Hello, beloved fam´ly! Sounds like it´s been a great week there as well as here! I loved seeing all the pictures. Seeing Jacob´s juggling is making me wonder if I want to pick that up when I get home! (Although if I start learning to juggle I´m sure I´ll be doing quite a bit of ´picking up´, at least at first.) Looks like a great time. I hope you said hello to Grandma for me, and gave her my love.
I´m afraid I only have 20 minutes to write, so today´s letter will be a combination of journal entries that I can type of fast, and an extract from my letter to President this week.
I feel a great sense of accomplishment for this week. This was the first week that I really did everything I could, every day, to meet our goals. Like you told me to in our interview, I put pressure on myself, and that pressure motivated me to plan better and be more diligent during the day. This week I did not slack off once, and that´s why I take pride in it. I feel satisfied for having pushed myself beyond my previous level of diligence and effectiveness. It was a sacred week.
Elder Steffen (a zone leader, previously the secretary to President Carter) and I went on divisions this week, and that was awesome. He taught that I should pray every day for the opportunity to challenge someone to be baptized. I´ve been putting it into practice, with good results.
I am studying about ´the enabling power of the Atonement´, the help that Christ affords us to change our natures and BECOME better people. I saw that in action many times this past week - I prayed for desire to get up and talk to people instead of just sitting on the bus, and that desire and strength was given to me! And that is changing me. This week I experienced the grace of Christ, which came after all I could do - because despite our best efforts, on Sunday evening we were looking at barely missing our goals by a new investigator and a lesson with member. But I prayed for help, and because we had worked hard all week, the help came and we completed our goals, and had very good lessons.
June 1, 2013
I´m so tired!
...
Particularly rewarding today was a visit to M & K. (The last visit - M is already down in Bragado, and K heads down with [their daughter] on Wednesday.) We shared Alma 32 again, like at the beginning of our visits, but from a different perspective now. They told us how they have grown because of the Gospel. And the most gratifying was M´s testimony: he said that the biggest change that has happened in him is that now he has a purpose. A goal, a direction. HE knows what he´s working for. And, as he also said, he is becoming more capable at leading his family in the right way. So, that was awesome! (K said that the biggest change for her is the unity and the dialog they now enjoy, that beforehand they didn´t have.)
We passed by JH again today, first time in many weeks. He´s really good. We had an excellent lesson about keeping the Sabbath Day holy. He´s a great man, very dedicated... he´s looking for the truth, but he just hasn´t given our church a good enough try yet! I love him.
June 2, 2013
Today we had an excellent lesson with A´s father. He wants to be a better father. He wants to change his personality and replace hate and impatience with positive attributes, love and long-suffering. We shared a message about how Jesus Christ can change us as we have faith in Him an repent. We spoke of baptism, how it is a new beginning given to us by God. We invited him to prepare to be baptized on the 29 of June and he accepted. It was a very good lesson.
He also told me something that I had said last week, about fathers needing to work to provide for their children, had stayed with him and motivated him all week to get up and go to work even when he didn´t feel like it.
Today in church I was down because our investigators hadn´t come - I decided to change my attitude and asked for God´s help, and I felt better - I felt happy again and saw things in the larger perspective. I love my mission.
May 28, 2013
On the bus ride home, I did a contact; then I was our of contact cards so I sat down. Then I thought, ´instead of just sitting here I´ll do one contact more´, and I did. After that, feeling good for putting forth a little extra effort, I looked at our goals and realized we lacked one return appointment to meet our goal. We were almost home, and I knew everyone would be getting off the bus soon, but I thought, ´Just do it´, and I contact the last guy on the bus. He was really good and invited us to come back. So we made a return appointment and met our goal.
Oh, yeah! Elder Cook came and spoke to us, and shook each of our hands individually. It was a really good experience.
Well, that was this week. Lots of other good things happened, but no time to write them all.
I love you all so much and I hope you have a fantastic week! Enjoy the spring!
love,
Elder Stockton
June 10, 2013
Hello, family! You have my mouth watering with the descriptions of those peaches... and peach salsa. Mmmm! So many good things to be looked forward to. How are the many figs doing? Will they be producing when I get home? How many figs will we be getting?This is the last full week of the transfer... probably my last one in Jardines. I´ll start writing thank-you notes for people just in case, to be delivered if I leave.
We had a good week. It went really super fast, and it feels like I don´t have as many experiences to tell about this one. But at least the ones I do have to tell are good ones!
