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.

Week 79 Jardines Obregón

Hey guys,

My letter is going to be really short today. Today was transfers. Elder Yoo went to Navajoa. I´m gonna miss that Korean a lot. He isn´t zone leader anymore, which should be good, so that he can take it easy for the last 3 months of his mission. They did put him with one of the most lazy missionaries (and fattest) missionaries in the mission. Elder Yoo is going to work him to death, jaja.

My new companion is Elder Loveland. He seems like a good boy. He is from Alpine Utah and was the fastest promoted missionary in the mission. He was put as zone leader when he had just finished his 4th transfer in the field. Now he has one year and a lot of experience as zone leader. (He is also the richest companion I have ever had too. That´ll be nice.) jajaja.

I think Elder Yoo was happy to go. Just for the fact that our ward is so un-organized. Yesterday in Elders Quorum, the Elders Quorum president started giving the class, or in other words, he read the book for about 30 minutes. Everyone was so bored, Elder Yoo and I remembered that the Stake President was in the building, so we left to invite him into the class. He reluctantly came in, sat down, and fell asleep. After 10 more minutes, he woke up and walked out. So much for training the priesthood leaders in their callings.

Well, That´s it for the complaints this week. Here´s a few fun stories:

It finally rained!! On Tuesday we were teaching a lesson in the middle of the Machi-Lopez in front of some Cholo´s house. It started to rain so hard, and instead of inviting us inside, he told us to come back another day. So we left, and we didn´t have anywere to go. The Machi is known as the most Ghetto area of all Obregón. The streets are all dirt, and because of the lack of drainage system the streets turned into rivers. We got completely drenched, but I enjoyed it honestly.

I have another story, but the Cyber guy is kicking us out because he wants to close. I love you guys, have a fantastic week.

-Elder Steele

Week 78 Jardines Obregón

Well, this week was a little bit interesting. We actually didn´t do a lot of working because my companion still wasn´t feeling too great and we had a lot of meetings. We took it easy and it was worth it, because my companion seems to be doing a lot better. I also took advantage of my time and I learned the Korean alphabet this week. I don´t know when I´ll have to use it, but I feel a lot smarter now. We´ll have to thank my mom, because President Munive let us borrow his inversion table until it sells. We figured out today how to use it. I don´t really like it that much, it makes me all light-headed, but it´s not for me, hopefully it fixes my companion´s back.

So this week our new president, President Myers arrived with his wife. On Wednesday we had our leadership council. They are so different from President and Sister Munive. They seem to be really laid back. When I first met him he, he asked me where I was from, and when I said Kansas City he started talking about how good the Chiefs are. It was a little odd. His wife seems super awesome too. I´m pretty sure she knows spanish better than all of the Mexicans here. President Munive is different because he is super intense. When he walks into a room, you just feel the power, and everyone is nervious to be chewed out. I think that I´m really going to like the new president. The only problem is that they don´t know anything yet about being mission presidents, and they are basically giving the assistants the control to make all the decisions. So basically we still can´t drink soda. :(

On Thursday we had a multi-zone conference so that President and Sister Myers could introduce themselves to our two zones. Tomorrow we will have our zone meeting in which we will train on how to learn languages, with an emphasis on learning English. It should be interesting.

We don´t have much good news as far as proselyting goes. We were in the house all week almost and we only had 9 lessons. But we will be working harder than ever this week and will have investigators in church next week and baptisms within the next 3 or 4 weeks. We stopped teaching David, and will teach him again in August when he gets back from vacation. We did go to a baptism on Saturday of Karolina, who is best friends of Elder Yoo´s convert, Yahayra. They are both amazing converts.

That´s about it for our week. I forgot to wish everyone a happy 4th of July! Have a great week everybody!

-Elder Steele

Week 77 Jardines Obregón

Hey guys, it was another pretty intense week with a lot of ups and downs.

