Finishing Transfer 2 in Jardines

February 11, 2013

Hello, family!

I realized the other day that I have been with Elder Wing longer than with any other missionary! We´re just finishing up two 6-week transfers together. The next closest was Elder Correa, whom I spent 10 weeks with. It´s been a fun time!

We had a good week this week. We´ve started consistently reaching our goals in everything except getting investigators to church, (which the whole mission is struggling with). I´m not sure whether I´ll be staying here in Jardines or moving to a new area. President Carter informed us that there will not be many changes this transfer, but we´ll see! Part of me wants a change - a new companion, or a new area... but we´ll see what the Lord has in store for me.

I´ve been a little bit discouraged recently... it seems like none of the people we´re working with here are progressing to the point of baptism! Elder Wing and I have found more than 30 separate people/families in our two transfers here, who started investigating and eventually, for one reason or another, stopped. It´s tough to see investigators that were progressing stop progressing.

Last week, [one of our investigators] totally disappeared and wouldn´t answer us all week long. When we finally found him again, he was pretty bad - the light was gone from his eyes and his hope that he could change had disappeared. But, we worked with him a bit more, and after he started praying and reading in the Book of Mormon again he got better - back to how he was before. But for some reason, he wasn´t in his house yesterday when we went to pick him up for church. Discouraging! I know I need to have faith, and patience... I can take the example of Ammon and his brothers here. They endured disappointment and discouragement with faith, and the Lord gave them success. The important part is to keep having faith and working hard, and to know that eventually someone will change their life for the better. And apart from that, it´s good to know that my friends and family at home are praying for our investigators, and for us. So, thanks!

We did however, have some good parts of last week. A lady who at first seemed like shewouldn´t progress has been progressing - she´s feeling the Spirit in our lessons and that is giving her what she needs to continue to listen to us. She came to church for the first time yesterday, and I think she liked it. But it was quite a large step that she came to church, and a great milestone! I was very glad that she came.

And, maybe that´s it for today! On Tuesday night I´ll find out whether Elder Wing and I are staying or leaving, so... wish me luck, whatever next transfer holds! Thanks for your letters! It´s great to hear from you.

Love you all so much! Mom, give my love to Grandma, and to Scott! And tell Delbert I say hello and send him some warm Argentina air.

Take care!
Elder Stockton

February 18, 2013

Hello, family! The electricity just cut in the cyber that I am writing from, and the computers are running on backup. I´m not sure whether I´ll be able to finish, so I´ll send this along while I´m sure I can.
 

How was your week?

As Mom & Dad have seen (how do you know? Is the transfer video on the blog?), I will be remaining here in Jardines for at least one more transfer (and probably more than one)! The other exciting news is, I´m training!

At the transfer meeting -- reuniting with Elder Bower,
who is also from Tucson North Stake

A little red box around Andrew's face ...
only a Mom would search that crowd!

[Andrew's time with Elder Wing has ended. They worked very hard together, and saw some success.] We developed a very good friendship. He´s a good guy and I thoroughly enjoyed our time together.

But now... I´M TRAINING! Or, about to be! At this moment I´m with a mini-missionary. A mini-missionary is a local member who decides to help out by being a missionary for a transfer. This helps fill some empty spots where missionaries are still waiting for their visas in other countries. As it turns out, the mini-missionary that I am serving with was baptized... three months ago! Woah! (By a friend of mine, coincidentally: Elder Hutchings, who I arrived with.) So he´s still a very new member. But despite being a new member, this is his THIRD time serving a mini-mission. Wow!

He´s really funny. His name is Hermano Medina. He´s 24 years old. He is studying to be an English teacher, and is a really advanced speaker. But the fun thing is this - In Argentina, they teach British English, so he speaks with a British accent. He´s a fun guy. And, he teaches really well! I´m picking up some good techniques from him. It´s nice to be with an Argentine companion again. I could tranquilamente spend the rest of the transfer with Hno Medina and be perfectly happy. He gave a standout talk in Sacrament meeting this week. 

This week, let´s see...
We found lots of good people to teach! We taught a lady named Julia, who committed to be baptized and to turn her life around after we taught her that God has a plan for our happiness. Let´s hope something comes of it!

The ward had a talent show. I played ´Into the West´ and my companion did stand-up comedy, which was awesome!

