Hello everyone! Hitting exactly 5 months in the field today! I didn´t even realize it until I started writing this email haha but it´s weird how so much has happened in this short-ish amount of time.   I have learned so much and I´m so grateful for the time I´ve had on the mission so far even with the lack of success.  I say a lack of success but if you look at what a successful missionary is in preach my gospel I would actually say it´s been a successful 5 months.  Even though I haven´t produced a lot of "numbers" I think I´ve done some good things.  Like this last week we got into a house of a young couple from Ecuador named Mikaela and John.  At the end of the lesson John said the first prayer he´s ever offered in his entire life.  It was small and short but seeing a man pray for the first time in his life was really neat and even though it won´t be another number to send to the zone leaders it really made me feel like I was doing my job as a missionary.

This week started off with an exchange because my companion went to Málaga for district training.  So Elder Lelegren came in to work in my area for a day, and we had a great time!   So Elder Lelegren came in Tuesday afternoon and we dropped off his stuff at our apartment and went to work.  We got in two good lessons in the first little bit both with Nigerians. The whole time I was with him we literally non-stop talked the entire time about our experiences from high school (he just graduated from Alta) and our experiences from the mission and we definitely had a good time.  In the morning we had a lesson with a women named Diana from Columbia who´s been receiving lessons for a long time.  She told us she believes the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet, but she won´t get baptized because she was already baptized in the Catholic Church..... UGH WHY! I explained the importance of authority and it´s frustrating because I swear I was explaining it so clear but she didn´t understand and won´t change her mind.  And it´s hard because she can´t come to church because of her work.  So I´m kind of stuck on what we can do to help her if she already has a testimony and she can´t come to church and doesn´t want to get baptized... ugh

Well Elder Turley eventually came back and we had a good rest of the week! We placed two baptismal dates this week! One is with a Spaniard named Antonio. He´s a friend of a recent convert named Jesús and he is really smart but you can tell there is something wrong with his social abilities.  He understands about the gospel and everthing, so if everything goes right that will happen in two weeks! And Jésus just got the priesthood yesterday so if I had to guess Jésus we´ll be the one to baptize his friend. The other is a Nigerian named Kingsley.  It was our second lesson and we need to make sure he understands everthing before we go through with the baptism.

My companion and I found a couple other people that I don´t have time to talk about but we´re working hard and trying to get SOMETHING to excite the branch here for missionary work.

Love you all and say hi to Josh for me!!! Can´t believe josh come´s home this week!!!!!!!!!  I know he´ll be great to have back in the SLC and hope the homecoming goes exactly the way he/mom wants it. 

Besitos!!

Elder Stephens