Week 47 Villa Bonita

Hey guys, 

This week was definitely a lot calmer than last week. We actually were able to get some of the things back that were stolen. I got my camera charger back and my comp got his wallet and debit cards that he had already cancelled.  The cholo had already spent all the money on his personal debit card before my companion could cancel it.  The rest of the stuff I'm sure is long gone.

We have a lot of investigators now. Here´s a little bit about them:

Orlando: He is best friends with 2 guys from our ward. He went to the Young Men´s camp and is in the ward choir and going to mission prep classes. Obviously he will be baptized very soon.

Andrea: She is Orlando´s mom. She came to church for the first time yesterday and seems really interested.

Marisol: She is Keylani´s mom. The president made me promise that Marisol would be baptized before he gave me permission to baptize Keylani. She is progressing slowing, but I know I can keep my promise.

Edgar: He has so many different ideas about the world and religion and science. It seems that whenever I teach him, the lessons are super intense and I teach really well. The last time we had a lesson with him, he wanted to practice his English, so I taught the plan of salvation in English. He kept telling me how everything that I told him makes so much sense to him. Edgar is the funnest investigator to teach because there are so many "wow" experiences where I can see in his eyes that he had just learned something new and important.

Pablo Ruiz: For some reason that old man didn't go to church yesterday, we´re going to find out why. This week, we taught him the Word of Wisdom which he thinks is amazing.

Ivan: He is a really smart 10 year old kid whose parents are inactive members of the church. He has been to church 3 times and wants to be baptized.

Juan Pablo: He is another kid whose older brother is a recent convert of the church. He is progressing slowly just because his parents always take them on trips every weekend and they hardly can go to church.

Luis Angel: He also didn't make it to church yesterday, but wants to be baptized because his girlfriend is the bishop´s daughter.

Eleazar: His wife and grandson are my converts. He seems to have no desire to quit drinking coffee and has stopped coming to church. Men sometimes are so much more difficult than women to convert.

Those are our main investigators. This Sunday we also had a miracle happen at church. A family of 6 showed up. No one knows who they are. One of them says that he lived in Utah for 5 years. He got back to Mexico and brought his whole family to the church. He wants to be baptized on Wednesday. The rest of his family will be baptized in the end of December. I talked to the president and he says it´s ok, so we will be having a baptism on Wednesday I guess. Miracles do happen.

Funny random story: So my comp and I met some guy and started to teach him. My comp was talking to him and the guy asked where my comp was from. When my comp said Puebla, he was surprised. He asked "If your from Mexico, why do you talk so weird? I understand the Gringo better than you." That was pretty funny. I did feel bad. It didn't help very much to boost my companion´s confidence, but it sure boosted mine.

Thanksgiving was awesome here. Because we are in the mission president´s ward, he invited our district to eat dinner in his home. There is a senior couple from California that cooked a very delicious Thanksgiving dinner. We ate turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, stuffing, corn, fruit salad, regular salad, and of course, tamales. It was perfect. I didn't know it was possible to find that food in Mexico.

That was my week. It was pretty amazing. It sounds like you all had a pretty amazing Thanksgiving also. I love you guys!

-Elder Steele

On a side note...This is what I just got from President. Last week I asked him to keep me in Pioneros, because we are almost at transfers again and we have a lot of investigators.

Esta haciendo un gran trabajo en Pioneros!!, usted quedara alli!!!

(You are doing a great job in Pioneros!!, You will stay there!!!  :)

This is Thanksgiving Dinner!!
The people are (left to right): Alex Munive, Elder Rojas, Elder Reader, Elder Funk, Sister Perez,
Sister Palmer, Sister Munive, Sister Downs, Elder Downs, Elder Morrison, Elder Poaletti,
Elder Steele, Sister Rodgrigues, Sister Patraca, and Kenny Munive.

Our Thanksgiving Dinner

Just hanging out!

After the dinner

Week 46:The Craziest Week of my whole mission so far...

Like the title says, this was the most crazy week of the mission. Here´s what happened:

Monday: 

We had been planning on changing houses, so we called the mission president Monday in the morning to see what the else we needed to do to be ready. He said everything was fine and that we should call the owner of the new house to get everything changed that same day. The new owner didn´t answer his phone and we waited for him to call us back but he never did, and we decided we would wait a few more days to change the house. We should´ve listened to the mission president.

