Week 86 Jardines Obregón

Hey guys! 

Here we are in week 2 of this new transfer. This week had it´s ups and downs. The lousy news is that I´m still sick with stomach problems. I´m getting better though. I had the fun experience of having to poop in a cup, hahaha. Hopefully they can figure out what happened to my stomach that doesn´t let me eat. I just have to remember what I always told myself towards the beginning of the mission when dumb crap happened. "It´s all part of the mission."

This week we actually had the leadership council again. Nothing crazy happened there, but what happens next week will be pretty awesome. We´ll have our zone conference with a seventy. I´m actually pretty pumped. It looks like it might be a triple-zone conference too which would be amazing. Me and my comp can train pretty well together, we´re gonna see if we can impress a general authority.

The good news is that our zone is doing amazing. 9 of the 11 companionships got changed and things just went up. An area of frito elders that hadn´t brought investigators to church in 9 weeks got changed to sisters. The sisters, without knowing the area, the members, the investigators, nothing, brought 2 investigators to church with a baptismal date. Every single companionship had investigators in church and as a total in the zone we had 38.

Here´s a funny experience for the week:

   Yesterday my companion and I were waiting for a bus on the way back from the hospital. Two guys approached us wanted to talk. They were hipter-like mexicans wearing flat-billed hats. They started talking to us and they were pretty cool. After they got our confidence they started their sales pitch. Beforehand, we didn't even realize they were salesmen.

   The guy opens a box and is like "you guys are super cool and awesome for doing the mission and all, it got me thinking that you guys might like to buy some super delicious flavored tic-tacs from the USA."

   We looked at the guy and and his candy and my companion was like "umm, those are actually lemon heads, and we´re good. Thanks for the offer though."

   The guy wouldn´t accept no for an answer after wasting 10 minutes talking to us. He started up "don´t you guys believe in the bible and the bible says that we should serve our fellow man? Look at me, and just trying to make a living and you folks don´t want to be Christlike and help me out."

   Then my companion was like "Yeah, we believe in the bible. And the bible says something about the sabbath day. Thou shalt not work on the Sabbath day. Buying your candy would cause you to work."

   Salesman: "The sabbath day is on Saturday"

   Loveland: "Actually sir, the Sabbath was on Saturday, but it was changed to Sunday (The Lord´s Day) to remember the resurrection of Christ."

   Salesman: "No, the bible just says that we need to dedicate one day of the week to the Lord and it doesn´t matter what day!"

   Loveland: "Ok, then we pick Sunday as our day" Then the Saleperson gets a little upset, but continues on his sales pitch.

   Salesman: "Alright then, what do you guys think you´re doing working on Sunday by preaching the gospel?" 

My companion and I look at each other and I know we´re thinking the same thing, "Man, are you stupid or just really dumb" (Obviously we didn´t say that)

   Steele: "They don´t pay us to be here. We´re here voluntarily to invite others to come unto Christ. Obviously it´s something appropriate to do on the Lord´s day."

   Salesman: "You know the bible says that we should beware of them false prophets. What you guys teach is a message from a false prophet."

   Steele: "Well yeah, the bible does say that. But it doesn´t mean that every prophet after Christ will be false, or it would´ve just said that. But it invites us to look for their fruits to know which one´s are true."

   Salesman: "By their fruits ye shall know them. All right boys, answer me here a few questions." (I didn´t realize he was calling us false prophets). "Have you guys ever drunk alcohol?"

   Us: "No"

   Salesman: "Ever been with a woman?"

   Us: "No"

   Salesman: "Ever smoked mary jane"

   Us: "No"

   Salesman: "Ever smoked anything? Just a puff?"

   Us: "No, what are you trying to prove?"

   Salesman: (A little bit flustered) "Alright then! Have you guys are disobeyed what your parents have told you?"

   Us: "Umm, yeah"

   Salesman: "There we go! You boys are false prophets! So just buy my flavored tic-taks from the USA" He hands us the Lemon Heads again feeling victorious.

   Loveland: "Dude, what is your definition of a false prophet?"

   Salemsan: "Someone who preaches something and doesn´t live it himself"

   Loveland: "Umm, no. That would be everyone in the whole world. We all make mistakes"

   Salesman: "What´s a false prophet then?"

   Loveland: "Well, a false prophet would be someone who tries to trick people into falling into sin and not keep Gods commandments. What exactly are you trying to do to us right know?"

