Hello there everyone!!
We had an awesome experience this last week!! Elder Belnap and I got to go to the Area Presidency's office to meet with them and the assistants and sister training leaders of two other missions! So we went with our sister training leaders and with the Quezon and Quezon North missions. We went to talk to the Philippines Area Presidency about missionary work here in the Philippines. They wanted to meet with us because they had a mission president seminar and they used the things we told them in the seminar to all the mission presidents here in the Philippines. Anyway, it was a great experience because they are just awesome people. President Nielson, Elder Ardern, and Elder Echo Hawk were all there and it was great to just feel the Spirit in the room there. They had a ton of questions for us and they told us to be completely open with them and basically just teach them. One of the main focuses was helping missionaries to raise their expectations here in the mission. For me it came down to just understanding the doctrine of Christ and internalizing your purpose as a missionary. If we as missionaries just loved the people so much that we couldn't help but want to share the gospel with them, their testimonies would grow and their desire to work harder would grow as well. Elder Arden wanted to know how missionaries could strengthen their testimony and we shared a ton about that. One of the things that stood our to me was President Nielson said that we as missionaries have to go through the tough times in order to see success. He called it a "refiners fire." It was a great concept because a lot of missionaries get so discouraged when they don't see success right away and a lot of it, however that is where your testimony really grows because when you do see that success down the road, it feels that much better. I loved meeting with the area presidency. They took a picture and said they will send it out to us sometime. I will definitely have to send that one to all of you. Last week was transfer week and it looks like Elder Belnap and I will be together for another transfer! That makes it the third for us together. We are basically the same person at this point. I am stoked for another transfer with him though. We have had a lot of success and I feel like we ill continue to have more. I just love this work and I love being able to serve my Heavenly Father. I have learned a lot about service while I have been here and I hope I can continue to serve hard throughout my entire life. I love this gospel and can't believe I get to continue to share it with everyone I meet.
Elder Stephens
No comments:
Post a Comment