April 11, 2016

Hello everyone! I don't know if you have the new mission blog (apparently they stopped updating the one on blogspot last may) but here it is! http://nevadarenomission.com/

Things have been pretty cool around here. My companion Elder Corry said that I would only see lightning about 2 or three times on my mission, and one of those times was earlier this week. This whole week has been really rainy, which is weird because it's Nevada. I loved it though, you forget how much you miss rain when you're living in the middle of a mountainy desert. The views are awesome though. The people are pretty cool too, and they'd be even cooler if they would just hear what we have to say... But I'm not bitter... Agency is an important part of Heavenly Father's plan, even though it can be super frustrating sometimes. It's funny, I think I actually know how He feels when I choose not to obey Him, and if I feel this bad about it, how much worse does He feel when His children choose not to accept Him. The fullness of the gospel is a tremendous gift that we have been given, but we cannot enjoy it completely until we try to share it with everyone we meet. (we don't all have to wear tags though) Every day I find myself feeling torn between wanting to feel bad that my brothers and sisters don't want to hear the wonderful news of the restoration, and not wanting it to interfere with the work. I always knew a mission was hard, but I could never imagine just why it was so. Don't think this means that I don't like being a missionary, although it's hard, I have the witness of an apostle of the Lord that the strength I don't have to complete the work here will be given to me if I give all the strength I do have. The work of spreading the gospel is the most important thing we could do in this dispensation. Whether it's talking to your neighbors and friends about what you believe or raising children in such a way that they will know to choose the right and be an example for others doesn't matter. We all should be continually focused on sharing the gospel in all we do.

Not much else happened this week... we're still working on filling our teaching pool...

Stay righteous!

Reno Zone Conference

April 4, 2016

How's it going everyone? I hope you had as wonderful a conference weekend as I did. I can't decide which talk was my favorite, but it's between President Uchtdorf's or president Nelson's priesthood session addresses. It's so different watching conference now that I'm a missionary. One thing that I learned was how to better forget myself and how to truly put my all into the work. It's amazing how you can learn something that is never said during general conference. 

Anna's car was stolen the other day and her social security card was in there, and so the lesson we were going to have with her last Tuesday was cancelled. I sincerely hope that this experience drives her to her knees and increases her faith rather than detracts from it. She told us to pray for her, which we definitely will, so it seems like she's taking it good thus far. We are also planning on setting two of our other investigators, B and his wife, with baptismal dates. He found a book of Mormon in a Marriott hotel and wanted to steal it, but he was forbidden by his wife. (we chuckled at that :) He then talked to one of his Mormon friends and he was referred to us to give him one. He has read everything we gave him and has read through Mormon in the Book of Mormon. He works in Winnamucca during the week so we can only see him on Saturdays, but every night he calls his family and reads to them from the Book of Mormon over the phone. Hopefully he's as gold as he seems. the one issue we run into with him though is that he loves to talk, and to make it worse, he's really good at it, and so we struggle to teach much of a lesson each time we go, but lately (thanks mostly to the resolve of Elder Corry) we are starting to make progress. We're going to try to get them to church for stake conference this Sunday.

I finished the Book of Mormon for either the 10th or 11th time the other day. With spending just about 35-40 minutes on it a day I was able to read it in just under 2 and 1/2 months. Upon doing so, I was thinking more upon the importance of the Book of Mormon in our lives. I realized that the Book of Mormon should be far more important to us than we usually see it as. It's just so rich and you can dig so deep into just a verse or two. The prophet Joseph Smith wasn't lying when he said that a man can get closer to God than by any other book. The Book of Mormon is powerful. So powerful that the word powerful isn't powerful enough to describe just how powerful it is. Not only is it just good to bring us closer to God, but it is the convincing evidence that Joseph Smith and every one of his successors are true prophets of God, and that this church is God's kingdom on the earth. When one truly knows this simple truth, that the Book of Mormon is true, you then can know that God is real, that God knows you, and that He has provided a way for us to return to live with Him again, and all other plain and so very precious truths taught therein are indeed, truth. Read the Book of Mormon, it will bring you more happiness than anything else. I know that it will.

Until next week! Stay righteous!

March 28, 2016

Hello everyone! Happy Easter! I hope you're having a great day today! biggest thing that happened this week? It's still happening, IT's SNOWING!!! dang this high desert life is weird yesterday was so nice and today we woke up to snow! and not just a little bit, like 8 inches, and still piling up! I can handle the extremes, but it's weird having them in the same week. And of course my parents are enduring the heat of Miami right now. The world is so wack right now...

