Merry Christmas!

Hello family!

It's been a pretty good week I think.

These last couple of weeks we've really been trying to get this Christmas CD done! it turned out okay. Not close to professional, but good enough. For the Christmas initiative "Jesus worshipped through song and so can you" we decided we would delay getting the CD out and instead have members of the branch participate in making the CD.  So, we went to the church on mutual night, and after I taught a piano lesson to Sister Bingham's kid, Sister Bingham played a lovely harp solo of "Come thou fount".  Not a Christmas song, but it was too great not to put on the Cd. Then we remembered that Brother Griggs does gigs with his guitar and has an awesome song called "In Bethlehem" so we had him put on the CD. We also had our branch president's wife, Sister Wells record her version of "What child is This?"  We had a couple of the youth participate, and it turned out pretty great!  Now I 've just got to figure out how to mass produce this thing. I'm not sure how to put it in the right format. It's really frustrating since I am trying to send them to people for Christmas, as well as give them to people; hoping to bring people into the church.  Hopefully it will work

Other than that, this week, we've still been trying some other ways to find people to teach, although we found no one this week. I think in part to using our time inefficiently. I've been pretty terrible at that lately.

We tried going to our investigator's wedding, a less active's funeral. All great ways to find people but we just felt so awkward there and I didn't know how to bring up the gospel to people in those types of situations. 

At least we are trying though.

My new companion is Elder Burgoyne. I think he is great. He is an amazing  scherrenschnitter. Google that to figure that out. We made in awesome scherrenshnitte of the salt lake temple (well he did) while I did weekly planning which took hours upon hours. 

(Jen's note: I looked it up Scherrenshnitte is intricate paper cutting similar to this)

Dusty is doing pretty well this week. She has fought off some temptations and anger with her family. She is getting close to her baptism. I'm still not so sure if she's quite there yet though. She likes to tease me a lot. She calls me ornery and is going to apparently make me a new name tag that says ornery on it. She is the one who's ornery. 

We got new district members. Elder Williams from Blackfoot, ID, and a new missionary, Sister Anderson from Sandy, UT. Alta High School.

Also, we had a cool lesson with Chanh. He is so excited to pray! Christianity is new to him, but he asked us if he could pray before he goes to bed. Ee said YES! Also, today we found out that our zone leader's branch president speaks Vietnamese so we will see if we can work something out! Chanh is so cool. 24 years old. Very teachable, and child-like. He gave us a present from Vietnam- some kind of magnet doll thing. it was something special to him. he is excited to come to church! 

I feel like I have learned how to be pretty patient on my mission. I don't really get mad at people anymore. Also I've learned to not be so judgmental. I'm not going to lie, it has been pretty hard lately. A lot of days I have a hard time feeling the spirit but I just keep trying and trust that things will work out for the best. and the more I focus on other's problems than my own things go better. 

look forward to chatting on Christmas!

Love, 

Elder Soutas

Choose the Better Part

Hey everybody!

Hope you are enjoying the holiday season. It's been fun. 

This week we spent a couple hours making this plaque and Christmas light fixture which says #light the world 25 days 25 ways, visit mormon.org. I wish my camera had battery so I could take a picture of it. I am pretty proud of it.

Other than that this week, we drove 3 hours to Springfield early in the morning to go to an impromptu zone conference about planning. Apparently our mission struggles with effective planning so we spend 4 hours learning how to do that better. They want us to Think Outside of the tiny box that we are in without leaving the "trust box" or framework of rules that we are to live by. They really want us to increase our vision of finding people and try to be more creative.

Another way we tried to be more creative this week was to play music at the old folks home. they sure enjoyed it but it didn't turn into any people to teach. We will have to re evaluate that. 

This week we made some lee-way with Amparo. We brought Sister Large with us and her homemade cookies. They became instant friends. It was funny we couldn't go inside because there wasn't a man with us so we were left out in the cold while Amparo and Sister Large developed a friendship. Sister large also invited over our other investigator for lunch and a bible study as well as dinner! She is a fantastic member missionary. 

