Elder Spencer Stokes - Mexico Ciudad Juarez

First Off - Elder Rosas and I are both staying in Buenaventura! I am excited to be able to at least spend another six weeks with Elder Rosas. Which is great because we are finally starting to build that connection when we are teaching. We are better at bouncing off one of each other and letting each other talk when they have that spiritual prompting. With our obedience, we have been inviting the spirit into the rooms when we are in lessons. And the lessons go so much better when we have that spiritual guide with us (especially since I am still learning Spanish). And I am excited to be staying in Buenaventura. I am getting to be good friends with a lot of the members and our investigators are progressing and keeping their commitments so I am excited to be able to stay with them and keep teaching them. I also am getting a hang of the area. I said 90 weeks to go because my companion likes to remind me over and over again that he has less days than I have weeks. He has 84 days left now ...

This week was great! I would like to start with the success Elder Rosas and I had this week. And all this success came from one thing. Exact obedience. The whole time I have been here Elder Rosas has not been able to get out of bed at 6:30, and I had some days where I did not as well. It is hard to wake up at 630 every day. But I talked with him over a week ago and we decided that this last week we were going to be exactly obedient. Two weeks ago we only found 7 new people to teach (the goal for the mission is 12 a week) one person attend church and a baptism fall out... Marisol - Marisol told us she wanted to ¨try other flavors¨ that she wanted to attend other churches before deciding to get baptized. But that is fine because I know this church is true and in time she realize by the spirit that is the right decision to make. It is actually really good because she told us, she wants to join a church she knows she can defend and speak for knowing it is true! This last week, with...

Oh what a crazy week... This week I only had one day where I was in Buenaventura doing regular missionary work all day. But it was such a great week with how I have progressed. We did not see that much progress with the people we are teaching though. Which is kind of sad, because the only way to progress is by doing stuff by yourself and asking the Lord. All we can do is just keep inviting them to do it. And I hope they will. Quick sidenote. The weather here right now is like Utah probably about a month ago. Freezing in the mornings and nights but hot like none other in the days. So we always our carrying around our jackets in our backpacks right now. But it is all great. But that is why I have not left Utah.  Monday... Monday night we got a call from our executive secretary saying I had to go to Migration in Janos (which is 2.5 hours from Buenaventura) early the next morning. And because no buses leave from Buenaventura early in the mornings we had to leave that night to ...

This week was good. Today it has been two months since I left, and I really do not have any sense of time anymore. It is kind of becoming repetitive every day. We have a schedule to follow and work every day. But this last week I got to do some fun things. On Saturday we went to the temple with our branch. That was a lot of fun because I got to feel the spirit so strong. It is the smallest temple in the world, which is cool. Everything is on one floor. And they do not have a separate entrance for the baptismal font which is different. The spirit was so strong and I love being able to help people on the other side make it back to our Heavenly Father. Yesterday I had the wonderful privilege to speak in church. I spoke closely to preparing for the priesthood. The priesthood has blessed me and my family so much in my life. I found a great talk by President Henry B. Eyring from the Priesthood session of October 2011.  https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/gen...

I do not have much time because I am in Ciudad Juarez right now for a conference with the mission president for all of the Branches. So I am going to be short and brief. Friday night we went on an hour bus ride to casa grandes for interviews with the president we had saturday morning. We went back to buenaventura Saturday afternoon. Back to Casa grandes Sunday night. And left at 6 am this morning to Juarez. It was fun to be able to play soccer here with some missionaries.  Polygamy. So everyone in Buenaventura thinks all members of the church of Jesus Christ are Polygamists, because the capital of polygamy is 20 minutes away from Buenaventura.. a place called Lebaron. And to make it worse they call themselves Mormons and that is what everyone thinks we are. So we explain to basically every contact, that we are not trying to change their belief in Jesus Christ. And that we believe in how families are sacred between 1 man and 1 woman. And that families can live together fo...

We will start with Conference. I think I learned more in this conference than all of the other 144 sessions I have been alive for which is cool. I never understood how important conference is and how much of an impact it can have on our lives. Especially when you go in with a question to be answered. I loved all of the talks. The one that really stood out to me was Peter M. Johnson. Satan is always tempting us, and I know this but I also know that it is possible to overcome these temptations. We just have to make sure we recognize when he does tempt is. The three Ds of temptation. Deception, Distraction, Discouragement. I have seen the discouragement one a ton in this first week being out in the field. Satan wants me to think that I will not be able to do it. I am going to be real.. Coming out here has been rough, not one bit of it has been easy. I miss English so much. I did not understand how much I loved knowing what people were saying around me. I realize now how much I love m...