Well, the M & K chapter of my mission has officially ended. We woke up early on Tuesday to help K and her dad move all of their possessions into an old moving van, and the next day K [her daughter] followed their stuff ´home´ to Bragado. (And, finally, M came back in the early hours of Saturday to pick up Martin, their dog, thus completing the family. We´ll miss them, but they´re in good hands. We talked to Elder Blackburn, who is serving in Bragado, and he has everything taken care of. Seems like a pretty solid missionary. And Bragado had a baptism yesterday! So, good stuff! We´ll hope that before too long, we´ll be able to add an epilogue to their story - in which they get married, then baptized, sealed, and live happily ever after.
This week we taught M and J the word of wisdom; they accepted it and began making plans to leave behind some unhealthy habits. Their 3-year-old, is cute. He began our lesson by demanding that he get to say the opening prayer, and to our amazement, proceeded to do so in a very complete form. I think his parents liked it too. J is really seeing the difference happening in their family since they started living parts of the Gospel. M receives everything a little more hesitantly, but he´s still good. Yesterday we taught them about the law of chastity and invited them to be married. We had taught them about it before, but nothing came of it. We´ll see if this time they decide to go through with it! I sure hope so.
On the way back from a district meeting on Tuesday morning, I was sitting on the bus and really did not feel like doing anything. I was tired. But I decided to just do a few contacts... and the first lady I talked to on the bus happily informed us that her husband used to go to the Mormon church in Paraguay and he would love to talk to us! So, we went by, and they seem like a really good family! The dad went to church all the time in Paraguay when he was younger, and loved it, but he was never baptized. The mom is religious but doesn´t go to any church because she doesn´t know which one is correct. The daughter is young but has some very deep and hard questions of the soul that she wants answered. The son plays professional soccer. But they are very receptive, and look like they could progress.
We hadn´t been able to sit down and teach Y for about 2 weeks. She wasn´t answering her phone, she wouldn´t be there for appointments, and we were worried about her. Then this week we finally were able to find her and teach her again. She´s experiencing opposition from her husband and family for going to church. But she´s been reading the Book of Mormon every day with her son L and they´ve been praying together, and she told us she´s seen many blessings. She loves everything about the church and wants for her children to go there... but she also wants them to make their own decision. She also wants the support of her family, especially her husband. But they woke up Sunday morning and came to church in the rain, which is something that discourages many people from coming.
After church, we showed Y and L the baptismal font, and Y explained to her son what baptism means. We asked L, who is 11, whether he would like to be baptized (Y pointedly looked the other way so as not to influence his decision), and he said yes, he would. Mom gave her consent. We have to ask the dad. We had invited Y to prepare for baptism as well and she said she would love to. But, she has to get married first.
So, that´s the news this week! I hope you all have a really good week, with good weather, good food, peace and tranquility. And fun!
I love you all so much! Take care.
Elder Stockton
June 17, 2013
T-minus 2 days ´til transfers
Sounds like a pretty fun week at the Stockton house. I´d love to see Dad´s new website [kenstockton.com], but it´ll have to wait until I get home. I would, however, love to continue seeing pictures of the new paintings as they are finished!
Transfers happen this Wednesday... and we´re all pretty confident that I´m heading out. It will be nice to have a new start - a new area, ward and companion to help facilitate change and cement good habits into my character.
As you saw, we had a ´Mission Tour´ with Elder Viñas, who is a counselor in the Area Presidency. It was a really good experience. He talked about working hard to help overcome discouragement, and about helping our investigators to repent and apply the Atonement to their lives. It was a nice meeting. And, of course, fun to be in Luján again. That seems to be the standard meeting place for our zone of Moreno when we´re getting together with other zones.
And, yep! That was our choir singing at the Mission Tour. I was asked a few weeks back if I could play an accompaniment for a choir number: ´O Mi Padre´ (Oh, My Father). So during one P-day. and when we had an extra moment at the church, I got to create and practice a simple arrangement to accompany the song. The problem was that the choir was going to be created from the 3 different zones. We were able to practice with our the zone, but never got a chance to practice with everyone. So when we performed the number at the meeting, 2/3 of the zone had still never heard the arrangement of the song! But, thanks to our good director and some help from above, everything went really well and the Spirit was felt. It is nice to be able to help out in that way. Those piano lessons were worth it!
The stitching in my shoes finally gave way completely, and I had a pair re-stitched. Now they´re practically new again, and since the shoe was stitched from the start, they don´t even look ´repaired´. But when I see how other missionaries´ shoes have worn out after 10 months, I´m more and more convinced that we made a good buy!
