Another Great Week!

Hi Everyone,

  Well this week was pretty fun! At the beginning it seemed like just a normal week with nothing out of the ordinary, but then we were told that on Friday we would be having a member of the Seventy, Elder Wang from Hong Kong, come to our mission and we would have a big training with him. I was super excited for that and the whole week seemed to go by really slow because of that excitement haha. The training was great though! Before the big training, the district and zone leaders for Gaoxiong area got to have a special meeting with him and it was really helpful. He's a really funny and blunt man. So he answered our questions pretty straight up without beating around the bush haha. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot.

   One thing I really loved was the story of David and Goliath. We all know the story about how David knew that the Lord would be with him and that he would be able to defeat Goliath with his sling and a stone. But if he was that confident that the Lord would help him, why did he still bring 5 rocks with him. He only needed one. Why bring the extra 4 even though he knew that God could help him kill Goliath by using just one? The answer is that even though David knew that he only needed one stone and that God would help him win, he still needed to prepare himself for when the time came, depending on how far away Goliath was, how tall he was, how strong the wind was, and depending on many other variables, David would need to use a different size of stone. He needed to prepare himself so that the Lord could use him. Likewise, so do we. Even though we know that God can do anything, we still need to prepare and arm ourselves with our own skills and knowledge; with our own stones. This way the Lord can build off of what we have and we can be able to accomplish what we need to.

   Other than the training this week we have really been working with W.... He is ready to be baptized and he really wants to be, but his parents won't let him. He is only 19 years old, so until he is 20 he needs his parents’ permission to be baptized. He talked with then last week when he went to visit, but they said no. But on the bright side, they said that he could keep meeting with us and learning more. It is understandable that his parents might be a little apprehensive about their son joining a church that they know almost nothing about. So I believe that if W... can share his testimony with them and let him know about the great teachings and truths of the gospel they may realize that our church isn't scary after all. So please keep him and his family in your prayers.

  This week we also met a really cool guy named W... S... H.... He is almost finished with college and is really nice. He says that he wants to learn how he can change his life. He has always had a fairly nice life, but he has had some problems that pop up in his life from time to time, and he's realized that it is himself that needs to change. He's super cool and we are meeting again with him before he comes to our English class.

   Yeah we still teach English.  For the past few weeks, S... has been helping me teach the beginning class. It's super nice that S... is pretty willing to help out with that and it's fun to teach together with him.

   Well that's about it. We went to the hospital last pday so I don't have any cool pics...sorry. But I hope you all have a great week! Love you all lots!
Love

Elder Stevens

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