Week 60 Villa Bonita

Happy Leap Day!

This week was transfers again. The whole district stayed the same except for Sister Patraca, who finished her mission and is now in Veracruz. I don´t know if I have said who all is in my district. 

My district is: myself, my companion Elder Alvarenga (El Salvador), Elder Poaletti (New Jersey), Elder Sullivan (California), Elder Funk (Arizona) (also, he is my grandpa), Elder Flores (Yucatan), Sister Cruz (Hidalgo), and the new sister, Sister Kinard (Alabama). Maybe I'll have a district picture next week.

This week was kinda lousy when it comes to our investigators keeping commitments. They all say that they´ll go to church, but only one goes. We have left a lot of investigators in these 2 weeks because they haven´t been going to church. There are now 8 missionaries working in our tiny area of Villa Bonita, which means it´s kinda like war over the referrals from members. We all have good investigators though, and obviously we are all on the same team. As district leader, it´s awesome to see so many chosen investigators at church from the other missionaries.

I´m happy to be with my son Elder Alvarenga for another transfer. President invited us to go to the Leadership Council Meeting (I´m not quite sure if it´s called that in English) It´s the meeting in which the zone leaders from the whole mission discuss how the mission can improve. That´ll be interesting. I'm working hard on trying to get at least one baptism for the month of March so that I'll have baptisms for 8 months in a row.

Thanks for all your letters. I love you guys so much. Have a wonderful week!

-Elder Steele

Week 59 Villa Bonita

Hey guys,

It might be a little bit tough to write about this week because not much happened. We didn't have as much success as we normally do, but we started off this new week good yesterday.

Even though this week was kinda bad for us, as a district we did amazing. All together we brought 17 investigators to church, which broke a district record. 14 of them are progressing, which means that they have a date to be baptized.

Right now we are dealing with the classic problems of getting baptisms. We have to help 3 different investigators get divorced and then re-married, and another investigator we have to convince his parents to let him be baptized.

The sister missionaries in my district have a really awesome investigator that had told me last week that he didn't believe in god, but yesterday he wanted to tell me what he had experienced the night before. Long story short, he believes in God now. I've always wanted to teach an atheist, but they've never accepted to listen to our message.

Interesting story of the week: Yesterday evening we were outside of a house teaching a lesson when we noticed a kid walking in the street. He caught our eye because he was smoking and saying a ton of cuss words. He was a little cholito. When he passed by, I wanted to talk to him, but he just told us that he was a "Testigo de Goku." I asked the investigator if she knew him and how old he was. She said that he was only 7 years old. He must have the worst parents of ever.

That´s about it for the week. It should be a good week being the last one in the transfer. I hope I get to stay with Elder Alvarenga. 

See you guys later!

-Elder Steele

Extra letter to family:

We asked him..."What does Testigo de Goku mean?"

Elder Steele said..."Witness of Goku. Goku is the main character of Dragonball Z a cartoon which is extremely popular here. The joke is that he was rejecting us and making fun the Jehovah Witnesses at the same time."

Family..We asked him how often he does training being a district leader? 

He said...We have a district meeting that I have to train in almost every week. Tomorrow we have a zone meeting though. They didn't ask me to plan any training.

Elder Steele..."Transfers is next week already. I feel bad, because I have almost no pictures for these 6 weeks.

I can´t make up my mind if I want to get transferred or not. We don´t have anyone really "golden" that I want to see baptized. I just want to stay another transfer with Elder Alvarenga to do a better job training him. I also want to get the opportunity to be a zone leader. We´ll see what happens on Sunday."

Week 58 Villa Bonita

Hey guys! 

This week was another amazing week here in Obregón. The heat hit us strong, it feels like we're already in June, but it's February. I'm already sweating like crazy, taking cold showers, and drinking a lot of water. I just need to survive one more 9 month summer.

Church was amazing yesterday. Ricardo got confirmed and chose me to confirm him. It was actually the first time that I've ever confirmed someone. When I was done, my hands were trembling. I literally felt as if the Holy Ghost was transfered from my hands into Ricardo, which is was happened. I was super nervous too, which makes my spanish suck.

I actually broke another record of mine. We had 9 investigators at church, just from our one companionship. Most of them were part of Ricardo´s family. Their family of 14 all showed up together in their one truck. You can imagine how I felt seeing so many investigators showing up at the same time.

We were planning to baptize Luis Angel tomorrow, but yesterday he told us that his parents don´t like the idea of him getting baptized. They told him he could get baptized in the catholic church and it would be the same. So many people just don´t understand. It seems that the spirit of the devil has confused so many people.

This week alone I have left so many lessons just feeling angry because the people are so caught up in the beliefs that they themselves don´t even understand. For example, we were teaching Kristo's mom, Esther, who is already a member of the church. It was the worst lesson ever. She told us that she only got baptized because her daughter was baptized. I don´t know how, but the discussion turned to the Virgin. I explained how God doesn´t want us to worship graven images because there is only one God and the images are created by man and they don´t answer our prayers. She answered angrily and said "You have an image of your mom in your backpack! You can´t tell me that I shouldn´t have the Virgin in my home, it´s the same thing!" I wanted to give up at that point. So many times, it seems that I teach so clearly, but the hearts of people are so confused by the devil that it is almost impossible for them to come to the knowledge of the simple truth of the Gospel.

