Transfer 9 Week 2

This week went by pretty fast.

On Monday we had our P-Day but we were needed to help a members friend move across town. So we helped out for a couple of hours. They had a very heavy hide-a-bed couch that needed to go out of the back door. Elder Tunstall and I had to handle the couch ourselves. The door was tiny.. I'm sure we spent more time trying to get that couch out the door than we spent moving everything else.. We had to take off the door and the screen door to eventually slide it through.. Anyways, later that day we went to a member-owned adventure, I-spy type interactive place called Wizard Quest. Missionaries love going here on p-days.. Its really fun and its great because we get in free.. Hah We finished off Monday by having dinner at the Little-Soldiers home.

Tuesday was a normal proselyting day, we would of had District meeting but we didnt due to a worldwide missionary broadcast that happened on Wednesday. The broadcast was great. It was a 2 hour broadcast with many speakers and trainings from Apostles. We learned a lot of good things that we plan on implementing in our work. We finished off Wednesday by visiting a bunch of people and having dinner with the Gilletts.


Thursday we helped out Mason at his waffle shop. We've been helping him almost every week for 4 months on this shop and ive been able to see it improve and improve. The shop has really come together nicely. He plans on opening Feb 15th, so all of our hard work will hopefully pay off and we'll be able to eat some waffles! haha.

Friday we were able to go out to Lunch with Brother Ricks to a nice local shop in Baraboo. We spent the day planning and visiting/contacting people. In the evening the Funeral for Brother Boyd took place. It was a very nice service. The spirit was strong there. After the service some members took us out to eat at another local Baraboo restaurant. Which was great.

Saturday we helped Brother Gillett move one of his friends he works with into their home so that she, her mom, and her daughter could have a place to stay. (we had a hard time with the hide-a-bed couch again..) It's very nice of the Gilletts to open his home up to them. I know this lady has actually had a loat of questions and interests in our church before so now, when we have our dinners with the Gilletts, we'll be able to teach them as well. So I'm very excited about that! The lady is actually Romanian and a friend of Albertos. Pretty neat. Later that day we had a Family Home Evening with the Martinez family. We were able to teach a really good lesson. They invited us to come back next Sunday for another lesson. So that's great. That night we were tracting and we found this really nice lady who seemed pretty interested. So we were able to teach her some and so hopefully we'll be able to meet with her more and teach her more!

Yesterday, we had some really good talks and lessons at church. About Family home evening and good music. In gospel principles we talked about Exaltation which is really neat. We had lunch with the Dance family, where we did the Apostasy lesson that I talked about a couple weeks ago I think.. We also had a great dinner with the Andrews and shared a really cool video called Ill go where you want me to go.

Anyways. I think it was a pretty good week!

Hope you all have a good one. Love you all!



Elder Stevens

Transfer 9 Week 1

This week our main focus was to get the word out about the open house. We were able to talk with a lot of people and invite them. Lots were unable to attend due to weather as it was -3 degrees not including wind chill. However we had 4 non members attend. Tim Stofen brought his niece and her Husband Mike, and Sister Wiseheart brought 2 of her neighbors. These people went through the 5 booth like stations we had, led by their tour guide Brother Andrew. They learned about the Sacrament, Youth Programs, The Priesthood/Restoration, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and Temples/Family History. They all asked lots of questions and seemed very engaged! Although we only had 4 people attend, it was successful as Mike and his wife said that they would try to come with Brother Stofen to church this next Sunday. It was very neat to see them agree with some of our doctrine and feel the spirit that can be felt in the church building. The ward was veryy supportive and took the open house into their hands. Many say that would like to do the tour again in the spring so that more can attend. :)

We had a Less Active member, Brother Boyd pass away this week. We were able to visit with him on Tuesday and he passed on Saturday. Its sad to see him go, but i know hes in a better place now. 

Other than that we had a great week it felt like! Hope you all have a great week and stay warm! Love you all!

Transfer 8 Week 6

Welp this was a pretty average week. Nothing extraordinary happened. We had a pretty good Zone Training Meeting on Tuesday. It was good to see a bunch of missionaries. Transfers are this Wednesday, I'll be staying with Elder Tunstall in Baraboo for another 6 weeks. Most of the week was spent visiting, contacting and doing service for people. We were able to get into some less actives houses that we normally dont see and set up times to meet with them again. So that's good. 

One thing we shared with members this week was, we put a lot of Misc items into a cup and told the family to try to remember all of the items in the cup. Then we poured the cup and all its items onto the table. After 30 seconds we cleaned up all the items and had them write down everything they remembered on a piece of paper. Out of about 20 items most could only remember/write about half of them. We related this to when Christ was on Earth. Teaching and preaching, once he left all of the apostles tried to write/remember all he taught but inevitably they happened to forget some stuff. We then talked about the Restoration and the blessings that came from it. It was pretty cool. 

We'll be having an open house this next Sunday, where nonmembers and anyone can come to the church building to learn about us and what we do. It should be great! 

Alberto is about to leave for Romania for about 5 weeks so hopefully he'll still be interested when he gets back! (Or maybe he could get baptized while he's there, that would be even better hahah) But we have some new people were working with that were excited about! 

So yea. Sorry about the shorter letter, it was still a great week, still working hard and having fun! Love you all!

