Que Hay Familia:
Yo so another good week up in Victoria. It's been such a good 4 plus months up here, I would give anything to have another 6 weeks here. We have cambios the 5th of November so we will see what happens but until then, I'm just living up my time in the Promised Land with my boy Elder Garry. We are having a killer time everyday that's for sure. We had some good success this week in the Obra de Salvacion program and and it's been a lot of fun. The Obra de Salvacion is a program that President Johnson, the Area President of Mexico, is trying out as a way to find, baptize and reactivate families. He is trying it in 4 missions here in Mexico and it's been pretty sweet. The essence of it is that working with the active members, we invite menos activos to hear all the 4 missionary lessons again, if possible in the home of a member or in the Chapel. Elder Garry and I have taken it a step further planning wise, where we have a target group of 5 less active or part member families in each ward and we are teaching them one missionary lesson a week. This week we had 10 menos activos in church and a couple of investigators as well! It's been sweet. When Elder Castillo and I got here, the first week barrio Victoria had 28 members in attendance, last week we had 59! We've been tearing it up, Barrio Mainero has really grown as well. It's been really good to see. Here in Mexico seriously so many people are inactive just because they think that nobody cares. We have really seen some good success as far as reactivation and baptism here through the program.
We taught a ton of lessons to part member families and less actives this week as well. One family that we have reactivated is la familia Guerrero. They are a super cool family of 7, they are from Victoria but lived in Utah for like 7 years or so and then moved back here to Victoria, but their kids speak perfect English. We are almost done teaching them everything and they have come every week to church for the past month! They are fully active now, their son Sean is 19 years old and is preparing now to serve a mission and their youngest daughter will be baptized this Saturday! It's been sweet to see their progress. We have been helping them read the scriptures again and get into the habit of daily prayer as well.
With Sandra we have hit a major road block. Her husband doesn't want to get married. We are trying everything we can to help her out and find a way to fix the problem, but as of right now, she's pretty well blocked as far as that. We have another sweet investigator named Manuel who is still progressing super well, he should be baptized in the next week and a half. Also this week we've started working more with one of my recent converts, Jessica, with her husband Carlos. Carlos has come to church with Jessica (who is a total boss, she's read like legitimately almost the whole Book of Mormon and has only been a member 2 months) for like the last 4 weeks or so but he is hard to teach because he works super late, but were gonna start teaching him more and more.
Another thing that I've really been doing personally that I really like is giving an accountability to the Lord in my prayers. So many times in life we set goals or want to improve, but we never follow through. The reason is we don't have somebody else to hold us accountable. The sweet thing is that as we give an accounting to the Lord at the end of each day, He not only holds us responsible for what we have done, but it's also an awesome way to repent, and He also helps us to get better and we see almost daily improvement and progression in our lives. Just a thought as something to try.
It is so crazy for me to think that Jake is no longer Elder Johnston! Sounds like he gave a great talk, thanks for telling me all about it, Mom. He is totally right about working with the members. Lessons always go way better in a member's home, the spirit is strong, they already have a support system that way, and they don't just go inactive when "their missionaries" leave. Between all the Spanish speaking missionaries that will be coming home to Fallon in the next year and a half or so, there will legitimately be like a Spanish Stake in Fallon by the time we all get home. Haha we are seriously gonna have some great member missionary work to do with the Fallon Latino community.
I loved Ryan's "Jake Heaps" lawn mowing job! That was just way too much swaggg. Glad to see that Lil Bro is still reppin' the #JakeHeaps hardcore and holding it down for GMC$ while it's out of commission.
Well, that's about it from Ciudad Victoria. I love you all to death. I seriously must be the most prayed for Elder in the world because I feel the blessings daily. #143 #GMC$ #JakeHeaps.
Love,
Elder Stockard
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