March 3, 2014

Hey there everyone!!
I just love being a missionary. Last week we had an awesome zone activity for our Makati zone. We went to the Mall of Asia! We rode some rides and took pictures of the sunset over Manila Bay. It was an awesome experience, one I will never forget, and it was great being able to spend time with the missionaries in the zone to build some unity and stuff. We had a follow up training with the new trainers this last week. Everyone was doing great and no one had big problems. It just reminded me a little bit of when I wen to that meeting as a new missionary. Good times, good times. We had another missionary leadership council this last week. It was a great council and everyone was able to learn a ton from it! We witnessed so many miracles in the month of February, we had the most baptisms we have seen in the mission since I got here! I think the missionaries are really starting to exercise more faith and work real hard. As for the council itself, it was a little different than normal though because President Stucki had a ton of time set apart for all of us to just talk to one another and council together to help the mission. There were a few questions he came up with for all of us to talk about and it was really effective. I look forward to seeing if the mission rises up and acts on the things we said. Elder Belnap and I went on exchanges with the zone leaders over Pasay North. They are Elder Obray and Elder Hawkins. We had great exchanges and I was able to work with Elder Hawkins. He is a new zone leader, just this transfer, but he is already exercising great faith! He is a super positive person and it really helps the rest of his zone and it helped me a lot too! It was great working with Elder Hawkins. As for our proselyting, we had some great success! We taught a guy named Raymond and he brought over his best friend whose name is Bucay. They are awesome and it really was great teaching them. One of the nights, some members took us out to a pizza place and brought Raymond and Bocay along. The members names were Justin and Margarette Pearson, and it turns out they are going to San Diego for school! I was stoked when I heard that and they are excited to go out there. Shemir is doing awesome! His baptismal interview was this last week and he passed and is all ready for baptism this Saturday! He is awesome and we taught him all about enduring to the end so he doesn't fall away. He is exercising a ton of faith since he is finally making the steps to follow Jesus Christ. We had a great lesson with Johnny this past week. After the lesson he was talking about how he loves having us over because he just feels at peace every time we visit. Every time he feels stressed he just looks forward to the lessons we have for him because he always feels the Spirit and all the problems go away. I was so humbled to hear that and I just love Johnny so much. This was a great week and I am looking forward to the week coming up!

Elder Stephens