December 23, 2013

Hello everyone!
Merry Christmas!! I absolutely love this time of the year! Everyone is so much more loving and everyone really remembers the Savior more in this time of the year as well. This week was pretty good! We had transfers, and Elder Bayatan transferred from Makati to Manduluyong. The other half of our zone before. He actually opened up a new zone over there because the Makati zone got split this transfer! There were actually a ton of new zones made in this transfer. We went from 7 zones in the mission to 12! Exciting stuff! So I got a new companion! He is actually from my batch here in the field, his name is Elder Bautista! he is Filipino and an absolute stud. When I was a zone leader in Narra he was actually a district leader over there so we got to know each other and stuff, and then he got made a new zone leader this transfer over here! I am stoked to get to work with Elder Bautista. I actually have been wanting to for a while, but he doesn't know that:) I am real excited for the next transfer to see how everything goes. We also had our mission Christmas party this last week. It was really fun and basically everything was the same as last year. We had a devotional, the gift exchange thing, and talent shows! The devotional was great. President and Sister Stucki shared about the gifts of the Spirit this year. they said how there is a difference between presents and gifts. Christmas is great because we get presents and stuff, but it is more important to receive gifts, especially as a missionary. They had ten gifts that they wanted all of us to take away with after our missions. I can't tell you guys because it's top secret info. the Christmas party was a ton of fun and I especially enjoyed the spiritual parts of it. I love Christmas so much and the blessing we have to remember the birth of Jesus Christ I love Christ so much and am grateful for everything he has done. I pray we can all remember Christ this Christmas and strive to become more like Him each and every day.

Elder Stephens