And, other fun things happened, but they´re hinting at us that we should leave, because the power´s cut and the computers are running on backup. So... I´m glad to hear that you´re all doing well, and I´ll look forward to hearing from you next week! Love you all!

Elder Stockton

Oh, yes - one more experience I wanted to write about.

I got sick on Saturday - just a cold, I think, but I was sick and had a stuffy nose and not very much energy. We still went to work like normal, and I hoped I would get over it quickly. The next day after church, we ate with Elder Decker and Elder Sampson in their house. Before eating, I went to their room and said a quick prayer, asking God to help me feel better so that I could work hard. I felt the prompting that God had provided a way to help me be healed - if I want God´s help I should ask for a Priesthood blessing. So I did. After lunch Elders Sampson and Decker gave me a blessing. Elder Decker blessed me that I my energy would come back to me and that I would be able to serve the Lord with all my strength. As he blessed me, I felt my strength come back to me. I didn´t feel sick anymore! And very soon after, my stuffy nose unstuffed and never got stuffy after that. I was able to go out yesterday and work until the end. And, today I feel back to normal.

Another testimony to me that God approves of my work here, and that He wants me to be at 100%. I´m grateful for Priesthood blessings!

Bye! Love you!

And from Sister Carter's Mission blog:

Never even knew Andrew had a RAYA!

The RAYA!

Pronounced rah-jjjjjjjjjjjjaaaaahhhhh

When we arrived in the mission, there was a tradition that the missionaries wear a raya in their hair. The word actually means streak, line or stripe, but in this case it used to designate a part in their hair.

The white handbook for elders reads:

Hair. Keep your hair relatively short (not clipped too close) and evenly tapered. Extreme or faddish styles—including spiked, permed, or bleached hair or a shaved
head—are not appropriate.

Presidente was pleased to carry on with the raya tradition. He has had the same hairstyle since he first had hair. (Nowadays, I have to be grateful that he still has hair to part.) The missionaries seem to enthusiastically embrace the raya. Certain missionaries have such a distinctive raya that they are known for it mission-wide. Not only are we the best mission in all the world … our missionaries have the best rayas, as well!

Pizza!

February 4, 2013

A little background info ... Ken recently spent some time transferring our old videos from camcorder to DVD, so for the few short years when we had an operating camcorder, we were able to revisit our "little" family and some wonderful times past. What amazing memories! We took a few screenshots and sent them to Andrew, along with some of our thoughts and feelings. It will be fun to share them with him in entirety later this year!

Hello, mein family!

It was nice to read about the birthday celebrations! Happy Birthday, Mom! Sounds like you all had a fun time! It was fun to be able to see some of the pictures you sent to me of us as little chilluns. (My hair doesn´t appear to have changed much in all this time.) A good gift idea, Dad! And I suppose I should say to both Mom and Dad, good foresight for taking those family videos. Interesting how our various personalities could be seen (or at least guessed at) ´from the crib´.

This week was a good week in Jardines. I don´t have much time left to write -- but I´ll touch briefly on a few subjects.

A few weeks back, we started reading the Book of Mormon as a mission. We read about 11 pages every morning, and we should finish in about 7 more weeks. During our reading, I found a great scripture that we´ve been using recently in our teaching.

It´s Mosiah 24, vs. 10-15. It explains how Alma and his people were in captivity to the Lamanites. They prayed to God for deliverance. But God didn´t deliver them from their enemies right at first - instead, He strengthened them so they were able to cheerfully bear their burdens. Then, in vs 16, He tells them that because of their patience He will deliver them out of bondage. We read that with our investigators, then made the connection, saying ´You, like the people in this story, are passing through hard times and carrying heavy burdens. And maybe God won´t immediately take away all your problems, but you can be sure that He will give you the strength you need to cheerfully bear the trials if you do your part.´

Another connection that can be made, which I just noticed, is that God helped them because they covenanted with Him - they were baptized. We can relate that to the investigator´s baptismal covenant: ´God will bless you with the strength you need to endure your trials as you covenant with Him and become one of His people.´ That would be good to use.

So I really am loving this reading of the Book of Mormon. I find myself eagerly awaiting personal study time, and I am disappointed on Tuesday and Sunday (when there is no personal study) not to be reading. It´s really great to have these stories.

