Hello family!!!
Good to hear from you. You always seem to be doing very well, and I´m glad for that. Love you all, here´s some responses to your emails!
Mother, for heaven´s sake, please do not send emails about ABC Mandarin and Milkshakes. ;_). Just kidding. Oh boy, pots and pans at the Chadburns for new years. We had a lot of years pass like that, didn´t we? Those are good memories. Tell Chris to take it easy, would you? Haha, it was really good to see him come home the week before I left. He had changed so much. I hope that´s what some outgoing missionary thinks of me by the time I come home. Changed.
I can´t tell you how great it is to be in a house with four elders. Especially living with the Zone leaders. Haha, you´ll laugh, but I really feel like I´m a sophomore rooming with two Student Body Officers. They´re KILLER missionaries. Soooo good. It´s really inspiring to be around them. Elder Phelps especially. He´s a red head kid from Utah, and just the nicest guy ever. He´s super real with everyone, while still being very focused and direct. It seems like every time he opens his mouth he´s teaching, without you realizing that he´s teaching, because it really just seems like your talking. I went with him to pick up some members before church this week, and he just really knew how to talk with the natives, and be loving, but direct with them. A great opportunity overall, to be learning from so many older Elders.
Elder Ramirez is such a sweet comp. Him and I get along Sooooo well. He´s a super humble guy who´s willing to learn from my strengths, and compart of what he´s gained over the mission. We´ve got an awesome working relationship. He´s a STELLAR singer. Very very good. He played in a Mariachi band before the mission, and sang in it too. So we try to sing in a few of our lessons. It really helps to bring in the spirit. Right now our biggest trial is our numbers. We´re just reworking how things are planned out, and I think that´s going to help us out a lot. We had ZERO people with baptismal date when I got here. We visited almost all of our investigators, and handed out 11 baptismal invitations last week. We dropped a lot of investigators that we had been visiting, who weren´t progressing at all. So, en fin, we have 2 people with baptismal dates for this month now, and we´re going to be working our tails off this week to find some people ready to hear and accept the gospel. We actually might go head out right after this and meet with a pretty solid contact that we found yesterday, just for a quick p day visit!
Dad, your RTH joke is NOT funny. ;_). Digo no mas, chistoso es. Hay que seguir con tus chistes. ¿Necesitamos mas de la felicidad en nuestras vidas, no? ¿Cómo andas? ¿Trabajo? ¿Todo tranquilo? Que Dios le bendigas. Salud, dinero, y amor. Haha, siempre dicen así. Y yo resopondo, “El dinero, no tengo, y el amor, lejos es.” Ellos se rien. ;_)
Haha, mom, I was thinking about my shoes this week actually, and I was thinking about how grateful I was for you being so sensible about it! I always thought of a mission as super shined, fancy dress shoes, a spotless, dry cleaned shirt, you know, the whole nine yards. And yes, we try to present ourselves the very nicest possible. But the fact of Paraguayan life is that we walk on empedrado (look it up sometime. Funny.), which is just broken chunks of rock. I wanted really nice looking shoes, you wanted ones that would last. THANK YOU!!!! Haha, I´m using all three pairs of eccos, just switching them off every day. When it rains, it takes a good two days to really dry out, so it works out great. They´re all working good for me. I´m trying to take good care of mine, all of the older elders´ shoes are ripped to shreds. It´ll be a good feeling when I get to that point I think. Then you know you´ve done a lot of walking for the Lord!
Ybaté is still city. It´s an area inside the city of Lambaré, which is right next to asuncion. I´m only like 20 minutes, by auto, away from Centro. I´m just right next to Asuncion. It´s nice though, because it´s not downtown, like centro. There´s no skyscrapers here. Less city and business, more homes that have families living in them. I like it a lot.
I know school´s already started back up and everything, but I wanted to send my 5 favorite talks from Conference. If you have some down time, they´re good! At least, the two that I´ve read… haha. I like to read them really slowly (partly because I read my Spanish copy…), and mark them to death with my pen. I´m really glad to have the conference magazine. I had to wait a while to get the Spanish edition I wanted. I get excited when I pull it out in personal study. The words in there really are inspired. Ok, here they are:
5. Pg 74. Cleaning the interior vessel, Pres. Packer
I´ve read the top two. The other three were just the ones that I had marked as really good while I was reading them. For sure, if you have time, read the top two. KILLER. SOOO GOOD!!! Love you all.
Elder Stewart
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