Elder Stevens.

Transfer 8 Week 5

Happy New Year! 2016 is my Black year (what missionaries call the year that youre on your mission for the whole year..) So Yay!? hahah

This week was pretty good. Monday was PDay where we woke up, did our normal morning routine, then went to the Library to email. It had started to snow while on the way to the Library. By the time we were done emailing there was about 4 inches of snow on the road. 

We had plans to drive to Madison to spend the day with the Mad 3 Elders but that was canceled due to the terrible roads.. We almost died many times.. Our car is SOO bad in the snow.. (we didnt almost die but yea.) We decided to go to a Chinese restaurant to wait out the storm but it never stopped.. haha It stunk that our Pday plans were ruined but messing around in the snow was fun. We ended up getting like 10 inches. By Tuesday morning the roads were all plowed and we were able to go down to Madison for district meeting. 

We had DTM, then our dinner appointment canceled so the sisters pulled through and gave us a Free Lil Caesar's Pizza Coupon. That was great. We spent the rest of the day tracting and contacting. 

Wednesday started out with us baking cookies for the old folks at their assisted living place, that was fun because we also went around to their individual rooms to bring them to the 'cookie cafe'. We were able to to talk with them a lot more that way. 

Wednesday night, since our dinner appointment happened to cancel again, we were able to help Brother Gillett give his first ever blessing as a priesthood holder. He gave his wife a blessing and it was really special. Thursday was spent planning, tracting and contacting. Same with Friday.

On Saturday we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I was with Elder McDermott, we were able to teach scott in the morning which went very well. Later on that day, we went with Brother Andrew to Reedsburg to contact some investigators and less actives which went very well. We were able to get a Return Appointment with this very nice lady who happens to know a lot of members in the ward.

Later that night we were supposed to have dinner with the Gilletts but Brother Gillett decided to go somewhere before we got there and took way too long to get back. So we weren't allowed to be inside alone with Sister Gillett. We just stood outside, sliding on an ice patch talking for an hour and a half waiting for Brother Gillett to get home. We eventually had to go re exchange so we had to leave on an empty stomach. It was actually a really funny situation. 

On Sunday we had church, met with Brother Andrew finalizing the ward open house tour logistics and had a great Dinner with the Jones and a new family that moved into the ward the Ganders!

It was a pretty good week.

One thing we shard this week was Moroni 7: 26-29 and we just talked about how miracles have not ceased! Just focusing on all the blessings and miracles God has given you and to be thankful for them and to count your blessings (name them one by one.. hah)

This morning Brother Andrew asked if we wanted to go see the sunrise on top of Devils lake, so we woke up and rode with him to go. It was so Beautiful!

Anyways Hope you all have a good week. Love you all!

Transfer 8 Week 4

So this week was pretty great. We were able to Skype with our families. It was great to see everyone again, including all my siblings. I'm thankful for being able to speak with all of them. Seems like not too much has changed, which is a good thing. We were treated very well for Christmas. We went to the Gilletts in the morning after studies. From there we went to the Dances and had an early Dinner. They were very nice for including us in their family festivities. We played some board games and even rode their new Zipline they got for Christmas. After that we went to the Andrews to Skype with our Parents. They were also very kind for involving us. 

Earlier that week we went to Madison and Blitzed Mad 3's area. We were able to talk with a lot of nice people. While in Madison we had a great District Meeting on all the truths revealed because of Joseph Smith. We spent the whole meeting listing revealed truths and it was really cool to see all that was effected because of Him. After the District Meeting we had a white elephant gift exchange which was also fun.

One thing we were able to share with an investigator this week was Mosiah 24. In verses 13-15 the Lord shares how he will always be there for us, no matter what were going through in our lives we can always have the Lords help as we go to him in prayer. It was pretty neat.

Welp thats about it for this week. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a great New Year!

Elder Stevens.

Transfer 8 Week 3

Another week..

This week went by so fast I can barely even think of what went on.. Most of our Finding efforts and teaching opportunities have been around the #ASaviorIsBorn video. We found it a very effective way to get people to talk with us because its just a quick card and message. The video is awesome. Its just a 2 minute video. Check it out if you havent seen it yet!

E. Tunstalls birthday was on Tuesday, we didn't really do anything special for that.. but I think he enjoyed the day.

We had a great Zone Conference in Madison on Wednesday, they talked a ton about Faith. I had a really cool thing come to mind as they talked about praying for faith and miracles. I remember when I was serving with Elder Webster, we were teaching Lizzy and she hadn't made her mind up if she wanted to be baptized or not, She was sooo ready to be baptized and missionaries had been working with her for a year to be baptized but it just wasn't happening. So E. Webster starting giving thanks in his prayers to God for changing Lizzy's heart and giving her the desire to be baptized. I thought this was really odd as God hadn't changed her heart and he was already thanking him for doing so. He had that much faith that God would do so and sure enough that week she had such a spiritual experience at church that it changed her mind and she ended up getting baptized this past October. 

So E. Tunstall and I have began to try this method out. One morning we thanked Heavenly Father for the new Investigator we were to get that day and sure enough the first person we talked with that day, we set a return appointment. Pretty Crazy. 

Anyways. This week was pretty good. We get to Skype on Friday which is super exciting!! 

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Elder Stevens.