Hello this week has been really good! This week we started working with a recent convert named Antonio. He´s the funniest guy ever!! He and his family were baptized  at the end of 2014 and they are great.  He just got called to be a ward mission leader so we´ve been taking him with us a lot!  He really likes it too, and he´s the best contacter ever!  We got a buch of futures just because he would casually talk to someone and then somehow bring up the church and then we´d start talking.  And the best part is he has a car!  He has a personality where he just throws out joke after joke so we definitely have a good time with him.

Our investigator Juan Pablo pretty muched dropped us.  He didn´t pick up his phone for the last week and a half and finally a member got a hold of him on Saturday.  He basically told the member that he feels like he can´t overcome hiis issue with the word of wisdom and purposely isn´t answering our phone calls... I was sad to hear that but hopefully we´ll be able to get with him and talk to him about it.

We went over to Isabel´s house this week and her nephew Jose who is about 18 years old was there. We explained the plan of salvation and at the end he told us how he feels like right now is in on route to the terestial kindom and wants to make it to the Celestial kingdom.  We started talking about what he´s willing to do to get there and started talking about baptism.  He told us baptism is something he´s always wanted to do and will pray to see if that is what he should do! So I´m excited to visit him this week.

We have a lot of potential here in Almería.  I´m trying my best to contact people and to learn the area and figure out where we should be going.  

Oh and the IPADS ARE IN!!! We´ll be getting them at the end of this week! 

Love you all, Elder Stephens

Time literally flies by.  I feel like I got to Almería yesterday.  I love it here there is so much potential!  My comp Chacón and I are doing really good.  He really struggled with his last comp, but with me he´s been really awesome!  He really wants to work and has a great testimony so it´s been fun!  Every night we come home super tired, when I go to bed I feel like the moment my head touches my pillow I fall asleep haha.

So this last week one of the members invited his friend named Juan Pablo over so we could teach him! He was so awesome!  He wanted to be baptized and follow Christ, he has had a really tough life and lost custodity of his son.  But wants to turn his life around and feels like he can do it through Jesus Christ!  He had been to church twice and we placed a fetcha with him for this friday but he´s not going to be able to because of the word of wisdom.  He usually smokes at least 3 cigarettes a day and he went 3 or 4 days without smoking and he has problems with taking drugs when he feels nervous.  On Saturday night he relapsed and took a bunch of pills and was asleep for church on Sunday.   He has a big desire so we´ll be working really hard with him so he can follow the word of wisdom and be baptized! 

Also we found this lady named Isabel.  She is really nice and really believes in God.  Thing is she is super evangelist. She´s had the priviledge of seeing Jesus Christ and everything! We tried talking to her about Joseph Smith and prophets but she could not understand because she thought that she was a prophet and prophecies all the time and all that good stuff.  We presented the book of mormon and she is pretty interested and said she´s going to read it so we´ll see how that goes!

Friday we had zone meeting in Granada and we had to be at the bus station at 7 and it was a 45 minute walk so that was a tough morning.  Also the office bought the wrong tickets so instead of going straight to Granada the bus stopped in motril which added two hours to our journey.  At first I was kind of frustrated but it was fun because we drove right along the costline of the Mediterranean Sea for 3 hours so I wasn´t complaining! 

Saturday we had the best ward activity ever!  It was a sport activity and basically everyone showed up! It was a huge success because we had a bunch of investigators, recent converts, and less actives come.  It was so fun and it lasted all morning and afternoon.   We played soccer, volleyball, and basketball so it was awesome!  We ended with making a huge paella! (Paella is a real famous Spanish rice dish).  There was so many people though that there wasn´t enough to feed everyone so they had to quickly make another pot.  And also they started passing out all the plates of paella and then someone realized that there wasn´t any forks or spoons..... How do you forget silverwear?? hahah I think they just wanted us to practice patience as we had our food sitting in front of us waiting for someone to come back with plastic spoons... Why wait though when you can use bread to scoop it up?

Anyway I love it hear in Almería and we should have a lot of success here.  If we see success this summer the ward here will be divided into 2 wards! So we need to work hard and get some more baptisms/reactivations so it will happen.

And I haven´t heard anything about Ipads so hopefully they will actually get here soon!

Love you all, 

Elder Stephens

hello! So this week was pretty awesome! Started the week saying good bye to everyone, ended it with going to a new area and talking to my fam!!! And with an entire mission conference for the ipads in between!

So Wednesday we had the mission conference.  A 70 Elder Timothy J Dykes came and spake to us. He gave a prayer in this last conference! haha and also another representative from the missionary board or something came as well named Elder Allen.  They gave some really great talks!! They talked about how the reason we are getting ipads isn´t for the missionary work, but how it´s so we can know how to use the devices the way the Lord wants as to use them. With a PURPOSE. Not just on social media networks doing nothing but the technology is supposed to help us do things more effectively.  So that´s why we are getting ipads, so we can learn how to use these devices the way they were meant to.

So Thursday I arrived in Almería and it´s been a good few days!  My companion elder Chacón definitely is a character.  He has a rep for not getting a long with any of his companions so I was a little scared going in.  Him and his last comp basically hated each other and they didn´t work the last couple weeks... And also Chacón doesn´t know anything about the area and he´s been here for a transfer and a half. I think I know why I got mid-transfered here haha. Chacón didn´t write any plans in his agenda since he has been here so basically I´m working from ground 0. There is a bunch of potential here for sure though. And Chacón has been really obedient with me so that makes me happy.

That´s all the time I have but I´m super excited to be here! There was 140 people in church on Sunday so it´s good to see so many faces!  Love you all and it was the best to talk to the fam! Mom hope you had the best mother´s day!

