the path to gaining spiritual light

Letter #73
January 20, 2015
Area: Trinity River
Companion: Gamez

For us, this last week has been full of progress!  We were able to visit many families, including a new one, and help them take steps towards our Heavenly Father. We were excited to see the progress that the Chavez family made this week. Francisca approached her boss on Tuesday and asked for Sunday off of work, and he said yes! On Saturday, they gave us the sad news that her boss was not going to be able to work that Sunday morning, so she would have to work. They still were able to make it to Sacrament Meeting, and they brought their son, Manuel, and they all had a great time! This was their second time at Sacrament Meeting, and they are determined to make it to the classes as well this next week. We also caught Maria Mata at home, after about 2.5 weeks of not being able to find her. We had a great talk with her and caught up a little bit. She has been suffering depression since the passing of her mother about 3 months ago, but just in these last few weeks, she has been so busy that she didn't have time to sit down and think about the death of her mom, so she has been happier. She told us that she loves us coming over and it always makes her feel better, but anyways, the conversation changed slightly and she said her oldest son, Guadalupe, was sick almost all of last week. We offered to give him a blessing, but I guess he wasn't home, so instead she asked us if we could go visit somebody else! She told us about her sister that lives about 5 minutes away and how she has been feeling more depressed than even Maria has been. She gave us her address and we promised to go visit her the next day. We ended up visiting her, and we had the wonderful opportunity to teach her and help her understand the Plan of Happiness that Heavenly Father has for us. While we were teaching her, we noticed that her countenance was changing. She looked sad and depressed when we got there, and while we were teaching her and while we were leaving, she was actually happy! She also wanted us to talk with her 3 children, who are all grown up and 2 of which are married and have their own children, so her oldest grandson is 8 years old. I am super excited to teach their family and get them to come unto Christ and be baptized, especially because I think it will help Maria act more upon the teachings. 

This Sunday evening, Elder Gamez and I had a really good heart-to-heart talk.  It ended up starting because he got frustrated with an idea for a baptismal date for the Chavez family that I put out there. I just wanted to understand why he disagreed, and we opened up about our feelings for the Chavez family, as well as he brought up that he wanted me there at the lesson because the plan was originally to go on exchanges after P-Day. I feel so much closer to Elder Gamez now and I feel like he feels closer to me. I just feel like I trust him and he now understands why I have been pushing for getting the Chavez family a date as well as other things, so I feel like our desire to work has increased as well as our desire to baptize. He just mentioned that he feels like he loves them so much that he almost doesn't want to let them go, he just doesn't want to push them away by trying to get them to baptism. We decided to share some of those feelings of love for them yesterday in our lesson with them. We took some time in the morning and found some scriptures that expressed those feelings and our desires for them, and we went to the lesson prepared, as well as us having President Escobar and his family with us. The lesson went better than we could have imagined! They are truly gaining spiritual light and they have been noticing it, and how it is good, so they want more. We talked about how the brother of Jared came up with his plan to have light in their boats, expressed faith in the Lord, and asked him if he would make the plan work.  We then compared it with a baptismal calendar. We went over the commitments on the calendar with them and they realized how close they are, they only have 5-6 that they haven't done yet. We invited them to be baptized on the 8th of February, and invited them to make themselves a plan on when and how they will live the commitments and present it to the Lord, like the brother of Jared did. The lesson went great, and we feel like they now share our vision and the spirit is edifying them. I am certain they will be baptized before the end of the transfer, perhaps before the 8th of February. They only need to get married, live the laws of the tithe and fast, attend a baptism (optional, but recommended), and have the interview. I can't wait to see the fruits of my labors here!

I also wanted to ask you, mom, what ended up helping you get through your depression? I would like to share what helped you with Maria Mata and her sister Evangelia.

Angie and Carolyn, how did the daily scripture reading go this week?

I love you guys, and I hope you have another great week!

Elder Stanley Scott Dye

The progress is slow, but worth the effort

Letter #72
January 12, 2015
Area: Trinity River
Companion: Gamez

I enjoy reading your letters, and I could say it was a good week for all of you because of the things you learned! :D It seems like it was a common theme of strengthening your personal testimonies of the simple things, like Carolyn and Angela with the daily scripture study. By the way, Carolyn, como te va la lectura del libro en Espanol con Ryan? Y a todas mis hermanas, estais vosotras estudiando o practicando vuestro Espanol? Actually thinking of "vosotros" form, in a lesson with the Chavez family this Wednesday, I had the awkward experience of "vosotros" just coming out because I have been reading the scriptures a lot in Spanish and we are basically family with them now, so the more familiar "vosotros" form just slipped out when I tried saying "when we were thinking of you...". I ended up saying "Cuando estabamos pensando en vosotros..." instead of "cuando estabamos pensando en ustedes..."