My companion and I each gave a talk in church on Sunday (again...). I was wondering what to speak about and several ideas came to mind - service, charity, fulfilling duty, becoming converted. I wondered, Which of these topics am I supposed to talk about!? Then I found a General Conference talk that combined all of those themes, and knew it was the right message for my talk. The talk was Elder Ballard´s ´Becoming Anxiously Engaged´, from the October 2012 Conference, and I absolutely love it! I had never heard or read the talk in English before, but it´s quite a good one. Each of us individually has potential to change lives... and collectively, as a church body, we can bless and lift the world. I loved his challenge at the end. And I loved the part about letting our testimony go past our mind and sink deep into our hearts.
I read another really good Conference talk about fulfilling duty: President Eyring´s talk Act in All Diligence from the May 2010 General Conference. I´ve been thinking lately about what advice I would give to young men preparing to go on a mission. My counsel to any young man preparing to serve the Lord as a missionary would be to learn now how to serve the Lord as a Deacon, Teacher, or Priest. Learn the duties of your calling and learn to magnify it. If you learn to really magnify your Priesthood responsibilities now, you will magnify your mission and it will be a success.
I´m still struggling to master that principle. It´s no easy task and this week I´ve been very aware of my weakness and shortcomings. But that is why I´m so grateful for the experience of serving a mission, is because it shows you where you´re weak so that you can learn to rely on the Lord and become stronger. And I believe that the grace of Christ is sufficient to help us change when we humble ourselves and have faith in Him. I´ll look for that power this week.
I love you all so much and I´m happy to hear your news! May you have a fantastic week this week. Watch the mission blog to see the changes! Love you all.
Elder Stockton
Transfers happen this Wednesday... and we´re all pretty confident that I´m heading out. It will be nice to have a new start - a new area, ward and companion to help facilitate change and cement good habits into my character.
As you saw, we had a ´Mission Tour´ with Elder Viñas, who is a counselor in the Area Presidency. It was a really good experience. He talked about working hard to help overcome discouragement, and about helping our investigators to repent and apply the Atonement to their lives. It was a nice meeting. And, of course, fun to be in Luján again. That seems to be the standard meeting place for our zone of Moreno when we´re getting together with other zones.
And, yep! That was our choir singing at the Mission Tour. I was asked a few weeks back if I could play an accompaniment for a choir number: ´O Mi Padre´ (Oh, My Father). So during one P-day. and when we had an extra moment at the church, I got to create and practice a simple arrangement to accompany the song. The problem was that the choir was going to be created from the 3 different zones. We were able to practice with our the zone, but never got a chance to practice with everyone. So when we performed the number at the meeting, 2/3 of the zone had still never heard the arrangement of the song! But, thanks to our good director and some help from above, everything went really well and the Spirit was felt. It is nice to be able to help out in that way. Those piano lessons were worth it!
The stitching in my shoes finally gave way completely, and I had a pair re-stitched. Now they´re practically new again, and since the shoe was stitched from the start, they don´t even look ´repaired´. But when I see how other missionaries´ shoes have worn out after 10 months, I´m more and more convinced that we made a good buy!
My companion and I each gave a talk in church on Sunday (again...). I was wondering what to speak about and several ideas came to mind - service, charity, fulfilling duty, becoming converted. I wondered, Which of these topics am I supposed to talk about!? Then I found a General Conference talk that combined all of those themes, and knew it was the right message for my talk. The talk was Elder Ballard´s ´Becoming Anxiously Engaged´, from the October 2012 Conference, and I absolutely love it! I had never heard or read the talk in English before, but it´s quite a good one. Each of us individually has potential to change lives... and collectively, as a church body, we can bless and lift the world. I loved his challenge at the end. And I loved the part about letting our testimony go past our mind and sink deep into our hearts.
I read another really good Conference talk about fulfilling duty: President Eyring´s talk Act in All Diligence from the May 2010 General Conference. I´ve been thinking lately about what advice I would give to young men preparing to go on a mission. My counsel to any young man preparing to serve the Lord as a missionary would be to learn now how to serve the Lord as a Deacon, Teacher, or Priest. Learn the duties of your calling and learn to magnify it. If you learn to really magnify your Priesthood responsibilities now, you will magnify your mission and it will be a success.
I´m still struggling to master that principle. It´s no easy task and this week I´ve been very aware of my weakness and shortcomings. But that is why I´m so grateful for the experience of serving a mission, is because it shows you where you´re weak so that you can learn to rely on the Lord and become stronger. And I believe that the grace of Christ is sufficient to help us change when we humble ourselves and have faith in Him. I´ll look for that power this week.