Today we got permission to go to lunch as a district! The 6 of us (me, Elder Wing, Elder Sampson, Elder Decker, Elder Delgado, and Elder McBride) went to Pizza Libre - AKA All-You-Can-Eat Pizza. It´s not actually that expensive, and it was really good pizza. Basically, you get your plates and sit down, and a waiter comes around every few minutes with different types of pizza and anyone who wants it can take it. In a way it was kind of like musical chairs - all of the tomato and ham pizza got taken fast, leaving those who were slower in speaking up with the hot-dog-topped pizza. I ate egg pizza, onion pizza, pepper pizza, hot dog pizza, cheese pizza... strange herb pizza... it was good! And I didn´t even eat too much! So much the enjoyment. :-) A fun lunch. We have a really good district.

Elders Wing & Stockton - figuring out the menu

Bet the restaurant didn't make much of a profit that day!

More pictures from previous baptism:

Missionaries .... just doing their thing!

Got to go! Love you lots.

Elder Stockton

Wonderful Baptisms!

January 28, 2013

Hello, family! It was nice to read your emails today! It seems like you´re all doing marvelously! I also took a few minutes to review old photos that you all sent to me, which was fun! I think I´ll print a couple out.

Elder Wing and I got to enjoy some of ´the fruit´ of missionary work last Saturday when [a young man we've been teaching] got baptized. He´s a youth of 13 years whose Grandma is a member. The grandma recently re-activated herself in church, and he took interest in the church as well. He´s been slowly gaining a testimony and has decided to commit to continuing in God´s way. 

It was a wonderful baptism! Everything went smoothly, without any of the infamous last-minute difficulties which so often arise. (Although I did get quite a scare when I thought I had left the white baptism pants at home in the pench! It turned out my companion had them with him.)

[Another woman], one of the other elders´ investigators, was also baptized on Saturday. And they both came and were confirmed on Sunday. Marvelous! I´ll send pictures if I can... but all of the good pictures are on Elder Wing´s camera, but he can´t load those pictures onto the computer. So, later on the pictures will arrive in their fullness.

On Sunday, we talked to this young man and his grandmother. It made me happy to see how happy they both were - the Grandma was happy because everything seemed to be going well in life, and because her grandson had decided to join her in the church. 

He told us that while he was under the water, he felt like time was stopped, and he didn´t want to come back up. 

I love watching baptisms.

Sunday meeting was good, with me playing a couple parts in the program: The bishopric asked me to give a talk when the assigned speaker fell through, I played the piano as the accompanist, and we 4 missionaries had a special musical number. The musical number was Lead Kindly Light (well, Divina Luz), which we actually prepared for the baptism but sang again in sacrament meeting. It was a good meeting. Elder Sampson and Elder Decker had some good investigators there.

So - Elder Wing and I are doing well. This week we´re almost starting over looking for new investigators, because most of the ones we were working with stopped progressing due to a lack of contact. (They went out of town, or weren´t at home, etc.) The process begins anew!

[One of our investigators] is having trouble quitting smoking - prayers for him would be appreciated!

That´s all I´ve got for today. I love you so much, and I love reading your emails! Take care, and I hope you have a great week.
Elder Stockton

more ... January in Jardines

January 15, 2013

Ahh... hello!

I´m in Ramos Mejía (the offices) for P-day today - the last day (hopefully) of waiting in lines and going back and forth to get my visa stuff renewed. I am now legal to stay here for another year! Hurrah! Kind of makes P-day less restful, but, what can you do? Fun to spend some time with other missionaries, though!

Well, we have had an incredible week here in Jardines, with some really cool experiences.

God used us as instruments to help His children, in answer to their prayers, and we didn´t even know it. It is clear to me that God directs us. This is really His work!

[Consequently, one of our investigators had a change of heart.] Whereas beforehand he listened, but not showing an incredible amount of interest, he has now become involved and has turned into a great investigator. He came to church on Sunday and wants to set his life in order so he can be right with God. Ha ha! Awesome!

We had other good experiences this week, but I´ll just give these ones a couple sentences each:

-The wife in an investigator couple prayed about the Book of Mormon, and although she didn´t want to accept that it was true at first, she told God she would follow what He told her. Then she felt the Spirit powerfully testify to her, and her attitude towards the Church totally changed.
-One investigator, previously a drug addict, is undergoing an incredible change as he completes OLA. He finds it easier to pray when beforehand when it was hard for him, he´s gaining a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon, and he wants to leave behind the last of his vices and be the person God wants him to be. He has a light in his eyes that was not there when we met him. I LOVE that change!!

