Christmas Call!!

 

Merry Christmas friends and family,

 

We had a great visit with Bryce on Christmas Day. So wonderful to see his happy smiley face. He google chatted with us at a members home. We loved hearing his Spanish. It sounds amazing. It was wonderful getting to visit with the whole family at the same time,even though we were so far apart.

 

 

Some highlights: The concert with David Archuleta was a free concert for members and investigators. He also did a fireside for just the missionaries. He shared experiences from his mission. He also talked about the recording of  Glorious for Meet the Mormons. He got a call from his Mission President while he was serving in Chile. His mission President had gotten a call from Church Headquarters in Salt Lake asking for his approval for Elder Archuleta to record the song. Both agreed and a crew was sent to Chile to record and film the song.

 

Bryce really enjoyed serving in Lugo. He really learned to rely on the Lord. It's a much smaller city than Madrid but they were able to find many people to teach and saw many miracles. There is just a small branch there. He said he has always been a people person but he is even more so after serving there. He learned to love and appreciate all of the members in the branch and is even more comfortable talking with and getting to know others. He loves the people there. He loved that part of Spain especially the coast. He said it's even more beautiful than his pictures show. And is so glad he chose to go on a mission. He has been blessed beyond measure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Navidad Devotional

Hey Family!!

We had a super good week this week a lot of cool experiences.

We didn't have any investigators and so we were on the search this week. We contacted a lot which was nice. Lugo is such a small town and there are not that many people. Now in Madrid, I have millions of people literally!! So it's pretty cool. We found some cool people. There is one person named Fernando that was super nice. We were able to teach him a couple times. 
 

We are also teaching someone named Catalina. She is really great and has great potential. 

We got some good references people with a lot of potencial. We're excited to teach them.

One guy came to church on Sunday, his name is Bollivar from Ecuador. He is a really good person. We're excited to work with him.

Not much has happened other than that. This Sunday, we have a devotional with ... DAVID ARCHULETA! It should be pretty cool. I'm planning on doing google chat Thursday at 5 here so 8 there, sound good? Have a great week.
 

Love you,
-Elder Stevenson

 

Transfered

Farewell Elder Hathaway

Hey Family!

Sooo I'm in Madrid right now. We got the transfers Saturday and I pretty much knew I would be leaving. I'm in Madrid ward 2. It's in the east part of Madrid. My new companion is Elder Williams from Las Vegas and we are both... THE ZONE LEADERS! It should be
pretty good work down here together. I'm excited and greatful for this opportunity. 
 

Elder Williams

This week was pretty good. We had some good lessons and had a really good experience with Alejandro. We had him pray about the Book of Mormon with us and then we just sat there in silence and wait for an answer. He recieved his answer! It was an amazing experience. And the way he described it after it was for sure by the spirit. He is doing really well. So is his brother Leo. We had a branch activity where only the youth attended. It was really good because those two came also. They got to know some of the members really well.
 

We are helping Wellington a lot. We helped him paint and are teaching him. He tried coming to church, he just came a little late but he is doing really well. He got all of his papers in and he has way more desires to be baptized. I am excited to see his baptism picture some day, hopefully soon.
 

Mario, Andrea's friend, is also doing well. Apparently he was praying about which path to take in his life and then right after we called to see when we could meet. He wants to get baptized now.
 

There are some really great people in Lugo and I am excited that Elder Hathaway can continue helping them. It was tough saying goodbye to all the people I've met but I will see them again.
 

I will let you know more about barrio 2 when I know a little more. All I know is the Plaza de Toros is in our area. Have a great week!!

-Elder Stevenson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Lugo Mola

 

 

 

Lugo Mountains- panoramics

TURKEY!

 

Hey everyone!

We did get to celebrate Thanksgiving. We bought turkey legs. just like Disneyland!

This was a pretty interesting week. Wellington almost got deported again. This time they sent him down to Madrid and he was in the airport but then they sent him back to Lugo. The judge in Madrid said there is nothing wrong with his papers and he is doing what he needs to do. They gave him a paper saying he can't be detained for his papers because they don't know why the police in Lugo are doing it. Anyways, he is back again. He is going to start coming to church more even though he is dead tired from work. He says if I have been saved twice, I think God is trying to help me for some reason. And I feel that reason is you guys. So that was pretty cool.

Elder Hathaway falls asleep in cars really fast.

We are also working hard with Leo. He's is reading and praying which is great. He feels like the baptism is really close and that he doesn't really have great desirees to be baptized. We are trying to help him with that. He is for sure growing in testimony. We can already see it.

 

Our Brazilian investigator, who is moving back to Brazil today   = (

Other than that, we had a really tough week. Lost 9 of our investigators and got CHEWED out by a Peruvian lady. A lot are moving or they weren't progressing or they said they don't want to meet with us anymore. That was pretty tough. We did find a lot of new people in the street though. So hopefully we can meet with them soon. We are going to work really hard on that this week. New investigators because we need it.

 

Turkey!

Thanksgiving was nice. We do our weekly planning Thursday morning so we threw the turkey legs in the oven durning that. The house still smells like turkey. We made mashed potatoes, salad, and bought some croissants so it was pretty good. We just didn't have any pie!! The next day was Elder Hathaway's birthday so that was pretty nice. Instead of an octopus though we just had left over turkey. Still really good.

