October 31, 2017

 

Elder Stucki & Elder Rudd

 Elder Stucki - Elder Payne & Elder Palmer

Family,

This week has been a really good week! We were able to find 2 new investigators this week and one came out to church also. One of them is named R. and she is super solid. She is from a part member family were the dad is not a member and is really against the church and the mom is less active just because it's hard to go when he is against it. But R. is really awesome she is 18 and just had a boyfriend who left on a mission and she wanted to wait until he was gone to take the lessons because she wants to take them for herself and not feel like she is being pressured into it. Our other investigators are doing really well. kinda -sorta. The older couple we are going to drop because they don't have a desire to change. They are super nice they are just old and kinda stubborn and stuck in there ways. Super hard to teach them because of some health problems and Alzheimer's. 

So I've got mixed emotions right now. ha ha I'm being transferred and it will be OUT OF THE ZONE!!  I have served my whole mission so far in the Enumclaw Zone and have served in 4 out of the 7 wards here. I will now be going to Puyallup as a Zone Leader with Elder Rudd. Elder Rudd came out into the mission the same time I did. So it will be pretty fun to serve with him. I'm kinda sad to leave Enumclaw but I'm excited to see more of the mission. The stake I served in covers half of the mission. Kinda cool. I remember when I got my call I was looking at the map of the mission and I pointed to like the more rural part and said that's were I want to go and that is were I have been until now!! Anyways I don't have much else to say. 

...ya I'm already packed and I don't know how but I have accumulated more garbage then I came out with. I will be getting transferred today so I will be sleeping there tonight. Elder Rudd has been serving there so he knows the area.

...kinda funny you asked if anyone was leaving because my 2 favorite people left. Elder Palmer (Salem, Utah)  and Elder Payne (Emery, Utah) They slept in their beds back home last night!! Weird. I love these 2. Elder Payne the one in the pink tie says he will be waiting for me in Utah with guns in his truck. hahaha

I love you all!!!
Elder Ethan Stucki

Here is a copy of a letter we received today:

31 October 2017

Dear Elder Ethan Wayne Stucki:

I am pleased to let you know that you have been assigned to be a zone leader. Your assignment came as a result of earnest prayer. It reflects the confidence that both the Lord and I have in you to influence others for good. Thank you for your willingness to take on this important responsibility.

Of course, your assignment is a temporary but sacred stewardship from the Lord, not a promotion. As Elder Dallin H. Oaks taught, “There is no ‘up or down’ in the service of the Lord. There is only ‘forward or backward,’ and that difference depends on how we accept and act upon our releases and our callings.” But your assignment does give you both focus and license to lift and help others in a unique way. In fulfilling this critical role, let Doctrine and Covenants 121 and pages 55 – 66 of the Missionary Handbook be your guide. Study them carefully and regularly.

You and your companion, as zone leaders, will by example set the tone for the zone. Show them just what it looks like to obey with exactness out of love and to strive wholeheartedly to be the kind of missionary described on pages 10 and 11 of Preach My Gospel. Help them see what is possible by the way you live. Whether your zone has a culture of casual commitment or wholehearted service will be determined, in part, on your personal conduct. This will especially be true as you go on exchanges with each of the district leaders in your zone.  You should go on a transfer with them once each transfer at a minimum.  Additionally I may ask you to go on exchanges with other missionaries in your zone on occasion. Exchanges provide an extraordinary training opportunity. Plan them prayerfully, seeking to know what the greatest needs of each elder are and how you can best help him. Seek not only to enhance an Elder's skills and effectiveness, but to strengthen his faith and deepen his own conversion. Look for ways to enhance his insights and his spirit, to “succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees” (D&C 81:5). Elders should come away feeling inspired and illuminated rather than critiqued and criticized.

Zone training will provide you with a great opportunity to teach missionaries in your zone, but your primary means of influencing your zone will be through your district leaders. Build great relationships with them; lift them and help them develop the skills they will need to lead their districts well.

To help focus your efforts, review More Lasting Conversions 2014 regularly. Help the missionaries with whom you work obey and serve out of love, exercise faith to find and baptize those God is preparing, teach the doctrine of Christ with clarity and power, and become progressing missionaries. As you teach other principles, whenever possible, connect them to these core principles to help missionaries internalize them.

Use the scriptures and Preach My Gospel often in your conversation and teaching with other missionaries. Let them see how you use the scriptures to find answers to your own questions and how you engage in the cycle of improvement described on page vii of Preach My Gospel by studying, applying what you learn, evaluating what they do, and then seeking to improve regularly. As you plan together, help them discover the power of setting inspired goals that will stretch them and turn them to the Lord for help. When a missionary's drive to improve is fueled from within by love and faith, he will improve more quickly and more permanently.

As you help missionaries improve, praise them more for who they are becoming than for what others are doing in response to their efforts. While we want to provide missionaries with an opportunity to be accountable for the goals they set regarding their key indicators, changes in heart and character will lead to greater changes in key indicators than talking to missionaries about key indicators will.

Finally, as zone leaders, you will often see minor misconduct that you will need to correct. It is especially important that, as the Mission President’s Handbook states, you “make sure relationships between elders and sisters are in harmony with gospel teachings and missionary standards.” If you become aware of serious violations of the rules, such as missionaries interacting inappropriately with those of the opposite sex, leaving mission boundaries, or engaging in other conduct that could harm the work and endanger their spiritual welfare, please contact me directly and immediately, remembering that your “loyalty is first to the Lord, then to the mission president, then to the missionaries” (p. 62, Missionary Handbook).

Thank you for accepting this calling, and all of the challenges that come with it.  You will find that as you serve those in your zone through inspired leadership, that you will be blessed as well.  May the Lord bless you in this wonderful and important assignment.

Sincerely,

President Sterling A. RasmussenWashington Federal Way Mission

cc: Parents, Bishop, Stake President