Otro Testamento de Jesucristo

Hey Guys!

Another great week in the service of the Lord! Lots of hard work, lots of testimony-building experiences. Elder Oswald and I really focused on the Book of Mormon this week. We have realized that it is the best tool we have in this work of the Lord. We have had some amazing experiences with multiple people as we have explained the book, read it with others, and witnessed others pray about its truthfulness. I have learned to love it even more here in the mission field. It is filled with answers to questions of the soul and it is the key to find out if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is really the one church of Jesus Christ on the earth today. If we have a testimony of the Book of Mormon, we know Joseph Smith was a prophet and that this Church is true. We also know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that our Heavenly Father has a plan for us on this earth. I find myself having a really hard time putting the book down every morning when we leave the house to do the work. I love sharing it with others; whether it be on a taxi, a bus, in someones house or in the street, the book always brings the Spirit. Yesterday in our Preach My Gospel class, we talked about this wonderful book and gave every member a copy so that they could write their testimony in it and give it to a friend this week. I love the story of Lehis dream in the Book of Mormon. As I have dissected that vision, I noticed that giving someone a Book of Mormon is literally like taking them to the end of the iron rod so they can press their way forward to partake of the fruit of the tree, the most desirable. Without the Book of Mormon, we cannot get to the tree. How important it is that we share the Book of Mormon with our friends. With a testimony of the Book of Mormon, we also know that there are living apostles and a living prophet on the earth today. I am so excited to hear from these servants of the Lord this weekend!! It will be interesting this time around watching it in Spanish, but im confident it will bring the same Spirit and guidance for what each of us needs right now in our lives. Sorry for the lack of details in this email. We have been working hard here in Tepoztlan, especially with the members. We try to teach one member every day so that we can keep teaching throughout the day, keep the Spirit with us, and help strengthen the members here. We are still looking for somewhere else to have services because the little room we meet in is not sufficient for the number we have now in the branch. Ill have more details next week though. I know this work is the Lords work and that He is directing it because there is no way I could do this work alone. I love my Savior. Hope everyone has a fantastic week!!!!!

Mucho Amor

Elder Stutz

¡VIVA MEXICO!

Hola Hola

Had a pretty crazy week this week with the Mexican Independence day and all those festivities. A whole lot of partying going on in Tepoztlan (which is normal so there was much more than usual). We had some drunk American tourists yelling at us from the restaurants USA! USA!! haha We were a little embarrased because it was the Mexican Independence Day but we thought it was pretty funny. We had a stake party in Civac to celebrate the day and they had a bunch of regional dances and food. We gave a little church tour to those investigators that came to the party so it was a good time. We met a really nice guy this week named Abraham that speaks english and he just talks our ears off. We have had a few great conversations with him and he is really interested in the Church because he has realized that the Catholic church is not the right church and he is very curious of us and why we would give up two years in the prime of our life. He is so nice and we hope to teach him here in the near future. One let down this week was that Elder Oswald had his bday!! But it was a rough day for us as all our citas dropped and it was just a really down day. I felt bad for him that it was such a let down day but at least the Sister that we ate with made 3 leches cake! Our happiness from the slow week came on Sunday. We gave talks again and Elder Oswald got all mad at me because I spoke before him and took 25 minutes, so he was only left with about 10. I apologized but told him that it literally felt like a 5 minute talk. So either i spoke incredibly slow, or I was filled with the Spirit. I think it was a mixture of the 2 haha. Afterwards, we taught our new class that we are starting up: Preach My Gospel. We have 4 members in the class with us and we are going to teach them how to share the Gospel with their friends. We are super excited for this class and we know its going to bless this branch and the Tepoztlan area. We had a great discussion this Sunday about the pre-earth life and how our spirits have already been taught everything about the Gospel. When we share the Gospel with others, they feel the Spirit. This occurs because the Holy Ghost is reminding our friends spirit things that it has already learned in the pre-earth life. Ít is an amazing concept and when we have faith in it, we are never scared to share the Gospel with others because we know that they have already learned it before and have accepted this plan of happiness that our Father in Heaven created for us. Yesterday, Elder Oswald and I also took all our notes from the special mission conference with Elder Ballard and wrote up a covenant with some goals that we are going to complete so we can baptize more. We prayed hard about this covenant and we know that if we keep these goals that we have set, the Lord is going to bless us with people that are ready to make their covenant with Him of baptism. We are very excited for this next week! Hope its a great one for all of you. Love ya, appreciate ya!!

Elder Stutz

Here are a few answers to some questions we asked to Elder Stutz...

The Mexican people tend to be shorter in stature – have you observed this and if so, do you feel really tall among the people?

Ya i have hit my head on the tops of doorframes countless times haha

Have people commented on your height? ya a few people have but not too often

How is the language? Its coming along nice and super slow haha I still have troubles sometimes understanding and speaking is still a struggle at times. Im just trying to do my best. Reading El Libro de Mormon outloud has really helped me i think.