If you remember, I told you all that we would be having 2 baptisms. Well, we didn't have any. Early in the week, Josueth told us that he couldn't get baptized. Basically, Josueth´s sister is a super inactive member that lives in Tijuana, we can tell because she lives in a free union and seems to not know anything about the church. She told Josueth´s grandma (who is his guardian), that Josueth shouldn't be baptized until he is a lot older, but he could keep going to church if he wants to. So they convinced him that he is not smart enough to make his own decision, even though he is 12 years old. What a dumb sister, and a dumb grandma.

And David... David´s story makes me even more mad. David was progressing really well, we planned his baptism and everything. When we had his interview, everything went perfect. We made sure that the baptism was going to be ok with his grandma. She is his guardian because his mom died and his dad is in jail somewhere in the US. She said that it is fine if he gets baptized. We asked if she could sign the paper, she said that she couldn't read or write. We though, ok we´ll just have David´s sister sign the paper.

The next day was the baptism, we filled the font, invited everyone, 8 of our converts came, other missionaries brought their investigators to see the baptism, and David didn't show up when he said he would. We went to his house to go get him. When we finally got there, we yelled for him, and he came out looking really depressed. His grandma apparently told him last minute that getting baptized was "nonsense." She left town and locked David inside the house. Someone really stupid apparently told his grandma a bunch of dumb things about the church the night before. We tried everything, we told David "who cares what your grandma says, jump the fence! Let´s go!!" He looked super sad and didn't want any problems with his grandma. He said that if he disobeyed his grandma, she would never let him go to church again.

You guys have no idea how badly I have lost my patience with stupid people. In David´s house, literally everybody smokes marijuana, drinks, and are elementary school drop-outs. Everyone except for David. He is incredibly smart, he actually got a scholarship for High School, and plans to go to Japan to be a foreign-exchange student. I don´t know why he got placed in the dumbest family on the face of the earth, but that´s life. I walked away from that house back to the church just feeling so much anger for how much power Satan has over people who are mentally ill.

The worst part is walking in the baptismal room, after everyone has been waiting forever, looking into the eyes of all my converts and telling them the David can´t come because his grandma locked him inside the house.

That day got even worse after the failed baptism. Elder Yoo when he woke up that day was literally dying. We could barely walk to the church for the baptism in the first place. After the baptism, we went to the hospital where they connected Elder Yoo up with a bunch of suero. While he was sitting in the hospital bed for like an hour, I was sitting on the floor waiting. I have felt so bad these past weeks, and this week especially, watching my companion suffer so much pain. I bought us some Subway after the hospital, and then we went home and he rested.

After we rested for a bit, we went back to the church to teach our English class, then we went right back to the house. At that point, it was getting late, so I decided to start making dinner. I made Quesadillas de Carne Asada with an awesome salsa and guacamole for my companion and I. They were delicious. It was the least I could do for Elder Yoo. That night Elder Yoo suffered more than ever, I really thought "he can´t go on like this." He amazes me so much.

There was another baptism on Thursday from the other elders in the zone. We went to support them. It was the baptism of the son of Marcela, who is a really sweet lady that I interviewed when she got baptized. It was a super hectic baptism with way to many children, and I was conducting the program. When the ordinance was going to start, I noticed that Marcela´s youngest son wasn't in the room. I was going to be the witness of the baptism, so I told Marcela that we should have her other son see the baptism, so we left the room to find him. We were gone maybe 15 seconds, but by the time that we returned they had switched witnesses and baptized Marcela's son. Marcela didn´t see her son get baptized. I don´t know why they can´t think before they do things. Marcela was obviously really upset that they jumped the gun, and I felt guilty that I was the one that told her to find her son. I think I was more mad how unorganized the service was and how unobservant the bishop was.

