April 14, 2014

Hey everyone!
General Conference was awesome!! Heavenly Father really does guide us through His living prophets. I loved the messages about being courageous in obeying the commandments of God. We shouldn't be ashamed as we follow His commandments and we receive so much more joy as we do so. There were so many talks about just being obedient and following the Spirit and the prophets words. It was an awesome conference and I was able to learn so much. My favorite quote of the conference was by President Monson, who said, "if you ever find yourself where you shouldn't ought to be, get out!" super awesome. I also loved how Elder Ballard invited all of us to study Preach My Gospel and know it. So here is a quote from PMG! "Finding by the Spirit is as important as teaching by the Spirit. Have faith that you will know what to teach and what to do to find those who will receive you." (PMG. 156) So now I'll just talk about our proselyting. Elder Belnap and I spent a ton of time in our area and we were able to see so many miracles just happen. First, we taught a Chinese man who was taught before by some missionaries. He has come to church for a while and just never progressed with the missionaries before. We taught him this last week and right away he just had a desire to find out the truth of the gospel! He had some concerns about prayer and said that God just does not answer his prayers, however during the lesson both Elder Belnap and I testified that God answers prayers. In the middle of the lesson I told him how I came to know the truth and I got on my knees just like I did when I prayed about he Book of Mormon and testified about how heavenly Father answered my prayer. I felt the Spirit so strong and he is now excited to pray about the truth. We also had a lesson with a man who we found at a hospital the other day. We were walking and he called out to us then we set up a time to teach him. His name is Ronnie, he looks like a Filipino Mike Meyers, and he is just awesome. We took him to the church and we were able to share about the Restoration with him. We pray he is able to progress in the gospel. We also found a member  this last week named Tomas. He told us that he had been trying to come back to church and has been praying for it but never found a way to be able to come back. Elder Belnap and I were looking around for him but just couldn't find him. Eventually we were led to an apartment complex where we thought he might be, as we were talking to a man outside the complex, he walked by. We went over and found out it was Tomas and he invited us in! Once in we found out that he had been praying for us to come, and when he saw us talking to the man, he wanted to come and talk to us but was too shy. He said he wanted us to come and talk to him. We did just that. I know we were led by the Spirit to find him. I know without a doubt in my mind! This work is guided by our loving Heavenly Father. He guides our prophets and apostles to receive revelation for us all. He guides us to find those who He has prepared. I know this is His work.

Elder Stephens