   Salesman: (Now completely defeated. In fact his friend thought all this was hilarious.) "You guys are so contentious!"

   Steele: "Look man. We´re just been sitting here for like 30 minutes doing nothing. You came up to us. All you want to do is sell us your candy and we´re not going to buy it. Good luck with some other people."

    Then he walks away super mad and his friend is laughing at him. We felt pretty awesome. What was cool is that 2 minutes later a lady sits down next to us and she was totally interested and she just asked about a thousand questions about the church.

I hope you got a kick out of that experience. I´m all out of time now. This week I´m hoping to feel a lot better. I love you guys a ton and hope you have a great week!

-Elder Steele

Extras to just family...

I´m hanging in here, but it´s been a pretty tough week. I´m pretty sure that Tanner weighs more than me now because yesterday I weighed myself and I weighed about 139 lbs. It was kind of a crappy scale but I think it´s accurate. That means I've lost like 21 lbs on my mission, weight that I didn't have in the first place. The treatment the doctor gave me apparently didn't work for what I have. We went to the hospital yesterday and I pooped in a cup, and they took out blood to test it. We should get the results soon.

I debated on whether or not to tell you guys that I´m still feeling pretty lousy because I don´t want you to worry. I feel a lot better today. I ate a bowl of oatmeal and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with toast. My stomach didn´t reject that. More than anything I´ve just been feeling super tired. Don´t worry though. Sister Myers is well informed and she calls me everyday to see how I´m doing. We were actually able to have lessons every day this week. I know this stupid stomach illness will pass soon.

Week 85 Jardines Obregón

Transfer week came again. 

That was fast. No big news on these transfers though. Elder Loveland and I are staying together here in Jardines. But out of the 11 companionships in the zone, 9 had changes. Another area of Elders got changed out and 2 Sister missionaries got put in. That´s good. Those elders were kind of fritos. Our zone now has 12 elders and 10 sisters. 

So I have kinda "sicky" news to give you guys this week. (Did you catch my pun?) When my companion and I both got sick we went to the doctor and found out that we have either amoebas or parasites. So basically our week has been pretty crappy. I don´t want to give you guys too many details. 

If you remember that last week was my birthday, and my companion decided to announce it in his talk during sacrament meeting. Well anyway, I got 2 cakes given to me. One by the bishop´s amazing wife. Another by Haydee, an innactive member, and wife of our investigator Isaac. When she gave us the cake, we were in her house and her brother/my convert Abraham was there also. It was pretty awesome to see him.

Speaking of seeing old converts, we had stake conference yesterday, and I saw my very first convert, Saul. He recognized me right of the bat. It was awesome to see him in a suit and tie and helping the other young men set up chairs and everthing. He was baptized last August.

That´s basically the week for me. I´m excited to meet some of the new missionaries in our zone. I can´t believe I only have 3 more transfers left until I´m home. In these three transfers I´m going to baptize a lot. I love you guys.

- Elder Steele

Notes from family letter:

I´m dying just a little bit. Not from not having money. We found out that we either have parasites or amoebas living inside us. I got sick on Wednesday morning and it was horrible. I´ve had diarrea since then and I haven´t been able to eat almost anything, even though I´m always hungry. The doctor says that my stomach and intestines are swollen, even though I appear to have lost a lot of weight. They put me and my companion on a 7-day treatment in which we are taking pills that supposedly are going to kill everything inside of us and clean us out completely. I´ve probably had amoebas for a long time actually, because it´s been a long time since I´ve eaten well and I always feel so tired because the amoebas are stealing my nutrients. It´s been pretty bad to be honest. If this treatment works, then we are going to get super swoll to end my mission. You gotta love Mexico.

Week 84 Jardines Obregón

This week we finally baptized again. Paola got baptized and confirmed this weekend! That broke our little rough patch of not having baptisms in a while. Our zone is doing pretty well too. In these last 2 weeks we´ve had 8 baptisms. 

This week we did divisions on 2 different days. During the first one I got to be with my old companion Elder Rojas. It was a pretty awesome day. When we were together in Pioneros we baptized Genesis and Abraham. They have a sister named Haydee and her husband is Isaac. They moved away and it turns out that they had moved to Jardines. We´ve been teaching Haydee and Isaac for about a month now and Isaac is close to getting baptized. I just thought it was an awesome coincidence that the same two elders that found them in another area got to teach them together 8 months later.