Now I´m feeling bad that the majority of the letter seems pretty depressing. I´ll end on a high note. Yesterday, the Sister Trainer Leaders of our zone baptized 6 people! We went so Elder Yoo could play the piano. Being sister missionaries, their baptismal service was extremely well planned and super spiritual. President and Sister Munive showed up too, making it even that much more special. After the service, we took the last picture with President and his wife. Elder Yoo talked to president about his problem, and then president gave us a ride all around Obregón looking for a pharmacy that would sell the medication that could help my compa. President told him that if he doesn´t get better this week, that he would have to go home. So we have a ton of faith that the medicine will work. Elder Yoo didn't suffer 21 months already to go home early.

Another thing I almost forgot. Yesterday in church, another one of our converts, Ivonne, got a calling. They put her in the Nursery. 2 of Elder Yoo´s converts, Yahayra and Samuel gave talks in sacrament meeting. Yahayra did amazing. Like I said before, the most faithful members are our converts.

Now that I´ve written so much, I´ll come to an end. I´m looking forward to this week. On Wednesday we have the leadership council with our new president, President Myers. That should be interesting. We´re going to try to take things easy this week so that my compa can get better. I love you guys so much. Thanks for reading the letter!

-Elder Steele

This is a picture that we took last night with President and Sister Munive. 

They are gone now. President Munive and his wife came to the sisters baptism in which they baptized 6 people!

The new mission president should get here tonight. We have our leadership council on Wednesday, 

so I'll see him for sure then.

Week 76 Jardines Obregón

Wow, I seriously need to stop putting the week numbers. It´s making me all trunkie. Anyway, I hope you guys are still enjoying my letters. I stopped preparing them in advance, so I think the quality has gone done, but oh well.

Mom says that apparently today is the first day of summer. I thought it started like 3 months ago, but I guess it is just started. I hate the heat to be honest. I´ll probably move to Canada when I get home.

This week, we actually had interesting things to talk about. On Thursday, we had a Multi-zone conference with my old zone. The zone leader from that zone is probably one of my best friends in the mission, Elder Osborn. He arrived in Ahome in my place last year and baptized all my investigators, but I don´t hold any grudges or anything, he´s a pretty chill guy.

Anyway, Elder Yoo and I did not want to train, so we cleverly convinced Elder Osborn and his companion to do it. They really get me cracking up in their training. But the best part of the whole meeting is that I saw every single one of my companions, (except for Elder Rivas, who went home already). We took a picture with Elder Coello, Elder Martinez, Elder Juarez, Elder Rojas, Elder Alvarenga, and Elder Yoo. It was a pretty good time. I hope to get a hold of that picture soon.

That conference was basically the mission presidents farewell. We (Elder Yoo) prepared a sick piano arrangement for "Called to Serve" We made President and Sister Munive cry. It was pretty awesome.

The day after that we had another meeting in the mission offices. We had a leadership council via Skype with all the zone leaders in Navajoa, Guasave, and Los Mochis. I thought it was kind of pointless, we basically just told everyone how many baptisms we had and what we have been doing to improve. Our zone is doing pretty good. We always seem to land in 2nd place out of 7. I know it´s not a competition, but you guys know me.

This week, we weren´t able to teach Paula, who is the investigator who is going to get married to be able to be baptized. We went to her house, but there wasn´t enough time to teach her, but the good news is that they gave us two packages of carne asada (steak), a can of peaches, potato chips, and chocolate. It seems like we always leave that house with a handful of food. They are the best ever.

Our 15-year old pregnant investigator Elizabeth, had her baby this week. She had it at 7 months and had to have surgery. We actually haven´t seen her since last Sunday, but her family says she is Ok. 

The best news is that we will have 2 baptisms this Thursday. Josueth and David will hopefully be getting baptized. We had kind of a long drought without baptisms... 3 weeks, haha. After they get baptized, we should have more baptisms that closely follow: Paula, Alondra, Arisbeth, Elizabeth, and Juan.

