Un Milagro Cada Día (A miracle every day)

Hey Guys!

We had another great week in Tepoztlan! I can't believe it has already been a month since I arrived. The spanish is coming along slowly but surely. I can speak it pretty well but my challenge is understanding the natives sometimes. But it improves everyday. One funny thing that happened yesterday was that the Secretary of our branch came up to me and asked if I was related to John Tanner. I was confused how he could know this and asked how he knew. He said he had just watched the movie of him and saw that my first name is Tanner on the Record of Sayuris baptism. It was quite the coincidence but way awesome.

We climbed Tepozteco this morning! It is the pyramid in our area and our whole zone came and hiked it with us. Wow it was so beautiful and amazing to look out over our area and think of all the people out there that need the Gospel. Our zone and district leaders are so great and we have set some very high goals for this month. They are really inspiring us to do the great things that the Lord expects us to do. In the past, this zone has really struggled. But things are picking up and baptisms are ocurring in every area. We are working hard right now and we do so because we want to baptize because we love the Lord!

I had the opportunity to go with Elder Cevallos on exchanges in San Andres this week. He is from Ecuador and knows zero English because he also just got here. It was tough to communicate with him but we made it work and are good friends now. We spent most of our day however running around his area figuring out how we were going to fill the font for Sayuris baptism. We started by transfering water with buckets from underground near the church. We did this most the day and then finally someone came to fix the pump so everything ended up working out. We had a great baptismal service for Sayuri Sandoval. She was baptized on Friday in San Andres (because they have a baptismal font). She asked me to baptize her which shocked me a little because I hadn't talked too much in our lessons. I was excited though and it was a very spiritual experience to baptize her a see the joy and blessings that she has recieved from her baptism and from the Holy Ghost that she recieved yesterday in Church. The best part about this baptism is that her non member father now wants to baptized. The reason he wants to is because of a very spiritual experience we had with him after the baptism. On Saturday we were talking with him about baptism and he was joking that after meeting with the missionaries for 20 years he thinks he can wait longer to get baptized. We were laughing with him but also trying to help him see the need to be baptized now. We finally decided that the only thing we could do was pray about a specific day. So we prayed about the 13th of August and as he prayed the Spirit struck me very strong. After the prayer we sat there for a few minutes in silence. Finally Erik said I feel something very powerful in my heart, what is that? We gladly answered him that it was the Holy Ghost bearing a witness to him that he needs to be baptized on that day. So we have another baptism this week! We are so excited for him and for all the other people that we are currently helping come unto Christ. It is a joy to do this work and to see so many blessings and miracles each day. Look for the miracles! Much love,

Elder Stutz