Dear Family and Friends,
This week was bittersweet. I was nervous, excited, ready, but a little sad to leave the MTC. On Friday I started to feel it and was close to tears several times. One of my teachers, Brother Lisonbee, who is in a picture I attached with my companion and me, told us two very special things that comforted me and brought peace to my heart about moving on: 1. God trusts missionaries, so we should trust Him, 2. Miracles still happen; We believe in miracles, but we sometimes don't believe they can happen to or through us. I have faith that miracles will happen to me, other missionaries in Orlando, and investigators/less active members.
Some other missionaries and I talked about how we are going to convert all of Orlando. There are many stories in the scriptures where thousands of people were baptized at one time and I don't see any reason why that can't happen in these latter days. I'm so excited! :) I feel joyful and want to share this message with EVERYONE!
Every night at 10:20, missionaries here pray for miracles in this mission. The mission president calls it "the promised land". The work here is hard and great!
One miracle is that when I was at the SLC airport getting Cafe Rio. A man in line in front of the sisters I was with paid for our meals. He is going for army training. The funny thing is the man in line behind us is a young men's president and he said, "Oh, I was going to pay for them." I felt so grateful and very loved by people who don't know me and my Heavenly Father, who does know me.
We stayed with the mission president the night we arrived after being fed a delicious meal (I got Bluebell ice cream...I'm officially in the south, YES.) They are so wonderful. We felt right at home and they eased a lot of our worries about starting our work in the field.
My companion's name is Sister Hoffmeyer. She is 21 and so sweet! We get along great. She has trained four other missionaries and been out for 9 months, so she is a well-seasoned and great missionary. I love her! :) Here is a picture of us on our first night together. We have a super nice apartment. I feel so blessed! I haven't even seen one cockroach in there and it's been almost a week. We are well taken care of.
Plus, there is a senior missionary couple, the Bevans, and a set of elders assigned to the same ward as us. The Bevans are so awesome. They are helping us so much and have already fed us a few times and driven us around. They are from Canada and I absolutely love them!
There is LOTS of work to do here. The ward has many less actives and we have a very difficult time getting a hold of them. We must have tried to visit about 20 of them and actually talked to two. People in the ward are very needy. Only a few families help out and lots of families don't even have a car.
We spend hours knocking and few people are interested. We only have three progressing investigators. Two are from a part member family, who I will call the M family. The mom is a member. Her husband loves the Bible and likes us to teach him, but has a difficult time wanting to read the Book of Mormon (we do not consider him a progressing investigator.) The two children will hopefully be baptized on August 25. They can't commit yet because they haven't read the book of Matthew like their dad said they had to. I hope they do it so they can continue to progress in the gospel. I love the M family! Pray for their hearts to be softened and for a miracle that they will have a desire and commit to be baptized. It is the first step toward our Heavenly Father and happiness. I know it will bless their lives.
The third investigator I will call Sister G. She is a single mom of a 14 month old girl. She has lots of faith in what we teach and has a great desire to change. I hope she puts forth the effort to read the Book of Mormon as we have challenged her to do. We asked her to be baptized and she said she will if she can gain her own witness of its truthfulness. I love her. Please pray for her to overcome her addictions and want to be baptized on August 25 as well. we have another lesson with her tonight and probably later this week.
Love you all. It sounds like many of you are having a great summer. Keep the emails coming. I like mail too! :) Have a great day.
Keep the Faith,
Sister Stevens
