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

VISIT christmas.mormon.org

Letter #67
December, 8, 2014
Area: Trinity River
Companion:  Gamez

Hey guys, have I mentioned that I love being able to read about your week? We should definitely continue doing this weekly email thing after my mission ends. But Carolyn, maybe you should set a reminder on your phone for every Sunday at like 7pm to remind you to email :P

This week was a very interesting week, but a good testimony builder. We weren't teaching many lessons at all at the beginning of the week, we had only one lesson going into Thursday, and we were disappointed in ourselves. I had noticed that Elder Gamez wasn't helping at all during planning, and I was frankly just annoyed with him because it seemed like he wasn't trying very hard to help or to pay attention at all. During Weekly Planning I opened up about how I was feeling, and even though it didn't really fix the problem, I haven't been bugged by it as much, so I guess it fixed the other problem, my patience. We made plans to fix that and we started planning a little smarter, and from Thursday to Sunday we had at least 2 lessons a day. We got to meet with more of the less-active members that Brother Christiansen asked us to meet with, and we had the opportunity to bring out a couple of members to lessons.

We had a couple of really good lessons with the Chavez family this week, but sadly they couldn't make it to church because of car problems the day before caused Francisca to miss work that day, meaning she had to work Sunday. We also had the opportunity to teach a few of the less-active families, of which 3 families came to church Sunday, so we can see the progress from them. We also got to meet a couple of the part-member families that the hermanas were teaching, and they came to church as well, so we were very pleased with the response of the people this week. We were also glad for the opportunity to listen to the Christmas devotional and still have time to meet with the Chavez family afterwards to see why they didn't make it to church.

Elder Gamez has been doing well and as a companionship we have been able to have some spiritually edifying lessons. We luckily haven't had any accidents like him falling out of the shower again, but our ceiling started leaking this week, so it flooded the bathroom, which the apartment office had fixed, but then the next day Elder Gamez didn't notice that the curtain wasn't fixed from them moving it to fix the ceiling, so the bathroom flooded again... I was glad that we had a bunch of random extra towels in the apartment, which I used to clean up the water.

I personally have been reading more out of the Ensigns because I was looking for an article for the Chavez family, then I remembered that I really should be reading articles, so this morning I read an article on discerning the promptings of the spirit. I really enjoyed the message and I feel like it helped me understand a little more of how I can receive inspiration for the missionary work.

I know the missionaries are doing the same thing, but I want to remind you guys. VISIT christmas.mormon.org! It has a great video that reminds us of the true meaning and importance of Christmas. I invite you to watch it as part of Family Home Evening (FHE) and then to share it with friends, both member and non-member. And I would say to try to invite some non-member or less-active friends over for a nice FHE to help love them into the gospel. When I was in West Lake Houston, one of the part-member families was invited to do FHE with one of the other members and that was one of the non-member husband's favorite things about the church. :) Plus if you do these things, your missionaries will love you :)

I love you guys,

Elder Stanley Scott Dye

Humbled to be Serving

Letter #66
Dec 1, 2014
Area: Trinity River
Companion: Gamez

I have been called over to serve here in the Trinity River Branch with Elder Gamez. I feel blessed for this opportunity to serve. Elder Gamez and I have been getting along great! I believe that that is due to the need of service. Elder Gamez has Cerebral Palsy, making it so he is unable to do some of the tasks that we do normally, at least he can't do them alone. If you don't know what Cerebral Palsy is, it is a paralysis of the nervouse system or of the brain, something like that. Elder Gamez has difficulty with the left side of his body, he has to walk slowly and even though he can use his left hand, it is more difficult, it naturally goes more into the "claw" position, his hand closes and drops down close to his arm. I have the opportunity to tie his tie each morning, as well as help him down stairs at times, hang up his pants, etc. Sadly, on Sunday morning, we were running a little late for studies, then a meeting we had because as he tried adjusting the showerhead, he fell out of the shower. He luckily wasn't hurt or anything, but the bathroom got all wet, so I went in there to soak up the water before I got in the shower. Elder Gamez however, is far from incapable of being able to serve the Lord, but I have noticed that at times he just needs help, or he does it slower than most people. I already love Elder Gamez because of his pure desire to serve and help others, and especially because of the spirit and testimony he has.

The Trinity River Branch is struggling as well, and they are so grateful for the support of missionaries. This week, the branch had a total of 30 people there, including us, the Stake President, and Elder and Sister Christiansen, the elderly missionaries assigned to the English ward. They are still a dependent branch because they do not have enough active members to have the full leadership necessary to be a functioning branch itself. Sadly there are families that were active members that have recently moved out of the area, so they have lost some of their numbers. But I was able to help out with my musical talents by directing the music, as well as them asking me to sing in their Christmas program, and sing a song with the primary or something like that... The English ward as well as the branch are extremely willing to help though! We have Correlation meeting with the Ward Mission Leader on Tuesdays, and after that, at 7pm, they come out for a Visits Night, where we will go visit member or non-member families with them, and if we have an appointment set up at that time, they will come with us.

We have had the opportunity to eat with all of the members of the Branch Presidency and get to know and serve them. I have found that we have especially been a great support for Brother Christiansen, the first counselor, because he has been very stressed and weighed by the responsibility that has fallen onto him. Sadly the branch president, President Escobar, has been in Washington D.C. for the last month and will be until after Christmas because his work has him out there. And the second counselor, Brother Garcia, has been called into work for 3 Sundays in a row, so this Sunday was the first Sunday that he has been able to attend this since November 2nd. Brother Christiansen has been having to fill the roles of all three of them, but he has done the best he can, and more. We had the chance to eat with him on Saturday, and the spirit in his home was so strong! Elder Gamez and I could both tell from the strength of the spirit as well as what the Christiansen's were saying, they have truly become consecrated to the work. I truly love that family. Brother Christiansen seems to barely be holding back tears whenever we offer to help and when we ask what he would like us to do. We have been able to visit about half of the families that he has asked us to visit, and we have plans to visit the rest. I am honored to be able to help this branch, as well as bring new people into it. Brother Christiansen was also really surprised at how much we already knew about the branch and some of the families/investigators because I took it upon myself to truly study the records of the teaching visits and the progress of the different people.

There are many people prepared for the gospel in this area of Liberty and Dayton, and the hermanas were working with some of those non-member families. We haven't met very many of these people, but we have been able to make good use of our meetings with some of them. We were able to get the help of members for teaching a couple of those lessons, and every lesson we have had has been spiritual. Sadly, none of the investigators were able to make it to church, which is supposedly a rarity, but we still have the faith, hope, and desires to make this branch self-reliant. We hope for it to become a ward, and it has that potential with the reactivation of the men who are of age for the Melchizedek Priesthood and the baptisms of men who in due time will receive those same covenants and responsibilities. We have high hopes for this next week with members coming out with us, teaching the different less/in-actives, and helping the leadership.

I love you guys,

Elder Stanley Scott Dye

PS: I finally found a baritone player!!! The branch president's son plays baritone, so they might have us play a Christmas song together for their Christmas program.