Have you dreamed in Spanish yet? I dream about trying to speak the language if that makes sense. I always dream about being home but some things are in spanish so its pretty weird

What is the temple district of Cuernavaca –Mexico City??? Ya its mexico city. Mariana, the girl that i baptized, and Ivan are planning on getting married there in a year so if they invite we would be able to go!! But that is the only way we get to go to the temple in this mission

How are your clothes holding up? Pretty well, they don't get too clean cause we have to wash them ourselves now. Are your white shirts still nice and white? more or less haha

Are you still sleeping well at night? i never wake up in the middle of the night cause im always so dead tired haha Does it cool off enough at night for you to sleep? ya it cools off well in tepoz, and its pretty cold in the mornings

Are you wearing mosquito repellent all the time? i havent used any haha apparently it doesnt work that well and i only get bit in the middle of the night and i dont want my bed smelling like the repellant

Do you ever get the Ensign or Liahona magazines? ya we get liahona in engligh and spanish. the last one we got was all about marriage. I have to admit, Elder Oswald and I were loving reading and studying about it haha Do you get material from the church to give to investigators? Ya we have all the pamphlets and books of mormon, and we can buy dvds for fairly cheap to give to investigators

Mi Yugo es Fácil y Ligera Mi Carga (My yoke is easy and my burden is light)

Hey Everyone!

Hope everyone had a fun week! We sure had a special one! I will start with what we did throughout the week to get references from members. We decided to buy a pineapple and go to the members houses to play the Piña game! In this game, we ask the member a doctrinal question. If they get it right, they win the piña. If they get it wrong they have to take us to 3 of their friends houses so we can set up a family home evening with them and the member. This past week we had a lot of success with this game! It gets the members loosened up a little bit because they think its hilarious that we carry around a piña all day. Then the member has a smile on their face and they are completely willingly to take us to their friends, its perfect!! We are planning on using it this next week everytime we eat with a member and throughout the day when we pass by members houses. We met a great investigator this week who is loving the Book of Mormon and has already recieved answers about its truthfulness through prayer. Her name is Paula and she has such a strong testimony of Jesus Christ and the Bible. She just recently got baptized in a Christian church but she has found out that ours is the only true one on earth through sincere prayer. We have had some of our most spiritual lessons with her because her prayers are so sincere and meaningful and we have been guided by the Spirit in the lessons to answer her doubts through Bible and Book of Mormon passages. Now the reason this week was so special is because we recieved a special visit from a member of the Quorum of the 12 apostles to our mission. Elder Ballard came to Civac for a special stake conference on Saturday and Sunday so we had a mission conference with him as well Saturday morning. It was a life changing conference for me. My favorite part was his testimony of the Savior. He talked about how he is over 80 years old now but still has to travel the world in order to do the Lords missionary work. He says he often gets tired and weary physically and emotionally. He said that when this occurs, he looks at a picture of the Savior and takes himself back to Calvary and Golgatha to think about the Atonement of the Savior. He said everytime he does that, he feels 100% again and can continue on with the work. I know he is a special witness of our Savior Jesus Christ. What a privilege to hear from him and also from Elder Jay Jensen. We had 7 investigators that came to the conference on Sunday to hear from this apostle. Unfortunately there wasn't room in the overflows or in the chapel when we got there as a branch. So we sat in the hall, trying to listen the best we could. I will admit, I was pretty disappointed that this happened when we had 7 investigators come so far to hear from this apostle. But after the meeting, Elder Ballard shoke the hands of some of our investigators and that made the day pretty special. I just want everyone to know that I am very happy right now in the mission field! I know that when we obey the commandments of the Lord, we are happy. Sure, we have a ton of trials out here in the mission field and sometimes we wonder if we can overcome them. But we can always rely on the Lord in all we do and He will lighten our burdens and make up the rest. I am grateful for my Savior and His Atonement. I love Him, and we are becoming great friends here in Mexico as my companion, Him, and I work together to bring salvation to the people here in Tepoztlán. I love this work and want to thank everyone for their love, support, and example. Have a tremendous week!

Elder Stutz

La Lluvia Mágica (Magical Rain)

Hey Guys!

What a crazy week!! I'll start by saying that it rained non-stop last week day and night. It definitely slowed down the work a little bit but it brought a lot of fun adventures. The other night my companion got super sick and he has a wicked infection in his stomach. He is feeling better now but it was an ugly experience those couple days. We were able to have an absolutely wonderful baptismal service of Lalo and Valentin. Lalo is the old man that finally was able to give up smoking after almost a year of trying in order to be baptized. And Valentin is the twenty year old that is a total stud when it comes to his testimony of the Gospel, after just a few weeks of experience. On Sunday we had a lesson with him and he told us he wants to serve a mission in a year and get married in the temple. The Spirit was so strong. Also we had the confirmations in church on Sunday. Although there were only about 25 people there, the Spririt was so strong and I could tell that the ward trusts us now and is more excited to share the Gospel with their friends. So my companion and I are going to try some crazy ideas to get references and meet the friends of the members this week. I will let you know how it goes in the next email. One thing that my companion and I are loving every week is doing Family Nights with the members and the investigators. We always start by doing a few magic tricks which gets them real excited and then we teach them how to play spoons! Every family has loved playing it and we have had a lot of fun as well with them. We have built up a lot of trust with these families because they can see that we are normal people as well. After the game we use a parable to share a message and bring the Spirit into their home. Just to briefly share, the parable is that sometimes we focus too much of our attention on our "cards" and not enough attention on the spoons. The real way to win the game is by grabbing the spoon, not by having the right cards. The cards in this example are the things of the world. work, school, chores, music, sports, all good things. But what really matters in the eternal perspective is our salvation. We can have better priorities such as reading the scriptures, praying, and going to church in order to build our own testimony of Jesus Chirst. We learn that we are saved through Him and that following His teachings make us happy in this life and gives us eternal happiness in the life to come. Let us focus more of our time on things that matter most, I promise you will be more happy for it! I hope everyone is well and happy. Share the Gospel!!! It will bring you the greatest joy! Love you all!

Elder Stutz