A Week of Learning

Hey everybody!

I really felt like I've grown a lot this week. I feel a lot more confident in doing missionary work. On Wednesday though I got really discouraged and wanted to go home. Some days as a missionary it feels like there is no hope or light to look for. I came across a talk from last conference by Elder Whitney L. Clayton called "Choose to Believe."  It is really good when you feel like you can't endure any longer:

"There may be times when we cannot see any light on the horizon, and we may feel like giving up. If we are willing to believe, if we desire to believe, if we choose to believe, then the Savior’s teachings and example will show us the pathway forward."

Though I read this only yesterday I basically applied this principle the other day when I really wanted to quit. The rest of the week went a lot lot better when I chose to endure and have a good attitude. The joyful feeling I get after I share the gospel with others is definitely worth staying on a mission. I couldn't let myself give up because I knew how disappointed I, my family, and God would be. 

This week we picked up 2 new investigators named Bert and Ty. Those are both good names(especially the latter). 

We sort of experienced a miracle with Bert because we were an answer to his prayer. Bert's water shut off in his house and so he was in panic mode. He didn't know what else to do and so he decided to pray for help. He told us when we met with him later that immediately after he ended his prayer I called him on the phone which he felt was an answer to his prayer. . We went over later and gave him a case of water to use. He was humble and so he let us teach him the next day. We taught him the Plan of Salvation since his mother is dying and asked him to pray if the things we were teaching him were true. He said he would and we are meeting with him again this week. 

Yesterday we taught Ty at Bro. Cloud's house who is one of our ward mission leaders  we work with a lot. We had to convince him to come over with powdered jelly donuts. Ty  knows pretty much nothing about God and has never prayed before. He is very open-minded though and humble. I think we have a pretty good chance with him. We answered some of his questions he had about Prayer and the nature of God. He said he is cool with us meeting again soon. He is really cool kid and is from New York. 

We went to the Payson open house again with a less active family, the Cooks. We hope that the mom will want to get sealed to her new husband. At the open house though we ended up talking with some Indians (not the Native American kind) named Alok and Needi. They are nonmembers who are married and attend BYU. They got really excited about forever families when we took them in the sealing room. We referred them to the sisters in their area and so i think they will probably join the church. So that was pretty cool! 

Saturday we taught an evangjcal family.At least we tried to, but it turned into a good ol fashioned bible bash! Our initial intention in going there was to contact one of our referrals named Shay. shay wasnt there, but her mom and dad sat us down in their porch to talk while they were barbecuing. The wife discredited just about everything we said with a bunch of stuff like the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The first thing she brought up was grace of course. We tried explaining things like repentance but she said of course that repentance isn't necessary as long as you confessed Christ. She told us that she knew her religion is right because of all of the scientific proof and historicity. She talked a lot about Hebrew words, primary sources, and transliterations   I told here that my source of know,edge is God, but then she of course ripped on the Book of Mormon. Yeah I got really heated, and I felt pretty stupid after because the spirit wasn't there because of the tone of voice I used. It was so frustrating, but it was a testimony builder for me though it didn't do a lot of good for the family. Elder Fenton knew what we were getting into when they told us they were Evangelical. His  grandpa is evangelical and told him that if he were to go on a mission he'd end up in Hell!  It was a good learning experience. 

After meeting with them I was really frustrated. We decided to go teach the Cloud family the restoration and bear our testimonies. I felt a lot better after that, and the Clouds were really appreciative of us teaching them because the prior sisters who would come over to their house a lot never would share a message with them. 

Elder Fenton got called to be the new ASL missionary for the mission. We visited a deaf family to learn some sign language. They have a way cool 18 year old son named Parker. I've picked up a little sign language this week since meeting him. It is really fun to do ASL, and I really want to learn more. Maybe I could be am ASL missionary, if not I would like to do some in college. Could be a cool career opportunity. Parker's father is not deaf but it is way cool because he can talk to us and do sign at the same time. For P-day today we took  Parker  with us to play basketball at the church. We taught him how to play the game 7 on the line and we also played 2 on 2. He and I beat Elder Fenton and this kid named Brandon pretty badly. Parker is pretty good at basketball and we called ourselves The Dream Team. It was his idea obviously because he had to show me the sign for Dream Team since he can't hear at all. 

