June 16, 2014

I guess my letters are not quite long enough? Haha well I will answer these and any other questions any of you may have! So how do you like your companion??? How is that going with him??? Does he follow the rules well? My companion, Elder Hinds is awesome; I think he is my favorite companion. He is very hard working and is a great missionary. He has been out about 4 months now but seems like he has a lot more experience than that. We work really well together. Probably the nicest person you ever have met, he is willing to do anything for anyone, almost too nice sometimes... ha-ha and as a side note, next Tuesday is transfers but we will both be staying here for at least 6 more weeks. How do you like your area?? The area, central phoenix, is indescribable. There is definitely never a dull day! I love it. How are you?? I am good, being a missionary is great, we work hard and sleep well at night from being exhausted. Even sleep thru blood sucking bugs ;) oh yeah mom- don't worry about them in Rexburg 20 degrees will kill them.. or 120+. Is your acne getting any better??? I think my acne is getting better, it comes and goes but I am being more diligent at taking the medicine dad sent me as well as washing my face more. Part of it comes from stress I think and that won't ever go away as a missionary. Are you getting skinny riding that bike??? My weight goes up and down but I went from 222 to 210 in the last 2 weeks so I think that’s pretty good, been working on eating healthier with fruits and stuff. Are you dying of heat??? The heat really isn't too bad as long as you have water. At 110 and up it all feels the same anyways ;) Do you have AC in your apartment??? We sure do, we have to keep it on 78 always. Do the members feed you well? We have a lot of spaghetti and here a lot of member will sign up to have us over then at the last minute they give us some money or take us out which is fine too. Are you having lots of appointments? Keeping busy? We have lots of appointments, we could talk to 100+ people on the streets every day that are humble from being poor but if we go over they end up flaking and falling thru, so we really have to use our judgment on which people are ready for the gospel.. It’s sad to have to pass some people by but there’s not really a way to talk with every person. What was the best part of your week? This week we got to go to the Mesa Temple visitor’s center with Ann & Keegan! It was great, they really enjoyed it. We looked at the Christus statue and then watched JSPR video. It was one I haven’t seen before, might be new.. it answered a lot of Ann's concerns about prophets and she was thinking we put him on a higher platform then the rest of us so it was good for her to see he was a man too as well as a prophet, and for her to see the persecution was good too. And I actually saw a girl from Idaho Falls that I went to kindergarten with who is serving a mission in the Tempe mission so that was cool. What was the worst? The worst day ever was Friday. We had to prep for the exterminator to come and spray and the list was huge! There was a lot to do so we spend most of the day on it, and I think it was so bad was cause we were stuck inside doing housework instead of being able to go and share the gospel. What was your best faith filled moment? One cool experience yesterday was we got a referral we have been trying to contact for a lady named Sarah, who is from Russia with her family and speaks broken English. She just found out she has cancer so and wanted a blessing so we went to her house and it was hard to understand, but we were able to give her a blessing and share with her 10ish year old about the restoration and gave her a pamphlet cause she wanted to teach it to her mom. We are going to get some Russian book of Mormons. The missionaries in got pulled out and we got 3 of them now in our mission and one of them might be able to come and help us teach them since they learned some Russian while they were there, so that would be really cool! What about biggest surprise? One surprise was what dinner did to my stomach the other night 20 minutes after we left ;) Ha-ha just kidding.. The Spanish missionaries have been teaching a lady that speaks both English and Spanish and I guess the Spanish branch and her are having some problems so we found out it would be better if she was to learn and attend the English ward! We are still trying to meet her but hopefully all goes well! A few other things during the week- Julie is still doing good, chugging along and we found out her mom and some other people in her family are actually planning to be baptized in July! She found the missionaries first but I think somehow the missionaries started teaching her mom so the whole family is hearing about the gospel. Ann is going to be baptized on the 28th of this month, I am really excited! We went over the baptismal interview questions with her after church yesterday and she nailed every single one perfectly. During the week we went on a hike of squaw peak, it was fun, we went with Kegan and the young men group. He had lots of fun but sadly the family "friend" that’s the anti-one invited him to go to Tucson for a concert Sunday so he wasn't at church.. But he promised to be next week. I love you, have a good week! Love, Elder Stevenson