Julie's Baptism! and transfer

We had a worldwide missionary broadcast this week:

“All things gathered together in one… (D&C 27:13). Again, we can’t just treat baptism separate and apart from the “repentance thing”. It’s ongoing, they are all interrelated. In my judgment, there is little or no spiritual power in treating the fundamental elements of the Doctrine of Christ as separate things. It’s when they are tied together, and we see faith unto repentance (Alma 34:15-16), and repentance preceding baptism (Moroni 8:25), and baptism helping us to press forward (2 Nephi 31:13-21) on the strait and narrow path – the covenant path – that there is power (D&C 84:20-21), not when they are separated.” 

How do we as members of the church live each element of the doctrine of christ separately? Maybe you all could answer that for me because I guess I still don't quite understand. 

How can you excercise true faith alone and that wouldn't yield repentance? Faith moves a person to repentance so can they really have faith if they don't repent? I would have to say no on that. Also can a person truly make a covenant of baptism without true repentance? no they can't and they also can't receive the gift of the holy ghost without baptism by proper authority. So maybe you can help me here. How does a person treat the doctrine of christ separately? What might that look like?

I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by that when he said it but I've thought a little bit more about since then. Now I think I understand a little bit more, that we can't live a life of just faith or just repentance, or make and keep covenants through baptism or have the companionship of the holy ghost in and of itself. Repentance can't be achieved without faith, neither can baptism without repentance, and a person can pretend all they want that they have the holy ghost, but they will not truly have it unless they are repenting and have made or are working toward making covenants. 


 I am excited to go to Weldon Spring and serve with Elder Gifford. Elder Kama served with him and I know that was his favorite companion. 

We had our baptism with Julie this weekend! We made a lot of preparations for the baptism and it payed off! People were saying that it was one of the best baptisms they've ever attended. There were a lot of people there too. We tried to get the members to invite their nonmember friends by giving out invitations but unfortunately none of them showed up. I do like how our branch does baptisms after church Sunday because we had over 80 people there to support Julie! 

We have a lot of hope for Julie and Brian. Brian's mother Reba expressed that Julie being married to Brian was an answer to lots of prayers. Brian kind of fell away from the church after his father died while he was in high school. He played for the basketball team but then his father died of either a heart attack or a stroke during one of the games and it kind of traumatized him. He left to play basketball in California, but then made his way back. I don't think I've ever met anyone as cool as Brian Fulk! He couldn't ever pronounce my name correct but he will be remembered. 

We haven't found a whole lot of new investigators this week. I think part of the reason is it takes more time to find new investigators when you try to work through the members. We got multiple solid referrals this week, a couple of them which we contacted and said they would be interestsed in either family history or want to come check out our church services. 

We have also been sharing the Dallin H Oaks talk and Neil L. Andersen talk with members. With the Neil L. Andersen talk it is fun to share with members because we do an object lesson where we use an actual 100 or 1000 piece puzzle that they have to try to solve by themselves, but when we help them see what happens when they all contribute together, then they begin to realize like Neil L. Andersen said in his talk: each of us is a piece of the puzzle, and each of us helps to set in place other essential pieces. Its weird to think that if each of us is a piece of the puzzle then that would be an over who-knows-how-many Biillion piece puzzle to represent the population of every person who ever has or will live on the earth!

I am going to miss the Paris area. I've never seen people so united and their hearts being knit together as one. I will definitely revisit some day and hopefully the new converts here that I was able to see get baptized will still be strong and their posterity will too. I have great expectations for Brian and Julie Fulk when they can go to the temple in a year and be sealed to their little boy. Hopefully one day Mashell's husband Randy will come and accept the priesthood. I wonder how many people will be affected by Julie's decision to be baptized because she is so excited to share the gospel with her family and even gave her mother a Korean book of Mormon this week!

Well I had better get going.

Elder Soutas

 I am not in some of them because I was doing prelude on the piano for the baptism. 

Paris Branch

We have had some great success in our branch! Julie Fulk is set to be baptized this Sunday. She and her husband Brian who is a returning member have been keeping all of their commitments and coming to church every week. We even got her to attend relief society now (she usually helps her husband in Primary) and she loved it. She wants to give a Korean Book of Mormon to her mother! We have printed out invitations and are encouraging the branch to invite many people so they can experience the power of the ordinance and want to be bapitzed themselves. We taught Julie the word of wisdom the other day and she is completely willing to live it which is great. That is a really big sacrifice especially since she is a manager at Starbucks in Terre Haute, IN. We are really impressed at her progression and are really looking forward to her baptism Sunday.