I love you all so much and I´m happy to hear your news! May you have a fantastic week this week. Watch the mission blog to see the changes! Love you all.
Elder Stockton
June 24, 2013
Meeting Ituzaingo 2
Hello, dear fam!
Yep! As you`ve seen already, I have been transferred. We were surprised when we got the phone call and found out that both Elder Lee and I would be leaving - in mission language, that`s called a whitewash: when they put in two new missionaries who don`t know the area. But then we found out at transfer meeting that they weren`t putting new missionaries in - Jardines A was merged with Jardines B! So we`re leaving the area (Jardines A and B) in the capable hands of Elder De Leon and his new trainee. Jardines was a long and a good chapter, my favorite area and time so far, but now it`s time to move on and look at what`s to come.
I`m in a fairly large city called Ituzaingo. It is different in a lot of ways from Jardines. Ituzaingo is very rich - the people here are quite well off. The ward is small and seems to be closely knit, with good leadership and some really good families. We will never be lunchless here.
My companion is Elder Leatham, from Ridgecrest, CA. He`s cool! We get along well. He`s been in the mission for 16 months.
We don`t have very many investigators... in fact, we just have one. His name is S, and he`s a super stud! He`s a 45-ish-year-old taxi driver who was recently separated from his wife and is looking for meaning in his life. One day the missionaries had stayed late to eat dinner at a members` house, and the members called for a taxi so that the missionaries would get home on time. S was the driver who came to pick them up, and on the way home he told them his story and they made an appointment to go teach him. This was about a month ago - now, he`s been to church a few times and loves it, he`s reading in the Book of Mormon and he`s praying, and he`s trying to break his smoking addiction.
The other day we had a lesson at his house, and he told us he really wants to stop smoking. He made the goal to only smoke 3 more cigarettes, and not buy any more. As the lesson went on, he decided he didn`t even need three and crushed two of them and gave them to us to take away. A minute later, there was a knock on the door - his neighbor had come over to ask for a cigarette. So S surrendered his last cigarette and said it must be a sign. Funny guy.
It looks as if the big challenge here in Ituzaingo is going to be finding investigators to teach - in Jardines is isn`t that difficult, but we`ve spent 3 whole days doing almost nothing but knocking doors so far and haven`t come up with anything. (We found a lot of atheists in our door contacting, which I never found in Barrio Jardines.) So, it`s time to change our methods!
On Thursday we went to a ward baptism of a boy named K. It was a good baptism, and afterward we went to a party at the family`s house. They made a pretty elaborate `Angry Birds` cake, which I`ll send a picture of when I can.
So, that`s the new area! Thanks for your letters, it´s great to think of what`s going on at home. Hope you all have a quite fantastic week!
Love,
Elder Stockton
Yep! As you`ve seen already, I have been transferred. We were surprised when we got the phone call and found out that both Elder Lee and I would be leaving - in mission language, that`s called a whitewash: when they put in two new missionaries who don`t know the area. But then we found out at transfer meeting that they weren`t putting new missionaries in - Jardines A was merged with Jardines B! So we`re leaving the area (Jardines A and B) in the capable hands of Elder De Leon and his new trainee. Jardines was a long and a good chapter, my favorite area and time so far, but now it`s time to move on and look at what`s to come.
I`m in a fairly large city called Ituzaingo. It is different in a lot of ways from Jardines. Ituzaingo is very rich - the people here are quite well off. The ward is small and seems to be closely knit, with good leadership and some really good families. We will never be lunchless here.
My companion is Elder Leatham, from Ridgecrest, CA. He`s cool! We get along well. He`s been in the mission for 16 months.
We don`t have very many investigators... in fact, we just have one. His name is S, and he`s a super stud! He`s a 45-ish-year-old taxi driver who was recently separated from his wife and is looking for meaning in his life. One day the missionaries had stayed late to eat dinner at a members` house, and the members called for a taxi so that the missionaries would get home on time. S was the driver who came to pick them up, and on the way home he told them his story and they made an appointment to go teach him. This was about a month ago - now, he`s been to church a few times and loves it, he`s reading in the Book of Mormon and he`s praying, and he`s trying to break his smoking addiction.
The other day we had a lesson at his house, and he told us he really wants to stop smoking. He made the goal to only smoke 3 more cigarettes, and not buy any more. As the lesson went on, he decided he didn`t even need three and crushed two of them and gave them to us to take away. A minute later, there was a knock on the door - his neighbor had come over to ask for a cigarette. So S surrendered his last cigarette and said it must be a sign. Funny guy.