If you didn´t know. I´m 20 years old now. I feel pretty old actually. My birthday was pretty good. On Sunday morning, we read a text from the bishop at about 9:30 asking as to give talks during sacrament meeting that starts at 11:00. Pre-mission Elder Steele would´ve had a freak out, but my companion and I were able to write some pretty dope talks in the matter of 30-40 minutes. My companion in his talk decided to mention that it was my birthday, so everyone bombarded me after sacrament meeting. For dinner on my birthday, we made some good spaghetti and today we went to a pretty good burger joint called Oliver´s Grill. It was better than last years birthday. hahaha.

This transfer has definately gone by pretty fast. Next week we find out about the new transfers. The mission is smaller than it used to be and less missionaries are coming to the field. It´s fine though because we´re increasing our baptisms with less missionaries :) I hope to stay in the area at least one more transfer as zone leader, but I´ll be fine with whatever happens. That´s about it for the week. I love you guys.

-Elder Steele

Extras he wrote to family with such a good attitude...

I didn´t get the package yet. It´s all good though. I had a good birthday. The best birthday present is a baptism. Paola finally got baptized. And our zone baptized 5 this week!

Week 83 Jardines Obregón

Hey guys,

This week was pretty awesome. Not going to lie. To start it off. Tuesday we had our leadership council as a mission. We had to tell everyone that our zone only had three baptisms in July :( That kinda sucked, but all is well. We are working our butts off to try to get our zone to work their butts off. It seems like everything is working just fine. This weekend, our zone had 3 baptisms to start off August, so we already are doing better than last month.

Some things changed in the mission since the leadership council. Our new president, now that he has a little bit more experience has established his rules. I really like this guy. His mindset is: We are all adults, we all have agency, our eternal progression depends on the way we use our agency. So he´s pretty laid back. We can drink soda now :) :) :) He wants us to use our agency, the spirit, and discernment to make wise decisions instead of having 100 different rules for every different situation that could happen. He trusts us a lot more.

After the leadership council we planned our zone conference. Ours went really well. Normally the zone conferences are pretty easy to prepare because we train about what they taught us in the leadership council. This time they told us to train about something that wasn´t addressed in the council. We talked about Cultivating the Faith to Find. 

We came up with a pretty good idea. We bought a bunch of golden chocolate coins and on each of the gold coins we wrote the names of each of the investigators that are hopefully going to get baptized in August. There were 35 in total. We hid each of the 35 coins around the outside of the church. Then we told everyone to go outside to look for the coins. Obviously there were some that got super into it and ran outside looking for the coins, and there were some that couldn´t care less about finding a gold chocolate coin.

The point was to show them that finding investigators is the same way. If we´re super excited, then we´re going to find a ton of investigators. The people who didn´t even try kind of felt bad when they didn´t find anything and other people had coins that had the names of their own investigators on them, and that is exactly what I wanted for them to repent, hahaha. My bud, Elder Rojas found the most out of everyone. He´s a fun guy. We´re going to do exchanges with him tomorrow because he is going to have like 3 baptisms this Saturday. We´re going to drink a bunch of Coke to celebrate. Haha

Yesterday, we apparently experienced a "Solar Storm." It was pretty crazy. Apparently there were extra strong UV rays that were extremely dangerous, so dangerous that some wards decided not to start church until 6 PM. I didn´t feel anything, but if I get cancer after the mission, we´ll know why. jaja.

I´m trying to think of what else happened this week. We still didn´t have Paula´s baptism because her family still didn´t get to town. But for sure it will be this week. We went to 2 baptismal services in our zone and that was pretty successful. I´m about out of time. Thanks for reading my letter. I love you guys!

-Elder Steele

Week 82 Jardines Obregón

Welcome to August everybody! 

Wow the time flies by so fast. July ended pretty well. The whole last week we had beautiful cloudy days with amazing sunsets. It rained a little bit each day, which means that the streets were covered in mud. I forgot to mention in previous emails that we had a for-real sandstorm the other week. It was awesome and horrible at the same time. Awesome because I´ll never get to experience anything that like that again. Horrible because it was a sandstorm and I hate sand. We were sitting outside under a tin roof teaching a lesson and we had sand and dust in our eyes, and our clothes got completely ruined because it rained afterward. Basically it looked like the clouds had a brownish tint to them.

This week I achieved one of my goals. I made these goals during my first few months of the mission. They are:

-Baptize one person.

-Baptize a family.

