"Long hours and lots of sacrifice"

Hello mom and dad!! I think this has been the busiest week of my mission, hands down. I learned a ton and did a whole lot. These transfers are definitely going to be an opportunity to develop greater charity. 

One slight change in protocol, since we do a lot of admin on Sunday, we will email on Sunday as well. So expect my emails a little sooner.

This week is a blur. Elder Wooley picked me up on Monday and drove me down to St. George and since then it has been a blur of transfer meetings with the President and Elder Woolley, meeting with missionaries, and teaching. Elder Woolley and I talked on the way down, it was a good heart to heart :) He told me that "This assignment is a great opportunity. It represents long hours and lots of sacrifice, but you will love it." We do have an area; we cover Dixie State University, in the St. George YSA 1st stake. It is amazing :) There are kids here from all over the world that we teach: Hong Kong, Mexico, Haiti, Mozambique, Russia, and Sweden. It’s pretty incredible.

In Richfield, C got baptized this week! I was sad I didn’t get to see him, but we also had a baptism this weekend in Dixie. A young man whom the elders have been teaching for a few weeks got baptized on Saturday. His name is J and he is from Hong Kong. I now repent for ever wanting to go on a mission in China, because here in Dixie the Chinese kids come to us :)

My companions for this week were Elder Pedersen from Argentina and Elder Chidester from Massachusetts. They are great missionaries and Elder Chidester will probably be my companion for the next few transfers.

One of the things I am already appreciating is being around President Leonard so much. The man is amazing. He is patient, kind, bold, and objective all wrapped up into one. He honestly listens to and accepts our input for transfers and he trusts us so much. I am going to love this :-) We kind of had a major fire drill this week. We make transfer calls and type up all of the info for our calls on a sheet of paper (new area, new companion, transfer location and time etc.). Well, Sunday evening, we were getting ready to call all of the Elders to give them there transfers, when we found that the file had been corrupted. That was a lot of work down the tubes. So we used pictures of the transfer board to make the calls and we gave all of the other information from memory for 144 missionaries. It was such a blessing that the Lord helped us to remember everything. That was pretty crazy.

In other news, this week we found three new investigators who all came to church. Teaching just YSA's is going to be a lot of fun.

Well, I have to go!! I just want to let you all know though how much I love the Lord and this mission. It seems like I am giving more now than I ever have, and I am trusting in the Lord to take care of everything. It seems like a theme on my mission has been that you can't do it all alone. I couldn't learn Spanish alone, couldn't teach alone, couldn't train alone, and it’s no different now. I know that Christ's atonement can strengthen us in everything. This is his church! The key to access his power is obedience to his gospel.

I love you so much! Keep praying for us to be able to find investigators.

Love,

Elder Michael George Stewart