Personification Sentence

Hello again,

It is so good to be writing you all again. I would just like to mention some highlights that I forgot to mention in my email last week. For one, our district (Elder Curtis, Elder Meldrum, Elder Hancock, Sister lesue, Sister Van Dam, Elder Knudsen, and I) all went to the Woodbury Art Museum. It was super cool because the museum had all different types of art, like ceramics, ink injection, photography, wire art, etc. A lot of the art was done by students at UVU, so that was cool to think that college students made this.

A picture I thought was notable due to my diet.

Alright, for my spiritual thought today I will talk about what I have been studying. This is a unique topic to study especially as a missionary. This week I studied about Parenthood. It was actually a really interesting study.

The wire art I mentioned.

I just want to start out by saying how important using the Priesthood properly is when you are in a family, especially the father who presides over the family. Presiding over the family does not mean that you make every single decision for the family, you should actually teach your children to learn to receive personal revelation for themselves so that they can come closer to God and can know what God wants for them personally.

This is a frog, I think.

Parents should always treat each other as equals. I heard a really good quote this week. I forgot who said it but it went something like this: "Parents can think that they are listening, but if their children do not know 100% that they are listening then we should not assume that we have done all that we can do." So listening is also another vital part of parenthood. To me honest sincere listening is a vital part to every relationship. There have been some lessons I have had on my mission where all we did was listen and it was very helpful for the investigator. Listening helps you to get to know someone and can really strengthen any relationship.

Angeli's baptism photo.

I know that as we serve others and help strengthen each other by listening and by showing our love, we can help each other come closer to Jesus Christ who strengthens us all. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and Redeemer. He is my Brother and my Friend. It is through His Atonement and His power that we are able to return with our Father in Heaven. I know that Jesus loves each and every one of us. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Mariah at her baptism.

I just want to end by inviting you all to watch a really good talk about families by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. You can watch it here.

Another picture from Mariah's baptism.

Here are some things that were pretty awesome this week.

• On Sunday We had a choir come to the M.T.C and they sang something called the Lamb of God. It is kind of like the Messiah but for Easter instead of Christmas. It was super good. there were a lot of good songs in it. I also think that it portrayed a lot of the people in the Bible in a different light. like when Peter denies Jesus three times, it made it seem like Peter denied Him because of the stress that was going on at the time which I think was pretty interesting.
• Elder Knudsen and I had a really good lesson with Victoria. We talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we got to baptism we noticed that it was a sensitive topic for her, and she told us that it was because of some things that happened in her past. Someone told her that she should get baptized without really questioning it. so we talked with her about how it is okay to ask questions and it is really good to as well because questions are how we find answers. That kind of gave her comfort because it was what she believed.
• Victoria also went to church and met her local missionaries which we were super excited about. They even had a lesson with her on Wednesday, which she really enjoyed.
• Elder echo Hawk came on Tuesday for the Devotional. He basically told us His conversion story. There was a part that I really liked. right after he was baptized he still didn't have that large of a testimony and the Bishop was afraid that Elder Echo Hawk would fall away so they called a new priest quorum adviser. Basically they told this Priest Quorum Adviser to help Elder Echo Hawk and he didn't know how. So what this adviser did was he got to know Elder Echo Hawk personally outside of the priest quorum on Sunday and helped him to achieve his goals. This was really special to me because it reminded me of when I was a Teachers Quorum Adviser.
• Something I forgot to write about was Angeli. She was one of the investigators that I taught with Elder Stewart. Well she got baptized and she sent Elder Stewart her testimony and it was so beautiful. This was a few weeks ago. I forgot about it until this week because I saw her baptism photo.
• Elder Knudsen and I had our first member dinners together this week. We had members eat with us on both Wednesday and Thursday. This was really special because the last time I had a member dinner was back in August or September when I was with Elder Meldrum. For both of the member dinners we had pizza and it was super good. The one on Wednesday we had Costco pizza, which the people who invited us to have dinner took us to a field near the Provo Temple and we set up blankets and had a picnic. It was really fun. For the spiritual thought I talked about the importance of Friendship. On Thursday, we went to another member's apartment and had Little Caesars pizza. Everyone that we ate with on Thursday was from Springville which was super cool.

I hope that you all have a great rest of your week and a wonderful upcoming one.

Love,

Elder Stevenson

P.S. I forgot to mention something. Mariah, one of my investigators actually got baptized today! I asked her how her baptism was and this is what she said, "It was unexplainable, Elder. I'm in bliss."