-Baptize a TJ. (Jehovah Witness)

-Baptize a piña. (Those of you that served spanish speaking missions know what I´m talking about. Don´t judge me, it´s just a goal. hahaha)

-Baptize a cholo. (gangster)

-Baptize a couple after getting them married.

-Baptize a total of 30 people.

I still haven´t baptized a piña, a cholo, or 30 people. But this week I got a couple married! This week Paula and Luis got married! Paula still didn´t get baptized though, just because they are waiting until their cousins get in town this week so the baptism can be more special I guess. They are so awesome though. We never leave their house without a handful of food. The other day we ate a ton of molletes and then we ran all the way to our house because it was getting late. We about threw up before we got home. At the wedding we were just sitting there waiting and then someone pointed to us and asked if we were the witnesses. Another person responded and was like "no, they´re the mormons." It got us cracking up pretty good.

It seems like we´re going to have to play "Hitch" for the next little while because we have to more couples of investigators who are progressing but they need to get married. I think I need to make a new goal: "Baptize a 14-year old girl after getting her married with a cholo."

Talking about marriage, it seems like ever since I´ve been with Elder Loveland, more people have tried offering their daughters to us. They see 2 más o menos good looking gringos, and they also see a easy way into the United States.

Yesterday we were expected a lot more success than we had in church. We had 13 people that PROMISED they would go to church and 4 people even promised that they would be ready at 10:30 when we passed by for them. So what do we do? We walk a really long way through mud and heat in the Machi-Lopez and when we show up to each of the 4 different houses, 2 of the 4 aren´t even there, 1 of them is asleep, and 1 actually had a pretty decent reason for not being able to go to church. That is just bad manners and I´m kind of losing my patience with people. I´m really trying to develop more patience with people, but when I saw them, I directly told them that they were rude and they shouldn´t do that to people. They felt bad and hopefully repented. We had 1 guy in church, but a lot of the people had good reasons for not going, and we are expected them this following Sunday.

This morning we had an amazing zone activity that I planned. Basically our zone sucked this month and we only had 3 baptisms. 4 missionaries are dying this month and they just don´t want to work anymore. One in fact apparently hasn´t prayed in like 6 months. Unbelievable right? Other missionaries are just a little depressed. I´m trying all that I can to get these people to work. So this morning, we walked forever so that we could go to Sam´s Club and buy them donuts, brownies, and chocolate milk. So they all ate their donuts and chatted and then we sat then all down and kind of planched them. (planch is like chew them out, the english translation doesn´t really work.) We talked about the end of their missions and how they would like to feel in the airplane and then analized with them Helaman 10: 4-5. Then we invited some of the missionaries to share their testimonies about why they came to the mission, what were some of their aspirations when they got here, how the mission has changed them, etc. It ended up being really awesome. It was the first time in my 18 months in the mission field that I have been in a missionary testimony meeting. I think it really motivated them. Afterwards we took the zone to go bowling and they all loved that. I bowled and got a score of 130! Afterwards, we met up with some buddies who are zone leaders of a different zone at KFC, and a senior missionary couple was there and they bought us lunch. What a great day!

The sisters who are in our ward are kind of really needy, but they´re cool. This week we get a call as we are about ready to go to the district meeting. I answer and the sister says, "Elder Steele, our house is scaring us, we don´t know what to do, I think we have ghosts!" I was totally chill and a little annoyed about all the crazy calls we get from this sister. I responded like "Alright, we´ll talk about it in the church before the district meeting alright?" Then we hung up. Then we get another call and its the sisters again. "Elder, we can´t leave our room. We´re scared. Come outside our house and then we´ll leave." So that´s what we did. The sisters went to the church and us Elders went inside their house and blessed it. We "cast out un-clean spirits" you could say. I´ve actually blessed quite a few houses while on the mission. My companion and I got a laugh out of changed the song: "Who ya gonna call? ZONE LEADERS!"

Tomorrow we are going to the leadership council. I fully expect the assistants to planch me. I´m ready with new ideas to help my zone progress and not die too early. That´s pretty much what´s going on with me this week. We´re expecting a baptism this Saturday. Hopefully president gives us permission to go to the sea-food dinner they have planned for after the baptism to celebrate. That´ll be fun. Anyway, I love you guys. Have a fantastic week!

-Elder Steele

Week 81 Jardines Obregón

Hey guys! 

