Week 15

Hello Family!!

I´m alive!!! I haven´t written because it´s transfer week. But perfect love casteth out all fear, as george always said. So don´t worry about me!

does the spanish ever sound like noise to you when you are tired??? Haha, yes. But i´m getting used to it. Sometimes my comp will say something, and I´m not sure if he said it in Spanish or english, because it all just goes through this translator in my head. Kind of funny. Kind of weird.

-do you exercise? Go running or anything? Nope. I´m just gradually growing larger. OF COURSE I EXERCISE!!!! Every single day! I´m up to 120 push ups, 3 sets of 40, and a LOT of sit ups every morning. Send that part to george if you could, and let him know that his cheeks are getting chunky in his pictures.

-what do you do on your p-days? email, groceries, write, clean a little, PREPARE FOR A BAPTISM TODAY!!!!

-what is the one thing you are really glad you brought with you? What is it you think you might NEVER use?! ha ha! I´ll think about this one. Ask me again next week.

-how are you doing with keeping your stuff up OFF the floor? Is your room clean? (a MOM question! :) I have a fear of the floor. Nothings on the floor. There´s PK, or I don´t know how you spell it, some bug like that that lives on the floor.

-is it starting to get hotter there? Because I think you are headed into summer? It´ll get up to 120 degrees here for the next 3 months. I´ll complain when it comes.

-DO YOU DO YOUR OWN LAUNDRY???? Your own cooking????? Nope. A member does our laundry, and Irons our shirts. We cook breakfast. HAHA!!!! Cereal. And then we eat an ENORMOUS luch. My stomach literally has had to expand here. We eat lunch with the members. And then we don´t usually have time for dinner. Wé´re on the Lord´s errand here! We´ll make a pb and j sandwich or hot dogs or something when we get home.

We´re on the brink of seeing a lot of miracles here in Centro. We´ve got 7 people with baptismal dates in the next 4 weeks, all of them progressing. We´ve got the baptism of Mario tonight. He´s been working through a few doubts and struggles, but he´s finally made his decision, and he´s happy. He´s just happy. You can see it in his eyes, in his face, in his ambiance when we´re around him. We´ve got a baptism of an 11 year old from a less active family next week. They´re so great. The mom has to work on sundays, but her kids come to church every week with their aunt. The dad isn´t interested at all. We´re going to try to get working with them, and get them to be a solid family. We´ve got more people coming up in the escalator of investigators, and we´re working hard to meet each of their individual needs. Mauricio is one of those. He´s 35 and lives with his mom. He has a big problem with drinking. It´s been really tough on his mom, and his extended family, who are members. He had an interview with the stake president and really wants to turn his life around. We taught him of repentance, and the different steps therein. We taught him about restitution, trying to make things right with those that are closest to him, whom he´s hurt a lot with his alcohol habit. Right there, he walked over to his mom, who was sitting and listening with us, and dropped to his knees and asked for forgiveness. I´ve never seen, in person, a grown man cry like that. They sobbed, and they hugged, and they talked. She told of her years of hurt and pain. He told of his sorrow, and desires to change. We sat and watched a miracle. The gospel is beautiful. So beautiful. It changes and heals lives, and it´s so real here in the mission. I love it.

I got a new Comp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Elder Divis, from Washington. I can´t tell you how much I respect my companion already. It´s his second day here, and I already love him. He got here yesterday with almost no sleep, and just plowed through the work all day long. He´s incredible. He has an incredibly high vision of the mission, of what it can be, of what we can be as laborers in the Lord´s Vineyard. He´s been climbing at an incredible rate for 17 months of his mission, and for that he´s been rewarded with being able to look out from the mountain of the mission, and see clearly what needs to be done. Along with this, he has fun. Haha, we laughed and talked yesterday like good friends. He can see the fun in the work, and balances it perfectly. Yesterday was amazingly successful, and I was smiling a lot. Probably the funnest day I´ve had on my mission so far. I guess a missionary really can have the two together. He laughs at the ridiculous sights here, and takes pictures of them, and laughs"!!!!!! haha. It´s great. These six weeks are going to be awesome.

Alright, don´t ask me any more questions for next week. I want to have time to send pics. I´ve got pics with a lot of our families here, because elder swenson left. Love you all!!!!!!

LOVE YOU ALLLL!!!!!!!!

Elder Stewart

Week 14

Hey Fam,

First off, Congrats David!!! That´s really neat to hear about his call. Wowsa. Really sweet. Look at this family, just heading out hacer un poco daño a satanas. Muuuyyyy bien.

Listen, we have important things to discuss this week.

Food. The first day I got here, I thought I was going to die. Really. My first meal here was horrendous. If that´s a word... But you get the idea. REALLY bad. It was at a member´s house, and I couldn´t even finish it. They put it in a little bag for me to take home, because I kept telling them how good it tasted, but how i just didn´t have room to finish. I threw that sick little bag away.

Fast forwart to this week. We were eating at the same house, with the same meal. And I couldn´t help but laugh. I was savoring it. It turns out that that is one of the best meals, one of my preffered ones. The mission can change taste buds. A fast food burger with onions and tomatoes and everything that I never liked, sounds AWESOME right now. Picky? That was in my past life. I´m a changed man.

A man stopped us on the street and very politely told us how our church, and especially Joseph Smith, was of the Devil. Really interesting experience. First one of it´s kind with me. We bore simple testimony, and shook hands and left.

Pigs. Guiness book of World Records never came to paraguay. The biggest pigs I´ve ever seen in my life walk right by us in the streets. Haha, they´re not scared of us one bit, but I found out that if I make a cougar noise, they squeal and RUN. And I mean RUN. I have a little bit of fear of the super big ones though. THey might come charge me....

