Transfer 6 Week 1

Hello Everyone! This was my first week in my new area Baraboo. I'm really enjoying it so far. It's a smaller town with rolling hills and lakes and very beautiful scenery! I'm excited for Fall so that I can get some great pictures! Elder Pounds and I are getting along great. He is literally the twin of Lawry.. They look the same, and have the same comedy.. its great. 

We spent a lot of time doing service this week. We help out at a community Restore place, at a food pantry and we helped with a couple members house projects. We have a couple really solid investigators here. Last night we had a lesson with this guy named Alberto. He used to travel the world with the circus! He grew up very wealthy in Armenia and trained at a young age to do what he did. He has lots of stories of the circus and his life. We were able to set a baptism date with him last night for October 17th. We had Brother Ricks in that lesson with us and he owns a couple Rigleys Believe it or Nots and other crazy stores in the Wisconsin Dells. It was pretty neat to sit down and have a lesson with two very wealthy and famous people. We taught Alberto the Plan of Salvation and he says he's willing to do anything to be baptized. We were also able to have a lesson with Jose, Hes been taught mostly everything but he doesn't want to continue without his families support. I havent been able to meet all of the people we are working with yet but so far its going great!

The members here are super nice! I already think I'm gaining weight because of them feeding us here. I really like our apartment, it's smaller than my other ones but it's more open so I like it! This is going to be a great 6 weeks I can already tell!

Welp thats about it I think..

Love and miss you all!

Elder Stevens

Mission Pics

Transfer 5 Week 6

This past week was my last week in Beaver Dam. Tomorrow I'm headed to Baraboo Wisconsin. Its only about an hour west of Beaver Dam. It's North of Madison. All of my areas are touching each other.. hahah It seems like I'm just circling the outside of Madison.. hahah My New Address is 503 7th St Baraboo WI 53913.

My new companions name is Elder Pounds. He's my Trainer's MTC companion so I've heard a lot about him and I've met him a couple times and were already really cool with each other so it'll be great!

This past week we went down to Madison for Zone Training Meeting. We were asked to bring food for a pot luck afterwards. I was expecting a bunch of treats and appetizers but there was actually some good food there! Elder Atkinson and I brought shrimp with cocktail sauce.. I believe it was a crowd favorite.. ;) After ZTM we stopped at Chris Farleys gravesite.  It was in this church building thingy.  It was pretty neat.

We did a lot of service this week. We were able to go to the Moyer's farm and help out with the kangaroos and what not. We helped a less active move most of Wednesday. We were able to have a great lesson with Kyle again this week.   We've been going around to lots of investigators and members so that I can see them for the last time these past couple days. It's bittersweet. I'm excited to be moving on to a new area but I will miss a lot of the members here. Its crazy to think that I've spent more than half my mission in Beaver Dam. It feels like I just got here..

I'm excited for Baraboo! Sorry for no email last week!

I love and miss you all!

Elder Stevens

FW: train

Transfer 5 Week 3

This week I got Elder Atkinson sick. I was sick for about half the week and then when I started to get better, he came down with the sickness. Theres been something going around here, because it seems like a lot of people have been sick these past few weeks. I'm feeling mostly better but I still have a constant cough.

On Wednsday we had a 6 hour meeting in Madison. It was fun to see a lot of missionaries gathered together in the same building and it was really nice to see some old friends. One thing I liked from the meeting was a remark that Sister Cutler said. The spirit is the same. That hit me because a lot of the time I think, "man it would be great if we could just have an apostle or the prophet in a lesson with us, because they would know everything to say and it would be soo much easier." Well, with that remark it made me realize that the spirit is the same. No matter who its coming from. You could have Elder Eyring in the lesson and he could say and speak all this stuff but the feeling the investigator gets would be the same. Because its the same exact spirit. Pretty neat.

After the meeting we went as a district to Chick Fil A. Perfect. 

We got a Media Referral this week from this 15 year old Hispanic girl named Yosseline. Her aunt and cousins are members of the church and her aunt had her go online and request us to come see her. We had a great first contact lesson with her. Shes pretty interested in learning more and I'm really excited to start teaching her. 

We had a great lesson with Kyle this week at Tonys Pizza. We had a pretty powerful lesson with him over some pizza so it was pretty great.. Lots of people are out of town this week because school starts in like 2 weeks so everyone's on vacation. We've been able to talk with Dorthea but shes been out of town helping a friend so we havent been able to meet with her for a couple weeks. 

We were able to go to The Moyer's farm again this week and play with the goats and kangaroos so that was fun. We also went to Brother Bricketts for his annual Garden Party where he has 300+ feet of model rail road track, where he has a little model train running along in circles.  It was pretty neat... 

Anyways, It was a pretty good week for being sick. I love and miss you all!

Elder Stevens

Transfer 5 Week 2

This week was a little slower. Most of the week I've been feeling a little under the weather. I have a progressing cough and I had a sore throat at the start of the week. Thankfully that's gone.

Anyways, we were able to give 4 blessings in 2 days this week. A sister in our branch has trouble breathing, and she's on an oxygen tank thingy, but she stopped breathing Wednesday night and went into the hospital. We went to go see her Thursday night and were able to give her a blessing. The doctors said she would be in the hospital at least until Sunday night. We were in her neighborhood the following day. We were passing her apartment and all of the sudden she comes out the door to say hi! She was soo happy and she said "It Worked! I knew it would!" We were dumbfounded.. we were like uhhh what? What are you doing home soo early!?!? She always has the best attitude and she has such great faith. What a miracle.

We were unable to see Tiffany and Jordan this week, they were super busy this week but we are planning on meeting this upcoming week. Hopefully they will be able to make it to church this Sunday. Dorthea has been out of town for about 10 days now, so we haven't been able to meet with her. She says she will text us when she gets back so were praying everything is still good with her! I'm sure it is, but you never know!

Elder Atkinson and I are still getting along great. We are able to get a lot of work done but still have a lot of fun doing so. Its great.

I don't really know what else to say! So I love and miss you all! Hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Stevens