Yesterday, something hilarious happened. My companion, Elder Yoo, get planched hard by a 13-year old girl named Kenia. She was pissed off that Elder Yoo told her that he couldn´t give her piano lessons. On Tuesday, she had asked him for a piano lesson during the mutual, Elder Yoo said no because we were supposed to have a meeting, and we were there for our investigators, Josueth and David. The meeting ended up getting cancelled, and towards the end of the mutual, David asked Elder Yoo to teach him a little bit about piano. So for 5 minutes Elder Yoo showed David a little bit about how to play a chord. During those 5 minutes, Kenia walked in and saw them and got mad.

Kenia knew that we were going to eat in her house yesterday. She prepared scriptures and questions to try to make Elder Yoo look like the devil. She talked about how if someone has talents and doesn´t use them to help people, then god will take away their talents. She told Elder Yoo that he was a liar and that God was going to take away his talents. She went on and on and honestly did an amazing job. She would make a great lawyer. I was trying so hard not to laugh.

To finish this short story that I made too long, we believe that her whole family is out to get us now. They made us a broth to eat which included chicken neck, nopal (cactus), and habanero peppers. We almost died. They acted as if the food was normal and that we should love it. The poor sister missionaries were there too. They couldn´t eat the food, and poured their food in our bowls. It was seriously the hottest food I have ever tasted, and chicken neck has the weirdest tecture to it. We´re pretty sure they did that on purpose, because they themselves didn´t eat the food.

Another quick story to end the letter. After a long day´s work with one of the young men from the ward, we went to buy hot dogs for him. We noticed some huge hot dogs wrapped in bacon, stuffed inside of a huge green pepper along with ham and cheese, which pepper was also wrapped in bacon. We asked the lady what exactly it was. The guy standing next to us told the lady to give us 3 of those Jumbo chile dogos and he paid. That immediately made us feel like that day was a success.

I can´t remember any more events of this week. This is the last week of President Munive, the new president gets here on the 27th. Thanks for reading my super long letter. I love you guys a ton. Take care!!

-Elder Steele

Week 75 Jardines Obregón

Hey guys! There´s is no real big news this week. It was really hot as normal, but not as hot as the last week, so I can´t complain that much. Yesterday, we had 5 progressing investigators in church again, which was amazing. Our recent convert Olga (who got baptized 2 weeks ago), got a calling as primary teacher. That made us pretty happy. It makes us happy to see that the most faithful members of the ward are our converts. I´m getting really frustrated with howly badly the church service goes on sunday due to the lack of preparation an faithfulness of the members. First of all, even the "active" members go to church an average of once or twice a month. The talks in sacrament are normally terribly boring, and the Elders quorum is pitiful. To make matters worse, our least favorite member of the ward just got called to be the Ward Mission Leader.

This week, I felt extremely bad for my companion. I found out a while bad that he has had a herniated disc in his lower back since long before the mission. This week, the pain was overwhelming for him. I wanted to help him so much, but felt so worthless. We had to stay in our house last Sunday after church, Monday a little bit, and Saturday almost all day long. I took advantage of the time and read a lot and studied a lot of spanish. I am almost done with the Old Testament. I´ve also learning a ton of Spanish slang and expressions that they say here, along with some higher vocabulary.

Here´s a little bit to know about our progressing investigators.

David: He is a 15 year-old kid that is progressing extremely well. He is incredibly intelligent and understands the doctrine really fast. He should be baptized on the 25th of June

Josueth: He is a 12 year-old kid. Unlike David, this kid is kinda retarded. We have to explain the things over and over and over again. Elder Yoo was actually teaching him since before I got here. Josueth things it´s funny when we get frustrated, and whenever we extend an invitation, he never says yes, but always, "probably", or "maybe," or "If God wants", or "who knows" and then he laughs. And he doesn´t do that because he is unsure, he just thinks it´s funny.