It looks as if the big challenge here in Ituzaingo is going to be finding investigators to teach - in Jardines is isn`t that difficult, but we`ve spent 3 whole days doing almost nothing but knocking doors so far and haven`t come up with anything. (We found a lot of atheists in our door contacting, which I never found in Barrio Jardines.) So, it`s time to change our methods!
On Thursday we went to a ward baptism of a boy named K. It was a good baptism, and afterward we went to a party at the family`s house. They made a pretty elaborate `Angry Birds` cake, which I`ll send a picture of when I can.
So, that`s the new area! Thanks for your letters, it´s great to think of what`s going on at home. Hope you all have a quite fantastic week!
Love,
Elder Stockton
July 1, 2013
Week 2 in Ituzaingo 2Well, we had a really good week here. By working hard and with help from above, we broke the lack-of-new-investigators streak the area had been experiencing and found several new families/individuals to teach.
On Monday we found a man named D, who invited us in and asked what it was that we shared with people - we shared the Restoration and invited him to investigate and be baptized, and he accepted. After the lesson he knelt and said the closing prayer. I think it must have been the first time he prayed out loud. He prayed very sincerely and there were tears in his eyes as he finished.
We passed by a woman named R who investigated the church about a year ago, and was on the point of being baptized when she relapsed and was overcome by her smoking addiction. After her next few attempts to give up smoking failed, she became discouraged and stopped working towards baptism. When we arrived, she said it was funny that we should arrive just at that moment because just a week ago she had decided to give up smoking for good, and that she was trying to do that now. In fact, that very morning she had found her Gospel Principles book and read the chapter about the Word of Wisdom. We told her we will help her stop smoking and invited her to be baptized, and she accepted.
And we met and started teaching the C family, a family that has recently passed through some very hard times with an abusive husband. The family has been living in spiritual darkness, and we told them how Jesus Christ can bring light to their lives again. They were going to come to church on Sunday, but unfortunately the littlest child got sick Saturday night and they couldn`t make it.
We taught a lesson in English to a 21-year-old named E. He`s learning English so that he can come work in the US. (His friend lives in San Bernardino!) It was really hard for my companion to teach in English, which was funny. Spanish words and sentence patterns kept sneaking in. I`m sure I`m just as bad. It doesn`t seem like he`s that interested in our message itself, which is too bad, but maybe we`ll be able to find someone who is interested through him.
We met an elderly lady named M in a member`s house, and taught her about the Restoration. She is Catholic, but says she always has arguments with the Priests about certain doctrines that she doesn`t think make sense. She seems very promising. She wanted to come to church on Sunday, but unfortunately she had a fall on Friday when the bus she was boarding accelerated too early, and she was too sore to be able to come.
So, we have some new, promising people! We`ll hope that many of these people are prepared for their baptism dates at the end of July.
This week I was forced to learn how to navigate the area quickly because (surprise) we went on 2-day divisions with the Zone Leaders, and I had to guide the area. With my map, we made our way around. Reminds me of years ago when Dad taught me how to use a map, as we were doing our home teaching visits. So many things that I didn`t think were useful then that turned out to be! ;-)
While we were on divisions, we tracted a house and the bishop`s wife came out. And thus we found the bishop`s house. How`s that for a successful contact? She even came to church on Sunday!
Last week began a new rule in our mission - from Tuesday to Sunday we can only listen to Mormon Tabernacle Choir music. I actually kind of like it... fortunately I have a pretty good selection of music, or we`d be listening to my companion`s 2 songs over and over again!
For a P-day activity today, and in preparation for Thursday, Elder Leatham and I bought a big piece of poster board and painted into a giant American flag. And Elder Leatham made real American apple pie. Mmm mmmm! Fun being with a North American for the 4th of July. How I love the USA.
Elder Leatham and I both gave talks this week - I reused my `Anxiously Engaged` talk from Jardines, but modified to this ward. I wanted each of the members to really feel that they can make a difference in someone`s life. I shared as an example Brother Schoenheim, who had a big effect on me - not for any great thing he did, but because he always made me feel like I was important and valued. I wanted the members to realize that the little things we do to help lift others can make a big difference.
Elder Leatham and I discovered the other day that the supermarket close to our house sells chicken wings cheap - 2 lbs for a little bit less than $0.50 USD. So, we bought 4 lbs of chicken wings and made spicy oven-cooked chicken wings! Mmmm!
And, wow. A lot happened this week! It was a good week... and a very long week! Let`s hope this one is just as good.
I love you all very much. Thank you for your prayers for me and for being mindful of me here. I have the best family ever!
Elder Stockton
No comments:
Post a Comment