Our other investigator, Brent, has started to progress too. He came to church for the first time in a while (he used to come all the time and was very close to baptism  and he was touched by the song "If you Could Hie to Kolob" that someone sang. We thought that was kind of funny for some reason.

We also decided this week to go tract out a small town called Dennison. We gave 1/3 of the town a copy of the book of mormon! We passed out 3 of them! For reals though, we actually ran into this man named Mark. Although he likes his alchohol,  he is really nice. He built a huge deck attached to a trailor for his frail mother. He isn't much into religion he says because no one could answer his questions like "how did God become God?" We told him we had the answer but he didn't seem to listen. But, his mother we met with and she is very tender-hearted. We didnt' get to really teach her much since she talks in circles (she is old). However, she was thrilled when we invited her to church. Mark says he wouldn't make any promises to drive her, but he said that he trusted us if we were to arrange a ride for her. Well, we weren't able to get her a ride despite our best efforts. i felt really bad that we didn't get her one. Hopefully they'll give us another chance and that we can figure out a way to get her there. Mark has some potential though, he said we could come help him do some projects around his property. They offered us coke to drink while he drank his beer. I gladly accepted it. Never do I turn down a coke. I am still 172 pounds is all. My metabollism is still young. 

In other news, we also have been having great success in Casey! The Large and Griggs families have been carpooling a good amount of people to church the last several weeks. There are a couple familes that have been coming that we are hoping to start teaching soon. One of which is the Scheiners, a part member "family" (aren't civilly married). They live about 5 miles south of Casey, but are technically in the Effingham boundaries. They don't have any desire to go to the Effingham branch and have good friends in our branch. They have 3 children that are baptism age. We asked the zone leaders if we should teach them or if Effingham should teach them. They told us to turn them over to Effingham, which I get, however the odds of them going to the Effingham branch are very slim. Even Elder Merrill and Williams are skeptical of them actually coming to their branch because the fellowship there is pretty terrible (at least that's what they tell me). The zone leaders said that Effingham should teach them and see how it goes, and if it doesn't go well they can turn them over to us. 

Another family in Casey came to church and are good friends with the Large family. Billy Jean has 4 kids that are all baptism age as well. We just haven't been able to have a very formally appointment with them yet besides Billy Jean. The members in Casey are exceptional. They have been helping get Mashell and Christina (both recent converts) started on their family history/temple work. Mashell's husband Randy is a work in progress as well. Family history has proven to be fairly effective as we have helped multiple active and less active members experience the spirit of elijah and we even got 2 non member referrals the last two days from Sister Fuller who has caught the family history bug as well! I also helped a lady do her family history  Also, we got the relief society on board to do family history night at the church once a month!! I have a testimony that if you want things to actually happen and get done, as the relief society, they can help you. 

As far as the district is concerned, they are doing pretty well. The Sisters in Mattoon set 2 baptism dates this week! One with Katie for the 18th of February, and Josh for the 4th of March. Josh is a referral/fellowshipper from the Stake President, President Stowell. The sisters were really excited when President Stowell gave away his coat to someone in need while he was with the sisters. He is setting a wondeful example to the stake to step it up in sharing the gospel along with the missionaries. We are all committed to his vision to fill the stake chapel choir seats by the end of the year with 57 active new converts! 

As with the Effingham branch, I am a little concerned. Elder Williams said it best the other week that you know things aren't going super well when your key indicators begin to look like binary code! 

Well, we shall see if this will be my last week in Paris. I wouldn't mind going to MIssouri at all. 

Well I guess I will just close with bearing testimony since that is just what you should do when you close an email as a missionary. I know that God answers our prayers through the prayer of faith. Our prayers are often answered according to the amount of work and effort we put in. Things can fall into place if we put in our best effort and if it is the Lord's will. I have been able to see the Paris branch grow a little bit because of the faith I have done my best to exude. I know that I won't fully perceive the blessings that will result from my labors here, but I know that by very small means great things will gradually come to pass. I know Jesus Christ atoned for my sins, for all of my screwups, and rebellions. He is so good to us all. His way is the only way to everlasting peace and happiness. 