We also took Parker with us to play soccer with the other Elders in our district to play soccer with a bunch of Hispanics. Yeah it was elders against them so we got creamed! I thought we'd be better with Elder Malster who is from England.

In other news, we had a baptism! How could I forget? Isaiah was baptized Saturday by his dad and was confirmed in Sacrament meeting. Elder Fenton and I taught The Restoration and it was really spiritual. It's awesome to see how happy not only Isaiah is now, but his parents too because when we first met them they weren't very sure about letting Isaiah be baptized. Isaiah's dad was also very nervous to do the confirmation in church but he did a pretty good job. 

So today I'll be going on exchanges for a day with Elder Wilcox, another new missionary. He's cool so it'll be awesome! 

Well I love you all! 

Godspeed, 

Elder Soutas 

Hello Family and Friends!

Week 2 in the mission here at Eagle Mountain, Utah (Provo Mission) was pretty good! I had a down day or 2 but other than that I've found a lot of joy serving the people here. For those of my friends who are hearing from me for the first time, I am serving for 3 months full-time here in the Provo mission before I get my second call elsewhere in the world!! I like it here. The people are very welcoming and such. We have had no baptisms yet, but we have a few investigators and a few possible investigators. One of our possible investigators is Karen, who is a vegetarian who owns an animal shelter. We can't mention anything about meat in front of her or we will lose our trust with her. He husband thinks we are sent by God to them, but we haven't taught them yet because she won't really let us...yet.  We met another investigor this week named Scott Jasmer who is an ex-Army guy. He really doesn't like the church at all but we had a good 20 min conversation on his doorstep. He believes that it wasn't fair that Jesus had to pay for his sins, but that he should have to pay for them instead. We told him that wasn't necessary. I think we're going to share with him D&C 19 and also about Saul (before he became Paul) that might help him out. We visit a lot with two other ex-navy/army guys as well! They are kind of hardened though from all of the experiences they've had in war. They've said they just don't think they can be forgiven for the people they have killed; they can though because it's not a sin to kill when you are fighting for freedom and liberty. They need to read the war chapters in Alma! One of the ex-navy guys is named Bert Smith. He kept flaking on us this week and telling us he was sick. He finally let us in for a few minutes pm Saturday, and we will be stopping by to teach him this week. His voice sounds like he's been a smoker his whole life, but nonetheless he is a very nice guy with a huge great dane dog!

The other navy guy is Richard Kruelisky. I don't even know where to start. He kind of scares the b-jeebers out of me because he is so nit picky and cynical. He will make fun of you and even punch you. The first day he made fun of my tie because I guess it was crooked. It certainly doesn't help that I'm serving a mission close to home either! He's just teasing though. He has PTSD and was abused growing up. That's why he is so hardened. He's also fun to talk to at the same time. It's weird. He's like my dog Kako--I hate him, but at the same time I love him! Richard looks like the guy on Hot Rod that Rod tries to save so he can beat him up!!!! No joke!!! He acts just like him. His wife is a stalwart member of the church though and keeps him grounded sort of. Yesterday I was putting up this awesome BYU flag for Richard's kids in his room and he was making fun of me the whole time because I was under a lot of pressure with him staring at me! He is also kind at times because he steamed my tie that had wrinkles on it. I hope Richard will let us teach him someday. He needs the gospel more than anything! Please pray for him, he needs all the prayers he can get!

Here in Utah, it's hard to work these sorts of people that think they've got it all figured out and know everything about Mormons. We have another investigator named Teagan who's kind of a punk kid, but we commited him to be baptized and go to church with us. His brother got baptized and says he kind of regrets it, but after we spoke to them about the afterlife he softened up a little. We're taking them to the Payson temple open house this week! We're also taking another family to the open house, Marcelo and his family, this week who just got ordained to the Aaronic preisthood this week!

On Wednesay after ZTM I got kind of discouraged for some reason. I didn't want to be on the mission at all and was being a poophead. But in the car we played a fun game where you mention a movie, and then you have to try to think of a movie that starts with what the last movie ended with. Elder Fenton (my trainer), told be that he felt prompted to play that game so I would be happy. It worked! By small and simple things are great things brought to pass! 