Alondra: She is really frustrating us. She wants to go to our church because her older sister is a recent convert. But she wants to do her first communion so that she can have her fiesta de quince años. That catholic church has apparently threatened her to kick her out of their church if she doesn´t come finish all her first communion, confirmacion, perseverancia and all that stuff. She knows that the Catholic church isn´t the true church, she goes just to be able to have a party when she turns 15, which is in 4 years!

Elizabeth: She just barely turned 15 and she is pregnant. This wouldn´t normally be that big of a problem because it´s pretty common here, but she lives with her boyfriend, so we have to get her married. The good news is that we have already taught her 19 year old boyfriend, and he came to church yesterday. We are also teaching her mom, and I think her mom with give her permission to get married so that she can get baptized.

Paula: She also needs to get married, but this one will be a piece of cake. Her husband is super awesome. He has been a member of the church his whole like, and not he is getting re-activated. He already had an interview with the bishop and is working on getting his credentials so that he can get married as soon as possible. He will baptize his wife as soon as they are married, and they will be married as soon as he gets his credentials, which should be the first week of July.

This week I also got to do divisions with Elder Coello, who was my trainer. It was kinda interesting since now I am his zone leader. We both have changed a ton since May 2015 which is when we together. He doesn´t drive me as crazy anymore, and teaches a lot better, and his district doesn´t hate him like they did when we were in Ahome. He learned how to let go of all the stress and be more laid back. It was kinda nice being with him and remembering all the memories we had in Ahome.

Now my time is about up. Thanks for reading my letter. Keep enjoying your summer. See you guys in 28 more weeks!

-Elder Steele

Week 74 Jardines Obregón

This Week was the hottest week I have experienced since last summer. Waking up and looking outside just makes me think "Why do people live here?" Walking outside makes me feel like the sun is baking me, and the wind doesn´t help at all, it just feels like a blowtorch on my face.

The good news is that we brought a bunch of new people to church. After baptizing 9 people last transfer, it didn´t leave us with very many progressing investigators. This week we had Paula, Alondra, David, Arisbeth, and Elizabeth in church, the last 3 being new investigators.

I took a count of all the people that were at church yesterday because of the missionary efforts. In total, there were 21 people that were either investigators, recent converts, less actives, or children of them who are less than 8. All of which, we are visiting. I know it´s just a number, but it made us happy that 25% of the attendance were people that we´ve been visiting.

Sorry for not writing so much this week, we are trying to plan a Family Home Evening that we are going to have in like one hour. I´m out of time though. Take care everybody. I love you guys.

-Elder Steele

Week 73 Jardines Obregón

Hey Guys! This week was transfers again. Me and my companion are still together. We have had a ton of success together. We had those 4 baptisms that I mentioned last week. In total, we´ve had 9 baptisms in 6 weeks of being together. Our zone had 14 baptisms in May, which is pretty good actually. It landed us in 2nd place again.

It´s always interesting that right before we have baptisms something bad always has to happen. It is Satan trying to stop the people from doing sacred convenants with God. This time, our investigator had a ton of doubts the day before her interview. We read her the interview questions, and she started freaking out about what we believe on Abortion and Homosexuality. She had a problem accepting those two things, she had to have an interview with President Munive. Also, the day of the baptism, some cholos decided to break into another church building. They broke the doors, windows, pulpit, pictures, baptismal font, piano, and some other stuff. They actually didn´t steal anything. They just caused chaos. The bishop of our ward works as a contractor for the church and they called him to go fix everthing. He was supposed to baptized all of the 4 investigators. (They were also baptisms in the other building too that day). So basically, we showed up to the baptism, the bishop calls us to tell us he can´t come.... But everything turned out good. 4 baptisms!!!

