My Email.....from Elder Stewart the Great!

Hello Friends and Family,

I am grateful for the opportunity of writing to all of you and let you know what is going on in my small and insignificant life here in Brazil. I am sure that you are doing well and having a good time getting ready for the holidays. I am here and wishing that I was home so that I would be able to be with my family on Thanksgiving but I also have the bitter sweet feeling that I will be with them next year and that is almost as good. I am amazed at how fast the mission is flying by and it seems like it is going to be over before I know it. I really feel the pressure to improve now that I am getting closer because I want to really take advantage of what I have left. I figured out that the secret to having success on the mission is just being happy and smiling a lot. If you combine those things with hard work you are on your way to having a great mission.
This week I have a good experience that I wanted to share with you all. I have been having a hard time getting my investigators to go to church and I was fed up with it! So I got to the house of a girl who has a date for this Sunday and she told me that she would go to church no matter what. Well I got there and she told me that she was not going to be able to go because her baby was not being very good and she didn't want to bring him and her mom was not going to be home. She said she would go the next week and that she was sorry. I didn't take no for an answer. I told her that I was there to take her to church and that she was going go anywhere with out going to the church with me. I told her I was going to sit down and wait for her. We argued over it for a half hour and finally she decided to go. I promised her that her kid was going to be good in church if she would show her faith and go. So she got ready and we left. Her baby was perfect during the entire meeting and she loved the church as well. She will be baptized on Sunday and I really think that if I would not have been bold and used the authority that I have to help her be baptized she would not have gone to church and possibly not have felt the spirit. I know that sometimes we have to force people a little bit because it is for their own good! Wouldn't you want to be forced into eternal life? Ha ha. So I have a testimony that the love that we have for the people will help us to be annoying sometimes when we need to be. I guess now I know how my mom feels. Ha ha. I actually am starting to like being annoying and helping people to do things they don't want to do only to see that they end up thanking me in the end. You should all try it. Ha ha.
Then there was last night I got to the house of an ex-investigator and we wanted to teach her again and she said she was busy. So I talked to her friend who was there and found out she lived in the house above this girl and that she would like to hear. We taught her and then out of no where another friend came up who had just found out that her boyfriend had cheated on her and she needed to hear the "Word of God". So we taught both of them and then after the lesson we gave her a blessing of comfort to handle her situation. They both felt the spirit really strong and I think that it was no coincidence that we were sent to that house again.
I am really loving my mission and striving to see miracles occur in my mission. I want come home and have plenty of talk stories for the rest of my life. Ha ha. I am very grateful for this mission and for all that I have been learning and for all those that I have come encounter with. I feel so blessed and I know that I have much more to do here before my time is over. We have transfers this week end and it is possible that I will leave or Elder Ashton too. We really don't know what will happen but neither of us really wants to separate yet. I know however that the Lord is over all and that it will always be his will what happens in my life. I love you all and will tell you about the Baptism that are marked for this week end and about more experiences of my time in Brazil. Have a good week!

Elder Stewart