Our hope this week is to be creative by "calling members on a mission" since there has been increasing emphasis in our stake about sharing the gospel. I thought we would kind of mimic a full-time missionary call letter and give it to the members and also even give them a print out of the mission they are called to with a map of the Paris branch, key indicators like "awkward situations, pass along cards passed, church invites, etc... just make it fun for them. WE will see how it turns out. 

This week we also made some great progress with Dusty. She had us over for dinner and is a great cook by the way. She made home made chicken and noodles. We also were able to last night travel all the way to Champain with brother strait and sister strait to attend the annual stake musical fireside which was very very good. IT was kind of funny because one of the songs was an arrangement of "O Holy NIght' which Elder Kama and I performed just the day before at some one's baptism, except it was waaaay better. The reason being is that the stake pres. daughter who is my age has a voice that is unbelievable. Elder Kama and I thought it was funny because the stake president was at the baptism just the day before and heard our musical number knowing that the next day his daughter would perform it and would sound much better. Haha kind of hard to explain. I'm in a hurry typing this.

Also this week I learned in church that I need to be better at spending my time more wisely. In the sacrament a phrase in the hymn stood out "and choose the better part." Then in 3rd hour they read Mormon 9 28 which says to be wise in the days of your probation. So apparently I need to use my time more wisely, and choose better things over good things since I have A LOT of good ideas, but I need to be careful. It's one of those gift/curse type of things that I have. 

Well I better wrap up this email! 

I am so glad for this Christmas season to reflect on my personal relationship with Christ. It could honestly be a lot better, but I know that everything that is good in my life is because of him. My family, good people that are in my life, trials to be able to develop Christlike attributes, the book of Mormon. It is  all because of him. 

I love you all!

Keep enjoying the holidays and serving others!

Elder Soutas

p.s. I am staying in Paris another transfer! and getting an elder burgoyle

How can we serve?

Due to time, I will just send my letter I sent to my mission president with some things edited out due to confidentiality. 

"Dear President Bateman,

Lots of things to tell you.

I think that is great counsel on usage of the cell phones after 9pm. I value that hour and a half before bed time especially so I can reflect on the day and how I need to repent. 
Member dinners have always been challenging on my mission. I know there's been times on my mission that I was really strict on them being only an hour and I would get really anxious if it was over that. I think I've been a little loose with that rule as of late so thank you for the chastening. 

This week has been good. We were able to have Dusty come to stake conference which she really enjoyed, as well as the christmas devotional. We had 3 of our vietnamese investigators come to the Randolph's house to watch the devotional with us as well. 

Dusty has a new baptismal date for Jan 1st. She wants me to baptize her. I am honored, but of course that will only happen if it is the lord's will that I stay here in Paris. It was great to see how she overcame her temptation to go and buy pot and alcohol, and instead she bought a 25 dollar entertainment center. She continues to thank us how us and the Bemises and the Straits have come into her life. 

A few of our other investigators have been challenging to meet with on a consistent basis, however we found 2 more really solid ones named Amparo and Pedro. They are hispanic moved from Texas recently. They have been fixing the roofing on their home, and they had no heat. But thankfully we had some members in Casey where they live install a heater. Then when we came by with Brother Bingham who just moved here from texas (coincidence I think not) on Sunday we helped them put the shingles and other trash into the dumpster before it came the next morning! They were so thankful, and afterwards we taught them the restoration and invited them to be baptized, and they said they would! She is a devoted catholic. She is so faithful though and wants her family to come closer to God because they are straying away. She felt the message of the restoration was true.Before we left, she wanted to hug us and we let her (not explicitly in the missionary handbook) and she said "mi casa es tu casa."  She has many grandkids and a few other relatives that live with her so we may be teaching a family here soon!