And my time is already almost up. I had to make a bunch of calls during my writing time, but whatever. These transfers were pretty crazy. Everyone was expected Elder Yoo to be assistant to the president, but President chose another Elder who was Jr companion to a District Leader. No one believed the transfers until we actually saw the guy with President. Poor new AP, he looks so nervous. Also in these transfers, they sent Elder Coello to our zone as one of the District Leaders. So that will be interesting. If you don´t remember, he is my dad, (the one that trained me). I will be sure to get mad at him as much as I can for everything his district does bad. The son is now the boss, hahaha. He should do a pretty good job.

I´m kind of stressing out for tomorrow. They assigned us to train during the Leadership Council Meeting. If you know me, you know that I don´t have anything prepared yet. We´ll see what happens tonight. I know for I fact I´m not as nervous as the new assistant though.

That´s about it for this week because of the time. Les amo mucho!!! BYE!!

-Elder Steele

Week 72 Jardines Obregón

Wow, I have never felt more satisfied in all my mission with the success that we are having. I feel like Elder Yoo and I click really well together. To be honest, we have never done a practice together, but our teaching has been super effective. This Saturday, we baptized Pedro, who will be going to the temple on the 28th to do baptisms for the dead with his family, who are also recent converts of ours. :)

This Friday we will have a baptismal service for Gregorio. We are also hoping that Olga and her two sons get baptized that day as well. They have gone to church 4 weeks in a row, have attended various church activities, and are in MOSIAH in the Book of Mormon. They still say they aren´t sure, but with faith, we will have 4 baptisms this Friday.

If you´ve been keeping track, with all those baptisms, it´ll be 9 baptisms in one transfer (6 weeks). Like I said, I´ve never felt more blessed in all my mission. The success that we having is because of our daily diligence in working hard, and our love that we have for our investigators. They are our glory. Yesterday, we were able to bring 8 investigators to church, 7 of which have baptismal dates.

We had another Zone Conference this week, so we had to plan another training. We just kept it really simple, really short, but super spiritual. It went really well I thought. It was actually President Munive´s last time doing Zone Conferences in all the zones. He announced a new change in the missionary clothing standards. The sister missionaries are now encouraged to wear dress pants instead of skirts, and we can wear hats and sunglasses. I don´t think I´ll wear a hat though, because I don´t want to look like a Jehovah Witness. 

This is already the last week of this transfer. Man the time goes by fast. But, this trasfer by far has been the most successful ever. I imagine my companion will be made the new asistent to the president next week. It´s either him or Elder Aleman, my old Zone Leader. It´ll be interesting for sure. Anyway, that´s about it for the week, it wasn´t a super detailed letter but oh well. I love you guys, Take Care!

-Elder Steele

Week 71 Jardines Obregón

Hey everybody. The weeks are flying by here in Obregón. This week the heat started for real, and it´s still just starting. I´m not ready for the 6 month long summer of intense heat... 

Here´s the status of the progressing investigators:

Pedro: He was the one that told us that he wanted to be baptized as soon as possible, but we have to help him stop smoking. He´s doing remarkably well. Actually his baptism is this Saturday. We have already baptized his wife, Ivonne, his daughter Milagros, and his mother-in-law Maria.

Olga: She is progressing really well too. Her 11-year old son Leonel read like 20 chapters in the Book of Mormon in like 2 days. She has gone to church 3 weeks in a row and has went the the mothers day activity. She sounds like she is pretty sure that she wants to be baptized. She has a few minor doubts/questions, but should be baptized with 2 of her sons next Saturday.

Gregorio: He is progressing slowly but surely. He always has a ton of questions. At first he didn´t want to rush a baptism because his sister got baptized but after many years of listening to the missionaries. She is actually a returned missionary and is helping us out a lot. He seems really interested in the church, and is planning on being baptized next saturday with Olga and her sons. It´ll be 5 baptisms in one day!

Those are the investigators that our progressing. This week, the most interesting thing that I did was that we had divisions with some other Elders. I got stuck being with an Elder with is known throughout the mission as the most annoying guy in the whole world. I got through it though. I just tried to ignore him the whole day. I don´t want to sound too negative, so I won´t get into the details.