And, yep! We´re plugging along here. Things are going well. Some really great missionaries went home recently, including Elder Foster, who took me tracting in the rain in Catán on my first day in Argentina. He´s a missionary legend. On the last Saturday of his mission, he baptized 12 people - and that just reflects his whole mission. He´s that kind of guy! He also loves and is the friend of all the other missionaries. I´d like to be a little more like him. :-)

I´ve got to get going now and do some shopping for this week, but thanks for your letters! I love you all so much! And good luck in the cold, heh heh. If I could open up a portal and send you some warm Argentine air, I would do it!

Much love!
Elder Stockton

January 15, 2013

How are you doing!? I enjoyed the pictures Dad sent me - those looked like some pretty monstrous avocados! Let´s hope they do well in our fertile AZ soil! I also particularly enjoyed thinking about those homemade fajitas... mmmm. Sets the mouth a-waterin´.

We have also had a good week here in Jardines. One of our investigators is really progressing. His testimony is very firm that this is the true church of Jesus Christ. He came to church this week and told us that he´s liking it more every time. The members are also starting to fellowship him, and I´m sure that´s making a big difference. He is trying to quit smoking, which I´m sure is very difficult. But he´s progressing just fine.

On Saturday we went to the baptism of one of Elder Sampson and Elder Decker´s investigators. When we informed [our investigator] about the baptism a few days earlier, his eyes lit up and he asked, ´Can I go?´ So we all went together to the baptism, and he loved it. He said that as he watched [the baptism], he imagined himself in her place and it filled him up with a good feeling. He also said that (I´m not really sure how to translate this well) her smile when she came up out of the water stayed engraved upon his mind. We all felt a good spirit as we left, and the next day we saw her confirmed. So, that was a nice experience for all of us. I love to see baptisms. It does me good to see someone who has made the commitment to change their life and to live in the Lord´s way. I want to help other people to that point.

I had 2nd Christmas last week after receiving Krista´s Christmas package! That was fun. And, since then, my companion and I have been singing Lower Lights music to each other as we go about the day. (Go down, Moses!)

The night before I left for the MTC, Mom hid a bunch of little notes in my suitcase - inspirational quotes, notes of support, etc. One of these, which I have reviewed quite a few times since then, says Service Softens Hearts, and tells about how Ammon was able to gain access to King Lamoni´s heart because of how he served him - not just because he was a powerful teacher. It then highlights the importance of serving others so that they can feel our love (and God´s love) for them. Well, this week we had an experience that relates to that, and involves one of our old investigators, José. 

For various reasons, we hadn´t been able to teach a real, spiritual lesson to José for about two weeks, and as a result of this, when we were finally able to teach him again he had become a little less open to our teaching. In that time he had talked to other churches and become aware of the many different doctrines and churches that there are, and didn´t accept what we taught as readily as before. It was like he had lost his belief that anyone knows which church is really the true church. So, that was disappointing - he had stopped progressing. 

Then, this last week, we happened to run into him in the street and he told us he was moving - just a few blocks down from where he was before - and that he was about to go start taking his things over to the new house. Because we didn´t have a fixed appointment at that time, we offered to go help him, and we helped him move to his new house. (Not as easy as in the US, since instead of a U-Haul we had only a small handcart to get all of his possessions from one place to the other. Fortunately, he didn´t have all that much stuff and it was only large items that we were moving.) He thanked us, and we carried on. We went to his house a few days later and found that he was working to attach some furniture to the wall, so we pitched in and helped him get it done a lot faster than he could have done it by himself. 

Because of those two acts of service, he opened up to us once again and we were able to apply the Gospel to help him know how to resolve his problems. He listened to us, and he trusted our counsel once again. When we left, we told him we´re always available if he needs help, and he said, ´Yes... I know.´ Like mom said - service does soften hearts. And it was great that God put us in just the place we needed to be both times so that we were there when he needed help.

Alright, that´s all I´ve got today! We´re going to go shopping now and then do some fun P.day apartment cleaning! Yee-ha. 

Take care! I love you all so much! Have a great week.

Hugs, and a kiss on the cheek for Mom and sisters,
Elder Andrew Stockton

Photos:

  Second Christmas!

Service in Jardines: