Letter 56

July 30, 2012

Hola Todos!

Hahaha you don’t need to make your vacation sound lame just to make me happy! I'm glad you had a great time! I was totally kidding in my last email... gee wiz....

Yes mom I know the Olympics are going on. I'm not dead... haha we actually went to go give a less active member a blessing the other day and sand volleyball was on. E. Montiel was swooning because volleyball is his favorite sport. Needless to say we got out of there pretty quick! haha but yeah Shayla's uncle IS Jake Gibb and that’s probably why she's there... LUCKY! haha

I didn’t recieve any letters this week from you.... but they'll probably get here soon. Those darn roaches are going to die!! haha President Trayner said that we should keep our eyes out for a new apartment, but the problem is... we're in the middle of nowhere and there are no apartments! So I guess we'll just have to deal with the roaches and one shower for us four men! I hope that BORAX concoction works! As for a package... just some pictures of the family trip, maybe like a letter from Chase and Austin... (yeah right hahaha), umm... oatmeal cookies, and a new card for my camera (my other one is almost filled) OH and I need some new shirts... like 2 short sleeve. Other than that I can’t think of anything. I don’t need a puppy because there is absolutely ZERO animal control down here so the dogs just run wild making puppies where ever they please! I have plenty.
I'm sorry if in my other letters I sound like I've been getting down on myself. Haha don’t be worried! I just know that I need to be doing more. I need to focus more on the people and less on myself. I think that I look around and ask myself why I'm not having more "success" and I forget that the reason I'm here is to do what Heavenly Father wants me to do. If I can say that I'm doing that then I am successful. I don’t care about baptisms anymore, I just want to do what He wants me to do. And I know that I'll be happy. I gotta work though haha. When missionaries work they’re happy. So I'm going to work my butt off this week!

This week we had Interviews with President Tryaner. What a guy! I love him so darn much. I received a lot of personal revelation during the trainings and the interview. President really helped me to see that I had a lot of potential and told me some aread that I could improve on. He told me we wants to be a consistent missionary so he can trust me to be a leader in the coming months. I realized that I really need to be more consistent. I'm going to make this transfer the best I can. I know it will require a lot of effort, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes. I have been kind of ungrateful for things that I've learned in the past. But I will try to utilize all of the things that I've learned. During my planner check Sister Trayner gave me some tips on how I can track my weekly progress I can know what it is I can do to improve. So I will be doing that for the rest of my mission and hopefully consistently get better.

This week was pretty good. Looking back on the things Elder Montiel and I accomplished I am pleased with our efforts in some areas, but I also found some others that we can work on. I was looking at the numbers and we did really well with our referrals and New Investigators, but then only 1 of those 7 new investigators accepted a baptismal date. So Elder Montiel and I discussed what we need to be doing to have people commit to be baptized. We found that both of us had been struggling to find the investigators' need in the first moments, so we would just teach a lesson that didn’t really apply to them. We had a comp study with Elder Schull and he told us that the Atonement applies to every need. He said, "when in doubt Atonement it out" haha. Also we need to be sure that every investigator that we are finding really is worth our time and not just "decoys" that the adversary sends our way to waste our time. This week Elder Montiel and I are going to be separating the wheat from the tares. haha.

We received one pretty solid referral this week from Presidente Villegas our Branch President. His cousin, Maribel, is a really amazing woman that has gone through some rough times. She's willing to act and change to receive the blessings of Heavenly Father. She had a family emergency this weekend and had to go to McAllen so she couldn’t come to church, but this week we'll help her get back on track.

We also tracted into a pretty cool part-member family that met with the missionaries about a year ago. The wife was planning on being baptized but her parents discouraged her and she dropped. We're having a lesson with her today so we'll see how that goes.

Well I better close for this week. Les amo muchisimo y espero que tegan una hermosa semana! Que Dios les bendiga!

-Elder Jordan Stewart