This week went well despite the lack of investigators we have. We still are working with the Chavez family and they are showing true desire and are progressing, but slower than before. The lack of progress was concerning us for a while, but as we pondered their situation, we realized that even though they haven't been able to make it to church recently, they still desire to move forward.  They have also been making steps forward in their Book of Mormon reading. As we re-evaluated their progress and situation, we came to the conclusion that we should try to help them 'see' their own progress by having one major goal per week and the smaller goals (or commitments) and helping them accomplish it through our visits. 
    Other than visiting the Chavez family, we have been putting forth the effort to contact more and to find more areas that are heavily populated by Hispanics. We actually had a good experience like that yesterday.  We had nothing to do and we had no idea who to visit, so when I just felt that we should just get out of the car and just contact and knock the street.  The street was that of a part-member family that we were going to visit about an hour later. We only contacted 3 people, but one of them ended up being a good referral for the West Lake Houston Elders. He was the only interested Hispanic person we found last week, but we feel like things will go really well with him and he will get baptized.

This next week we have the goal of getting back in with more of our less-active member families.  Again, most of them were on vacation, so now they have returned. Some of them show more desire to return to church, others don't show too much desire to return to church, but are excited to get their children involved in the activities.  We are going to work with them from there and help them come back at whatever pace they are willing to go.

I love you guys,

Elder Stanley Scott Dye

the Importance of the Small Things

Letter #71
January 5, 2015
Area: Trinity River
Companion: Gamez

This week had some ups and downs like many weeks do, but we felt so blessed with what we were able to do. We visited with the Chavez family a couple of times this week, and they are doing well. President and Sister Escobar were going to come with us both times we visited, but they couldn't make it the second time. We slowed, and backed up, our teaching instruction with them instead of pushing for a marriage and baptism.  We felt that we were losing focus on the small things that are of more importance to the Chavez family--those things that will allow them to love and live the gospel for a good long time.. We refocused them on reading the scriptures (from the Book of Mormon), praying, and going to church because we were wondering why we weren't seeing progression.  What we noticed was that those things were starting to slip. Ernesto mentioned that he had recently started to read the Book of Mormon and he was loving it! Francisca had been focusing on the Bible mainly, but we lovingly told her that the thing that will help her most, at this time, would be reading the Book of Mormon.  She sweetly committed to read daily from the Book of Mormon.

This week we were able to also get in contact with a lot more of the less-active members  Many of them had been on vacation. Some of the families we visited have been feeling the desire and need to return to the church, and we are excited to be able to work with them in doing that. One family, the Garcia's, want to come back to church and get their children baptized because they want their children to grow up firm in their beliefs.

It is incredibly hard to believe that it is already 2015, but it is harder to believe that before the end of this year, I will be home and in college and stuff...I think I might ask for an extension for the rest of my life. ;D

I love you guys,

Elder Stanley Scott Dye

Busy with the Work of the Lord

Letter #70
December 29, 2104
Area: Trinity River
Companion: Gamez

Hey guys, I hope you all had a great Christmas and will have a great New Years! It sounds like most of you had a good week, this last week went well for me as well, but it was different than a normal week. We had Christmas Eve and Christmas day of course, but we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders from Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday afternoon, and also exchanges with our District Leader, Elder Perry, on Saturday. Sadly we weren't able to visit/teach some less-active members, as well as some investigators that we have been teaching. On Saturday though, as I was on exchanges with Elder Perry, we were able to find the Chavez family at home, as well as 3 other families: Maria Mata and her sons, Kenny and Leo Zuniga, and Carlos Mendoza.  We were able to teach them all!

We needed to talk with the Chavez family because they are trying to work towards baptism. We needed to specifically clarify some things about the Word of Wisdom because Ernesto had started drinking Decaffeinated Coffee every so often.  He misunderstood what a member had said, so we explained that even decaffeinated works against the Word of Wisdom. We explained to him that we might not understand all of the reasons, but we shouldn't drink any form of coffee, and it seems like they understood and they agreed to doing that. They sadly missed church again, so we are going to figure out why, and we the Escobar family is back in town, which is good because they are going to be able to help with the whole marriage thing.

