God's Plan

We got soaked in the rain.
Elder Charles and Elder Stevenson

The most interesting thing that happened was zone conference. We had a member of the seventy, Elder Klebingat, come and speak to us. It was a long conference, took the whole day, but it was worth it. He knows the scriptures so well. He started off by explaining exactly who we were in the pre-earth life, and what that means we have to do now. Super good, here's some of my favorite quotes:

• Tell yourself "I am here to fulfill a pre-mortal covenant to gather Israel"

• The pain of discipline is always better than the pain of regret

• Once we yield to temptation, we give the adversary ammunition with a memory

• You need to be better than yourself tomorrow

• Fear, typically, is not to be overcome, but to be managed and controlled

• You are choosing today where you want to be for eternity

• Everything you do today is a reflection of the depth of your conversion

• Never make the first mistake once

• You cannot teach what you don't know, and you will not teach what you are not excited about

Lots of good stuff.

God's Plan

We also had our best lesson with Astrel and Saintana this week. We taught the plan of salvation with some little toys that my family had made for me and gave me last Christmas. It really made it all click for Astrel, he really liked the part about the spirit world and how nobody burns in hell haha. He took pictures of the final setup, each one moving the people down. I reenacted it to show you what I mean. He asked us to get some Scriptures from the Bible that talk about it so he can share it, so we went back yesterday with one for each of the major parts. They also got a car now, so hopefully Astrel  can drive them all to church. Good stuff!

We also had our first member meal appointment since coming to this area haha. We got permission to go to Lehigh to have dinner with the Knoop family, and they made us a really nice meal. Grateful.

We didn't have any investigators come to church yesterday, but Saintana was there which was great. They had the baptism of the lady that wanted to get baptized after seeing Saintana's baptism, that was pretty neat.

That was pretty much it from this week, just a couple highlights but it was a good one. It's been raining off and on all week here, which is kinda nice. We've been needing some good rain, it keeps us cool while biking haha. Anyways hope you all have a great week!

Getting chases by a dog on our bikes. haha

Rain

Vulture drying out in the sun. There are tons of vultures here.

Saintana had this on her TV last night, snagged a pic haha

Lanmou,
Eldè Stevenson

I'm in Hollywood, 2000 miles away from Hollywood

​Me and Elder Hatch, right now.
 (Dang, camera really does add 10 pounds haha)​

Hello everyone! So this week has been a busy one, still trying to figure out the area after whitewashing [see mission lingo on side bar]. The last Elders left us with basically nothing, so we're starting from scratch. It's going good though. Elder Hatch works really hard, which is good. He's also the District Leader, or should I say Sister-ict Leader, because the other 2 companionships in our district are both sisters. Definitely a change from my last district, should be fun though. There's Sister Murdock, Sister Brown, Sister Stokes, and Sister Osburne (no pictures yet, sorry!)

So the other day we knocked into a lady from Pakistan named Faiza. She speaks Urdu and very little English. We talked to her through her 10 year old son, and she accepted a prayer from us. She even invited us back to learn more about Jesus Christ! We went back and printed off the Plan of Salvation pamphlet in Urdu from lds.org and taught them, again through her 10 year old son. We explained about Christ and even though she said she is Muslim she committed to coming to church on Sunday. (She didn't come though, she had guests coming over at the last minute apparently. Plus it was Stake Conference [when all of the Congregations/Wards in an area come together for one big church meeting] so that makes everything harder.) To the best of our knowledge she is accepting everything. That'd be super cool if she got baptized! We just really need to find a member that speaks Urdu.

Stake Conference was good though, we had a member of the Seventy come speak, Elder Alba. He gave a good talk about the difference between balance and harmony. He had the organist play the melody of How Firm a Foundation, then she added in notes in other keys, still playing the same tune but it didn't sound like anything at all. Then she played the melody again and added in notes that harmonized, and it sounded awesome. The moral of the story was that there's a difference between simply having our lives in balance and having them in harmony. Cool stuff.

Our ward seems like it's very good with lots of strong members, even Haitian members. That also means I'm probably going to get fat, haha. Definitely functions better than my last one. We even have ward missionaries! We're still working on meeting everyone, whitewashing is a hassle sometimes. Most times.

That's pretty much it for this week, doing lots of finding and trying to find where all the Haitians live. So far so good! Hope all is going well for all of you too!

We live next to a golf course.​

​Like right next to it. Fancy.
Also apparently our complex has it's own bowling alley? Will let you know how that goes.

​

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

P.S. Email my mom if you want my new address.