Email Update: 4/28/2014

Dear Familie,

Louis'  Baptism went flawlessly---The Ward Mission Leader worked with the Bishop to get the program planned, the baptism went perfect the first time (Note: the man who baptized Louis is an actor for some of the Bible videos on LDS.org, so not only did he have an awesome beard, he spoke in a perfectly clear and carrying baritone; It was really cool), and Louis actually brought two non-member friends and his mom for it. The confirmation went just as well, with the same person who baptized Louis, Jim Cavins, voicing the blessing, and Louis getting sustained for membership, Aaronic Priesthood, and a calling as a Ward Missionary all at the same time.

In short, it went very well.

Unfortunately, no iPads just yet; we are using computers for right now. As for facebook itself, it's pretty awesome. I got to show a lot of the Bible videos that I like, got to talk two 5 of my nonmember friends (and 5 less active friends) for the first time since my mission, and got to see some of the world beyond the mission on a larger scale. I really think that it has the ability to do a lot of good (though it can through you into a frustrated rant sometimes), and i thinks it's so awesome that we have the chance to use so many tools as missionaries now.

To be honest, this birthday was weird. It was on Friday, when we have our district meetings, we already had lessons booking the rest of the day, but our dinner had to cancel on us. So, my birthday seemed more like Saturday than Friday. To top of the weirdness, I am now 20. Both digits changed. *chills shudder down my spine* I feel old.

Then, besides Louis' baptism and a lady named Kathy who we taught 4 lessons to, our week kinda flopped. Dinners canceled. Couldn't contact other investigators. Less actives decided the other members weren't doing there jobs right and didn't come this week. Recent convert wasn't able to make it to church. No investigators at church in second ward. So, yeah. Kinda hard week. Oh well. It happens. Oh, and the weather in McCall is even more bizarre than Orem's; It was quite literally snowing one minute and sunny--with no snow on the ground---the next. Then the next minute it hailed. Then the next minute it rained. Then the next minute it was sunny again. Then snowing a blizzard. This was in the course of 15 minutes, by the way.

Well, that just about does it for this week. Thank you so much for everything you do and say!

Love and Insanity, Elder Stuver

Email Update: 4/21/2014--Baptisms!

Yeah, the main big news is that my mission gets to use face book!!!! We use it as a teaching tool, and to get in contact with people that we have a harder time with out it. It's a two hour a day thing, and it's pretty awesome. It's definitely a little weird, but it's really fun, and I get to spend time watching and reading a lot more on Christ from LDS.org.

Along with that, Samantha just got baptized on Saturday! She'd been waiting for a long time, almost 6 years according to her, but husbands had been getting in the way (the first one nixed it when the font was filled, and the other was clinically crazy. He's in New York now.), but now she was able to have the decision be totally hers, and she was really happy, even though she is possibly the shyest person I have ever met. It was a little crazy, because the person who baptized her had to do the prayer 6 times, and baptize her three times, but it went really well.

We have another baptism on Tuesday, for an 18 year old named Louis, and he is just plain rock solid. He was introduced when a friend of his decided to fix her crazy streak, and was able to quit smoking along with starting to come back to church, and just living better. As Louis saw all this, he wanted to why, and most of all, how she was able to do it. So, Heidi taught him what she knew, and gave him a book of Mormon. 3 weeks later, we are sitting down teaching him, he's 1/2 way through the 2nd book of Nephi, and has quit smoking for two weeks. Now, he is two months clean, and is just about to get baptized. Yes, very rock solid.

We honestly didn't do very much on Easter. We had dinner with a really cool family, and that was about it. It's alright; we didn't really want to get in between family's time on Easter.

Thank you for getting the picture to Seminary; i need to have some kind of legacy there! ;) Thank you for the happy birthday (from everyone), and have a grrrrrrrrreat week! 

Love and insanity, Elder Stuver

P.S. Jeffrey at Prom? Now I feel old!!

Email Update: 4/14/2014--Now on Facebook!

Dear Familie,

Thanks for all of the stories, they really make my day. Rock climbing?!?!? I want to come...

