HEY EVERYONE!

Wow I cannot believe that I am here in the Philippines! It is so insane that I am here now. Let me tell you, it is hot hot hot here in the Philippines. The humidity gets me more than anything I think. The temperature always says its not too hot but then I realize that it is probably 100000% humidity so that's why it's so hot. It's alright though because there's no other place I would rather be right now. So the flight to the Philippines took forever. The worst part was the 16 hour flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. I slept like 10 hours though so it wasn't tooo bad. Then we got here and right away we were tossed into the work. Seriously at the airport they gave us pamphlets and a few Book of Mormon and we were told to give them out to people there at the airport. It was so weird since we just got there and none of us knew the language that well. But it was okay. Then later on after lunch we had some more missionary work! Yup, this is still the first day. We went to Makati in Manila, just a big city and went around talking to as many people as we could. It was actually really cool and we got a lot out of the experience. We talked to a lot more people than at the airport and I actually felt more like a missionary in that situation. That was sweet! Later on we just crashed at the mission home, I hit the bed and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep in like 5 seconds. The next day was the transfer meeting where we all met our companions and where we were going to serve. I met Elder Pugmire, my new companion! He's from Logan, Utah and he's been out for a while now. He's an awesome missionary and we get along very well. It's sweet since I haven't even been out a week here in the field and I'm already getting along with my companion. He was funny right off the bat and has been ever since. Right when they called his name I looked around and he was hunched over and had his finger over his mouth doing the "shhhh" thing. I don't know if you can picture that but I tried. I also found out where my area is. So now I'm serving in the Naic district of the Philippines. There's a ton of areas in the Manila mission and most of them are stakes but Naic isn't strong enough YET so it's still a district. And I'm in the Carissa part of the Naic district. I'm totally excited to be here in this part and I know it's where  I am supposed to be. Then we went to a memorial cemetery for the soldiers that fought in World War II. It was really cool. I love that kind of stuff and it was sweet going there and taking pictures and stuff. Then we went to our areas and I was dead tired so again I slept on the whole ride home! Sweet right?! Now I'm in my area and actually we get to serve with a senior missionary couple in our area! There's another set of Elders in another area that's really close to ours and the senior missionaries switch off going to lessons with the four of us. It is so cool and it's great because they don't know Tagalog so they just say everything in English. Most Filipinos know English, at least some of the basics, so they understand most of the things that they are saying. All of the people that we teach are so nice. It is so cool to know that their Filipino blood runs in my veins. I know I'm not from here or anything, or that we're actually family, but it's just sweet being here an experiencing the Philippines in this way. There's no way I would have experienced all of this without my mission and without this call. I am so grateful for it. A lot of the people we teach here are inactive families that were baptized but just don't come anymore. That is one of the focuses of the mission here in the Philippines: to bring those families back. We still teach a lot of non members too to help them come closer to Christ. The people here are so nice that they always let us in because they just don't want to be mean and kick us out. I think that is so awesome. On Sunday, I had my first Sunday here in the Philippines. It was fast Sunday which was so tough because it is so hot here. Luckily we are able to drink water when we absolutely need it because otherwise, I think we would die. We had an awesome testimony meeting and the people here really have strong testimonies. They don't get all into story time and they go up for a little and bear a strong testimony. I love it so much. The language is sort of coming along. I don't have a lot of conversational vocab because all the vocab we do in the MTC is for our lessons. So in the lessons I do pretty well for myself teaching but outside of that I am horrible haha. Understanding is tough too, since I don't know the vocab I don't know most of the words that they are saying and not only that, they speak so so fast sometimes. I've only been here for 5 days tough so I'm not too bummed about that. I know the Lord will help me with the language if I truly work at it and work at it hard. He did in the MTC with the gospel stuff and it has carried over to here in the Philippines. Te food is great. The rice here is way better than the rice in America. They make it here a ton, every meal actually, so it's not surprising that they know how to make it well .We have a Filipino elder in the house with us and he cooks a lot for everyone. We actually came up with a plan to all buy groceries together and he will just cook. I love it since I have no idea how to cook. I'll learn sometime hopefully but as for now, I'm okay with not cooking haha. That sounds so bad. But I really love the Philippines and I am so happy to be serving here. I know the Lord has sent me here for a reason and  am so excited to find out what it is. I love this work and I can't wait to serve here for the next 2 years. I'll just end with saying that I know this work is the work of the Lord and that I was called here by Him to help the people in the Philippines come unto Christ. I can't wait to see how much I change fro my mission. I know I already have. I have 22 more months to go and the clock's ticking. I love you all and I really appreciate every one of the emails and letters. See you later!!

Elder Stephens