 ​"the poop statue".  I actually have no idea what that statue is but for me that´s what it was hahah

                          A less active named Ramona from Bolivia! She is way funny

                                                     Abuelita! She is the funniest person ever!

It started pouring down rain! We were stuck without any umbrellas so we just had to take it.

Eyy everyone this week was pretty solid.  We are teaching a lot of different people and we did some finding.  This week a less active named Angie called me and told me she had met this women from Honduras who´s like 28 and they started talking about religion and eventually Angie invited her to listen to us and she accepted!  So Thursday we met with her and it was a really good lesson! We met her at a park and we had a really good lesson!! Other than the fact that a Jehovah´s Witness women came up to us and long story short I invited her to sit down and listen to the story of Joseph Smith and she did and after took out her bible and started teaching all this random stuff that had nothing to do with what we were talking about haha.  But it was a fun time!  The lady´s name that we taught was Maria.  She´s awesome! She has been living here for a couple years and is looking for a church to go to.  She has been going to this one evangelist church for the last couple weeks and invited us to go with her.  I accepted because I never had been to an evangelist church before.  It was the weirdest experience ever.  There was a band and people would just randomly start yelling out prayers from the crowd.  It was a very different experience for me.  It was fun but i felt so weird.  

We found this lady from Guatamala and she is awesome too! I don´t want to leave this area because I have a bunch of people with potential the last few weeks.  I´ll be working very hard my last week here in Córdoba and do my best!  This week we are doing as a mission "week of consagracion".  Where we are going to be perfectly perfectly obedient.  President wanted to do it before we have the Ipad conference next week.  I´m super excited!!! We´ll see what comes out of this week.  

We had no one come to church on Sunday and I was pretty bumbed about that but this last week here I hope that we can get a bunch of people to go!

Elder Stephens

Hello.  This week was pretty crazy! Since Elder Durfey went home on Monday I spent the first of the week in Sevilla working with the other elders in my district.  It was literally the best time ever! I didn´t have to plan at night or anything haha. So transfer days were wednesday and it was kind of funny that both my companions traveled through sevilla so us three took the same train into our area.  Elder Robinson and Elder Wiltbank.  Two great guys right there.  Robinson is from Brigham City and Wiltbank is from a little town in Arizona.  They´re both farm boys and both have a ranch with cows and like to talk about trucks and that kind of stuff.  There is a lot of stuff about cows that I don´t know about.  They tell me about the "cow business" and it´s actually pretty interesting.  All the different types of cows and how people raise their cows.  So yes we have the most interesting conversations in the world.  Both really good guys! Being in a trio is a little different but really fun!

I don´t have any more time but we had a solid few days working!  Our investigator Mónica said a prayer for the first time in our lesson!! It was a simple but big step for her! She´ll for sure be baptized.  Maybe not during my time here in the next 2 weeks but I know she will soon! She has a date for the 2nd of May I hope she´ll be ready by then because that´ll be my last weekend in Córdoba.

The mission is the best place ever.  Send me pictures of everything back home! I want to see where you´ve been and what you´re all doing.

Elder Stephens

 this is what we call here in spain a "Spanish Spider".  Very common here.  Super condacious

                                             Matching!  With some members from Guatamala! 

Hey everyone!  So I´m just finishing my 4th transfer in the field!! WOAH! time goes by so fast.  So elder durfey is going home two days early so he can be able to watch his mom graduate from college so I´ll be here in Sevilla until Wednesday when transfers happen.  Speaking of transfers.........

I´m staying in Córdoba! Yes for more than 4 transfers, I´ve already been here 6 months. And I´m receiving two companions! Elder Robinson from Utah and Elder Wiltbank from I don´t know where.  But I´ll be with them for three weeks then I´m getting transferred halfway through to a different area.  It´s crazy that these will be my 4th and 5th companion in ONE AREA.  Most people don´t have more than 2.  3 is unusual.  But 5???? That´s unheard of.  And Elder Robinson is going home this next transfer by the way.  So that will be 1, 2, 3, 4 COMPANIONS in a row that I´ll be sending home.  Woah kind of crazy.  Even though I´ll only be with Robinson for half a transfer I´m still counting it as a solid "kill"!  I´m the "matador" of the mission. 

So this week was really good! My comp was super tired because he couldn´t sleep at night.  We got some work done though.  We met with this married couple from Peru named Elke and Catarina.  They are awesome.  Our first lesson with them was insane.  So we started talking about the usual stuff and about how after the apostles died that the church of christ fell blah blah then Elke started talking and he´s a really smart guy.  He was talking and he made a comment about how Paul was the last apostle to die and my comp butts in and says "well actually he didn´t die".  So long story short we showed them the 3 nephites and had to explain the book of mormon at the same time.  It was all over the place and Elke asked some really good questions. They have a bunch of potential and they looked like they were going to read.  I think that was the first time I´ve taught a married couple where both were interested in listening.  Crazy first lesson I´m grateful we got it under control though.

Monica was super busy this last week.  She basically had to work all day everyday so that she could pay for all her bills.  She was sick too so she didn´t have to good of a week.  We saw her Saturday night and had a really good lesson.  The whole week with all that stress and being so busy she didn´t drink any coffee or alcohol or smoke!  I was truthfully really surprised to hear that!  She didn´t pray or read but that´s awesome that she is following the word of wisdom.  At the end of the lesson we tried for 10 minutes to get her to pray with us.  She is so scared to pray in front of us because she never really has said a pray in her life.  She ended up not praying, but I really hope we can get her to because she won´t really start progressing until she gets that prayer in.  It´ll be a big step for her.

We have a bunch of potential investigators that we need to follow up on.  There is a lot of work to do, and I only have 3 weeks to make Córdoba the best area ever.  Hopefully we can get everthing done and my comps will only have 3 weeks to learn the area so they´ll need to learn fast!

Love you! Elder Stephens