First week with Elder Corry! I found out that I was relying waaayyy to much on elder Day's knowledge of the area... so yeah that's been an adventure, and our miles are pretty wrecked... but on the other hand, elder Corry is a super experience missionary, he goes home in July and he's coming up from Carson City where he was a zone leader. Now he's a district leader, so that means I get to go on exchanges with the zone leaders here! in just one week we made a program to help the wards get excited about missionary work, and despite the short notice all the ward leaders loved it! 

Here's the program: it's called "April Showers" when the members sign up on our dinner calendar, they fast on that day that they will be able to find someone to visit with the missionaries, and when the dinner appointment comes, they break their fast and tell us who they could find for the missionaries. 

The mission had a lot of success with this program last year so we thought we could try this again. So far, everyone's pumped!!

I don't think I mentioned this but everyone's super rich in our area, like Mercedes', BMW's, Audi's and Range Rovers are almost more common than the regular Toyota's and Honda's and such. We even saw this super cool "Alfa Romero" just sitting on the side of the road! I'm pretty sure it's worth more than a million dollars...

 (I'd send pictures but I'm pretty sure my camera's busted so I'll try to get elder corry to send them to me) I'm pretty sure it's all the rich people from San Francisco coming over because housing prices are cheaper here (they're still not cheap, trust me take one look at the houses here and you'd agree with me) Elder Corry was just blown away, he started his mission in Sun Valley, the 2nd (formerly 1st) biggest trailer park  in the world, and the most released convicts per ca pita, and now he's here...

With this easter season I've been thinking a lot about the atonement. We went to give this less active Man a blessing to help him stop smoking, I love that the atonement isn't just for sins, but it can also help us overcome addictions, pains, emotional or physical, and even just our little mistakes. I hope all of you choose to take advantage of this wonderful gift. As a missionary, I have the opportunity to help people to repent and become whole again. As I daily repent of my own sins, I gain a greater appreciation for the atonement, and thus a more fervent drive to share it with others. I hope all of y'all do the same!

Until next week!

March 21, 2016

Hello everyone! another week has come and gone, and I have survived my first transfer out here in the Lord's vineyard! And I will stay at least another 6 weeks in the south meadows/foothill wards. Elder Day however, got call​ed to be a district leader down in Carson City. My new companion is Elder Corey, and I don't know much about him other than he's super cool and a super awesome missionary and only has 3 transfers left. I'm pretty excited... (:

So anyway, we got a super cool less active hippie dude named Steve to give us a ride to a "why I believe" fireside, which is a fireside where recent converts come and share their testimonies, and believe me, it's super spiritual, some of the experiences these guys had are amazing. There was one guy who accidentally got off on the wrong bus stop and there he met the missionaries, another guy who made a list of different religions and prayed about each one and got a spiritual witness when he got to "mormon." So yeah, I loved it. We also got Anna to come and bring her friend as well! which was SUPER awesome. 

Every day I feel more and more the spirit guiding me and my own testimony of the gospel grows so much! I love being out here on a mission serving the Lord. And I'm also super tired every night!! I love it!!!

One thing I've grown to love while I'm out here is district meetings and zone training's. This last zone training was super awesome, I can't remember off the top of my head what exactly was said, but I do know that it was one of the strongest times I felt the spirit in my entire life. I knew that this work is right. There was no way that I can deny it. It was such a contrast when we went proselyting how many people just wouldn't talk to us, like, it's was super hard to get people to talk to us. It was like God came into the room and said, "I know it's hard, I know people's agency is frustrating, but I'm on your side."

That's it for this week, I hope y'all are staying righteous! (don't be like the Nephites... Spiritual thought! BOOM!)

March 14, 2016

Hello everybody!! It's a new week! First miracle that happened, we went on exchanges Thursday and without Elder Day around I actually was able to talk to everyone on the street about something that then turned into a gospel oriented discussion! So I was pretty happy that I finally got that down. Every week I'm reminded that I probably am in the best area for member meals. You know that when you have pot roast twice and honey glazed ham and cheesy potatoes all in the same week that you're probably spoiled...Guys, I'm actually worried that I might actually perhaps maybe get a little husky... but unfortunately we can't have pets, so it looks like I'll just get fat. To make matters worse, Elder Day flat out refuses to go run with me in the mornings! I never thought that I'd be concerned with the members feeding me so many too dang tasty meals... but hey, I guess that's a good problem to have.

(:

Because of something to do with the mtc, this transfer is an extra week long, so they're next week, not tomorrow. It's weird to think that I've been out a whole transfer already, it feels like just last week I was in the mtc.

