Transfer 2 Week 5

Soo this week was a little slower but very interesting!

First off, the baptism was able to go through on Saturday! The service was pretty short but we had a decent amount of members come to support Erik. He was confirmed yesterday and is very excited about receiving the priesthood in due time! So that's pretty awesome!

On Tuesday, we had our Mission President, President Cutler, come to our weekly district meeting for interviews. Every other transfer you get interviewed by the mission president. The interview went really well and he told Elder Santos and I some upcoming news for Transfers coming up next week. Due to upcoming transfers, the mission will be loosing a lot of missionaries going home. (About 70 Missionaries are going home in the next 3 months) So they are combining 2 areas. So there were 6 missionaries in Sun Prairie. But as of next week, there will only be 4. The Sun Prairie Sisters are going to be taking over our area. They will be taking all of our investigators and everything. They are even moving into the apartment we are staying in currently. President Cutler said, However one of the Sun Prairie A Elders (Elder Santos and I) will be transferred to DeForest (The other set of missionaries in the ward), so that we could still help the sisters in the huge transition. So Sun Prairie A is closing, due to not enough missionaries in the mission. Pretty Crazy News. However, President Cutler told me personally that due to all these missionaries going home, I will be able to serve in a leadership position a Lot sooner than most other missionaries. So that's pretty exciting!

Transfers are coming up next week and they are going to be very very interesting. So my address is going to change this upcoming week. I'll give out my new address as soon as I find out!

Other than that crazy news, and the baptism, this week was pretty slow. We've been deep cleaning our apartment (again) for the sisters to move in and organizing our area so that they wont have as hard of a time taking over our area.

Something cool that happened this week, was that we decided to stop by this guy named Holman. Elder Santos didn't really want to stop by this guy because he's really sketchy but i decided we should knock anyways. He opened the door and we had to introduce ourselves again to him because he had forgotten who we were. Then he asked if we could get rid of evil spirits. And we said yea? all hesitantly. Long story short, We ended up going into this guys home and Blessing his home. He felt a lot better after we did that. He proceeded to give us a 30 minute pep talk on faith and staying strong which was pretty cool! He told us that we were amazing and that we were doing the right things and that we should never allow anyone to get us down. This guy started talking about things that are talked about in the D&C and we had no idea how he knew that information. But all in all it was pretty cool and he made us late to our dinner appointment but oh well.. hah

I think that's about it! Love you all!

Elder Stevens

Transfer 2, Week 4

This week was pretty interesting.. :)

We've been going to Wednesday night activities for the past couple of weeks because the ward would like us to for some reason. This week we were with the Teachers. The teachers in this ward are sooo smart.. its kinda scary how smart they all are..

Anyways, this week they had a "Missionary Ramen Noodle Cook Off" So we all got one packet of ramen and we had to use anything we could find in the kitchen to make it. They had judges, and there were 3 categories that were being judged. Taste, Presentation, and Creativity. Welp, long story short, Elder Santos and I ended up winning the Taste category. (the only category that really matters..) Which was pretty crazy. We were so surprised.. it was pretty funny. I guess were good missionaries after all..

This week we ran into some reallyy nice people. We ran out of paper plates in our apartment so we ran over to the gas station to grab some real quick. And the plates were really expensive so we ended up deciding not to get them. As we were leaving this random lady came up to us and offered to buy us what we needed. We thanked her for the offer but declined. She insisted.. She wouldn't take no for an answer.. so we ended up getting 2 large bags of chips, the paper plates and some fruit from this random lady.. We felt bad because we had no idea who this lady was and she spent $16 dollars on us.. oh well. Thank you who ever you are!

The next day we were out tracting.. The very first door we knocked on, a lady opened the door really quick and said to hold on, she had brownies in the oven, so she shut the door before we could say anything and she came back out with some brownies. She gave us a brownie each and then said that we would need some liquid to help wash the brownies down. Before we could say anything again, she was back inside. She came out juggling some cups, water, and milk. She poured us a glass of water then headed back inside. This next time she came out with a ball of cash and stuffed it into Elder Santos pocket. She asked us if we had been to a Salvators Pizza that was in town. We said no and she said, "welp! You're going there tonight! Do you need a ride?! My daughter works there! She looks like Emma Stone and you need to tell her I sent you.." and all this stuff. Then she started talking about how she loves Mormons and she used to have LDS friends in Kentucky when she lived there and how they were the nicest people she's ever met and all this stuff. We hadn't even said anything yet and we already knew this ladies life story!

Long story short, were going to go back this week and help her with some yard work. And we ended up going to the Pizza place because she wouldn't take the cash back.. As soon as we got there, her daughter ran up to us and told us her mom had called saying we were coming. She was super excited to seat us and have us there. It was pretty crazy! Some super nice people! We didn't know how to thank her!