Tuesday: 

After lunch on Tuesday me and my companion we going to go visit a lady who needed a blessing, but we didn´t have oil on hand, so we went to our house to go grab some. Our horrible week began when we walked in the house. First we noticed that there were keys sitting on the couch that were not ours and there were clothes and papers scattered around. We immediately recognized that we had been robbed.

I ran to the bedroom to see that the air-conditioner had be taken out of the wall and was sitting outside. I went outside and saw a man who has been working on the roof of the house behing us. Not thinking, I asked him what had happened. He told me that in the morning he saw a man who was taking down the AC. Another man then came and said that the AC was like that when they arrived at their job. They had said different things, the second man not hearing what the first man had said.

I recognized that they were the ones who had robbed us. From the bedroom window, I took a picture of one of the men with my camara. We then began searching the house for things missing. We found a lighter and an un-smoked cigarette in the bathroom. I noticed also that the plants near the wall behind our house had been stepped on, and not by us. We also noticed that there were many things of great value still inside the house. With all that evidence including keys left inside the house we came to the conclusion that we had arrived at the perfect time, those 2 men had just barely began to rob us. When they heard us arrive they ran as fast as they could, leaving behind personal items and items of great value in plain sight that they could have easily stolen.

The things that the did steal are: 5 flash drives: 2 of mine with music and 3 of my comps with pictures and music, my electronic razor, our portable DVD player with speakers, my flashlight and pocketknife, my camara charger, my comp´s wallet with debit cards, ID cards, temple recommend, insurance card, and Sam´s club membership card, my comp´s USB cable, my comp´s watch, 2 drawstring bags, and last but not least my flip-flops. My comp´s electronic razor was in plain sight but not stolen, and I also had a case full of money that they didn´t have enough time to find. (thank goodness)

We called a member (Cesar) to ask for help moving our stuff to the new house. We packed all of our luggage and went to drop it off at his house because we still didn´t have the key to the new house and we didn´t want the thiefs to break in and steal more stuff again. The member with the key was at the church for the mutual activity, so we drove with Cesar to the church because we also had a meeting with the ward mission leader. We planned on after the activity moving all our stuff to the new house. We waited till the end, telling the crazy story to the other missionaries and the members.

When the activity ended the youth were playing soccer when suddenly, Cesar´s 11-year old kid, Ezra lost all his strength and he appeared unconsious. Cesar put his son in his truck and told all the youth that live in Villa Bonita to get in the back of his truck immediately. (Cesar has to give all the youth a ride home after mutual). With about 25 people in the truck we all drove to the nearest doctor who told us that we needed to go to the emergency room. After Ezra was taken in we could all finally go to Villa Bonita. After all the kids were dropped off, I told Cesar to just drop us off and that we would just sleep in the house that had been robbed so that he could get back to his son. He did that, (and in case you were wondering, Ezra is much better now.)

We arrived at our house at about 10:30 and slept on couches in the living room because the bedroom had a huge whole in the wall. I stacked the beds and tables in front of where people could easily enter the house. I slept with a frying pan under the couch because it was the best weapon we had. I was really scared that people would break in again.

Wednesday:

I woke up after dreaming all the what could´ve happened that night. Everything was fine, but we had a lot to do. First of all, my companion needed to cancel his debit cards, so we went first thing in the morning to do that. Unfortunately, at the bank he couldn´t find his card in the system and he didn´t have any form of Identification, so that was a pain. We then called the owner of the house to tell her what happened, (she was pissed). After that we called Cesar to see how his son was doing and if we could get our stuff from his house. He had gotten home from the ER at 7 in the morning. He is such a good guy and helped us get the few necessary things to our new house.

We could finally start proselyting. We walked by Brother Iriarte´s house to talk to them for a little while. They were obviously concerned when we told them that we were robbed. Then his wife surprised us; without us telling her, she told us all the things that had been robbed from us, down to the flip-flops. The man that robbed us had tried to sell all of our stuff to her in her store. The man in the picture in my camara was the same man who had tried selling her my stuff. Apparently he goes to her store almost every day.

That day it was difficult to focus on teaching. When night came, we decided we would carry a few more things from our old house to our new house. When we entered the house the back door was open! Someone had broken in again. He smoked his cigarette and took his lighter back. I imagine that he was looking for his keys that he left. He didn´t find them because I had them in my pocket. We wondered why he would be so dumb to leave the back door open. My companion noticed that the bathroom door was closed. Being scared, my companion quickly pushed on the door to see if it was open. When it didn´t open, he told me that the thief was in our bathroom and I should call the police. I did. While waiting for the police to arrive, I grabbed the frying pan and opened the bathroom door ready to kill someone. The door opened, but there was no one. Luckily my comp was wrong.