A really huge miracle was 5 nonmembers coming to church. Anna brought a friend, one of the priests brought a friend, some other family brought someone, and this one lady we're teaching named Diana came to church (that's the miracle). Diana is this funny old lady who was married to a member for something like 56 years before he died last year. Before he died she wasn't too interested in meeting with the missionaries, but she told elder Day that she wasn't taking his death as well as she had thought. the missionaries have been teaching her for about 7 months and she would always have plans on Sundays that would prevent her from coming to church. So this is the first time that she came to church in all that time!!! (the relief society president says she came to church when her husband died, but she doesn't remember that so I won't count it) Elder Day and I were praying so hard that she would want to come to church because we knew that the only way she would start to progress was if she finally got to church. Then we went to her lesson and she said right after the opening prayer that she wanted to come to church... The church is true guys!

So yeah, you could say it was a pretty good week. ;)

Okay! Spiritual thought time!

The experience with Diana had me thinking about how God answers our prayers. the easy example to give is Joseph Smith, but we aren't always going to receive an answer quite like that every time. I've found that God answers our prayers through other people. The experience with Diana is an example. I know that God is mindful of every little prayer that we say, He want's to bless us and loves us more than any of us could possibly comprehend. I love all of you so much!

Stay faithful Y'all!

March 7 (but didn't send until March 14!)

Sorry for missing last week, I wrote this email but somehow I forgot to send it...

Hello Everyone! How is it in the real world? Things have been just marvelous here in Reno. We just got our first spring rain this week. The mountains block some of the clouds from getting into the valley and it looks awesome, I took a picture, hopefully it turns out. I was blown away by how awesome it looked. I was also almost blown away by the wind, it's super strong here. Well everything else during the week was really awesome! On Thursday Elder Day decided that I should lead the planning session... I didn't really know how to do it. You have to consider who's home at each time, when are the good times to street contact and tract, how many miles we'll use (we have about 28 miles a day in our car) what time and day works best for each person we want to go see blah blah blah... it hurt my brain trying to figure it all out... but I did feel that we should go down to this one area where we had met this super interested lady the other day. it wasn't much, sorta just a "hey, this is a place, let's go there" kinda thought. So on Friday we went according to the plan, talked to a few people we haven't seen in a while. And then eventually we reached the part of the day where we planned to go to that one place, it's called Curti Ranch, when we went there I had a thought that we should go down this one road, it was a "hey there's a road, let's go down there" kinda thought. It turned out to be our investigator Anna's road. we were able to talk to her and her friend, they were there getting ready for prom and for whatever reason her parents weren't there. That was a good thing because her parents were being a little slow to get on board with the whole "their daughter wants to get baptized" thing, so we were able to avoid any akward conversations. But don't worry we kept all the rules. but I think that if we hadn't gone down there and talked with her she probably wouldn't have come to church yesterday! so of course those thoughts I had were impressions from the Spirit! Being a missionary is so awesome!! 

Hey so I noticed that my 3rd expectation wasn't there so here they are again.

1. Always be focused on the work

2. To come home exhausted every night

3. Never let anyone just pass by.

4. Gain a stronger testimony of the Savior and the restoration

Who wouldn't expect this?

5. Learn to Look beyond myself more.

There you go. Now I still want what Y'all are expecting of me pleeeeeaaseee.....

Today I was reading in Alma 32, otherwise known as the Faith chapter. The thought came to me that if faith is like planting and nuturing a seed and it takes a while to be able to eat the fruit of the tree that takes a long time to grow, we need to be patient and diligent to make sure that the tree is as strong and healthy as it can be, and don't let Satan anywhere near it, because he always has an ax on him... just don't let him in...

I love you all!

Elder Stotts with his companion Elder Day

February 29, 2016

Hello Everyone! How's it going today? This week was pretty awesome for me. I was able to go to my first zone conference, and I can say that it was the most spiritual experience I've had on my mission. I'm just glad that I've got like 8 more to go, and I heard that it only gets better as you go on. So yeah, you could say I'm excited.

So do you remember I told you about that one girl who was getting baptized last Saturday? Well, her parents decided that she should wait a little bit, just to make sure it was what she wanted to do... If only she was eighteen... but she'll get baptized eventually, she referred herself on mormon.org so yeah, it's what she wants to do.

At zone conference President Chesnut told us about the 5 expectations he has for all the missionaries:

1. Be exactly obedient

2. At least 1 new investigator a week

3. At least 1 person at church a week

4. At least 1 person with a baptismal date at all times

5. Exceed these expectations

He then told us to write down 5 expectations we have for our missions. Mine were:

1. Always be focused on the work

2. To  come home exhausted every night

3.

4. Gain a stronger testimony of the Savior and the restoration

Who wouldn't expect this?

5. Learn to Look beyond myself more.

I'm not saying I have a pride issue, but I want to pattern my life after the Savior, which I feel is a good thing.

I want everyone who reads this to send me their five expectations they have for my mission. What do YOU expect of me?