February 3, 2014

Hello Everyone!
This last week was crazy! First I had an awesome last few days in the Makati 2A area. On my last day there we had a family home evening with the Enciso family and Sister Demacali came to help them out and show they can start having family home evening on their own every week! It was an awesome time and we were really able to help them feel the spirit and know how to strengthen their family by having a weekly family home evening. Then I move into my new area! Makati 4 with Elder Belnap. It is crazy being an assistant to the president. We get to work a lot with President Stucki and the office couples here as well. We have two office couples, Elder and Sister Paine, and Elder and Sister Theler. They are the cutest old couples ever. My first experience as the new assistant was a new missionary orientation for all the incoming missionaries. It reminded me of my first day and made me realize just how old I am in the mission. This new batch of missionaries is great though and they were all really looking forward to serving in their new areas. We also had a few awesome lessons! We are teaching a man named Johnny who is scheduled for baptism on February 22nd. We went in the lesson helping to somehow teach the word of wisdom, and right in the beginning he asked a ton of questions on how we can help him stop smoking and drinking! It made me realize how much Heavenly Father just prepares these people to receive these lessons in order to help them to come unto Christ. We set a firm date for that baptism and he made a strong commitment to follow the word of wisdom. he wrote it down on a piece of paper and signed it and everything, then told us to bring it to him on the day of his baptism as a congratulations to himself that he was able to come unto Christ. It was awesome. We were also teaching a Persian man named Shemir. He is super funny and loves us a ton. We taught him about the Sabbath Day this past week and gave him a strong commitment to come to church on Sunday. he did just that, and even dressed up in a silver suit to top it all off. I love Shemir so much. He also took us out to dinner one tonight to a Persian restaurant. I never knew Persian food was so good! It is a little different teaching all these people in English because we are actually assigned in the foreigners ward here in Makati. It is awesome though and a really good experience for me. We are actually assigned in two wards, the Makati 3rd and 4th wards. I love this new area and I love my new companion Elder Belnap. We have been wanting to serve together for the longest time. It is a different assignment being an assistant, but I am excited to learn a ton from it!

Elder Stephens