June 30, 2014

Hey everyone!!

Another great week in the mission field! We said goodbye to President and Sister Stucki this last week. It was their last week here and we were sad to see them go. They were such a blessing in my life and it was a wonderful blessing to be able to serve with them up until they left. President and Sister Stucki have had a big impact in my life and I will never ever forget them. I am grateful for both of them and everything I have learned from them as well. I will forever be grateful to my Father in heaven for the opportunity to serve with such faithful servants of God. We now have a new mission president, President and Sister Ostler. They also brought their 14 year old son, Caleb! They are so awesome and I know they are going to bless this mission so much. We had the blessing of meeting them last Sunday night and having a good talk with them. President and Sister Ostler are so loving and they talked a lot about being a Christ centered and family centered family. That was awesome to hear that. He said it because they actually have a family here with Caleb and so it is different from when it was just President and Sister Stucki. President Ostler also mentioned that he rally wants everyone in the mission to know that he will love them, but also expect a lot. I also loved hearing that one. There will be some changes, and that was to be expected, but I believe changes are for the better. I did ask him, as his assistants what would be the thing we could help him out with the most. He said that he wants everyone to know what is going on, basically that we become super unified as a mission. He mentioned to talk with the zone leaders and others about things we talk about in meetings. As we become more unified, our love for each other will grow, and our love for the Lord will grow as well. I am grateful to now serve with President and Sister Ostler and I am so excited to see how much our mission will grow. Elder Limocon and I are doing great in our area and we are super excited because we have some people that are progressing really well. Patrick is doing super well and I am super grateful we are helping him know more about the gospel. He has come to church for the past three weeks and he loves it. He even went to an activity in the elders quorum where they played basketball. I am amazed on how much he is already progressing and wanting to accept this gospel. We also found a new family that we are super excited about. It is the Mateos family and they are awesome. We had a name on our potential investigators list and so we went to go look for it, actually we were with President Stucki at the time, and turns out it was a big family and we ended up teaching. They have no come to church yet, but we are excited to see how they will do! I love this gospel so much and I love that I have the opportunity to share it. I know this work is guided by the Lord. Even with our new mission president, I have already seen how involved the lord is in this work, with Him working through President Ostler. I love being a missionary!

Elder Stephens