August 4, 2014

Hello there everyone!

We had a wonderful week! To start out the week we got our fingerprinting done. That was sweet because I got to go with my batch and also we saw a few people from our batch that are serving in other missions here in the Philippines. It was a super weird experience going to immigration and getting fingerprinted but it was cool too because that was the first time I had ever really done that. We went to the Temple for the last time on my mission. That was awesome. I am so grateful I had the blessing of going to the Temple each transfer for my mission. I love the Temple so much and my testimony of temple work was strengthened so much because I was able to come here each transfer. The Spirit is so strong in the Temple and I am grateful for that because going to the Temple helped me receive so much revelation for myself and for the people I had taught and worked with. i am so grateful for temples here on earth. We had a sweet activity for the Elder's quorum in the Makati 3rd ward. We played basketball and had a boodle fight. I learned that the boodle fight came from the army or something like that and now we do it in the Philippines for fun and what you do is put all the food on a huge banana leaf and it all together. It's so much fun! The main part of the activity tough was the part where we talked about where we are as an alders quorum and some goals we wanted to set to grow. The main thing we talked about was home teaching and we really made some great goals to get better and doing home teaching and helping our fellow priesthood brethren to come back to church. We had another missionary leadership council this last week! It was my 14th MLC and the last one for my mission. It was a great MLC and I was able to learn so much from it. The theme was agency and using our agency to bless ourselves and bless the lives of others. We are a super obedient mission and I am so grateful for that. So our MLC focused on using agency and acting rather than just asking for permission to do a lot of things. I realized that doing that will also bless us so much for after the mission because we have tons of decisions to make and of course we should be making the right ones. Another thing we talked about in MLC was goals. President Ostler talked about the "will you" goals and the "stretch you" goals. That was sweet and pretty interesting to think about. The last part of our MLC was where we counseled about some of the rules in the mission. It was interesting talking about the rules and how we should handle them as leaders. There are a ton that missionaries were asking permission about to the mission president and could just be taken care of with district or zone leaders. So it was good to talk about those things and how we are to handle them as leaders in the missing. I got a temple recommend interview this last week because mine was about to expire, that was a wonderful experience. It's a great feeling to know you are worth y to enter in the House of the Lord. I'll never forget that interview I had with President Ostler. This last Sunday we my last time to bear my testimony in a fast and testimony meeting. I felt the Spirit testify through me and it was definitely a humbling experience to feel that. I love my mission and I love being able to serve in this capacity. I know this is the work of the Lord. I've had so many experiences that witness to me that this church is the true church of Jesus Christ, and that this work is His work. I love being a missionary!

Elder Stephens