The police got there and I told them everything that had happened from the past two days. After we went to the new house to sleep.

Thursday:

In the morning on Thursday we had a multi-zone conference in Obregón. After we were able to talk to the president a little bit more about what happened. When we returned to Villa Bonita, we decided to pass by the old house. I don´t think we were even surprised to see that the bars on the window had be broken off, the window was broked and the AC was gone. On the ground we saw a key to a car, a blade that was used to try cut the pad-lock off the door, and a tool that they used to brake the bars or the window free from the house. The neighbor was there and she told us that the police had been there the night before and that she was really scared.

We tried opening the door with the key, but they had messed with the door from the inside so that we couldn´t open it even with the key. I entered through the window, hoping not to find people inside. I didn´t find people, but so many things were knocked over and I could smell so much marijuana that had been smoked inside our house the night before. I used a knife to open the door from the inside. We noticed that our little electric stove had been stolen along with the AC. The rest was still there.

We called the owner of the house again (she was even more pissed) and we told her that we were going to put all her things in our new house. We then called Brother Iriarte who helped us put everything in his truck and haul it all to the new house.

Friday:

During all this time, we had been planning a baptism for a little girl named Keylani. Friday night was the day of her baptism. Friday morning was the day of her interview. The zone leaders had to add to the stressful week when they showed up 45 minutes late for the interview when Keylani had to make it to school. While waiting for them to show up, I called every member that I had in my phone to invite them to the baptism. The interview went well, and while it was happening, we taught Keylani´s mom and set a baptism date.

After the interview, the zone leaders told me that we needed the signature of Keylani´s stepdad and not her mom. I thought that was crazy because they´re not even married and he has nothing to do with Keylani. The step-dad was working and wouldn´t return until 11:00 that night. I was so worried that the baptism wasn´t going to happen that I called the mission president. After 20 minutes of talking, I convinced him to let me baptize Keylani, with one condition: I promised that Keylani´s mom would be baptized.I was so relieved.

As we were finishing planning the baptism, I get a call from Keylani´s mom. She tells me that we have to postpone the baptism because Sarai was sick. Sarai is the member that has been bringing Keylani to church for the last 6 months. I said that would be ok. Stressed again, I had to call every single member that I invited earlier to tell them that there wouldn´t be a baptism and that it would be Sunday in the morning.

Friday night I had my first baptism interview as District Leader for a guy named Chalo. He would be getting baptized Saturday night. (which was the original date of Keylani´s baptism) The interview went really well and we finished the night playing piano in the chapel with him and the sister missionaries who taught him. Playing the piano is a great way to conquer stress.

Saturday:

Nothing crazy happened on Saturday. Jose, (Yu-Yo´s friend from last week) apparently cried to his mom telling her that he didn´t want to go to the discussion that we had planned. That surprised me. We had another lesson with an 8-year old named Genesis and her mom. She will be baptized on December 12th. We had a lesson with Luis Angel, (the bishop´s daughter´s boyfriend) and his sister. The lesson went well and he accepted another baptism date. After that lesson, Luis´s sister almost kissed my companion. My companion did absolutely nothing to stop it from happening. That was funny.

Saturday night was Chalo´s baptism. I got the opportunity to baptize him. Of all the member´s that I invited to the baptisms, one showed up. It´s a good thing that Chalo invited a lot of family so that the baptism wasn´t completely empty. After the baptism, we bought Choco-flan for Keylani´s baptism.

Sunday:

We woke up early on Sunday to make it to the baptism that would happen at 9:00. We got there to try to warm up the water and make the program. The baptism went really well. I don´t have any pictures of it because my camara died and my charger got stolen. Another sister should be sending me the pictures.

Church was absolutely amazing. We had 5 investigators at church even though during the week we had hardly been able to teach. The investigators were: Marisol (Keylani´s mom), Luis Angel, Pablo Ruiz (the old man from last week), Genesis, and Jesus Orlando. There were 2 confirmations in the ward, and the mission president was present. :) In total, my district brought 9 investigators to church.

After church, while we were helping make lunch, one of the sister missionaries set her long hair on fire with the gas stove. (we noticed it time, and it only burned the very end of part of her hair. Poor girl, I felt really bad. She joked that always after a good thing happens, a bad thing follows. (She was the sister who baptized Chalo.)