On Thursday we will be having a zone conference. The last zone conference with President Munive. I feel like this next transfer is going to be super crazy getting a new president and everything. A nice little change will sure be what I need to keep working hard and finish the mission off strong. I love you guys a ton. Take care!!

-Elder Steele

Week 70 Jardines Obregón

Wow, this week was a pretty great week. Here´s some of the highlights:

On Monday, we had a Family Home Evening with our recent converts Maria and Milagros and our investigator Ivonne. We had 9 members present in that family home evening. It was perfect and what we needed to motivate Ivonne to get baptized.

On Tuesday we had the Leadership council. It was pretty interesting. The activity was that we had a baptismal service. The Ponce family finally got baptized. They are a family Elder Poaletti from Pioneros taught. I got to teach them a few times too. Elder Poaletti got transferred to Los Mochis as Zone Leader, but the family showed up as a surprise during the meeting and he got to baptize them. Another Sister missionary was there, Sister Garcia Soto, who had actually found the Ponce Family more than a year ago.

I got to see my whole old district during the baptism (except for Sister Cruz). It was great to see my son Elder Alvarenga again.

On Friday I had my first zone meeting as a zone leader. It was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to turn out. They want us to give the exact same training that we saw in the leadership council, so that´s what I did. It kinda takes away our creativity, but it´s super easy. I always thought that the zone leaders prepared all those amazing trainings, but they are just copies of what President and other leaders come up with.

On Saturday we had a baptism! Ivonne got baptized! Her husband Pedro also came to the service. He lives outside of our area so we haven´t been able to teach him yet. He went to church this week and last week. When he showed up, he told us that he also wanted to be baptized so that he could get sealed with his family in the temple. I was actually mopping the baptismal font when he said that, and I was just like, "alright, how about May 28th?" He said yes. We weren't even in a lesson and were able to place a baptismal date. It was pretty awesome.

Sunday was super awesome too. Obviously the best part was when I got to talk to my family on Skype. Another great part was when 5 investigators showed up to church by themselves with baptismal dates. I've been amazed how chosen all of our investigators are. All have read a ton in the Book of Mormon, have said their prayers, and walk to church on Sundays. They are self-sufficient, which means that when they are baptized, they are going to stay active.

Olga: She is amazing. She is a single mom with 4 sons. 3 of them live with her and she has brought them to church. She is almost to 2 Nephi in the Book of Mormon already. She seems to fit in perfectly at church. Her problem is that she went to church years ago with one of her friends. The missionaries never started teaching her, but they did teach and baptize her friend, who went inactive afterwards. Olga doesn´t want that to happen to her. I know it won´t, and I can already tell that she knows that the church is true.

Gregorio: He is kinda weird honestly. His sister is a returned missionary. Yesterday was the first time that Gregorio had gone to church. His problem is that his sister took like 12 years to be baptized, so he doesn't want to rush the decision either. He always has a ton of questions.

Pedro: I already talked a little about him. I just want you to know just how chosen this man is. He volunteered in the Elders quorum to make the food for the mothers day activity this Wednesday. We are going to try to teach him as fast as we can so he can be baptized as soon as possible. We are thinking of changing his goal to the 21st of May so that he can go do baptisms for the dead with his family on the 28th when they go to the temple.

Well, that´s just about it for today. I have more investigators, but those are the five that are progressing. I´m loving it here in Jardines. Thanks for reading my letter. Feliz día de las Madres. Les amo a todos!

-Elder Steele

The Leadership council meeting last week

Mision Mexico Ciudad Obregon

"Ahora es el momento en que los miembros y los misioneros se unan, que trabajen juntos, que trabajen en la viña del Señor para traer almas a Él."        ---Presidente Thomas S. Monson

"Now it is the time for members and missionaries to unite, work together, 

work in the Lord's vineyard to bring souls to Him."     ---President Thomas S. Monson