February 18, 2013

Helloo from the Philippines!
Wow this week was a great week. We had so many great learning experiences this past week. So first of all, we had a zone conference this week. It was a great zone conference. President Stucki really just talked about how we need to start "building the ship" as Nephi did in 1 Nephi 17. Basically there are four parts to building his ship that all of us need to do. That is (1) work diligently (2) have faith in Christ (3) pray mightily and (4) be exactly obedient. If we do these four things, the work here in the Philippines and all over the world will hasten in the Lord's way. It was an awesome message and it just made me want to be that much better to really help all the Filipino people come unto Christ. He also explained the importance of working with the members and using the Book of Mormon more effectively. President Stucki is great. We also had District Conference this week. The Naic District has some great stuff coming in the future. Our District President was released so a new one was called. The new District President for the Naic District was actually our Branch President in Carissa! He is President Baldarama and he is the best Branch President and will be the best District President ever. I'm so excited for Naic. We also had a lot of great talks, and a lot of them talked about tithing and the blessings that come from paying tithing. They were all wonderful talks and I know so many people loved it. We had some pretty great lessons ttis week. One of the lessons we had was with an investigator we have, named Leo, and we have been teaching him for a while now. He is actually moving to Makati or might have already moved, I don't know for sure. But we had our last lesson with him and he just thanked us for all we have helped him with and he says even when he goes o Makati he is going to continue with the lessons and eventually be baptized. I loved hearing that form him and I am so thankful for the wonderful blessing we had to teach him. We also had a great lesson with less-active/part member family. They are the Briones family and we just started teaching the son who is actually not a member. Anyway, we had a wonderful lesson on the Book of Mormon and how we can know the truth about everything that we as missionaries teach through knowing that the Book of Mormon is true. It was a great lesson and the Spirit was so strong. At the end of the lesson I invited the son, Mark, to be baptized on a specific date. He said yes and he is really excited to prepare himself for baptism, and that made me so happy. Then after the father, who is less-active and didn't really like us teaching him, bore his own testimony of the church and explained how he was just so happy that his son will get baptized and his whole family will be members of the church. It was extra great because he said this gave him the desire to return and become a strong member in the church. I loved hearing that and it just made me so happy. I know this gospel can bless families and I know that it is true. Heavenly Father loves each and every one of us and even when we start to get lost, He does everything He can to help us back and get us on the strait and narrow path that leads to eternal happiness. I love missionary work so much. Well that's about it from me. I love all you guys!

Elder Stephens