Also, something kind of crazy happened yesterday. So within the branch, there recently has been a nasty divorce and it has effected a lot of members of the branch. I won't mention any names. But this woman who got divorced is now dating and living together with a returned missionary who recently "went off the deep-end.". Well after he turned it off his car lights which we told him he left on he came and knocked on our door to thank us, and he also came asking us to help him repent. He is 24 years old and is from the same city as me (South Jordan Utah.) He says he wants to get back in the church and everything, but with the tender feelings in the branch because of the divorce we are still unsure about if it would be good to teach him or not.  Kind of a sticky situation. we will of course pray about it. But it is kind of one of those things where you think "the Lord knows his children." 

Went on exchanges this week with the zone leaders. They told us that as a mission we need to think more outside the box and so Elder Kama and I have been doing that the last week. We've come up with quite a few ideas, one of which has already been approved, and another may need approval as well. 
(1) With the emphasize of member missionary work from general conference and stake conference, we were thinking that we could be creative somehow and call members on a mission! Maybe do it for a day or two, or maybe even just an evening for mutual-- go out and "warn their neighbors" and share the gospel!
(2) Have a PMG class for members they can attend if they want where we can teach them how to be a good member missionary. 
(3) We are going to make a #light the world CD with music compositions of an lds artist (Sally Deford) which says it is okay to copy for non-commercial use. We may need to look more into that and make sure it is okay to distribute songs that we perform by other artists. IF that isn't allowed then we are capable of creating our own compositions. We thought this would be good if we were to give this along with the chrsistmas intitiative cards! We are even going to create a type of light the world theme song! We are really excited about this! If we can do this, what do we need to make sure we do so we don't overstep our bounds?
(4) Along with the light the world, we are planning on making a light fixture with the nativity scene with wording #light the world 25 ways over 25 days. Visit Mormon.org. We are wondering if this would be approved. We have thought of putting it in the church yard but that may not be allowed, plus our branch mission leader may not like it. The other place we have considered was in front of our landlord's place, however that may not be good because then people might get an idea of where we live and that's not good. The other place we've considered and already have permission to do is at our WML's house. He loves the idea. The question I have for you though is if it would put his house in jeopardy of being mistreated or if it would cause someone to commit a hate crime because it says mormon.org. What do you think? I will also ask the zone leaders to ask the APs but I thought I might as well describe to you in this email what we were hoping to do. Hopefully there is a way we can do it without there being potential mishaps. There is a park in town that allows anyone in the community to put up christmas lights but we heard that it might be too late to put more up.
(5) We've been broadening our horizons with service. WE are now switching off weeks between a compassionate clothing donation center, an animal shelter, food pantry (which might end due to DM being on wednesdays), we tried doing shop with a cop but it was too late. That is where you buy toys for families that can't afford them. We are also getting in touch with hospitals to see what kind of service we can do that is within our rules. Also, I just talked to the librarian here where we are doing emails and she gave us this website (fiaec.com) which stands for faith in action edgar county .com. We've talked to this organization before, but they are well-known in the community for service. We asked the librarian if there were any adults who have learning disabilities that we can help them read, and she directed us to look on this website. So would we be allowed to get permission to look this up?
(6) Also, i made this myths refutes/truths affirmed diagram with the questions of the soul based off of Elder Russel M. Nelson's talk. I'll send it to the office elders as an attachment. Would that be okay to distribute to people?
(7) Lastly, Elder Kama and I have been thinking how we can use our talents to build better trust with the members or to find people. So since I play piano and he sings well, we were thinking it might be a good idea to do free piano/singing lessons and pass out flyers. 

Sorry for so many requests. I don't mean to surpass the zone leaders and APs. I am mostly just really excited about implementing these ideas into our proselyting and wanted to tell you about them and get your opinion. 

 
Thanks for your pateince with me and Elder Kama and taking the time to glance at this long email."

Sincerely, 
Elder Soutas