of time together, I´m finally saying goodbye to Elder Calero.  He´s been a really good comp, one of my favorites.  He´s really chill, and has a good heart.  He just needs a push here and there to get going, but when he does, he´s awesome.  It´s been really fun with him, but I´m excited to see who I´m going to be with for the next little while tomorrow!

     (Just a side note, if you don´t know yet.  This change was changed to only have four weeks, because if it was normal, changes would have been on Chirstmas Eve, which would´ve sucked for everyone.  So they made some switches, and this next change is going to have eight weeks to make up for the lost two weeks.  Just so you know.)

     We had an awesome week this week.  It all came together on Saturday, where we had a BAPTISM of a daughter of a family we recently reactivated.  Her name was Hanny.  It was really simple, they didn´t want very many people at the service, which we respected.  But their 16 year old daughter who still hasn´t come back to church yet came, so that was way special.  It was simple and sweet.  There really is nothing like a baptismal service to get your spirits up again.

     Something really cool real quick.  We had a priest that we know baptize Hanny just as an afterthought, because we figured that would be better for him to do it and not us.  We didn´t really think much of it until Sunday, where he bore his testimony in Sacrament Meeting.  At the end he said, "I also am very grateful to my Heavenly Father for the chance I had to baptize Hanny yesterday.  I will be forever grateful to the Missionaries for this opportunity they gave me."  When he said that last part, he looked right at me.  I just felt so good inside, and the scripture of "small things make great things" came to mind.  I thought it was just an afterthought, but it was really a prompting from the Spirit to strengthen his testimony.  That was a really cool experience.

     We are still working with Wosvelí.  We are planning for his baptism this Saturday, the 14th of December.  He´s starting to get nervous, and in the last lesson we had he said he wants more preparation, but honestly he doesn´t need it.  He knows it´s something that he has to do, and we are going to make sure that he follows through with it.  His family is helping a lot, coming to the ward every week.  He just needs a little push, and he´s good.

     The Christmas Devotional was this Sunday.  The only thing was we got pushed back in a cita, and ended up seeing only the last half.  But it still gets me, especially the music.  (Christmas music is one of the only things that makes me baggy...)  It´s good to take a step back every once in a while and realize what the true meaning of Christmas is.  And we have the chance to devote all our time to help others realize that.

     Once again, we´ve seen some miracles by seeing some things go wrong only to lead us to a very good thing.  For example, we´ve been teaching this lady for a while now, and we had planned to not go anymore.  But one night in our planning sessions, we had the impression to go with her.  Well, we went, but she made up some lame excuse and said she didn´t have time.  So, when she shut the door, we decided to knock the next door because we had some extra time.  The man opened the door and was hesitant at first, but accepted to hear our message.  And he is basically the perfect example of someone who is prepared to accept this message.  (Not going to any church, but looking for one.  Knows a lot about the scriptures.  Etc.)  When we told him about the Restoration, he basically said "That makes sense."  A really neat experience.

     At this point I think I´m just rambling on.  So I´ll just stop now.  But I´m super stoked to be working here, because things are really starting to pick up.  I love being a missionary, and I´m scared about how fast time is going.  But I´ve just got to make the best of what I have left!  Until next time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S. 1 Peter 3:15

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