Not surprised that Denton wanted to hire Dad, Dad's just awesome like that; I'm the one who needs an accountant.

Yes, on call is lousy. But, huge datenightintheafternoons are fun.

I'm glad you all liked General Conference, I really liked it too. And thanks for the daily herald thing, it was fun to read.

This week has been interesting. We only taught two lessons to non members, but we taught 21 lessons to less active members, 13 of which were in one ward. Along with that, even though we only taught a couple lessons to people, we still had a lot of non members show up to church. The only real problem was a lot of our investigators are going through health problems right now (one has a spinal cord that is trying to pinch itself in the vertebrae, another has her brain trying to move from her head into her spine), so those people were not at church, and we weren't able to set appointments with the second family. Other than that, all of them are doing great. In fact, two of our investigators were interviewed for baptism, and both passed! So, we now have a baptism on Friday, and one tentatively set for next Tuesday, Samantha and Louis respectively. 

Through all of this, I've been getting to know Elder Painter, and so far, things are awesome. He's a fan of 1950's commercials and other old stuff, and he is very relaxed and easy to work with (most of the time). Elder Painter is from Gilbert, Arizona, and he actually lives right down the street from the new Gilbert temple, though it was still under construction when he left for his mission. He worked at his family's auto body shop before his mission (and most of his life before that), so his art is on cars, not on canvas. To top it all off, he has all of the common sense that I lack, and he's kind enough to tell me when I need to pay attention to what I'm doing, so we get along just fine.

That pretty much sums up my week up here. Thank you so much for everything that you do, and all of the prayers that you say.

Love and Insanity, Elder Stuver.

P.S. We get to use Facebook and other social media for two hours a day now!!! So if you find any good Easter stuff, please send it to me. The theme that we are working with is "Because of Him," so anything that comes to mind i'd appreciate

Email Update: 4/7/2014

Dear Familie,

That's all awesome; I just wish i had cinnamon rolls too.... :(

I did get the tax returns, and I am going to mail them out today.

Zone conference had some really fun parts to it, such as upgrading our phone (just to a better version of what we already had--no iPads yet) and playing life sized battleship using missionaries as the ships. One of the great things that we learned during the conference was how much the next ordinance matters, and how we can work to help people get there.

General Conference was really cool, though a little frustrating on Saturday; we were watching it at a member's home for the first session and the broadcasting station itself went out, and for the second session, we went to an investigator's home, and tried to watch it online. We saw 38 minutes of it, and it took us 2 1/2 hours to do so. We went to the church for the Priesthood session, and my favorite talk was also President Uchdorf's, though Elder Oak's talk was really good, and made me chuckle. The Sunday sessions, we just went to the church where they were broadcasting them, and watched them with the 2nd counselor in the 1st ward and his son. I was really impressed by all of the talks on the basics of the gospel, especially Elder Christopherson's. Those ones really stood out to me, because we have another investigator who was down in Salt Lake City for the Conference. I'm sure that he got answers to any questions that he had left, and his testimony strengthened on the things he already knew.

As for the rest of this week, it was actually really slow. I my new companion, Elder Painter, is really cool, and we work well together (I think), we just were unable to set nearly as many appointments as we usually do. We did have one really cool lesson with a couple of ladies named Julie and Kathy, who were referrals from the ward. Kathy's sister just recently passed away, and that sister, named Hope, had just started coming to church. When she died, Kathy wanted to know more about it, and called a member to see where she could learn more. Julie was here friend, and her son had been involved in the search for a plane that had crashed with an LDS family inside of it. He did end up finding it with the brother of one of the passengers, and that family kind of adopted Julie's son. He just recently was baptized, and Julie was so impressed with how the living LDS family treated her son, that she wanted to learn more. We had a lesson at Kathy's home, and had a realy great discussion on the Introduction to the Book of Mormon. Kathy is already into 2 Nephi, and Julie had read about to 1 Nephi 8 before the lession, so i have high hopes for them.

Well, that sums up this week. Thank you so much for all that you do, and the work that you give for me.

Love and Insanity,

Elder Stuver