February 24, 2014

Hello there everyone!
Elder Belnap and I had a crazy week this last week .I have never done so much in my entire mission than we did last week. The reason being, we had zone conferences all week throughout the entire mission .For the whole week we ended up having four zone conferences. First we went to Palawan! It was good going back to that beautiful island, even for only a day. It actually went great even though it was the first one. After that we came back to the mainland and had three more all in the Buendia chapel. Zone conference was great and I was really able to learn to, especially since I attended four times. President Stucki mainly shared about the doctrine of Christ, or the gospel, and how it should drive everything that we do. The doctrine of Christ needs to be deep in our hearts and it should push us to do everything we can to help others come unto Christ. It was a cool lesson where the doctrine was the engine of a train, with cars behind it to help missionary work. Those cars are prayer, reading the Book of Mormon, church attendance, and finding. It we have the doctrine deep in our hearts, we would be in the engine of that train and if we are doing all those things in the cars and helping investigators do them, we will have success in the work. Sister Stucki shared bout faith in Christ. She basically just focused on how faith is power. If we have faith in Jesus Christ, we can do anything which is expedient in Him. Elder Belnap shared about the importance of receiving and contacting referrals and I shared about helping people to attend sacrament meeting. Everyone did great at sharing and I felt everyone learned a lot! We also had our area medical adviser, Elder Jackson, come and share with us. He had a great message on health for the entire mission. The thing I like most was when he was talking about getting along with your companion. He said, "try to do more for your companion, than your companion does for you." It was a great principle and something I would love to apply for the rest of my life. Overall, zone conference was great. it was really tiring getting up early every morning to set up everything, but it was a blast to be able to see all the wonderful missionaries and be able to help them fulfill their purpose as missionaries. For the actual missionary work side of things, Johnny was baptized this last week! It was a wonderful baptismal service and a ton of members just came around to really help him feel welcome and I am sure he loved it so much. After he came up out of the water, and actually after his confirmation, he raised his arms and said "WOO HOO!" It was awesome and I could just feel the excitement he had that he was baptized and had received the Holy Ghost. Johnny is awesome and he continues to teach me things and help me grow even though he probably does not even know it. I love him a ton and can't wait to see him continue to grow! This work is so great. I love it with all my heart. I absolutely love these people and I feel like that is what drives me to work hard each day. I know Jesus is the Christ and He really guides this work.

Elder Stephens