President Texeira and the Great Christmas Conference

President José Texeira, who is the president in the Area Presidency for Europe (and thus a member of the first quorum of the 70), came on a mission tour this week. I got to spend two days with him: first at zone conference, and then at mission leader council.

This week was fantastic. It was one of the craziest weeks of my mission: I went on two exchanges plus zone conference and mission leader council, so I left Assen Monday night and got back to Assen Friday night. Lots of sleep-overs! But it was good. I learned so much from this week, especially from President and Sister Texeira, and we were able to finish off the week with some really cool miracles.

I think that one of the biggest things that I learned from President Texeira was how to change. He talked a lot about repentance, and about how ultimately what that requires is a change of our thoughts and feelings, which will then lead to a change in behavior. If we change our belief/priority system, then we will also change our behavior. We cannot make the change that needs to happen in our stewardship if we do not make changes in ourselves. And what it comes down to is working harder, and better, and with more faith in God that He can and will give us the success that He is asking if we leave EVERYTHING on the altar and then act in complete faith. Ultimately it requires a mighty change of heart and a mighty change of mind. Our focus needs to be totally on our mission and our responsibilities here! These trainings from him have been exactly what I needed. We learned so many things from him in terms of doing missionary work better. I'm excited to implement them! But what was more important is how it inspired us to do better: to work harder and with more faith. And we've already seen the miracles from it!

This week, like I said, was pretty crazy, but we also had some amazing miracles the last few days too. We were able to find 3 new investigators still, and teach several lessons, some of which were not even scheduled appointments. And our branch president's wife came with us on joint teach last night even though she lives 20-30 minutes away and it was in the evening, and the lesson went super well! We're staying busy and we're very happy.

Keep being awesome and share the gospel!

Love

Sister Stevens