This Morning:

We woke up to the angry owner of the house calling us. She was mad that the house was so dirty. I told her, "well, we got robbed, what do you expect." We went over to the house and cleaned everything for her. Afterwords, she told us that we needed to pay to replace the window and the AC because she never charged a deposit. I was super pissed, and straight-forward told her that not charging deposit was her fault and it says so in the contract. We weren´t even staying in the house anymore when they broke the window and robbed the AC, and we called her on Wednesday to tell her that. Anyway, no it feels like I´m ranting so I´ll stop here.

Something interesting that I forgot to mention is that in this week I started learning Italian. I bought il libro di mormon and I´m studying it and writing the things that I learn. It´s amazing how much easier it is to learn your third language than your second language. My goal is to be tri-lingual by the time my mission is over.

That was my week. If I have another week like this, I might go home. Jk, haha. Not really, actually I´m glad things like this happen. I came to the mission expecting things bad to happen so I could have a fun experience. I´m just thankful it´s over and now I can focus 100% of my time on my investigators. If you made it this far in my letter, I truly love you. Have fun in Utah guys, and happy thanksgiving everyone!

-Elder Steele

Just updating the Blog for this week because Sister Palmer sent him the photos of the baptism.  Yay!!

Keylani's baptism photo

This is Keylani, Marisol-her mom, and the lady who has been bringing her to church.

The other little girl is Zuri. She is Keylani´s little sister. 
She is only 7 years old and she bore her testimony in sacrament meeting yesterday.
It was pretty awesome. I was really proud.

This photo is with Sister Palmer, Sister Perez, and Chalo, their convert.

Week 45 Villa Bonita

Hey guys, 

This week was pretty good. I made myself a goal at the beginning of the week that I would baptize a little girl named Keylani on the 21st of November. We've been trying to teach her for a long time, but she just likes to play and doesn´t pay much attention. We decided that we would make games out of the missionary lessons and teach her in a member's home. The games we made kinda sucked, but they were good enough to keep her attention for 20 minutes and at the end she earned candy if she listened well. After the first lesson, she got excited for the next lessons, and now she is excited for this Saturday when she will be baptized. She has been to church about 20 times, previous attempts to teach her failed, this week I committed to doing all I could to get her prepared to be baptized. We´ll see if everything works out on Saturday.

We had two more investigators come to church for the first time this week, Pablo and Andrés. Pablo is an old retired elementary school teacher, and Andrés is cholísimo. A él le gustan mucha las drogas. It was a cool Sunday, we were standing with Andrés on the side of the highway waiting for the bus when Pablo pulled up with his car and offered us a ride to church. I have never had an investigator give me a ride to church, he even gave a ride to our other investigator. The Sacrament meeting was perfect because it was the Primary Program. I sat next to Pablo as he watched the little children speak and sing in front of everyone. It impressed him a lot because he works with little children as a living and never had seen such wonderful kids in his life, so powerful in sharing the gospel.

Speaking of little kids sharing the gospel, we had a lesson with an 8 year-old recent convert to the church named Yu-Yo and his best friend. Yu-Yo was so hilarious during that lesson and so direct in preaching the gospel. Starting out he immediately asked his friend if he wanted to be baptized and what he needed to do to be a member of the church. He told his friend that if he goes to church he has to stop saying bad words and stop hitting people. I just let him go on and on talking because it was hilarious and actually pretty powerful words he was saying to his friend. After the lesson, Yu-Yo chewed us out for not reading from the Book of Mormon during the lesson. He also asked us if he could be a mini-missionary and wear a white shirt and tie, carry a heavy back-pack and walk all the way to the church. That kid in 10 years is going to make an awesome missionary.

Now we go from little kids to old people. This week, we planned a district activity to sing in a retirement center. It was a pretty awesome experience. Old people make me laugh just as much as little kids sometimes.

I realized that I hardly talk about my investigators in my emails, so I´ll write a little bit more about some of them.

Luis Angel is the bishop´s daughter´s "boyfriend". He is a super cool kid, he just needs to come to church on Sunday. He goes to every single mutual activity. He is 15 years-old, which is the perfect age for me to be able to give him a hard time about being lazy and not waking up for church. He´s coming along slowing, but he will be baptized as soon as he starts coming to church.

Marco Antonio is a new investigator who is 13 years old and also good friends with some of the members of the ward. He understood the Restoration faster than anyone that I´ve ever seen. After the first night, he had read 3 Nephi 11 prayed, received an answer and everything. The problem is that he has gone to the Catholic Church every week for ever and his parents aren´t gonna let him come to our church. A little more work with his parents and he will be baptized.