Love, 

Elder Soutas

The Lord is my Strength

Hey Mom and Dad,

Doing pretty good today. It's been a good week. Also pretty challenging. There was supposed to be a bunch of freezing rain this week but it never actually happened which was good so we didn't die on the roads. 

We've made some good progress with Julie this week. She has a great shot of being baptized the 29th! She and Brian have been reading consistently and praying. They stayed all 3 hours of church and we had a lesson with them afterwards. We also had a lesson with them over the phone since they are really busy. If you don't remember, Brian is the sophomore basketball coach for the Paris High team. I wish he could've been my coach when I played at Bingham. He's a really good guy. His father passed when he was his basketball coach in high school. He's gone through a lot of troubled times because of that but is returning and I have confidence he will be a strong member! We hope that he will be able to baptized Julie!

In other news, Dusty dropped us again! She reconsidered after dropping us last week, but then she made some poor choices this weekend and now has decided not to come to church for good. Pretty disappointing. 

We met with Amparo and Pedro again last night. We thought they didn't want us to talk to them anymore, but I guess not. We got to teach their daughters and grandkids, too! It's not very often that we get to teach a whole family at once. The lesson went really well, until they all got distracted by making hooooooot pockets! Ugh. Right when we were teaching the apostay. It was a perfect demonstration of how the apostasy happened. We don't know how that happened. Very frustrating. They are originally from the Houston area near Jordan served but I think it was in the north mission (in Humble, Texas). They are pretty set being catholic for now but they agreed to read the Book of Mormon. They just don't quite understand giving up  Catholicism when the book of Mormon is true.   Thanks to those hot pockets distracting their learning. 

We had interviews with President Bateman this week. He gave me a lot of good advice. He referenced 1 Nephi 15 about holding fast to the rod, and feasting upon the fruit compared to clinging to the rod and tasting of the fruit. He also told me that while I am a missionary I am "married to the Lord."

I would go into more detail but am constrained to time. He is a great man though. I had a really terrible day Friday, and he was able to talk me through everything. Also both of those letters you sent me on Christmas were a comfort in time of immense discouragement. Thank you for taking the time to write those. 

I am learning a lot of how to fight through and hold fast to my Faith in times of darkness and opposition. There's been a lot of disappointing things happening, and I have had plently of reason to just throw up my hands and pack my bags and go home,  but I have stayed true and I will never forsake the Lord because in him is my strength. I love my Father in Heaven and my Savior. I know they will help us through our own personal Gethsemanes. 

Hope you all enjoy your week!

Love 

Elder Soutas

 The world's largest golf tee. Casey is home to the world's largest objects and for each of them to pass the test they have to actually have them work like a real golf tee, so they had to actually swing a huge club off this huge tee to pass the test!

Elder Merril, Elder Williams, Elder Burgoyne

                      At a dirt bike course

Teaching through Family History

 Hello

Another week come and gone. 

This place is colder than a freezer! 

We have done a lot of work with family history this past week. Our recent converts Mashell and Christina both got really excited about it as well as Mashell's husband who is less active. Christina was baptized over a year ago who has been really hot and really cold and we helped discover her 4 generations and so now she is really excited to do more. She hasn't been to the temple yet so hopefully this will get her into gear. every thursday or so we have a family history night scheduled at the Grigg's home for recent converts and whoever wants to come. It works great.

We also made a cool flyer to put in the local libraries about anyone interested in having free family history help. We got a call from a lady that we are meeting with tonight. The librarian in Casey is more than happy to let us help people in the library, and she is interested too! She was really impressed with our flyer and was excited to put it up for people to see! We also have located a genealogical center in Paris and in Marshall where we are hoping to see what we can do with them. 

Dusty, our top progressing, dropped us the other day. She has nothing against our teaching or anything, she is just confused and wants to take a step back to sort things out. She still had us come over for dinner though and she talked a lot of things out with our ward mission leader and his wife while Elder Burgoyne and I started her with a Family search account and traced her lineage back to her great-great grandpa! So now we at least have an excuse to come back though she doesn't want to be baptized anymore (at least for now). 