This week was pretty successful for us. Yesterday we had 4 investigators in church. We´re still working with Paula. She´s been to church 7 times and has wanted to be baptized since the first week. We´re just trying to help her get married. They want to get married too they just need to get motivated to do things. We actually contacted the missionaries in El Fuerte Sinaloa so that they could get her birth certificate sent to us. It should get here tomorrow. Then during this week they should get married and this weekend should be Paula´s baptism.

We kind of felt like spies trying to get the birth certificate of someone else all the way from a different state. We call up the Elders from El Fuerte. They tell us they don´t have money to get the birth certificate or to sent it to us, so we have to send them $200 pesos. We weren´t sure exactly how to send them the money so we decided to do it via Oxxo. It´s a little convenient store that´s all over Mexico. Apparently you can send someone large amounts of money from one Oxxo to another anyway in the country. But they actually didn´t let us send the money because we didn´t have Mexican IDs so we asked some random guy if he could give us a favor. Basically we used someone else´s name to send the money to Elder Cruz, so they could never trace the money back to us. Narcos could totally use this system to buy drugs from Sinaloa without getting the money traced back to them. haha.

We also have Juan and Elizabeth that are loving the church so much. It seems like they are getting closer and closer to getting married as well and we´ll have their baptism very shortly.

Here´s a fun short little story about a random 6 year old kid named Angel. I was sitting on the sidewalk wanting to die in the heat when I kid comes up from behind me and puts a toy gun up to my head. This kid was hilarious. He tried to get to know me a little bit. Then he asks me if I have a wife. I say no. He then asks me if I have a girlfriend. I say no. He kind of looked disappointed in me and I just laughed and asked him if he had a girlfriend. He says "Yeah, I do. And she´s 4" holding up 4 fingers. He then says "If you don´t have a wife, you don´t have a girlfriend, well, what do you have?" I didn´t know how to respond to this question so I just laugh. Then this kid is quiet for a little bit as he starts looking around. Then he says, "There´s girlfriends all over the place, grab one!" And he points to some girl walking by. I just thought it was funny how all this little 6 year old kid thinks about is getting girls. I didn´t even know this kid but he gave us a fun laugh.

That´s just about what time will give me this week. I love you guys and hope you have a great week.

-Elder Steele

Week 80 Jardines Obregón

Hey, we´re going to go back to our area. We´ve been in the bus station waiting for my companion to get from Guaymas. I get back online when we get to the cyber in our area...


Hey guys! 

This week was a pretty great week. It was the first week with my new companion Elder Loveland. He´s actually a pretty cool guy. I don´t know why, but he has a slight southern accent when he talks in English. He´s from Utah. He´s making me speak that way too on accident, but we get a laugh out of it.

Today Elder Loveland went to Guaymas to renew his visa and since yesterday I´ve been in divisions with the coolest guy in the mission, Elder Martinez. We had a great time together. He´s going home in 5 weeks. 

This week we finally were able to bring some progressing investigators to church again after a few really bad weeks. One of the people that came to church was Haydee. She is the sister of Genesis and Abraham. (My converts from Villa Bonita). A few months ago I randomly saw Haydee and her son Christopher in the street and I got their new address. We were finally able to visit them and she and her fiance went to church. 

Another story that I cant remember if I told has to do with a girl named Elizabeth. I´ve talked about her already. She is the 14-year old that just had a baby a while back. This week she was able to get her baby from the hospital. The amazing thing is that we invited her and her boyfriend Juan to get married and they said yes. Then we asked Elizabeth´s mom who was right there if she would be ok with that and she also said yes.

That has to be one of the most gutsy invitations that I have made on my mission. I told a 14 year-old girl that she was sinning and then invited her to get married in front of her mom. And they humbly accepted. Inviting someone to be baptized is nothing now.

I´m almost out of time. Right now we are going to go visit Paula, who should be getting married real soon. I´m not sure which day yet but we keep pressuring them. Thanks for all the letters you send me. Have a great week everyone!

-Elder Steele

Additional things mentioned this week:

Here´s some news that would be better if I didn't include it in the big letter. The sister missionaries who work in our ward got robbed this week. Someone broke into their house, stole 4 fans, a bag of colored pencils and markers, and yogurt and a donut from the fridge. Yesterday the sisters found the bag of colored pencils and markers outside their house. It looked like they decided to return it. We joke that the robber was just hungry and really hot and that´s why he just stole some fans and a donut.

Also, I think I´m used to the heat now. Our main AC broke the last week with Elder Yoo. So for almost 2 weeks we studied and ate in the bedroom. This week we got the big AC fixed and we´re doing fine now.