Have a Wonderful Christmas!

It has been a wet and rainy week that is for sure. But you kind of get
use to it and when members see us they always pick us up. So that
helps us stay nice and dry. We had a pretty good week here in the
Vancouver 3rd Ward. Especially since we had zone conference this week.
So I will start with that. It was really awesome and I saw so many
former companions and awesome people that I have served with. We
focused a lot on how we can work better with members in our area. Most
of the baptism come from the members and only 4% come from Tracting.
But we are spending most of our time Tracting. So we talked about how
we need to be spending 60% of our time with members. So that is what
we are going to be doing. It will be a good change and hopefully help
the mission have more baptisms. We also had our Christmas "party" at
the conference with an awesome lunch and we all got a present. All the
walking missionaries got an extra present. Awesome. I love the mission
staff. They are so awesome. So that was a super good conference and we
found out that our new mission president is coming in July and he is
from Canada but I don't remember his name.

Our teaching this week went pretty good. Shannon wants to meet with us
again so we will continue to help her as best as we can. We also found
a super awesome guy while we were walking. His name is Jim and we were
walking down the street towards him and his daughter. He called out to
us and we stopped to talk to him, he told his daughter that we were
people doing God's work! And he talked about how he is trying to figure
his life out and doesn't want to go to his church anymore. He said he
really likes the LDS church and he wants us to come back this week! We
are super excited to see how it works out.

We met with Nikita but she is not progressing a lot. She is reading
from the Book of Mormon but hasn't been coming to church yet and has a
lot of things to work through. So we just keep praying for her and
hope that the spirit will continue to touch her life. We also met with
a lot of less active members this week. So that was pretty great. A
lot of them also came to church for the Christmas program! It was a pretty
great week. And tomorrow we are going to the temple. So stoked.

I am really pumped for Christmas. We have five families that we are
spending time with. We didn't have anyone this last week yet and so
they asked in elders quorum who wanted the missionaries and a ton of
hands went up so we are covered!! And on Christmas Eve we are going
caroling with the Reynolds family. I am really excited for this
Christmas season. It definitely has a lot of people remembering Christ
which then helps us when we want to teach them about Him. So it works
out pretty great.

Anyway life is good. I love the mission. Have a wonderful Christmas!!

Love,
Sister Stephens

Sis Nielsen and I on exchanges

Zone conference!! Sis McMullin and her posterity

Titi! Hawaii and tongas oldest daughter