Elder Andrew Stockton: 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.