Real Email of the Week

Hi family and friends!


This is an email that was forwarded to me from Elder Houston's new companion's mom! Turns out that Elder Guthrie is in the mesa south stake in az and his dad is in the stake presidency, and his brother is in the ward in mesa also! Great family! Anyway, he talks about Colten's time with him and the success they are having! Its great!

Cynthia
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Guthrie Family
Date: Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 10:20 AM
To: Cynthia Houston
Dear Cynthia,
My daughter-in-law Stacy gave me your e-mail address. I thought you would like to hear what our son tells us about "Elder Houston". You can be proud of your son. All ready he is an amazing missionary. Good job missionary Mom!
Enjoy!
Elaine Guthrie

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Scott Lee Guthrie
Date: Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 9:43 AM
Dear Family,
Last week was our first week being together in this new area. As you know I am here with wonderful Elder Houston and we are just doing amazingly together. So this area for some reason has been suffering for a little while according to what the members in the branch have told me, and it hasn't really been worked very recently. So our major efforts are to find people we can teach, and to get the members excited and involved in the missionary work in the branch here in Woods Cross. As it turns out this branch is really amazing, I don't know why the missionaries didn't work here before. I can tell that the members have lost trust in the missionaries, and so Elder Houston and I are working our hardest to get it back, and I think it's working. For example: we really don't know anybody so we thought the first week we would go and visit the branch presidency, and the first counselor invited us to branch counsel on Sunday, so we went. We met all the important leaders, and the branch president asked us if we could give the prayers I said yes for the both of us Elder Houston was a little hesitant, but accepted as well. So we go to church and everything is going well until we go to the secretary's office to get a new branch list before sacrament meeting starts(which is the last hour). The branch president comes up to us again and says, "elders could you be able to give a talk today because the brother that was supposed to give it hasn't shown up yet, so could you have something to share just in case?" Ha ha! another opportunity to meet people I don't know and share with them a little about myself. Of course we wanted to, Elder Houston didn't know what was going on so I explained it to him, and he turned a little more pale, but he still accepted the invitation. I told him some good scriptures he could use if he wanted to, and I think that helped settle his stomach a little. Anyway I am so proud of Elder Houston he faced the crowd fearlessly, I must say this young lad has a mind to do whatever it takes to get the job done no matter what! He did amazingly for only having 6 days out in the mission field, he talked for like nearly 10 minutes, bien hecho Elder Houston! So kudos to Elder Houston for his unwavering faith. I remember the first time I spoke at sacrament meeting in Preston, I think I only talked for about 3-5 minutes and I had a whole week to prepare something to say! Hah, amazing how the lord is preparing the missionaries. It was so funny because the other day, on Saturday it was, we went to this appointment we had, but we went way early like an hour early, usually this never happens, but our lesson fell through. So we went and the lady wasn't there, but her husband was, and he was even more receptive than she was. Apparently he had been out of work for some while previously, but just found some work with a former employer in landscaping. As it turns out his patron, boss, is a member, Utah Mormon for ya, and has been sharing a little about the gospel with him, and it has really caught his attention. So we visited a while, then his wife came back and we shared a little message with them and we got a return appointment! Hooray, only thing is that they are moving to Salt Lake to a new apartment closer to work the 30th of this month, bummer! They are super amazing, the wife has a few Catholic doubts, but that's okay. So after the lesson Elder Houston exclaimed:"We got into a house and taught a lesson!!" It was fun, we have been just scrounging to find anyone to teach, and this small opportunity to share our testimonies was enough to give us the excitement to keep going even though the going is rough. But It's getting better now that we know a few members, life is getting better. So Elder Houston and I are trying something that I've never done before, and that I always hated when the missionaries did whenever they came over to our house. We are trying to go and visit every member of our branch give them a book of Mormon to give to a friend and invite them to church. Then, this is the best part that nobody knows about, we take a picture with them and their book of Mormon, and we're going to send them the picture with a note of gratitude for helping the lord bring more of his children back into his fold. It's always funny because las Hermanas always are like, "you want to take a picture right now! with me looking like this! Let me go put some makeup or something on!" It's pretty funny. So family everything is going good. We're having a great time here in Woods Cross and we're not giving up on this branch like the other missionaries might have in the past. Oh real quick last night we had dinner with a Peruvian family. They might invite us over to eat Guinea pig with them, we just have to find a Guinea pig to eat first. It is interesting because in this branch there are a lot of members form various parts of the world, and not that many from Mexico, so it will be interesting to see what kinds of food we get to eat. So far nothing out of the ordinary, just spaghetti, carne asada, enchiladas, rice, and chicken, but we're working on it. We'll get Elder Houston Culturalized before he heads off to Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas Mexico.

I love you!

Elder Scott Guthrie