November 25, 2013

 

Hello, Hello!

This week has been crazy but in a good way. To start I am writing you all from a little small town called Pine. It’s above Payson like 20 miles and its up in the mountains about 2 hours north of mesa/Scottsdale/phoenix. It is cold too, it snowed on Friday before I got here but its melted now it’s a lot like Swan Valley type feeling. mostly older people live here and are in the 40's 50's 60's and are retired some of the town is empty right now cause they go to the valley in the winter to stay warm. My new companion is elder Oakley. He's from Oklahoma. I'm excited to work with him and to be up here, yesterday was my first day here but the people I did meet were really nice sincere loving people but they also hunt and have a shotgun above their door and are cowboys and stuff so I like it. We cover a ward that includes pine and strawberry and a branch that's called Blue Ridge. We have a truck and i get to drive it and its actually pretty fun since there's dirt roads and small town instead of a big city highway. I guess there are lots of less actives here so that mostly who we work with to try and reactivate them and get them to church.

It was sad to leave Beverly ward in mesa since I've come to love the people there so much and the work was getting even busier but the lord sent me here and I know it. On Saturday Isaac was baptized!! i forgot my camera at the house to sent you pics but it was really good and his dad came (parents not married- we never met his dad before) and apparently his dad is a member of the church to and we all just found that out so it’s really neat both his parents are there to be examples no matter who's house he may be at. We went to the temple with the Boyd's like I was saying we were going to last week. it was Amazing Karen and David were just going to watch and kind of get the feel for it and not actually perform the ordinances but Daniel said he wanted to be baptized and confirmed and so he was and then after he was done being baptized they could feel the spirit and we asked if they wanted to get baptized now and they said yes and it was really neat. I was talking with Karen after and comparing it to her baptism and she said this was even better since she knew she was helping someone else. i thought that was amazing she’s still so knew to the church but has so much love and charity for people she doesn't even know. Oh yeah we had a massive rainstorm last week it rained like 3 inches in 2 days or something like that which is unheard of hear so the streets were basically flooded for one day then most it flowed somewhere but it was pretty cool. Have an awesome thanksgiving and remember to be thankful in the season and why we are celebrating.

Love,

Elder Stevenson