I guess if you run into too many nice people in one week, you have to run into some not too nice people as well.. We ran into an Anti Mormon when we were tracting and that wasn't very fun.. He was cussing us out and trying to put us down. I personally thought it was kinda funny because everything he said didn't make any sense and he wouldn't even let us talk back.. It was a good faith builder! I tried to shake the guys hand but he refused.. lollllll

We also got to help build part of the Millers driveway on Saturday. I got to ride in Brother Millers tractor with him while he went and drove to his farm to haul some dirt to the driveway. That was pretty fun. Dont think I've ever done that before..

Welp all in all it was a great week. Erik has his baptismal interview on Wednesday and the baptism is on Saturday! Hope that is able to go through!

Love you all!

Elder Stevens

Easter Box

Transfer 2 Week 3

This week was the best week on paper for Elder Santos and I. We accomplished the most "numbers wise." So that's pretty cool!

The baptism that we had planned for Saturday wasn't able to go through. Our investigator had some questions about why we ask the baptismal questions. So he spoke with the bishop on Sunday and hopefully got his questions answered.

We're meeting with him tomorrow and we'll be able to set up another date for him to be baptized. It might not happen this Saturday because there is going to be a funeral at the church building. So we'll see what we can do. It's gonna happen soon though! No worries!

We have over 100 potential investigators in Sun Prairie but its really hard to get super solid ones and get in with them consistently. We tract at least an hour a day to keep trying to find more solid investigators. We have a couple in mind though that could progress.

So there's only 3 more weeks until I'm done getting trained! This is exciting and nerve racking I guess. I'm not nervous at all though. I'm kinda excited to be able to get a new companion and see what we can do together. I might be regretting saying this in the future though.. Elder Santos is great.

Welp this was a short email but there's not much to talk about and I'm not the talkative type sooo yup!

Love you all!

Elder Stevens

Transfer 2 Week 2

The Sun Prairie ward has 3 sets of missionaries, The Sun Prairie A Elders (us), The DeForest Elders and The Sun Prairie B Sisters. I've never seen a ward with three sets of missionaries... I bring this up because this week was April 1st and we decided to play a prank on the DeForest Elders. We knew that the DeForest Elders had a dinner appointment at 6 the night before, so we broke into their apartment when they were gone. (They keep their door locked.. you can tell they're both from Utah) All we did was hide my alarm clock behind their TV and set it for 2:24 am. They said they woke up to what they thought was the fire alarm, luckily they figured out it wasn't the fire alarm pretty quickly or else this week coulda been a lot worse.. All in all, they weren't very happy.. We all got a good laugh from it though, good thing they weren't too mad at us.

We were able to watch general conference in the chapel, which we had allll to ourselves. Only missionaries showed up to watch it at the ward. We did have an investigator at one of the sessions though, he thought it was weird that everyone stays at home to watch it. I woulda stayed at home too though if I had the chance.. I've heard that General conference weekend is especially loved by missionaries. I know why now, its like you're in a movie theater, finally getting a break from running around everywhere..

Our investigator that is supposed to get baptized this Saturday is ready but is really nervous! He wants to push it back a couple of weeks but we both know he is ready! Hopefully it won't get pushed back! But we will just have to wait and see what happens!

Welp, I think that's about it! It was just a normal week again.

Love you all!

Elder Stevens

Week 7

Soo this weeek, hmm

One of our investigators that used to be the Sister Missionaries investigator but got handed over to us is getting baptized on the 11th of April. He's had a baptismal date for months but they've had to keep moving him farther and farther back, but in these last few weeks, with us teaching him. He has progressed really far and its crazy. Its hard to explain it all but he said he knows everything is true but he still has doubts. He told us on Thursday that he knows he needs to take a leap of faith and so he is finally gonna get baptized this next Saturday. Pretty cool.

We had a pretty scary experience on Saturday. We were out tracting, and we knocked on this guys door. I introduced us and said who we were and what we were doing (the normal tracting approach) and then the guy said, "Its cold out side, please come in." So we stepped inside and he offered us water and fruit and invited us to come sit down. This was weird because we didn't know this guy, and he was acting very strange, while being overly nice about everything. So we took some water and sat down at his dinner table. For the next hour this guy spoke to us about how he sees angels, he can talk to birds, how he's seen people disappear, and reappear, and just all sorts of crazy things. Then he says people call him crazy and his therapists call him crazy but he's not because all that stuff is in the bible. He starts saying how everything that isn't Vegan is of Satan, and has all these devilish theories about everything and he tries proving them through math problems and it was all just insane. Elder Santos and I were scared for our lives because when we stepped inside, he locked the door with 3 bolts and then he just sat there talking to us for an hour. You could feel an evil presence in his house. It was crazy.

But yea, we finally got out of there and he didn't try to keep us but we thought we were being kidnapped or something in the moment.. We found out later, in our area book that missionaries had knocked on his door before and they had a big description about him and how you should never go back and to stay away. So yea. Pretty funny.

Anyways, that's about it for this week. Same old same old. Everything's good. :)

Love you all,

Elder Stevens