Hello Fam,

its been an interesting week.

We had Nalani and Jacob Taylor come to a temple grounds tour. I wish I took a picture of the front of the temple. IT was cold outside and wasn't very well planned out so we didn't get a chance. Nalani needs to get baptized. She is so great. Her family is Buddhist. She is from the Phillipines. She also loves to crochet, which was no coincidence because before we knew that we went to a free crochet class at the public library two days before. So our plan now is to try to get some of the relief society there as well as Nalani where they can become well acquainted. Also it is a great missionary opportunity. The teacher of the class is named Laurie and is Jewish. 

Also, Jacob gave such a powerful talk on Sunday in sacrament meeting. He is about 24 years old. It was general authority good. He is a chemist. Very bright person. Part asian. Very humble and kind personality. I hope that Nalani felt the power of the spirit in his talk. She made it to sacrament which is good. 

Also we had a new investigator come to sacrament this week! Her name is Robyn. She is a former investigator, a referral of Brother York Bennett. She has a very sensitive personality, very kind. We had a few lessons with her and her son, Anthony. There is a little bit of tension between the two during the lesson. We were primarily there to teach Anthony since Robyn is desperate to help him get his life on track, but what has ended up happening is that she has gained more interest than Anthony. 

Robyn found it really fascinating that we live in the promised land. She also was intrigued that she could do baptisms for the dead for her grandfather. During the course of the lesson she apologized to Brother Bennett for misunderstanding our religion. 

When she came to church on Sunday she came in a little late, but the talks were wonderful which is always a relief. She left after gospel principles because she has a brain injury, and also she broke down in tears after the lesson that we taught about Prophets of God. There is a lot going on in her life right now. She used to be catholic and a choir music director (which is quite impressive for that church). But she had some bad experience there which caused her to not like the church anymore. She also realizes that the Catholic church took books out of the bible, which she found very interesting to her that it mentions that in the Book of Mormon. 

She is a work in progress. Hopefully we can get things rolling with her. I have thought that using music would be a great way to build a better relationship with her and help her recognize the spirit. 

well, it appears that I have to end earlier than expected. One of the missionaries in our district is going home early and so we have to drive him to the airport. Also, my companion this past week has had an MRI on his shoulder and will hear back results from Salt Lake at the end of this week. He may or may not have to leave his mission early, too for surgery. We will see. Pray for the best to happen to him. 

I'll close with a brief testimony. I know that Jesus is Christ, he is the Son of God and has the power to deliever us from death, from sorrow, and from sin. Joseph Smith is for sure a prophet of God, and The Book of Mormon is undeniably the word of God and is a marvel and a wonder to me. 

Love you all,

Elder Soutas

Becoming a Saint

Hello everyone! 

Don't have much time to email today due to President's day yesterday. I am so impressed with Brycen's shooting ability. I am also excited that your hebrew book is going well. I have thought recently about maybe going to BYU Jerusalem center some time when I get back. Who knows. You'll be a fine teacher of gospel principles Dad. Just go to the teaching in the Savior's way classes and study preach my gospel chapter 10 and 3  and you'll be good. 

Let's see if I can remember what has all happened this week. Well, we are having a hard time finding new investigators but are finding a few potentials. Last night we weren't able to find anyone to teach and so it was time to bike home. I prayed on the way back that there would be some people to talk to. The first person wasn't interested. But when we got to our apartment complex  as I raced around the corner I was still praying about who we could talk to and I saw a man walking his small dog by some cars on the grass there. His name was Keegan. He was about 30 or less. He actually had lived in Utah at some point. He wasn't a churchgoer because he felt like many of them are hypocrites. Indeed! He had heard about the book of Mormon before but never read it. We were able to give him a copy and he was interested to read it. He also thought it was cool that we had a prophet at the head of our church and we didn't get paid to preach. Didn't get his address though, so I may not see him again. I have high hopes for his next encounter with Mormons though. 

Let's see, what other positive things happened this week. Oh yeah! We have been helping Ken to quit smoking! Brother Bennett (who I need to send a picture of him home) is taking time out of his day to help him quit buying him all of the material for the stop smoking workshop and everything. We were able to give him a blessing! And also we invited him to come to a baptism held within the district! Ken is less active. He has had some unfortunate things occur in his life. His son got home from a mission not too long ago but he doesn't correspond with him. Same with his daughter. He isn't very self reliant either and relies heavily upon his parents who are nonmembers`. He lives by himself in our complex but I don't think he pays for it. He has some mental illness too. He is such a nice guy though and I really like sitting next to him at church and talking to him. He is very reserved and lonely. Good guy though and good things coming. 

Also, we have been serving and preparing food at the senior's center the past couple of weeks. I've decided to make the extra effort to share the gospel while serving and try to interact with the old fogies more. I've been trying to get myself out of my comfort zone and overcome shyness.  It's harder to share the gospel in this kind of setting, but I figured that that is how it'll be when I get home.

