First pic in the field...

Stephen with Elder and Sister Nelson

1st Week in the Mission Field

Good morning everyone!

Monday is Stephens P. Day so he gets to email us on those days. This morning I woke up to find a lovely email from him with all the details he left out in his letter. Enjoy!


OK, I have a lot to tell everybody. Hopefully I will remember everything I wanted to say. We arrived at the airport monday afternoon around 2:00. Pres. Nelson and the AP's picked us up and brought us to the mission home. Before we landed at JFK we had to circle the airport for 25 minutes because President Obama was leaving the airport and we had to wait for Airforce 1 to be in the airbefore we could land. CRAZY. so that was weird.

Anyway, I spent the first night at the presidents home and we had a nice dinner and a little fireside with all the new missionaries. The next morning we drove to the mission office in Queens, met our companions, and went to our various areas. My companion is ELder Williamson. He is from SanDiego and he great. I am in the Patchogue Spanish branch. The appartments that Jared and Sarah lived in are in my area!(Jared and I lived in Bellport, NY for 4 months durring the summer of 2007) I drove through them just yesterday.

The first day I got here we went over the some investegators homes and taught them a lesson, then we taught another lesson and then we visited some less active members. We don't do much tracting because it's hard to know where the spanish speaking people live and its more effective to go to the homes of former investegators, less active members, media referals,ect. then we knock on three doors to the right and 3 to the left. The spanish speaking people usually live close to each other so this works well.

There are 6 Elders in my appartment. Elder Williamson, Elder Close, Elder Douglass, Elder Huner(new elder), Elder Parez and Me. They are all good missionaries that want to work hard, so that's good. My companion has been out for almost 1 year, and he has been in Patchogue for 4 transfers, so he knows everybody and he knows how to get around. This makes it a lot easier.

I went to church yesterday for the first time. Some of our progressing investegators came. They both want to be baptized but arn't able to yet. I really enjoyed church, there are about 50 or so members that come each week, that number includes the children. It's a lot different than the Alpine 7th ward, thats for sure.

We got to go to the temple saturday morning with the ward, to do baptisms for the dead because there were some reasent converts that were going fort he first time. They loved it and can't wait to go back.

The Ward missionleader's are Benito and Jose, Jose has only been a member for 2 months but he is awesome. He comes with us a lot to teach and he is super smart and very proffestional. He always coaches us on how to be punctual and how we should say things. He is really funny. So far I am loving it, and our branch really loves the missionaries and most of them are very excited about missionary work, we get lots of member referals and they are always willing to come to lessons with us and that is what really makes the difference.I can't wait to get to know the members better and to find more people to teach. I have really enjoyed my first week here, but i wish i couldunderstand what people were saying a litte better. Some people speak clearly and i can tell, but others... I'm clueless. When we get packages they are kept at the mission office until we have atranfer or if the office elders have time to bring them out here. It's aboutan hour or so drive to the mission office from my area. Really its likethere are two TOTALLY different missions in my mission. The city, and theIsland. It's crazy but I am loving it so far.

I am really enjoying myself and its a LOT of HARD work, but it's vale lapena. (worth it).

Thanks for all of your prayers, love, and support.

Love, Stephen

Off to the Big Apple

SOOOOO... Stephen left the MTC on Monday morning to fly out to New York! This would have been very exciting in and of it's self, but to make it even better he got to call home from the airport. His flight left the Salt Lake International Airport around 8:30AM so after he got all checked in and through security he was able to call us on a payphone at like 7:00 AMish. Because my dad is currently in Santiago, Chile we had to 3 way him in while my mom, Jennie, Nate, Josh, and I used 3 different phones all set on speaker phone to talk with him. It was so good to hear his voice! Lots of meaningless chit chat went on at first, then we heard a little more about the MTC and what he had been doing there. He and my dad also had quite a long conversation in all Spanish and Stephen did so well! From what I understood they were talking about how quickly he has picked up the language yet how different it is going to be once he is out in NY. From what I understood they were talking about how quickly he has picked up the language yet how different it is going to be once he is out in NY. Most of the people he will be meeting with will have learned Spanish as their first language so they will speak much faster than he is use to and will use a lot of slang terms that he will have to pick up while he is in the mission field. After my dad left the call we 3-wayed Jared and Kote so they could talk to him. Jared speaks fluent Spanish so he and Stephen talked to each other in Spanish also, but Jared couldn't stop laughing the whole time... apparently he thought it was funny that Stephen can speak Spanish... Not sure. Ha All in all it was a GREAT conversation for everyone. I will admit that I shed a few silent tears at first but I hid them well.

I am assuming that he made it to New York... I didn't hear about any plane crashes that day and no one ever called us to let us know that he didn't arrive... apparently while on the Mish no news can be considered good news. So Stephen is now out tromping around somewhere in the New York New York South mission.... could be in Queens, maybe the Hampton's, possibly Brentwood. We don't really know yet. Hopefully he will send a letter soon and fill us in on all that jazz. Once I know, I will let YOU know.

In the mean time here are some pictures of Stephen in the MTC... watch for one of my BFF's to make a guest appearance! :)

Stephen and... some other Elders... not sure who any of them are. HA

Stephen... FLYING!

Stephen got to help my BFF Dani Talbot get all checked in and whatever on her first day at the MTC!

Monday, Monday, Monday!

Stephen is leaving the MTC on Monday!!! So from now on if you want to write him you will need to use his NYC address. We get to talk to him on the phone while he is at the airport so I will give everyone a full update after we hear from him.