We also have been working with a newly activated family, the Waltons. Trevor --the Dad-is an awesome guy and has taught me to be a master at ping pong. I freaking love Ping pong! I hope I get called to Korea like my dad when i get my next mission call so I can keep playing ping pong. The Walton's fed us an amazing steak garganzola dinner on Friday--seriously the best meal I have ever had!! (sorry Mom). It's basically a tenderloin marinade with alfredo sauce and fettucine noodles! I'm craving a bite of that right now, and actually the Walton's just barely gave us another steak to cook and I am about to eat some in a few minutes!! We got fed steak twice last week and ribs twice! I haven't gained a pound though because I do 50 pushups everymorning and I do situps. 

It was really rainy last week, but the thunder was way cool while we were at the Payson open house with the Stacey Family. Mark Stacey is about 50 years old and he has really bad anxiety. Until recently, he hadn't been out of a single room for over a year. He also has recovered from cancer recently! They are going to be sealed hopefully soon, but they need to get sundays off and start going to church. 

I am adjusting pretty well to the mission. Most days I want to just go back to bed because i feel like a zombie! elder s likes to sleep with his fan on full blast and so I don't get any sleep! But he leaves in a couple of days and so we won't be in a trio anymore! My faith keeps me out of bed though. 

Well sorry for the long letter. I get carried away sometimes!

Love,

Elder Soutas

Many to teach

Hola Familia y amigos,

By now I am pretty sick of writing emails. It's been a pretty good week here in Eagle Mountain. The area is finally starting to boom! On monday and tuesday we wasted a bunch of time because Elder Smith was saying his final good-byes to everyone! it was really emotional.

We had zone conference this week, as well as district meeting. we picked up a few investigators and a bunch of referrals. I'm not going to go too much into detail this week. 

So yesterday I got stricken with the flu! 

I'm just going to copy and paste Sent from my iPad

S-nonmember. His kids go to young womens and stuff but they have a lot of questions about the church. We taught them a lot of principles of the gospel, ad we are going to be meeting with them every week to talk religion sort of informally. 

T--we were going to take him and his brother G and their mom to the temple open house this week but G got a tooth infection

G 

Brother J--He's inactive. Very nice guy. We helped him lay some sod in his front yard and after he showed us his awesome knife collection. He let us barrow some overalls to cover our church clothes as we layed the sod. He just moved from Emery county. They gave us a cake and a thank you card for helping them. 

T--We are trying to get him and his sister to take family names to the temple. We went over there on friday to show them how to do family history

C

I -We have a baptism scheduled for him this Saturday. They are very timid/shy people and are worried about doing the confirmation in front of everyone since it is a convert baptism. I is 10 years old. 

M--New member. Probably my favorite person we talk to. He and his wife are from Brazil. We tried to take them to the temple open house this week but he is training to be a chef at Squatters in Park City (we've been there!) I hope he doesn't have to work sundays. we need him to get ordained to the melchezidek preisthood. beautiful family. 

D--teaching the 9 year old son who has severe ADHD. taught him the restoration and book of mormon lesson. 

Bt --   He wants to come golfing with us on P-day too since it's only 8 bucks at Talon's Cove! 

M and I--I is in denial about repenting for living with Mbefore they were married. Gave them a blessing since she has bad health. 

B--they are going to the temple end of June. Teaching them the temple lessons. 

The C--are taking them to the temple open house tomorrow! Are inactive

The F--recently moved from Riverton. 2 daughters are being baptized in Riverton and so we will teach them the new member lessons. Their step dad is inactive as well as their mom. Their dad back in riverton is very activce though. 

K--we are making progress  We help at her farm a lot. We'll teach them soon I'm sure.

T-inactive family. We are teaching them this wednesday! 

M -. Likes to grow chili peppers in his yard. 

T -  17 year old nonmember. He canceled on us yesterday though. 

R-didn't meet with them this week. He scares me. 

I am getting an ipad this week and so ill send the photos from last week then. 

Elder Soutas