Elder Gamez was able to talk with Maria Mata on exchanges with Elder Brewer.  She has been struggling, but the visits always help her.  I also tried stopping by with Elder Perry, but she was asleep.  Her sons were there and were willing to talk with us. We taught them about the Plan of Salvation because they had some questions and that is what they were interested in at that time. We also found out that her older son, Guadalupe, knows 2 of the young men in the branch! We have plans to bring them to lessons with us in order to help the sons learn from their own friends. In fact one of his best friends is Kenny Zuniga, so we went over and talked with Kenny after teaching Guadalupe and his brother, Luis, and asked him if he would be willing to help us teach his friend.

I hope you all have a great week and a happy New Years holiday!

Elder Stanley Scott Dye

Working towards Baptism

Letter #69
December 22, 2014
Area: Trinity River
Companion: Gamez

Sorry my email won't be very long, I don't have much time, but I will be skyping you on Christmas.  I will call Dad's phone at about 11am or a little after to give exact details, we will skype at about 11am or about 11:40am depending on who goes first. (note: Elder Dye did call, and it was enjoyable...the time was definitely Texas time:)

This week we both felt like the main thing that we did well was how we worked with the Chavez family.  Again, they are working towards baptism hopefully this weekend, the one problem is them getting married. They said they would try to go to the courthouse today to at least get the information necessary and set a date to get the marriage license. This is a challenge that we are trusting in the Lord, so we went over there four different times to visit them in preparing them by teaching them the commandments of God.  The first day we taught the Word of Wisdom, and when they read that drinking coffee is bad, they said "It looks like we're not drinking coffee anymore," then we found out that Ernesto was a smoker, but he threw out his cigarettes and gave his word to his wife, and to us that he wouldn't smoke anymore, and so far, he still hasn't! The next time we went over the baptismal questions, the only problem was that they weren't legally married, so sadly we had to move their baptism back a week, once again. We then got to talk about the Law of Chastity and the true reason we have it, that being-- to protect the family and prepare the family to be one sealed as an eternal family. During that lesson we shifted their focus from baptism to the temple, and they seem to understand what is necessary to get to baptism, and then to the temple. Then the fourth and final time we visited them, we decided to do a "He is the Gift" lesson and sadly the video didn't load, but we got to talk to them about The Gift of Christmas - that being Heavenly Father's gift of His son, Jesus Christ, and how we (as God's children) can discover, embrace, and share it.

Love you

Good Learning Experience- in Patience

Letter #68
December 15, 2014
Area: Trinity River
Companion: Gamez

It sounds like you all had a great week, but it sounds like the cold weather has started...well, everywhere except here, right now it is 80 degrees, but the rest of this week looks like it'll rain and be in the 60s.

This week went well, we have been working more with the Chavez family, and we have been meeting more of the people that the hermanas taught. A lot of people came to church this week, but a couple of them don't really seem too interested in us teaching them, yet they come to church because they like to come or because they have family in the church. One of these people is the husband of a woman in the ward and he seems to be warming up to us a little more, but whenever we go visit their family, he goes into the bedroom. The other has some kind of problem with the Book of Mormon, but he works out of town all week, so we haven't had the chance to teach him yet.

The Chavez family is coming along great, they are pretty sure about being baptized this coming Sunday, we just need to make sure we can teach them the commandments, but they have a pretty good testimony of the stuff we have taught so far. The only worry I have about them is whether or not they will be ready for this Sunday. We hope that we won't have to push their date back a week, but that might have to happen.

We got to meet with April and Valeria, the nonmember daughters of a RS teacher, and we got to help them understand some things a little more. We felt like in their case the hermanas were just going too fast on the lessons and weren't teaching quite to their understanding.  We are taking the time to resolve concerns they have and to help them know what they need to do to know the truth of these things. We feel like soon enough they will find their answer and choose to be baptized.

I can tell that being with Elder Gamez has been, and will be, a good learning experience because it has been a test of patience. I very much like moving fast and not taking many breaks, as well as concentrating at the task at hand, at least when it comes to planning and preparing for the activities of the day.  Elder Gamez is pretty much the opposite. I love serving with him and he has a great testimony, I just wish we could move a little faster in the unnecessary things... I am just trying to be grateful for the things I have been given, I also enjoy laughing with Elder Gamez about the little funny or dumb things that we do.

I wish I had more time, but we should get going,

I love you guys,

Elder Stanley Scott Dye