Yes, my name is Elder Stockard and yes, I do serve in the best city on Earth.
My neck has gotten a little bit smaller, haha.
Elder Garry and I at Lorenzo's baptism.
Familllllllliaaaaa
Wow, OK so first off, so so so stoked for Elder Travis Woodburn to be serving a mish!!! ¿Hong Kong? That is so, so dope. Elder Garry has been to Hong Kong quite a bit actually. His Grandpa was the Area President there for a long time when he was in the Quorum of the 70 and he loved it! That is so sick! Yo but momma, you totally left me hanging on when he leaves for the mish, haha. So hit me up with that next week. So good to hear from all of you clowns once again. Sounds like everything is going really well back in the US. Yes momma not gonna lie, it does kinda seem like all you guys do is go to Midway and I don't blame you haha. That's all I will be doing for prob the first six months when I get back along with #ElderSpecialK and T Hubbs. We're gonna be living the dream up there at BYU and hopefully making the trip up to Midway quite often.
So its been another super great week up in Victoria. A few weeks back, President Jordan introduced a plan that Presidente Johnson, the Area Pres of Mexico, had come up with and that a lot of missions have been doing. It's called the Obra de Salvacion and it's a reactivation/find through the members/ baptize like it's hot plan. It's all centered on teaching these part member menos activo familias in the homes of members, in a joint effort between the Ward Counsels and the Missionaries. Basically, we are teaching these familias all of the investigator lessons again from the beginning in a way to really get them excited again and help them remember why they got baptized.
The highlight of this week I would say was that Elder Garry and I set some goals for what we feel we can accomplish in our two wards in these coming months before the end of the year. We really hit it hard (as part of these goals) this week with la Obra de Salvacion as well. We taught the Restoration a TON of times this week and almost all of them were a little bit different but they were all really great spiritual lessons. Elder Garry and I feel that we can increase the average attendance here in Barrio Victoria and Barrio Mainero by 25 people each through convert baptisms and reactivation between now and the end of this calendar year. So this past Tuesday we wrote out some really specific goals of what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it, and then we got our Ward Mission Leader on board with our plan of how to do so this last Tuesday at our meeting. We presented it at Ward Counsel yesterday. What we want to do is pick 5 familias that are part member or menos activo and start with them, and we want to combine that with a ward effort to give the visits every week until the end of the year. We mapped out a lot of potential families and the auxiliary organizations that they would be involved in and brought all this stuff together to our ward counsels. Then together with the ward counsel we picked 5 that we wanted to start with from this list and are hitting the pavement with it. It was a really great meeting and I feel like were really going to have success with this. The mission is teaching me the importance of goal setting as a way to truly achieve full potential. I really like it and have gotten so much better at it. It also gives you a better mapped out way of how we're going to do things and, when goals are set under the direction of the spirit with righteous intentions, it's a great way to enlist the spirit's help in your life. That's my opinion.
Also, believe it or not, the mission is teaching me the importance of having a plan. This is a struggle for me as Elders Christiansen, Adams, Faught, and I have always been complete fly by the seat of our pants kind of people, but planning really does have it's benefits. My problem is that I've always had a plan, I just don't usually voice it, I just get it done. Working in a companionship has really taught me to have a good, well-understood, well mapped out plan. That being said, I'm still not perfect, considering that we got assigned to speak in Church this last Wednesday and yesterday I just totally got up and winged it for 15 minutes hahaha. #Classic
I'm not gonna lie, I straight love serving with Elder Garry. He's a super cool Elder and he reminds me a lot of myself when I was with Rindy. I hope I remind him of Rindy cuz that dude is just a total boss, but we are having a super fun time. It's really funny having an American trainee because all the cultural differences that I don't even notice anymore, he totally notices, which in turn makes me notice.
Life is straight good. The work is good, really hard, but good. The comp is good, the food is good, the city is good. I hope all of you are having as good of a time in the US as I am down here in Mexico. I really do mean that. I have really arrived at a point where I straight love the people down here, I love teaching, I love the mish right now. I love you all so much. Shout out to Elder Faught heading down to Chile #DYT. Love you all and I truly do feel your love and support. #143 #JakeHeaps
Love,
Elder Stockard
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