June 23, 2014

Hey everyone!

I love being a missionary! We had a wonderful baptism this last week. It was just James and he reminds me a lot of me! He is 18 years old and accepted the gospel real quick. At the baptismal service, he bore his testimony and in it he said that he wants to go on a mission! I was stoked when I heard that. I told him how I was baptized at 18 years old also and went on a mission after one year, and I told him how it has blessed my life tremendously. I am so excited for James and I am so grateful I had the blessing to be a small part of his conversion process and able to baptize him as well. I love this gospel and how many things it brings to these wonderful people who accept it. I was thinking about this week and how this Fifa soccer stuff has all started. I was thinking how I could be home watching all these teams and countries play. Instead, I am helping these wonderful people in the Philippines accept this gospel and I had the wonderful blessing to even baptize someone in the true church of Jesus Christ. I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world right now. Last week, we also had a great lesson with Patrick He is progressing so well and he just takes in everything that we teach. He has a few questions and they are awesome questions, and when we answer them using the scriptures he just says, "Oh that makes total sense!" I love that guy. He came to the baptismal service and after I was talking with him, he said that he enjoyed it and said that he will be the next one in the font! I couldn't believe my ears! It was amazing how the gospel just makes people want to follow Jesus Christ and follow His gospel. This gospel is the best. In our mission we had a specialized leadership training for all of the district leaders, zone leaders, and sister training leaders. We had the blessing of teaching and being taught by all of the leaders in the mission. The whole meeting lasted from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, it was a real long day but it was so good. We have a new mission president coming at the end of this week on the 29th, they are President and Sister Ostler. So we had  a real big leaders hip training to help all of the leaders really great up for the big change that is coming up. We actually had every set of zone leaders and every set of sister training leaders participate in the training. The entire meeting, I felt like people were talking about being quick to observe and being proactive. We really need to help leaders and missionaries in general to be proactive in order to fulfill their purpose. We used D&C 107:99 as our theme scripture and I love that part where it says to act "In all diligence." Another thing that really stood out to me was that they really focused on being enthusiastic! One of the things that we talked about was how we need to be more enthusiastic when being with other missionaries as well as when we go out and work! I know we can find a lot more success if we just be more joyful and be more enthusiastic as we do missionary work. I just love being a missionary and I love this gospel. I know this church is true and that the fullness of the gospel was restored though the Prophet Joseph Smith. I know Jesus is the Christ. He lives and He loves us more than we can comprehend.

Elder Stephens