Quite the Week

    Hello Family!  Well, as you can see from the title of my email, this really has been quite the week.  But it sure did make for some good stories, so here I go!

     First things first, I didn´t tell you last week because I didn´t want to scare you guys, but we got robbed last Thursday.  A bunch of our stuff was missing, the biggest thing being a USB and a speaker that I had bought to listen to church music.   We wanted to try and find out who had done it without getting a bunch of people involved.  We honestly had no idea who did it, until this Saturday. 

     Also, the miracle family that I told you guys about a couple weeks back, well, the dad just died this week...  We knew he was in the hospital for something, but we didn´t know that it was so serious!  So yeah, one of our investigators passed away this week...  and we don´t really know what to think about it!

      It seems like Satan is really working in Pancá, and now it is our turn to do our work.  We know that these things happen, and we are trying to see it in a good light.  With the family that stole our stuff, it seems like this would be a really good opportunity for us to talk about repentance, and how one of the first steps to repentance is baptism.  So you never know, it could turn out good for us!  And with the family where the dad died, we can help them get their affairs in order to gain their confidence, and then talk about the Plan of Salvation, and tell them that they have the chance to see him again as part of their family.  So even though some things happen, I am always trying to see the best out of it, and see what I can make of it!

     On a happier note, this month is going to be the month with the most baptisms for President Bautista, which is about a year and a half´s worth of time!  I don´t know the exact number, but hey, that is a really good thing!  Even though I didn´t contribute to it, as I would have liked, it is still way cool to see that the work of the Lord is going forward!  I love you all, and thank you for your support!  Until Next Time!

     - Elder Stuart 

     P.S. The scripture for this week is Alma 37:37.  We should always have the Lord with us, in our thoughts and actions.  

An Interesting Week

     Hello Family!  Hope you all have been doing great, because I know that I have!  I just have to tell you in advance though, this week was pretty weird.  A lot of good things happened, but a lot of weird things happened too..  So I´ll just start and let you guys know!

     I have to begin by telling you about the weirdest lesson I probably have had yet.  So this family that we are visiting, the dad is an active member, the mom is a less active who hasn´t come to church for years, and the kids aren´t members.  We have been working with them to get them active and help them come back to church, so that we can get the kids baptized, which could be five baptisms.  It has been hard, but we definitely have made some progress!  This lesson, we decided to try and extend an invitation for baptism for the kids.  So we began talking about baptism and how it is the only way that we can make it to the Kingdom of Heaven. (John 3:5)  We bore super powerful testimonies about baptism, and then the big question came.  We started to ask the kids if they would commit to being baptized, and it went amazingly!  The first two kids that we asked agreed, but as we were asking the third kid, the dad interuppted and said that maybe they weren´t ready!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME???  He should be super excited that his kids are agreeing to it!  We explained to him that we would help them get ready, and we will be with them every step of the way, and that helped him out a lot.  Eventually, we got every single kid to agree to be baptized!  Woo Hoo!  But, the lesson wasn´t over yet.  We asked the mom if she would like to be in heaven with her family forever. She started to explain to us that there was just one God, so it didn´t matter what we did, as long as we believed in God.  She dropped a bomb on us and told us that she might start going to another church...  So yeah.  DUring the lesson, we got 5 baptismal dates, but just about lost a less active member...  We are going to help her out, but seriously, the whole last part of the lesson just felt so weird!

     We also have another family that is really positive, the "miracle family" as we call them.  It is the family of the man I was telling you about last week.  They live about 1 1/2 hours away, so we didn´t get much time to go and visit them, but they seem way positive, and we might be able to put some baptismal dates with them this week!  How exciting that everything is picking up here!  I love it!

     I did divisions with our Zone Leaders on Tuesday this week, and I went with Elder Schmidt.  We had a member come with us to go teach a lesson.  His name is Iffy, and he is from Africa, and totally looks the part!  He travels the world learning languages, and right now he is working on Spanish.  He knows two african dialects, English, French, and now Spanish.  But yeah, we went with him, and I couldn´t imagine how funny it must look for the people in Momos:  Two Gringos and an African walking down with a bunch of Latinos in the middle of Guatemala.  I just had to laugh about it!  

      I am really glad that things are picking up here, even though I might be leaving soon.  (Oh by the way, I should tell you that this change has been extended by a week to accomadate all the new missionaries that are coming in.  So I still have two weeks left in this change.)  After 6 months in Pancá (Holy Cow!) I´m pretty sure that I will be leaving.  But it has been really good to see things picking up here!  I love this work, and I always will!  THank you all for your support always, and I will talk to you all next week!  Until Next Time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S. Alma 5:26.  We should always be ready to "feel so now" about the gospel.  If we have had a change of heart, and know for a surety that this church is true, we should always remember it and always feel it in our hearts.  If you can, also look up Elder Cook´s talk from this last General Conference!