Hello everyone! This week was pretty solid.  I realized that what we've been doing isn't going to help us reach our purpose.  We´ve been spending way too much time in "gypsyville" trying to talk to all these people that aren´t going to progress.  We need progressing investigators and people that are going to read the book of mormon and pray and everything.  So we´re going to change things up a little bit. This month of June is month of invitation here in Spain so we´re going to work hard with the members!  That´s the best way to work.  So we´ll see  how it goes.

Friday we had zone meeting and it was really good! They talked about the importance of weekly planning/setting goals, and also about our image as missionaries.  In President Deer´s letter this week he said that the mission has had the least amount of baptisms in a 5-week period since a really long time ago.  Coincidentally right since we've gotten our ipads..  So he´s trying to help us focus on our purpose and not get distracted. 

Yesterday when we went over to Isabel´s she gave us our Book of Mormon back and said that she wasn't going to read it so we should just take it back.  If anyone needs the gospel it´s her but whatevs it's all good. 

Sunday fast and testimony meeting was so good yesterday, definitely one to remember.  I´ve never seen this before but it happened a few times where a family together would go up and each of them would bear their testimony.  My favorite part was when a couple went up and when the husband named Javier bore his testimony he talked about prayer.  He said how his family never really did family prayer, but this week they all prayed every night together that their 20 something year old son would come to church on Sunday to watch Javier bless his new born baby.  The son was there! (not a member so I was all over that ;) ) Javier testified about the power of prayer with true intention. He also said something really amazing. He said "The greatest happiness a person can have is from bringing others to Christ."  That is so true.  Bringing someone to Christ really is the greatest feeling.  Being a missionary is the best opportunity and blessing.  This sunday we fasted as a ward to see success during the month of invitation and I hope that we can see success and help other people come closer to Christ.

                                                                                    First selfie on the iPad

 I felt like Jack Sparrow when he´s about to fight the cracken in Pirates of the Carribean

                                                 what elders in Spain do on P-day

                                                                                  district

Hello everyone! Live is pretty good here in Almeria!  We succesfully got our ipads! We left friday morning and came back way late friday night.  It took forever to sink the ipads because everyone in my zone did it at once.  But everyone at the end got it all taken care of!.... Except for one Elder in my district, his ipad doesn´t work. Pour guy haha.  As of right now we don´t have access to facebook, I´ll think we´ll get permission in a few months haha.  And also we can´t use the planning applications because there are some "legal barriers" that we can´t put people´s address on the internet or something like that.  They´re working on it though.  So basically right now ipads only serve us for our personal study if we want, and we can download videos from the church. We´re thinking of ways as a mission to use the ipads to help us with our purpose as missionaries so we´ll see what we can do.

This week was really good!  We are working with these less actives Monolo and Ana.  They are really awesome! Sealed in the temple and everything.  They have lots of potential so we´re working with them that they can be completely active in the church and receive callings.  They´ve showed up 3 weeks in a row and hopefully they´ll be willing to receive callings here soon.

Also we met with Isabel the Aunt of José who has a baptism date.  We placed a baptism date with her for the last week of June.  She says she wants to but I don´t know how willing she is to go to church and read the scriptures and progress.  Elder Chacón and I are focusing on finding people who are going to progress.  And inviting people to do stuff so that they can progress.  

I´m super happy to be here in Almeria and we´ll see if we can find new people to teach this week!

Elder Stephens

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