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

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