Hola! Familia! Como estan? Another wonderful week here in Illinois. Sorry about the email last week, things are always a little bit rushed on transfer week Monday. We had a great week though! And a super successful transfer of missionaries. No mistakes. This transfer, the whole process became a lot easier for us because we leave in the middle of the day to take the departing missionaries to lunch with the Griffins and then to the temple. Honestly, we feel pretty spoiled and much less stressed by the end of the day. On wednesday, we took the departing missionaries to the airport and then headed back to the mission home to have some coordination meetings. The weeks kind of flow from meeting to meeting and working hard in between all of that. On Friday, we had MLC and then tomorrow we will have our first of 3 zone conferences this week. Plus, 4 exchanges in between all of that. Yeah, life is full! And that is the best way to live it in my opinion. One really great thing that happened this week was while teaching one of our investigators. The lesson started off pretty terribly. haha! He had been researching some annoying anti-mormon literature and had come up with what he thought were solid conclusions. I could probably improve at having more patience with these types of scenarios...but when the comment was made, "There were camels in North America, but not horses. If he would have said camels, maybe I would believe him." I just couldn't stop laughing. So that was my funny moment of the week. The positive moment was that by the end of the lesson with this man, he had knelt down and offered up a vocal prayer to God for the first time in years. That was powerful. That is a huge lesson that my mission has taught me. I feel true charity and love for that man, despite the nonsense. It is a special moment for me when my companion and I can candidly look someone in the eye and tell them that we care about them and their family, and invite them to change. I know that change is possible through the Savior Jesus Christ. He is the way. I love you all, cuidense mucho FOTOS: Random Photo shoot with my new glasses!
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I am so sorry!!!! I love you all. We are with the new missionaries today becuase it is transfers this week. I am staying in Woodridge for transfer #3! It is a blessing to be serving my God. I love my life! I love you all! Elder Stewart-Chester 1319 Butterfield Rd Ste 522 Downers Grove, IL 60515 1&2&3 Exchanges with Elder Squires our district leader 4 Hover boards at a members home. Too fun. Hello hello!
querida familia! another week rushes by. It has been super wonderful. There is always lots to do here in Woodridge. It is a lot like Arlington Heights as far as the culture and diversity. Often times it is very fast paced and busy, which is normal for being pretty close to the city. We got a fantastic surprise this morning, SNOW! I'll send some pictures. It is still snowing as we speak. So this week we had back to back exchanges again which was really fun. The way that exchanged work - or I guess, what they are for those of you who might not know - is when a companionship of Elders comes to our area for the day so that we can get an opportunity to learn and grow from each other. We split off, so I go with one Elder while my companion, Elder Riggins, goes with the other. They are a huge blessing, and usually really busy. This week we were able to find a lot of different people to teach!. I was with some really hard working Elders on the exchanges so it felt nice to get a lot done. One of the first people that we met was a lady named Yasmin. After having taught her about the structure of God calling prophets in the Old and New Testaments and the restoration of this same structure in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I made the comment, "We know that it is a bold claim to suggest that God has called a living Prophet to once again guide His church..." She jumped in and interrupted saying, "It is really that bold. I mean, if He did it then why wouldn't He do it now." To say the least, we are very stoked to go back and teach her. That very same day we went to go and see lady that had shown interest a few weeks ago. We knocked on her door becuase we noticed she had a Maserati parked in her driveway (one of the nicer neighborhoods within our area). Anyways, we went back and they let us right in. Such wonderful people! They are from Pakistan and have an incredible amount of faith. We are excited to continue teaching them! Another person that we met is named Nemo. It is a funny story so I thought I would include it. He is the son of a man we have been teaching for awhile, but we have never been able to meet his son. We went over last night and I heard Nemo in the room next door playing video games (he is 12 years old). As I searched for some way to involve him in the lesson, I noticed a deck of Magic the Gathering cards on the table. So I yelled over to Nemo if I could ask him about them hahah! Weird how you can relate to people in different ways. After talking about Magic we changed to talking about God. He said his parents had never taught him about God before and he had never really thought to much about it either. Long story short we are going over again next week and he actually has sincere curiousity. God works in wonderful ways to connect people to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a message that meets all needs, satisfys all concerns, and cures all doubts. I recognize that I used a pretty intense superlative there, but nevertheless, I know that it is true. If you don't believe me, read the Standard Works! Or just try it for yourself, I love you all! Thank you for everything, Los quiero mucho Con amor, Elder Stewart-Chester 1319 Butterfield Rd Ste 522 Downers Grove, IL 60515 FOTOS: 1&2 Exchanges! 