Mom, haha! I LOVE to hear stuff like that. You and rachael going on runs together, and you painting the girls´ room, and Dad and Rach and King Alex all shopping together. It makes me miss home a little bit. A good miss though. I really wouldn´t ever have been properly grateful for you all without this misión. I really love you all, and I´m so happy to hear that you´re happy.

Dad, your store blew my mind. Incredible. Before the misión, I never Would have thought that posible. But it´s so true. WAY TO BE!!!!!!!!!! Missionary in American Fork. That´s my dad. Keep in touch with him. Just like you said, Satan really is merciless, and just smacks people when they´re down, and trying to get back up. That man needs a friend. Wow. The Lord´s work is everywhere, if we can just open our eyes to the people around us.

Companionship. Every week I grow a little more grateful for my companion. He´s solid. He teaches me sooo much, and I´m really growing from him. He´s tough. He makes me get out of my comfort zone, especially with my contacts and with the language. It´s really helped me to move along though. His trainer didn´t push him to do contacts, and he felt like that held his language back a little. He wants the best for me, and I appreciate that.

Testimony. My testimony has strengthened this week. Last night, as we were teaching, the Spirit hit me really hard, and I just started to cry. The spirit told me that the Lord had been preparing Olivia for years, so that she´d be ready to receive our message at this moment in her life. She´d talked with the missionaries a time before, and went to church, but it just wasn´t her time, and she just dropped the whole religious idea. But she told us last night that she quit taking anti depressants two weeks after she started meeting with us missionaries this time around. She never mentioned that once before, while we were teaching her. She said it was super hard, but she just quit, because she knew that the Lord was giving her a new path to start walking. She told us how happy she is, how much light and joy our teaching brings to her. Haha, she called me her little angle. She said she could understand everything I ever tried to tell her, even right when I first got to paraguay. She called elder swenson the big boss, that keeps everything moving along, and then just told us both how grateful she is for the two of us. She´s still struggling with quitting to smoke, but she´s down to 3 ciggarretes and a cup of coffe each day, which is a huge improvement. I love the spirit. We´re not doing the work here. The spirit is. The Lord is. There´s no way she understands what I´m teaching without some divine help.

I love this work. I hope everyone´s happy back at home. Love you all.

Ask me some more questions!!! I loved answering them.

Elder Stewart

Week 13

Hey family!

This week was neat. Again. Never enough time. Buckle up.

STARTING WITH INVESTIGATORS!!!

Mario. Will be baptized this week. He was going to be baptized last week, but the day before his baptism, he smoked ONE cigar. ONE CIGAR!!!! That was all that kept him from entering in at the gate. We were super bummed. But listen, he´s the greatest guy ever. He´s sixty ish years old, and doesn´t speak or understand spanish super well. We have to teach SUPER simply, and even then he´ll get mixed up a lot. But he just really wants to do what´s right. When we started teaching him, he said, ¨I´ve found the way of God, and this is the path that I will follow for the rest of my life.¨ Incredible faith. Haha, everytime we come, he pulls out the nicest of his broken chairs and boxes for us to sit on, and his member friend, eva, makes us juice. (I think that´s how i got the runs when I got here...... But it´s the nicest thing ever, and we drink happily!) Every once in a while, he´ll pull out his guitar and play and sing in guarani. I always thought that it was the same song, but I´ve come to realize that it´s actually just the same chords. Different lyrics. Haha. Imagine it. Super skinny. Shirtless most of the time, with short shorts on. He´s just a happy man of the land.

This week, on Elder Swenson´s birthday, coolest day of the mission so far. The restoration and the Book of Mormon, really neat experience. That Night. it started to hail. Big gumball sized hail drops. Car alarms were going off because they were getting hit. It was crazy. And then came the rain. I couldn´t beleive it. It was 9 10 and we had 20 minutes to get to Olivia´s apartment and back to ours. We had a book of mormon in Portuguese, her native language, and we needed to get it to her that night. Why? Because she couldn´t wait. We had in our hands the most important book ever written, and NOTHING was going to stop us from getting it to her. She´s making huge strides, and loves what we teach her, but she´s having a battle with deciding to quit smoking. There´s power in the book of mormon, and there´s greater power when it´s in your native language. She needed that book. So, shoes in hand, pants rolled up, we ran. The water was past our ankles, and pouring like a fast running river down the street. The rain was coming down in sheets, and soaked us completely through within seconds. We got to Olivia´s apartment, and the power had gone out. We politely made our way through the crowd of people at the apartment entrance, getting a few funny glances, and arrived at the elevator. Well, the elevator doesn´t work when the power´s out. So Elder Swenson and I looked at eachother, laughed a little, flipped on the little light that we have on our cell phone, and booked it up the 10th floor where she lives. We arrived, out of breath, and happy.

That´s the beauty of it. I´m happy here. I really am. For some reason, it´s different. Usually when you arrive somewhere, at your house, or wherever, and you´re exhausted.... you´re not happy. You know? But there´s the greatest sense of tired happy here in Centro. President Nunez, the branch president, talked about taking care of your sheep in Sacrament meeting yesterday. There´s a joy that´s hard to describe when finish a day of doing all that you possibly can to care for your sheep. I think I´m finally learning Charity. I really do love Mario, and Olivia, and Berner. If I can learn to see everyone on the street, and feel that same love for them... I don´t know. I think that I´ll be closer to doing this work how the Lord would do it if He were in Asuncion.

I love you all. Take care.

Elder Stewart.

Mom. It´s me and Elder Swenson living together. I love it. I think the other pic was from a district meeting.

Yes. It´s kind of like AZ here... kind of. THere´s palm trees!