6 months down

Elder Stephan has now been out for 6 months, crazy huh? In one of Josh's letters it says, "Gosh i can't believe how fast time really does fly by when you're not thinking about it and doing the lords work!" He is doing amazing up in Canada.
This Transfer he was made District Leader!!!

His District!!

 Josh is very excited about having the leadership position and will serve well. He will continue to serve in Okotoks but he loves it there so he is very happy about that, and his companion is still Elder Fitamant!! He loves his companion, he is from France so he is still getting used to he American ways.

An amazing view of Okotoks! Elder Stephan with his companion Elder Fitamant

Elder Stephan has had amazing opportunities for baptism's these past few weeks! He has had 6 baptism's in a place where they hadn't had any for 9 months! "I feel like the Lord is putting those people in my path that are ready to receive the gospel! Everyone up here just keeps telling me, "oh Elder Stephan you are tearin it up here!!" i just say, "no the Lord is putting people in my pathway that are ready to receive his Gospel!!" -Elder Stephan

Melchor 3/17/12
 We had a baptism on Saturday for Melchor! He had been bailing on me all week long so Friday comes along and finally I'm like I'm going to hunt this man down!! So we hunt him down and end up talking to him and for the first 10-15 minutes he just sat there and told us how he was just going to stay in his religion and he was happy!! Well elder stephan, jsteph, call me what you want was not about to walk out of that household without him committing to baptism!! So the spirit just took over for the next hour!! I just told him that he knows its true but Satan is telling you that it's not!! We talked about the priesthood authority, i just throw down on him while the French man just sat and looked at me with such a blank look....it was honestly priceless!! So then an hour later after I had honestly just gone off I said " Now Melchor will you be baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of god!!" and he was like "what time tomorrow!!" it was absolutely sick!!!! So anyways because he had bounced on us all week long we still hadn't taught the word of wisdom so we taught the word of wisdom to him and we were like will you live the word of wisdom and he was like "yes!! Yes I will!!" so I was like "well do you have a problem with any the word of wisdom?" and he was like "nope I drink tea once a month and coffee like once every two weeks and I'm fine with drinking hot chocolate or warm soup!! I just drink it to warm my body up!!" so then I was like "well when was the last time you drank coffee?" and he sat there for a minute and was like well on Sunday I drank it!" In my mind I was like "oh no!!" because they have to be living the word of wisdom for at least 1 week! So it would of been 6 days!! So all I said is okay well let's do the baptismal Interveiw tonight, but keep your phone near by so we can call you and tell you what time to come! Because at this point I was going to go talk to the Zone Leaders and see if he could, and I didn't want to tell him that he couldn't because he broke a commandment that he didn't know about! So anyways I go to the church and talk to the Zone Leaders , and they were like " well sounds like a great man, I can't wait for his baptism next week!!" and I was like "wait hold on here, the lord provides a miracle for this man to be baptized tomorrow and you two are going to sit here and tell me that he can't be baptized!!!" I was so mad!!! They were like "elder stephan he has to be clean for 7 days!!" all I said is "ya it's been sick and he didn't know about that commandment when he broke it!!" they were both like "no he isn't getting baptized!!" I felt like saying then get your butt home because our whole purpose is to invite people to come unto christ through baptism!! So anyways they left and I was just like this is not right!! So I just was like I'm just going to call the AP's and see what they think! So I call them up and they were like "well we both had investigators with the same problem and president let us baptism he so go ahead and give president a call and see what he says!! So I called up Big President Archibald and just told him what was going on! You want to know what he said....? EXACT WORDS..... "BAPTIZE THAT MAN TOMORROW!!!!!!" I was like thank you president!!

Veronica, 3/10/12.
Everyone came to this baptism because it was the only baptism in the entire mission!!
Josh was very excited about that because President and Sister Archibal, the AP's, Zone Leaders,
 even Zone Leaders from other zones with investigators, and the senior missionaries
that work in the office got to be there!!

Josh is loving his mission!! He tell's us all the time how happy he is and how much he is truly enjoying serving in Canada! Here are some more pictures from his mission!!

Elder Shertliff (old companion) and Josh at the Cardston, Alberta Temple

Now he is a real canadian:)

just chilling on a horse, pretty normal!

I guess they wanted to see if they could fit in the box!

His favorite place to eat!

6 month tie burning:)

Sweat's he got for christmas from mama steph!!

His Zone!!

Elder Stephan has 4 more weeks of this transfer and than we will know where he will be next!!! We are very proud of Josh and all the hard work he is putting into his mission!!!:) Keep Elder Stephan in your prayers, he needs them!!:)

This is a video of him burning his tie for his six months!!!:) hahaha of course they used gasoline!!!