Letter 40

March 19, 2012

It’s been a pretty great week here in Donna! Unfortunately, I will be getting a new companion again! haha Elder Leiva is trading spots with Elder Rightmier in Edinburg. E. Rightmier just had surgery on his knee and he's in a bike area... so he can’t do any work. So they're sending him here to take it easy with me in the car (the Ford Fusion GT). We just barely found out yesterday right before church and E. Leiva leaves today at 1:30. haha it was pretty crazy... BUT ANYWAY.... E. Leiva and I have been blessed with a lot of success this week! As a zone we have all been praying to find families to teach and baptize, and Elder Leiva and I have been specifically praying to find a family of 4. Last Monday we set 4 BD's with a family, who are friends of a member family. They came to church this Sunday and loved it! Its a mom and her 3 daughters (12,10,8) and then there's little Juanito, but he's only 7... boooo.. too bad. They had
been taught once before by Elder Strong (one of the Elder's that died) at their member friends house, and they love the missionaries. Our first lesson we ended up doing 4 tea bag lessons (an object lesson that contains fire and tea bags)! At the end we asked them, "Who wants to come to church this Sunday?" They all said, "YEAH!!! WE DO!!" haha It was awesome. Oh. And it’s in Spanish. Roxanne (PM) just got interviewed yesterday and is all set to be
baptized next Sunday. She was kinda bummed when she found out Elder Leiva couldn’t baptize her now because he's leaving, but she'll be ok. She's great. She used to struggle reading her scriptures and understanding it all, so E. Leiva and I gave her a highlighter and had a lesson just to read the BOM. We read Lehi's dream and really broke it down simply for her and we highlighted things along the way. It was awesome to see the change in her after that lesson. Everything just clicked! From now on I'm going to give my investigators highlighters and read 2 Nephi 32:3. No more snacking! FEAST! We're still waiting on the letter from the First Presidency for Jesse and Krystal, but they're still holding on strong. Yesterday they came to a missionary fireside at the church and Jesse even said the closing prayer! Then after we went to their house and had a "FEAST upon the words of Christ" lesson and studied how testimonies are grown in Alma 32. It was a really powerful lesson. Also, yesterday Elder Leiva and I received a referral from a member. One of his friends from work came to church and really enjoyed it. She said she was coming next week for sure. We'll probably be seeing her on Saturday. We had our Zone Conference this week and it was focused on a talk given by Elder Bednar called Becoming a Preach My Gospel Missionary. He gave it while I was in the MTC so it was really awesome to hear it again. Man I really didn’t know anything about missionary work when I was in the MTC. SO that was really good for me to hear again. I have been reading it all this week.

I have this new hair gel that smells like Skittles and it is THE best thing in the world. My hair looks great AND smells great. What more could you ask for?! There is also a cabbage patch in our area that smells terrible... which is a testimony to me that there really must needs be an opposition in all things haha.

I think it would be best for you to send the package to the mission office and I can pick it up there. Did Dad get my line of authority? I’m super curious to see it. But that’s awesome that your sending England Candy!! I miss that stuff! Yay! I'm glad you both got home safe and you still could stay awake long enough to write me. LOVE YOUUUUUU! I'm loving being a senior companion. It’s tough though because I have to make a lot of decisions and you all know how great I am at doing that! But there has been a lot of growth. I am trying a lot harder to be obedient and trying to help our investigators progress. It truly is a humbling experience. Well that’s pretty much it this week. I’m pretty sure I didn’t answer all your questions but I feel like I did a good job haha. Have a great week! LOVE YOUUUU!

-Elder Stewart