3&4 Snow this morning (my best smile, whoops) Hello Fam,
Como andamos? It is me again! What a fast week. It is always wonderful to look back on the week and recognize the Lord's hand in everything. Illinois has had some fun weather the past week, in fact, I think we have seen it all. Sun, snow, wind, hail, rain, clouds, tornadoes, lightning, 30F, 65F. It is a fun adventure. The tornado part was slightly more serious, we were scrambling all night to get a report from the zone leaders about everyone's safetly. Ottawa actually had a death and some major damage in their city, so those Elders spent their night in the basement of a member's home without electricity. Crazy. Fortunately no one in the mission was harmed. The rest of us just watched the incredible lightning and clouds which I have never seen on the West coast. Nature is impressive. God is powerful. This week we had new missionary training and then back to back exchanges! Then we skyped a some of the zone leaders and had an interesting service opportunity. I'll jump to the service opportunity: The Hermanas in our ward called us about helping a member of our church's friend move. (we have Hermanas in our ward that cover both English and Spanish...which is a bummer that we don't cover Spanish...I am teaching Elder Riggins poco por poquito) We agreed to help and went over in the morning on Saturday. When we got their, nothing was packed and the poor family had no other help besides us to get everything moved. (I had tons of simpathy for this family left over from all of our moves back home) So we got to work as quickly as we could. It was the Hermano, Elder Riggins, and myself doing all of the lifting into their van. I couldn't but crack up becuase Elder Riggins kept recieving orders from the man in Spanish and didn't have a clue what was going on. He is a good sport. So pretty soon we realized that we weren't going to finish in time for the other appointments that we had scheduled for the rest of the day. So we changed into our formal proselyting clothes in the car and scurried over to the rest of the appointments. (Did I mention that these people are not members of our church?). The service was such a cool opportunity for us to explain more about what we do as full-time missionaries. They both had so many questions for us and invited us to go have dinner with them after our appointments. SO, we ate some of the best ranchero (basically carne asada) that I have ever had that night. It was overall crazy. But we are excited for the hermanas to start teaching them. Plus I have been missing speaking Spanish for soo long. It was a good day. I have been thinking quite alot about the subject of Christ's established church as found in the New Testament. We have a lady that is investigating into our church that has around 1.5million questions about just about anything you could think of when it comes to the origin of our church. The more that I think about it, the more I have come to realize something: Complexity is a misconception of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is nothing more pure and simple than the doctrine of Christ. I know through study and faith, as well as a confirming witness from the Holy Ghost, that the fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth in our day. Complete in its soundness, richness, and purity, but most importantly, its simplicity. Life is full of things that complicate the mind, and convolute the brain. God and His teachings do not fall into that category. SO, if there is something you don't quite understand, or have difficulty grasping, cheer up and trust in Christ. Keep believing, keep hoping. I have seen the good that comes from doing just that. This is His truth, and it is found in the message that I carry each day into the lives of those who choose to accept it. Please accept it. I love you all, have a fantastic week! con mucho amor, Elder Stewart-Chester 1319 Butterfield Rd Ste 522 Downers Grove, IL 60515 1&2 Exchange with Elder Bingham Syracuse, Utah 3 Basketball in the morning 4,&5 Exchange with Elder Fong from Houston, Texas |
Fletcher Stewart-ChesterFletcher is called to serve the Lord in the Chicago West Spanish Speaking mission. This is a blog of his letters and adventures CategoriesArchives
July 2017
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