Beautiful Spring

This week was a good week.   Tuesday we checked back with an investigator we haven’t been able to see for couple weeks.  We went with a member, he’s doing pretty good- we will continue to work with him.

We had a meeting with President Jordan this week, it was really good.   He explained that facebook was a new way of doing missionary work, but it doesn’t replace and will not replace other efforts as well.  We each created a new facebook account as missionaries.  We are only allowed to add friends in our mission boundaries and more specifically to focus on people in our assigned areas at that time.  We are allowed a maximum of one hour a day every day.  Not something we have to do, but something we are encouraged to do.  We are the first mission outside the United States to be using facebook.  So that is pretty exciting.    For now, we add the members and post 1 or 2 times per week.  Hopefully leading to some online lessons.

Because you can’t be my friends on facebook, I will share my favorite postings with you via email.  

"The family is the most important social unit of all time and eternity. It was designed this way by our Heavenly Father, who some people call God, the supreme creator, or as Aaron has stated in Alma 22:10 "He is that Great Spirit". The family is being attacked by Satan more than ever at this time. Living day prophets have spoken and testified that the way to have a successful marriage is as follows: "Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities." - The Family: A Proclamation to the World. I know that these things are true and that they are inspired of Heavenly Father to living day prophets and apostles on the earth today."       

Then I posted a link to the family proclamation. It’s a really cool thing and it is going to be so amazing for missionary work, it’s the best thing for this day and time to share though social media.  President Uchtdorf, in 2011, gave a talk about sharing the gospel through the internet, talking about texting and tweeting and the youth in these days using their thumbs faster than some people in the old days could think.

Wednesday we spent the day finding.  Thursday we headed to a neighboring area trying to follow up with a family we had met there.  No luck in catching up with them. We will keep trying.  As we were heading home that evening, we got a call from another gentleman.  He wanted us to come and give his child a priesthood blessing.  We were able to do that and the child was feeling better in the morning. 

Friday was mostly a day of planning for the coming week and we were able to volunteer at the local service organization for awhile. 

Our soccer/football game on Saturday is gaining more popularity. This week we had four missionaries, four members and four others.   It was pretty fun! 

Yesterday we gave a lesson in church on how the ward members could help the missionaries in finding more people to teach.  It was really good.   We introduced them to facebook and how we are using it.  It seemed to get the members excited as well.

Last night we went to supper with a family in the ward.  They invited us to come to watch General Conference with them this weekend as well.   Here you have to stream General Conference on the internet or go to one of the main church buildings to watch it on satellite.   Since the buildings are quite some ways from us, they invited us to come to their house and watch.  With the time difference, we watch conference at really odd hours here.   It should be really good. 

 This week we switched the clocks ahead and so now we have more sunlight in the evenings, I like it a lot. 

We visited these beautiful gardens this week. 

This was a good week.  Love, Elder Stevenson