June 27th, 2016

This week we had our car in the repair shop and so we were biking! I did not realize how much I liked biking! The bugs are awful but it was still really fun! Just have to keep your mouth closed or be ready of a lot of protein...

We have been working with a lot of the future Missionaries leaving from the wards we are working in and taking them to lessons with us, it has been so awesome! They are such awesome young men! They have been able to share a lot if insights that have really helped out our investigators and Less actives that we work with!

The Youth of the church and really the world are very very special children of God they will face things that we have never seen before, if we do not do all we can to help them they will be that much more disadvantaged. Always seek to be an example to the little ones of the church even Christ took time to bless and pray for them individually. I know that He still do that for each of us.

We are going to be in two parades at the end of next month! We are not sure how we are going to decorate our truck or if we are going to use a float yet but I think we have time.

I got chased by a dog for like almost a mile one day on our bikes I might have also crashed once but I am fine haha it was a fun week sometimes when we think we look really cool doing something we are just being very silly and should stop before we get knocked over..

Love you all sorry the letter is so short today. Thank you sister Jones for you letter I loved the pictures of the Tucson Temple!

Elder Stewart

June 20th, 2016

Happy Father’s day! I have been thinking a lot this week about the blessing and gift that fathers are, and it has struck me just how wonderful that work is. To be a father, to have helped bring life into the world and to teach and raise that child. We have the perfect example set by a Father in Heaven, He loves us enough to let us make out own choices. I am so grateful that my Dad in this life has let me make mistakes and has let me learn he has always been there to help break my fall for all of my many foolish mistakes but has never let me down. I am greatful to him for his example and his testimony of the Savior it has shaped my life and the life of my family my Parents are not perfect but to me they are a perfect team.

Love you Mom and Dad Happy Father’s day to everyone out there I hope it was wonderful!

This week was my Companion Elder Thompson's year mark! So he had the chance to go to the Denver temple. While he was up in Denver I was with one of our Zone leaders for about a day and a half. It was wonderful working with him I learned a pretty cool card trick that he turned in to a pretty awesome object lesson. And from it I have learned a few things. 1st just because we don't see our card at the time does not mean that it is missing but that someone who knows us better will be able to point it out to us. The second is that if we become lax even for a second we will miss what is happening in front of us. If we ever stop making progress we will lose the progress we have made. follow the advice of a very wise fish and "just keep swimming" at times it will be against the tide but if we move we will not sink.

We are helping an older couple put in a garden pyramid thing and as we were digging for sand to fill some of the layers we found the weirdest looking bug ever it was like a spider and scorpion had a baby. It was running around battling ants as we were working and we removed it to an ant hill in the front of the member’s home. This creature battled long and hard and in the end was victorious in its mighty struggle against the ants. Now I tell this story for more than reason (surprise surprise) firstly this battle was epic. And secondly I learned from it. My friends we are at times put up against a wall and we don't see a way out. We have to fight our way out. we have all been given tools to use and just like this spider we sometimes are put into an unfair fight however if we use the tools given to us we will have the upper hand and we will come out on top. We have been given the greatest tools ever we have the Lord with us if we chose to fight on his side we will never fail.

There is always so much to do and so much to learn. I have heard it said this way. "If we ever come to the end of a day and learn nothing, we have wasted so much more than that one day"

Thank you Brother Andrews for your weekly cards every week you say something that I have needed to hear. Thank you so very much!

Always seek to do those things that are good and be looking to serve and learn always!

Love you all!

Elder Stewart

June 13th, 2016

Happy Birthday Cayleb!!! You are getting so old!! That is crazy! Stay awesome little buddy!

Kiamama Happy birthday! I don't remember being 6 but I don't think you will too much earthier stay awesome!

It has been an eventful week! We have had many wonderful lessons and it has been great!

last Monday we had a huge Zone BBQ some people gave my comps and I a bunch of beef and so I made Burgers for about 24 missionaries (for all those who feed us I am so sorry I did not really realize how much we eat) It was really fun we had about 3 elders getting transferred so we had a really fun Zone activity! Everyone was like 40 mins late though. Then we played flag football for a while it was really fun!

On Tuesday morning we loaded up our truck and because no one was transferring into the SanLuis Valley Zone I had the great pleasure of driving all the way up to Colorado Springs to drop of the 3 transferring Elders and then drove back down, it was a 4 hour drive one way so Elder Thompson and I had a about and 8 hours of driving, it was an eventful day we got back in time for our appointments in the afternoon as well and so that was wonderful!

President Rehm set us this quote and I really love it and want to share it with all of you. Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” The Gospel teaches us that we should always be learning, growing and changing. I know from my own 19 years of life that this is so very very true. If you try and flip a switch with out there being any power the light no matter how hard you try it will never come on unless you do something different. The commandments of God are not changing, they allow us to chose our own path and figure things out. If in life you come up to a problem, try and gain a new perspective and change the way you go about life so that that problem will one day go away.

Things are going wonderfully here on the mission the work is really hard but it is the best work I can be doing right now with my time. The Lord gives trails to those who he loves, when the hard times come as they always will trust that God is with you, the Savior is always walking beside you.

I love you all and hope that you feel the lord’s arms around you always

Elder Stewart

June 6th, 2016

So this week has been pretty eventful, I am back in the San Luis Valley in a tiny town named Sanford there are two wards and only about 870 people in the town.

I really like it here the people are very kind and we have been doing a lot of service!

Today we are having a BBQ for the zone and I am going to be grilling for that and so that will be fun!

We had a lesson yesterday with a man who used to be very active in the church and then he fell away and started to look at the falsehoods online as if they were facts. It has lead me to ponder what it takes to keep a testimony of the Gospel and what chips away at it.

If we are not making progress towards something we are only moving away from it, the things that matter in this life take a constant effort to keep, if we stop even for a little bit it will only mean we have to work that much harder in the end to get it all back.

Thank you Grandma and grandpa Brown for the letter!

Love you all!

Elder Stewart