Well hope everyone had a great week love you all!

-Elder Stevenson

 

Andrea decorated me like a Christmas tree.

 

 

One of the Happiest Weeks of my Life

Roman and Me

 Hey Family!

We had a REALLY good week this week. The members didn't help us much but we are meeting with Leo & Alejandro a ton!

They basically don't do much in the afternoon and love us so they always let us come over. They have really good desires and ask very good questions. They are also very good at keeping commitments, reading, praying, church. They do it all happily with desires to know. They are growing immensely. We put them on a baptismal date for the 6th of December. 

Valentin is also doing really well. Met with him a couple times this week but it's a little more difficult to meet because the mom is usually working but we will be going over tomorrow. It's really nice to be teaching these youth because we can bring the other youth to the lessons to help strengthen them too. A lot have desires to serve missions so we are showing them how it is. Plus all the youth need some help. It's a weird time in their lives.

Our Branch President is still doing really well with helping us. Every Sunday he zips us around in his car so we can visit a lot of people because we aren't walk everywhere. We have also started doing splits with the members and that is helping a ton. Our Branch President was with us when we were talking about the somewhat low number of member present lessons we had this week. He asks us how many we want and we have a goal of ten because we have gotten 9 a good number of times but never 10. Then he asks what days we get the most and it's Sunday when he comes with us. He told us he wants to do it more than just Sunday then. This week he wants us to get 15 with a member so we will see how it goes! 

I think with all the investigators we have coming to church, they are seeing that we actually work well and now they want to help. 

On Saturday, we went to a village outside of Lugo called Sarria to visit a less active family that is coming back into activity. They want to baptize there daughter so we went to teach about the baptismal covenants. It was a good visit. Because of the bus schedule we had to wait there for a while and so they made us food. It has been one of the days that I have eaten the most on my mission. First they bring out a HUGE pot of lentejas or I think it's lintels in English. Not sure never ate them before the mission but I love them. Anyway, 2 big bowls of that and I was pretty full. I thought that was all we were going to eat. but then they bring out probably the biggest pizza I have seen in my life! Gave us a huge slice. I struggled to finish. Then of course there is always room for dessert. Bring out cake. They left the room while we were eating it and Elder Hathaway had to have me finish. He was dying! I was pretty dead after too. Sarria is the country, a lot of crops grown there. So they gave us a couple things to take home. First was a fruit that if you eat it while its green or yellow and not when it's orange, it's one of the spiciest things ever. 

Second they gave us eggs that every single one has two yolks. We ate eggs Sunday morning and it is true. Super funny.

This week was probably one of the happiest of my life. Andrea, who was just baptized a little over a month ago, went to the temple for the first time to do baptisms and confirmations. This is true happiness.

 

Anyway, that was our fun week. Hope everyone had a good one too.

 

Love you!!

-Elder Stevenson 

 

 

Some pics with the Halloween Mustache



pensive English Gent?

 

 

I also set up the Christmas tree and Spain is super cool!

 

 

Hey, I did get the package. Thank you sooo much!! I am wearing the socks right now.

I hung up the Advent Calendar. = )

 

 

FINALLY!!!!

Hey everyone!

We had an amazing week full of miracles! We have been waiting for a couple weeks now. After weeks of 0 to 1 investigators coming to church, we had 5 this week! We have been working so hard and it finally paid off.

During our zone training and conferences we have had the past two weeks, we talked a lot about getting people to church and how we can better it. So Elder Hathaway and I worked really hard. One thing that changed that hadn't even caught my attention much, but I feel like was the key was Preach My Gospel says make plans of things we need to do EVERY DAY to get them to come. So that's what we did. We talked about church attendance every day with them.

Plus the miracle family helped us out. About a month ago, we got a reference for a lady who lived on the 3rd floor of a building. We hit the button outside to get in the building and it opened. We go up to the 3rd floor the person isn't there. We start wondering who opened the door. So we decided to talk to all the people in the building and a lady on the first floor named Fatima opened the door and was busy but said we could pass by a different day and gave us her number. Well for a month we passed by and called and weren't able to meet. Saturday morning, we had some plans but I put the back up plan to pass by her house. She was there and let us in! We didn't want to take much time so we taught them about the Book of Mormon and invited them to read pray and come to church. We set up with them to call and come by in the morning and they were ok with that and they came! They enjoyed  church a lot. We are meeting with them again on Tuesday and plan to work really hard with them. 

We are also working hard with that part member family. The daughters only come on the weekend so we try and meet everyday. They are doing really well. They also came to church. = )

We lost a lot of our baptismal dates this week. We found out Oscar, Margarita's son, is going to stay in Valencia for a while then go to Colombia. Valentin wasn't able to come to church so we have to change that date. And Graciela, I guess is done with us. We had a lesson planned for Friday and we go over she's not there. I call her she realizes who it is and hangs up on me! So we went and visited Andrea and she gave us a member reference of a lady that lives below her and she came down and introduced us to her. It was really cool. But anyways than I call Graciela the next day she answers and then hangs up again when she realized it was us again. So we are working hard with thess new people to get them on dates.

Hope everyone had a great week. I love you all!!

-Elder Stevenson