Hello my dear Family! I hope you're all doing great! From the sound of your letters you are! I've loved the letters I got this week. It's pretty incredible to me how amazing what you write is, because almost every single time I'm thinking about something and then I get a letter, it's about what I was thinking and is just encouraging me. I sure do love you guys! Well first I guess i'll just start off mentioning a little about this week and what's going to happen. So we leave at 5 am on monday and I have a calling card so i'm going to call in Atlanta if that'll work with all of you (i think it lands like 2:20 their time and leaves 4:45, it's whatever i sent you last week) ! Can't wait to say Hi on my way to Colombia. Wow, it feels like i've been here for a really long time, but at the same time, it feels like you just said goodbye yesterday. My district left on the 15th and that was interesting. I really was blessed. We switched into a new district for just the last week of our stay and it made me realize how amazing ours was. We were the best of friends and had the greatest teachers. I sent a picture home of our district today and it has one of our teachers with us too. (on a side note. In that letter i put two other letters to some people i wanted to write to. If you could drop those off it'd save my bacon. Thanks!). Well I don't need to say much but I'm sure excited to see what awaits me. Oh and I talked to the travel office today and they said as far as they know the Visas are good, so we'll hope I have mine on monday.
Those pictures you sent me of the nephews and audrey is the Bomb! Seriously the Cutest (I think I'm aloud to say that since brian does ;D ) thing i've seen! Jord. you gotta let me know how your weekend went. It really sounds like you had some fun! Today i got to see this Dentist here at the MTC to make sure my teeth were all good before I left, he was this really old guy but was super nice. It was kind of fun. But it looks like i check all out because if i hadn't i may have had to come to Dads office! Hah.
Well, i'm starting to pack up and get ready but I want to go back to something I learned last friday in this thing called "in-field orientation". (since our district left before us we went last week and are going tomorrow too). They talked a lot about what we're going to have to do when we get out into the real world and there's some really great stuff they said, but in particular there was one thing they talked about that stood out to me and that was Faith. I'd been thinking about, and still am thinking a lot about faith. Because if the investigators have all of the choice when it comes to if they want to listen to you and if they'll follow Christ where does our faith come in? Why is it important? Well this is something they sort of talked about and was really interesting to me. Well i've been reading a bit in the 4 gospels and as I read these amazing things that Christ did his disciples always ask him how he does it and they can't. He usually says something to the effect of, if you had the faith of a mustard seed, and doubted not at all what God can do, you could say to that mountain be ye moved into the ocean and it would be moved. This pretty much blows my mind but I think it's so cool. I was thinking about faith and how much faith I have, and how I can really make that grow, and thats when we went to this orientation. They shared a scripture from Ether 12 (which is basically a whole chapter on faith that I think is amazing) . It's Ether 12:14 and it says, "Behold, it was the faith of Nephi and Lehi that wrought the change upon the Lamanites, that they were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost." And there's another scripture (sorry i don't have it written down) that says that Nephi (or another missionary) had so much Faith when he taught that those who heard him Could do nothing except believe him. These stories of the Book of Mormon missionaries are so amazing and those are some of the guys i'm really trying to become like. Well so i was thinking, If it was Their faith, the missionary's, that made a difference then my faith can do the same too. I know i'm just 19 and I sure don't have the faith that they did, but I want it, and i sure hope that starting there is enough for now. I'm going to study more about all of this but it's so cool to me how much simply Believing and Acting on those beliefs can do (faith). God has promised us everything if we can just do that. In 1 Nephi 7:12 it says "how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of men, if it so be that they excerise faith in him? Wherefore, let us be faithful to him."
I'm trying to be as faithful as I can and I know the Lord is preparing people right now for me to go find.
I wanted to say thanks also because for me, it all starting with seeing the faith of my parents, and my siblings. From that my faith started and grew to where it is right now and is still growing. I have no idea what I did to be in this family but you're the Best! Thanks for inspiring me.
So the next time I have a p-day and write you I should be in another country. Wow this is all crazy. Well live it up and have a great time together!
Your Brother and Son,
Elder Jake Stucki.
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