No one will recognize me as a missionary by the way I dress when i get home and so I am trying to learn how to direct casual conversations into gospel related stuff so when I return home I won't just return to "my old ways". 

Anyway, at the senior center usually the missionaries when we have breaks there go sit and study, but I decided that I should try to share the gospel the best I can even if I'm not terribly successful at it. Most of the older people there are all catholic and their minds are like cement (all mixed up at set in their ways) but I sure did enjoy playing "Mexican Train" (a dominoes game) with some of them the other day. I just hope that I can do some kind of good for when  they get to the spirit world and perhaps one of them could get baptized on this side of the veil. We'll see. 

Well there's a lot more that's happened this week that I am forgetting but I have to sign out now. I am very grateful for the atonement. Done some good studying on it this week. I know we can overcome the natural man (like being shy) by yielding to the enticings of the holy spirit, becoming a saint (which literally means holy, spotless, without blemish) and become like a little child. I know that because Christ was sinless he had the power to overcome death since death is the wage of sin. I understand a little bit more now that perfection takes a long time and through Christ I can become perfected in him if I deny myself of all ungodliness and Love God with all of my heart, might and strength. I can become a saint (holy and without spot) if I keep trying to overcome my individual sins and weaknesses. I just have to try and the Lord will accept my effort. 

Love,

Elder Soutas

p.s. challenge: compare mosiah 3:19 and moroni 10:32-33 and look up what it means to be a saint in the bible dictionary. See if you can find some connection between those two passages. 

success teaching the young men

Hey. I'm glad you got my letter. (Feb 6, so no blog post) 

it was a pretty good week. We had zone conference on Tuesday. There were some great trainings about leaving commitment invitations and setting better expectations with those we teach. Towards the last session we were talking about the doctrine of christ and how "all things must be gathered in one." Sometimes in the gospel we treat things as checklists or separate doctrinal principles from one another. But with the doctrine of Christ, as Elder Bednar puts it, "all things must be gathered in one or there is no spiritual power." President Bateman then drew on the chalkboard a cycle with faith->repentance->baptism->holy ghost-> endure to the end-> He showed that if we center Christ around living the doctrine of Christ in our life then the progression of our lives are like a cycle whose circumference keeps getting larger and larger because each time our faith expands which leads to greater repentance, keeping of covenants, feeling the spirit, enduring to the end. Contrastly, if we take Christ out of the center (so kind of imagine christ written in the middle of that cycle) then the complete opposite effect happens.The faith and repentance, keeping of covenants, etc. keeps getting infintesimally smaller kind of like a black whole or whirlpool that sucks us in. This diagram (if you can imagine it based on my great imagery ) represents dwindling in unbelief. So if we look beyond the mark this will happen and life just is terrible. That's why I know it is really important that we rely on Christ. 

Well I felt a little upset at myself listening to that because for some reason I felt like I was dwindling in unbelief (It might have been because I forgot to take my medication that day and so I had a hard time feeling the spirit). Well, I went into the restroom after zone conference to be alone, and I prayed that Heavenly father would send help for me and that I could talk to President Bateman about how I was feeling. Well almost immediately as I was walking down the hall, President Bateman approached me almost as if the spirit already told him to go look for me. I told him how I felt. He helped me understand that I wasn't dwindling in unblief and that I was doing a really good job. He also brought up how he had called you (DAD) and how you told him how much you loved me as your son. I don't have time to go into more detail but it was a sweet experience. I am so blessed to have President Bateman as my mission president. 

Also, I can't recall a time in my life where I have had a prayer answered that immediately! It gave me the assurance I needed to keep enduring. 

This week has been good. We got all 0s with our key indicators. We were really surpirsed that Nani and Cora both were sick and couldn't make it to church. 

We had a great opportunity to teach the young men 3rd hour at church yesterday. We trained them a little bit from the preach my gospel dvds of how to fellowship and things they can be doing now to prepare for a mission. I was praying that at least one of the young men would be motivated to act. It felt really good to share my testimony to the young men and to reflect on my growing up years in priesthood quorums. Kaleb Bunker approached us afterwards and asked us what our advice would be of how to share the gospel with a friend of his at school whose grandparents recently died. We stopped by at his house later in the evening and gave him the complete set. member missionary work at its finest! I was really proud of him for stepping up. Also, there is one other potential nonmember who was present in our discussion sunday. His name is Carson, and accepted an invitation from one of the young women to come to church to hear her piano solo which was amazing. So we are working with the youth the most right now, which is the best I think because they will affect generations. WE have another youth investigator who is 15 named Evan. He has a great relationship with our WML who is next door so we have high hopes for him! He has a great heart, but just got involved with the wrong crowd. We were unable to have a lesson this week but the good news is he expressed more interest to have another meeting with us. We have found some service ideas for him to do and he has even been taking the initiative of looking for service opportuities like we encouraged him to do. He called our WML up the other day and asked if he could borrow a chain saw to cut up a broken tree branch on the neighbors lawn. Such a good kid. I hope we can make an even greater impact in his life. 

Love you. 

Elder Soutas

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