For District meeting we got the whole district signed up on family search and familiar with it. They have all promised to fill out their booklets and to implement with the help of ward leaders ways to reach out with the help of family history. It has been cool learning some of the stories of Great-great-great grandpa Orrin, Great grandma Maxine, Grandpa Wallace. I never knew that Grandpa Wallace was the first to fly helicopters in Utah or that he flew all of those planes to the south pacific for world war 2. I thought it was hilarious that Grandpa Maxine would get her primary kids to behave by threatening to sit on them! And I never knew that Granpda Orrin had a pet bear that he would cuddle with when he was drunk and was good friends with Butch Cassidy! What else do I not know about our family! It is so easy for these stories to be forgotten. I've been doing a lot of thinknig about family members I've never known and I just hope that I can continue the trend some day with a family of my own. 

We ourselves have met a couple of less actives that have knowledge of family history that are willing to help out too. Our Branch president though is concerned about doing it though because he doesn't want to schedule any more days to keep people from being with their families (which is ridiculous since family history will only bring families together!!!!) and there isn't enough rooms in the building to do it during mutual so we aren't sure how we are going to get him on board with family history. His wife really likes it though so we will see. 

Other than that, things are going okay. Elder Burgoyne has been doing great. Our other investigator Julie is on date for baptism the 29th and she and her returning member husband have been reading the Book of Mormon consistently!

That's all I really feel like writing today. Hope you all are enjoying your life and aren't wasting it doing meaningless things.

Love Elder Soutas

St Bernard followed Elders 

Puzzled about the Purpose of LIfe?

Hey everyone,

It's been another eventful week!

Sorry we weren't able to email the other day since all libraries near us were closed.

Some good things happened this week. We've been trying extra hard to work with the active members in obtaining referrals. We are getting return appointments with them too to follow up on their efforts. We met with the Large family. They have the most ironic last name since they live in a small town with all of the biggest objects in the world. Like the world's largest chair, wind chime, golf tee, mailbox, etc. We taught a pretty good lesson about the book of Mormon and they all promised to read their scriptures better as a foundation for sharing the gospel. You can't share it if you don't study it. They are an awesome family. Brother Large gave the best priesthood lesson I've heard in a long while. It actually impacted me. It was about not being compelled and acting as an agent (not being commanded in all things). Because of that I decided we would skip lunch unlike normal. I almost decided against it, but I felt impressed that that was what we needed to do and so we did it and I felt a lot happier. As a result, we talked to a couple of really cool people, one of which was a Mr. Whitaker. He wouldn't accept a book of Mormon but he knew someone in the branch very well. so you never know. Another man seemed like he wanted to argue with us, but it turned out he actually had questions and accepted a book of Mormon after I insisted that he take one. I felt like we had only been doing the bear minimum lately, but I decided to try going the extra mile yesterday and like I said I felt a lot better.

Dusty has been sick all week and so we weren't able to meet with her much. She couldn't come to church either. That's two weeks in a row now. Her baptism date is pushed to the 15th now. We gave her a priesthood blessing and stuff still.

Julie made some good progress. She and her husband Brian read the first 5 chapters of the book of Mormon together, which is a great way to start off the new year. Brian came to church, but Julie had to fill in for work since she was the only one from her company that wasn't hung over from new years!

Brent has fallen of the face of the earth.

We had a cool church tour with Chanh while we were on exchanges. He enjoyed it. He didn't accept a baptism invite yet though.

we also met with the Large's grandparents, The Griggs. Had a really great lesson with them and I was very impressed with C.W. the Large's 10 year old son. We talked about Neil L. Andersen's talk which had to do how we are all pieces of the puzzle. C.W. said that like a puzzle, the world is puzzled or confused and we need to help them "fit in." While the world may be trying to fit in to certain clubs or cliques, we are to be trying to help each other be "fitly framed together" (ephesians 2:10) by helping our brothers and sisters who are puzzled about their purpose in life. Each puzzle has a purpose, some are turned over and have no clue where they fit.  We are all pieces of that puzzle, and like certain pieces that don't quite fit, we have thousands of our brothers and sisters who are looking to fit in to the truth but need our help to make a few adjustments (like turning a puzzle piece so it does fit). Also, in a puzzle their are 4 corners, and the gospel needs to "gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." (2 Nephi 21:12). 

I invite all who read this email to sort through the people you know in your life and help those who are puzzled to fit in. look for someone who looks lonely at school or just anywhere and help them know what their purpose is.

 "Those who surround you are open to spiritual inquiry. Remember the puzzle? You do not come to the table with empty hands but with technology and social media at your command. We need you; the Lord needs you to be even more engaged in this great cause."

       - Neil L. Andersen

have a great week!

Love you all!

Elder Soutas