July 11/16 - One Year!!! Already?!?!

It has been a pretty good, pretty slow honestly but good nonetheless. On Tuesday though we had a district meeting that was very memorable. Our district leader is Elder Lewis and he is quite good at what he does. We have a portion of District meeting where we all have to recite a scripture that we were supposed to memorize during the week. Elder Timms and I and the rest of the Elders are slackers. I decided that I would just memorize it during companion study the day of. I completely spaced the fact that we have a mission leadership conference call during comp study on Tuesday so that didn't happen. The sisters did memorize it (and you will know why in a second) and this old Spanish member that comes to our district meetings because he is bored and wants to practice his English memorized it too. Like all things in life there are consequences for our actions or lack thereof and in this case it was in the form of food. The sisters had made banana bread as both the reward for memorizing it and the consequence for not. Here is the catch, in the one they put chocolate chips... the other curry powder. In the one they put sugar... the other salt. That salty curry banana bread was hands down the worst thing I have ever tasted. All 4 of us Elders were walking around the room with our nose plugged just gagging like there is no tomorrow. It was FUNNY! Needless to say the lesson of the week comes from my good friend Alma. Do not procrastinate the day of your repentance or in this case do not procrastinate the day of memorizing. Brother Torres ended up winning the grand prize. The sisters tried to give it to me because I ate the most of the bad banana bread the fastest without throwing up but I though he deserved it because he won. He was happy about that. 

We were able to go see a young couple from the ward this week. She was less active for a long time and he is a convert of about 14 months. They are great! He is from El Salvador and she is from Colombia. They leave next week to go to Colombia to be sealed! It is very exciting to see the joy in their faces as they talk about it. That really makes all the hard things in missionary work worth it. 

We have been doing a ton of finding recently because currently those we are working with are not too excited about progressing so we need to rest them for a time. We knock doors like 6 hours a day sometimes. If anyone looked at the weather on Saturday here then you would have seen that it was quite frankly raining cats and dogs! It may have been the hardest I have ever seen it rain. The only time that could maybe compare is when we had that huge hailstorm in 2013. We didn't have anything planned and street contacting would be the most useless thing since the Ford Pinto. So we went tracting because everyone would be home. They were but no one let us in. We got drenched!!! 

Oh BTW Friday was my 1 year mark as a missionary. Pretty weird to think. Honestly I still feel like a young missionary but I am now older than probably 65% of the mission as far as mission age goes. I don't feel any different but it is just weird to think that I have more of my mission to look back on that I have ahead of me. I feel that that must be what you feel like when you turn 50. I am not excited to have that happen. I like life too much. We celebrated my year mark with the Spanish elders at a sushi buffet. time well spent for sure. We currently don't have anyone on date for baptism so we are really praying to find someone! 

This week is a bit of a write off though because we are leaving in like an hour for flin flon then to Thompson then to Winnipeg and staying there for two days because of an exchange and MLC. We won't be back here until Friday night. Hope everyone has a great week!

Love Elder Stewart

Also a quick shout out to AnneE who enters the MTC this Wednesday! You will do great

Elder Stewart, Elder Timms and Brother Timms in the backseat. :)

Elder Stewart and Elder Shane Burdett. Elder Burdett was a basketball buddy from home and ended up in the Winnipeg Mission as a Visa waiter.