Portland!

This week has been super interesting. I love Portland! Everyone here is
so amazing. And we have seen so many miracles already. We live with
the Jensen's who are members but we have this super cute cottage that
we live in that is behind their house. They have been out of town so
we haven't met them yet. But I just love the area people are so
willing to talk to you and you don't have to drive twenty minutes to
go to a new place. Being in a tri-pan is different but also has some
advantages. We never have to worry about having another sister being
with us to visit people. It is weird when we are tracting because we
overwhelm people with all of us at the door. But my companions are
sister Campbell and sister eyerly. They are super fun. I love sister
Campbell!! She was in my last district and we get along really well.
It kind of feels like we were doubled in but We are working hard and
doing our best.

Columbia river ward is pretty cool. It is known as the newly wed and
nearly dead ward. Which is so so true. The ward is tiny and so we are
ready to build it up!! There are so many diverse people here. I got to
speak Russian and Spanish in one day. We had a lady make us
traditional Philippine food and it was so good. Except the dessert. It
was interesting haha. The bishop is awesome and we get to have ward
council every week and he gives us a huge list of people to see.
The sisters before us didn't contact any list for two weeks so we have
a lot of things to do. A lot. But we are so up for the challenge.

We have a lot of people we are teaching and have a baptism for a girl
named broke who is eleven and her family is starting to come back to
church. Her baptism is May 30th and she is so excited. We also have a
lot of people who could be on date for baptism so we have to go in and
see why they stopped progressing. So we could have like five people on
date for baptism. So we are going to work so hard! I am so pumped for
this transfer. We also have a lot of less active people we are
teaching and they are all super awesome. One brother is bro Mckenzie
and he is so funny. He has a lot of mental illnesses and is just super
quirky. He has a kitten named plumpy and it's just super funny. He is
a convert and has come back to church and is working towards the
temple. I just love the people here. We have already seen a lot of
miracles. The first two days we found two new investigators!!! This
area is seriously on fire. We were at church the other day and sister
eyerly pointed out a man who had been coming to church but they had
not talked to him yet. His name is Arem and has been coming for a few
weeks. we invited him to Sunday school and they actually talked about
the restoration and it was amazing.he told us after that he thought the
bible should have modern because these times are so different. So we
taught him about prophets and he wants to continue to meet with us!!!
So cool. And when we went to find someone to sit with him we ran into
another person who just came to church to see what it was about. So
that was pretty cool. But we couldn't find him after sacrament so
hopefully he comes back. The lord is truly blessing us here in this
area.

I don't really have a Lot more to report but I love the area and am
excited to see what is in store for us.  

Love sister Stephens.