Edgar is about 24 years old. At first he had a ton of doubts about Christianity in general. When we started he believed in God, but not the Bible because it has become changed and corrupt. He reads a lot of things on the internet which have put a lot of doubts in him and it is difficult for his to believe anything.  We taught very simply, but very powerfully the Restoration with focus on the Book of Mormon and the Holy Ghost. He ended that lesson with a prayer in which he thanked God that he gave him the opportunity to have the Book of Mormon, which he hoped would be the answer to all his doubts. He told us that he would go to church yesterday, but didn´t show up.

Eleazar is Elvias husband. He is super old and loves coffee. He thinks it is wonderful that his wife and grandson were baptized, but he doesn´t want to be baptized quite yet.

Juan Pablo is another little kid. He is 9 years old, lives across the street from Keylani, and his older brother is a recent convert. He is a lot more mature than Keylani and enjoys listening to us even when we don´t have a game to play. His problem is that his family almost always goes on trips every weekend which doesn´t allow them to go to church. He has been to church 2 and wants to be baptized. I believe that he will be my next baptism after Keylani.

That´s my week and a little more information about some of the people that we are teaching. Hope you didn´t get boring reading it all, haha.

-Elder Steele

Week 44 Villa Bonita

Hey Guys! This week was a pretty good week for me here. We had another baptism. We baptized Elvia, who is the Chuy´s grandma. We had the baptism in between to sessions of Stake Conference so that was a little stressful because of the time limitation. Everything worked out perfectly.

Stake Conference was pretty interesting because an area seventy came. In Mexico, things are a little different. This guy came and was super direct and in three sessions of conference he chastized the whole stake telling them what they were doing wrong. It was really interesting to watch as he had bishops come to the front to answer questions and publicly correct them for their mistakes. 

The wife of the president, Sister Munive, gave a talk and she had a few missionaries sing a primary song as the opening part of her talk. Me and a few other missionaries sang La Familia es de Dios (The Family is of God). It was fun and we sounded pretty good.

This week it is finally cold! Too cold actually in the morning when we have to take freezing cold showers. So, usually when we have time, we heat water up in a bucket and use that water to take showers. It kinda sucks, but it's better than freezing cold showers on a cold morning. During the days it feels amazing outside and it really helps give us the motivation to talk to everybody. I´m getting along great with my new companion, (I think I said last week that he is from Oaxaca, that was a lie, he is from Puebla.)  

Thanks for all your support and letters, I love you guys a lot!  Hasta Luego!

-Elder Steele

 We baptized Chuy´s grandma, Elvia!

The people in the photo are (left to right): 

My companion Elder Rojas, Carlos (Chuy´s best friend), Michelle (Carlos´little sister), 

Marlene (Carlos and Michelle's grandma and Elvia´s best friend), 

Elvia, Chuy, Eleazar (Elvia´s husband), and me.

This is what I made myself for breakfast. It is a Mexican version of the Sunshine Skillet from Bob Evans. 

It has an egg on the bottom, and inside it has chorizo, salchicha, tomato, and onion. It was super good.

Week 43 Villa Bonita

Feliz Día de los Muertos! Actually thinking about that phrase, it´s probably not something one should say, but oh well. This week was a good week. I got my new companion, Elder Rojas. He is from Oaxaca Mexico. He will complete his one-year mark in 9 days, so that will be fun. He´s an extremely interesting guy.

This week was mostly just adjusting to a new companion again. Not much happened. The most exciting was Halloween even though it´s way different here in Mexico. Kids still dress up and go house to house in the safe neighborhoods. Because of 3 holidays in a row, not a lot of people were at church. In fact, none of our investigators. That hasn´t happened in a long time, but we knew that they were just out of town visiting cemetaries and stuff like that.

The best news of the week is that the Royals won the World Series! I imagine everyone is going crazy in Kansas City right now. Here we´re gonna keep working. We have a lot to do. We met a new guy named Edgar who seems to have a lot of potencial. We should have a baptism in the next week or 2 with Elvia. She´s just old and learns slow, but she is a really great lady who has a lot of faith. We have a lot to teach her, and I hope we can baptize her this Saturday.

We had a little taste of Halloween.  We got a little bit of candy 3 suckers and a Mexican-brand Tootsie Roll. All the suckers were caked in Chilli. I´m starting to like it finally. Spicy Candy.

That´s it for the week. Congratulations Royals!

-Elder Steele

My new companion, Elder Rojas