Transfer 3 Week 3

This week was pretty crazy!

Elder Rupnick and I set a goal to teach 50 other lessons this week, and we were able to get 45! We spent most of the week knocking on doors and street contacting people. We would have reached our goal of 50 others if it wouldn't have rained on Sunday! We went out, tracting in the rain, but had no success.. Oh well, we tried! This area doesn't have a lot of promising investigators, so it was really nice to go out and find a lot more people we could potentially teach! Hopefully some of the people we found this week are actually interested and we'll be able to start teaching them the normal lessons! 

Some pretty interested things happened this week..

While we were out tracting, some high school kids were playing basketball on a court across the street, they yelled over to us, asking if we wanted to shoot some hoops. I thought, why not? So we ran over there and started playing basketball with these 3 high school kids. They were reallyy surprised we actually came over and played with them. We were really chill with them and just started shooting hoops and talking. They ended up asking about us, who we were, what we do, why we do it, and all that stuff. So we started talking to them. (I think I'm a lot better when talking to kids that age) We gave 2 of them Book of Mormons and gave them our number and told them to call us. They said if we were in the area on Fridays, to come shoot more hoops with them. So it was pretty sweet!

We also got a referral from Church Headquarters this week. So if someone online, on mormon.org wants missionaries to come talk to them, or they want a free BoM, they can put in their information on the website, and we will get a text, telling us that information and saying what they wanted. Were supposed to contact them within 24 hours. This week we got a text, telling us the name and number of someone who wanted a BoM. I ended up calling the number to see when we could stop by. So I called the number and a lady picked up the phone and said "Dodge County Correctional Jail, how may I help you" I kinda froze.. I was like.. uhhh what? So I eventually told her who I was and that someone probably just gave us a prank number or something, apologized then hung up.. My heart kinda dropped when I heard her say that! I wasn't expecting that at all! So someone either pranked us, or someone in the jail wanted a BoM.... Were not allowed to teach people in jail, however sooo yea. That was pretty funny. 

We live next to Beaver Dam Lake, and one of the nights this week, there was the most amazing looking sunset I've ever seen... Elder Rupnick and I ran back to our apartment and grabbed our cameras. We then went to a public park and took some pictures.. I'll attach one of the pics.. It was crazy good looking. One of the best sunsets I've ever seen!

Anyways, it was a really fun and busy week! 

Love you all!

Elder Stevens

Transfer 3 Week 2

This past week was a little slow but wasn't the worst.

First off, next week we will have our P Day on Tuesday, due to Memorial day, which will be a normal proselyting day.

My Birthday was on Thursday and nothing out of the ordinary happened. We had our weekly planning that day, which happens every week. And then after, we visited a couple less actives and some potentials. I did receive a call from the Mission President, President Cutler and his wife telling me happy birthday which was really nice! No cake, or presents but it was totally fine! That's what i was expecting! haha.

We had a dinner appointment last night, and it was the dad's birthday earlier that week, so we had some cake and ice cream for him, (but in my mind it was just a late party for me..)

This week we ran out of Book of Mormons to hand out.. That's pretty awkward.. Its actually really hard to teach new people about a book, if you don't even have any on hand.. So that was pretty weird.. We should be getting a box of BoMs tomorrow.. Hopefully!

We had a lady come up to us while we were walking around town. She told us how her sister joined the church a couple years ago and she has a nephew on a mission. She said her sister has been trying to convert her over the past few years and she's actually might be changing her mind about the church. So we got her address and were going to go visit her this week. Hopefully something good comes out of that!

This week I was able to go on exchanges with the DeForest Elders. I was able to go back to Sun Prairie, and do the normal service we did with Peter at the Sun Prairie museum. He was really excited to see me and he thought I was back for good! but nope! Just for the day.. haha

We also helped the sisters move into our old apartment. Man, I thought I cleaned up that apartment. They cleaned it up real nice in the past week! It was pretty crazy, it barely looked like the same place!

This next week, were going to be doing a lottt of finding. We have a goal of getting 100 lessons taught this week in the district. Its gonna be hard but I'm sure we can do it. Were planning on getting 50 other lessons as a companionship. So we'll see how it goes! Were gonna be superrr busy.. Hope it goes well.

Anyways, i think that's about it!

Love you all!

Elder Stevens

Transfer 3, Week 1

This week was pretty good.

I arrived in Beaver Dam on Wednesday, it was a very fast exchange because Beaver Dam is just 15 miles north of Sun Prairie. Beaver Dam has about a 3rd of the people than Sun Prairie, and the area covers a much larger distance. We are very restricted on miles, so its very hard to get to some of the towns that we cover.

Yesterday I was able to Skype with my parents and brother which was really great! It was great being able to see them. It feels like I just left, so talking to them was pretty weird because I feel like I haven't been gone for very long! These last 3 months have flown by!

In this new companionship, I have to do most of the talking, teaching and finding. This is new to me, because Elder Santos would do most everything in the last companionship. I would talk and teach of course, but I was always in my comfort zone. Now I'm having to stretch outside my comfort zone and do most everything. This is good though, because I know that I'm learning and growing soo much quicker now. It stinks, but its good.. I find, that I'm having more fun doing it this way however. You feel better when you're the one handing out the BoMs and getting new investigators, instead of just listening to your companion do it.

Beaver Dam has a small branch, there's about 30 members who attend regularly. This is veryy weird to me, because I'm used to a good solid 150-200 people attending at wards.. They had me get up in the middle of sacrament meeting and introduce myself and bear my testimony. Even though there was only 30 people there I was still nervous because of the short notice.. I got through it though.. haha

Welp, that's about everything I think. Everything's going pretty good! No worries!

Thanks and Love you all!

Elder Stevens

Transfer 2 Week 6

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Well this week was my last week in Sun Prairie. We just found out this morning where everyone is getting transferred. I'm being transferred to Beaver Dam. Its a small town just north of Sun Prairie. It consists of a lot of smaller towns, spread out everywhere so we will be doing a lot of driving! My new Comps name is Elder Rupnick, he has one more transfer till he goes home.

Serving with him will be interesting because he has Asbergers. I'm sure ill be doing most of the teaching and interacting but that'll be good for me as it will make me grow and learn much faster! I've been to the Beaver Dam apartment before and I'm excited because I'll have a dish washer and I nicer apartment than the last three months!

I'm not sure what my new address is yet so ill make sure to have that to you all next week.

This last week we were mostly just preparing our area for the sisters to take it over. We did a lot of organizing and prioritizing a lot of investigators and cleaning and scrubbing the apartment for them, to make the transition as smooth as possible. We weren't allowed to tell any of our investigators that we wouldn't be coming back next week, and that the sisters would be coming back. So that was pretty weird.

I am super excited for this new area though, I'm going to try to make it the best area in our district and get the work moving there a lot more.

Welp that's about it! I'm excited for the new area and new comp and just getting a fresh start I guess!

This was an interesting week, just getting everything ready for the sisters.  I'm excited to call home for mothers day on Saturday! So that'll be exciting!

Hope everything is going well for all of you guys!
Love you all!

Elder Stevens.