Transfer 3 Week 6

This week started off with a zone conference in Madison. It was a very good zone conference on Faith leads to Action. The Zone Leaders (Elder Webster and Elder Larsen) did a little object lesson that included me.. They had a food cart on wheels that they had me stand up on, in front of the whole zone, then they had me hold on to one of them while they spun me around in circles, moving me throughout the room so I didn't know where I was. (I was blindfolded)

After about 3 minutes of spinning. They stood in front of me, telling me to follow their directions very carefully. With their voices in front of me, they told me to fall directly backwards. So I fell backwards, off of this food cart and then was caught by like 4 other missionaries. That was pretty fun.. It had me and everyone else laughing! I had to have the faith to fall, when I doesn't know that anyone was there to catch me. It was a pretty good object lesson thingy. hahah (I wish someone would have recorded it..)

Come to find out, that the Elder Webster that had me do this, is now my new companion for the next 6 weeks! So I'm pretty excited about that. :) Transfers are this Wednesday.

We went back to that investigator, who was out in the middle of nowhere. The lady dropped us, telling us she isn't interested anymore, and she said she gave the BoM to Kevin who was going to be in Jail for a while.. She said Kevin was happy to get it. Soo yea.

However, we had a guy named Kyle call us this week. Missionaries about 2 months ago tracted into him and he called us, asking if we could come back and teach him some more! So that was a very pleasant surprise! We taught him on Saturday, He's protestant but he's looking for more direction and purpose to his life. Were coming back next week to teach him again! So that's pretty exciting.

Cant think of much more soo

Hope everything's going well for everyone!

Love you guys!

Elder Stevens

Sunshine Hotdogs (something I used to feed the kids)

Transfer 3 Week 5

Hmm what happened this week..

We have an investigator named Hector, Hector is a Hispanic guy from Equidor or some country like that.. This week he shared with us how he found God. He was a Sargent in the military, during his countries civil war. Long story short, He got hit by and explosion and was in the hospital tent and there he found a lady missionary preaching. It was a very inspiring story, it took him like 40 minutes for him to tell us the full story, so I can't type it all up, but it was a pretty crazy story!

Just thought id share.. even though I couldnt tell the full story.. It was really cool.

We decided to to contact some former investigators this week. One of them lived allll the way out in the country, nothing but farm fields and manure.. We are already tight on miles this month so we were deciding whether or not we should go visit him. We had a good feeling about him, so we decided to go try him. We drove all the way out there, knocked on his door, and this raggedy older lady (maybe 50's but wasn't aging well) came to the door. We asked for Kevin, (the former) and she said he's been in jail for a while. So we ended up talking with her, and she seemed pretty interested and we got a return appointment for next week! It was pretty sweet. Glad we followed the prompting to go try the house!

We accidentally stopped by the same exact potential investigator 2 days in a row.. She wasn't very interested so when we stopped by the second time she wasn't too happy.. We totally forgot, and didn't even recognize the house before knocking! That was pretty embarrassing..

Can't really think of anything else.. Everything's going good! Only one more week till transfers! That's pretty crazy.. Time is going soo fast.

Love you all!

Elder Stevens

Transfer 3 Week 4

This week I was able to go on exchanges with one of our Zone Leaders in Madison, Elder Larsen. Madison is just like Waldorf except there's a lot more people.. I haven't seen so many black people since I left Waldorf! It was great! I felt like i was back at home! Where ever you walk, there's always people to talk to.. it was great. Its not like the tiny town I'm in now.. where we walk around for hours and see 3 people..

Elder Larsen is an amazing missionary. He's from California and he's so chill. We would of been great friends back home. He long boards and surfs and he's just really cool. I couldn't believe how he could just go up to random people and just start a conversation with them like he's known them for months.. I got a lot out of that exchange that I can apply to my own missionary work. He's a very inspirational person, it was a great 2 days.

One of the Zone Leaders recent converts, the Shields, were visiting family in Hughesville Maryland! I was shocked when I heard that! I was like, I live right next to that town! They thought it was pretty funny. Who knows, they might have visited the Calvert ward? (or whatever ward that is..)

This Sundays Sacrament meeting was pretty much like financial counseling.. There's nothing wrong with that.. but 3 speakers on the same exact topic, that really had nothing to do with the gospel.. There was a baby blessing in the branch that day, and they had 18 family members there for it.. they were all non-members.. That was a terrible topic with investigators there.. oh well. Just bad timing I guess.  

Welp, thats pretty much it I think.. Not much went on this week. We've been trying to get a lot more solid investigators, that we can sit down and teach. Its harder than you think to get those people who will sit down with you weekly..  We have a few, but not enough to keep us very busy. 

Everything's going good though! Love you all!

Elder Stevens

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