I imagine that is how the mission would be like in Missouri. The devil has got the minds of people so confused that they believe anything that their pastor will tell them. There´s not a single person on this planet that knows everything, that´s what I always tell my investigators. Don´t just trust whatever we tell them, but ask God. That´s what I like about our church so much. God will give the same answer to everyone. It´s so simple, so easy, but the people sometimes would rather trust their minister more than God.

Anyway, those are my thoughts right now. I am trying to improve my teaching more, to help them understand how two world wide accepted truths prove that our church is true: God is our Father; He loves us and wants us to be happy. Those two truths help us to know that if we truly believe in God, we know that he can answer a simple prayer. God doesn´t want to and won´t hide the way to happiness from us, his kids. Seek and ye shall find.

I´m just about out of time, that was my week. I love you guys. Have a wonderful week!

-Elder Steele

Week 57 Villa Bonita

Hey guys,

I went to Guaymas again today to finalize my visa. I missed out on going bowling today the zone for having the most baptisms in the mission, but that´s ok.  My companion stayed with Elder Poaletti and Elder Sullivan. Guaymas is a pretty cool place.  There was 5 of us that went from my generation.    I had a good time there even though all we did was sign a paper and eat pizza.  We ate Papa Johns pizza. 

So, this week was pretty good. We had Ricardo´s baptism on Tuesday. That was pretty interesting. We passed by his house to bring him to the church, but he wasn't home. Then we bravely went to his dad's house to see if he was there. He wasn't there either. So we were looking for him for about an hour and a half trying to find him. He finally showed up, and we went to the baptism and he got baptized.

There´s is another story about his confirmation. On Sunday, he showed up after sacrament meeting, so he wasn't able to get confirmed yet. When he showed up, he was wearing a hoodie to hide his face because he had been beat up. A member of the church had beat up my convert! I was pretty mad! Ricardo is a super scrawny poor kid, and he got beat up by a member way bigger than him, and he beat him until he passed out.

This week we had planned rides to bring at least 8 investigators to church. Unfortunately, only 3 of the 8 investigators made it to church.

We have found two huge families of investigators where some of them have already been baptized. For example, we are now teaching a bunch of Ricardo´s cousins and step-siblings and aunts, etc. We made a huge family tree in our house to make sense of the huge family and to see who is a member and who isn't. We should have a lot of baptisms from that family.

I don´t have that much more time. This next week should be good. Hopefully Ricardo gets confirmed and his whole family comes to church. Thanks for your letters and support. 

I love you guys.

-Elder Steele

Family letter extras:

Elder Steele's little Sister and Brother asked:  what does Mexican pizza taste like?  Haha. :)

Elder Steele's response: "There is a specialty pizza flavor called Pizza Mexicana. It comes with jalapeño, chorizo, salchicha and that´s pretty much it. It´s pretty good. Mexican pizza in general is pretty bad in comparison to American Pizza. Papa Johns is pretty much the same though."

We asked how Ricardo was doing after being beat up...Elder Steele responded that he seems to be doing fine.  Such a sad thing to have happen.

Here are the pictures from Ricardo´s baptism:

Me, Ricardo, and my companion Elder Alvarenga at the baptism

Here´s some pictures of me with Genesis´s crazy nephew, Christopher, he just turned 3

Week 56 Villa Bonita

Hey guys! 

This was pretty amazing for us. Last week I was a little disappointed by our lack of success, but this week was my best week ever when it comes to lessons to investigators. We taught 15 lessons with members present and 7 others. The standard of excellence is 18 and we had 22! I got pretty pumped by that.

I am focusing on teaching to people that I feel like are going to progress and be baptized, so if I can´t imagine them in white clothes in the baptismal font, I leave them. We have left many of our new investigators already and found new ones.

We will have a baptism tomorrow for Ricardo. He is Ivan´s older brother. We were going to baptize Luis Angel also, but he hasn´t been to church in 2 weeks and we want to make sure that he wants to be baptized for his own desire and not just the make his girlfriend (the bishop´s daughter) happy.

We have a lot of interesting new investigators to talk about.

Cristo: That´s right, his name is Christ in spanish! We found him as we were going through the member directory looking for all the less-active members in Villa Bonita. His mom and sister are both members that left the church because another member offended them. I helped them understand things and they want to come back to church. They are really interesting and the missionaries that baptized them were huge fritos. jajaja. They said that their what happened in their house doesn't leave their house, and they told us stories of everything the missionaries did there.

Maria: She is 81 years old and crazy. She loves listening to the gospel and tells the weirdest stories. For example, she told us that she read about when Jesus appeared in a Jail in Hermosillo and chose 12 apostles. He supposedly proved he was Christ by washing their feet. After that, they took off and no one knows where they went. She believed that story... She doesn't hear well, but she remembers well. We taught her about prophets and how our church is the true church and she told us she wants to be baptized in the same way that Jesus was baptized like we had explained to her. I just hope she is sane enough to baptize.

The rest of our investigators are pretty normal. We are just hoping that they´ll go to church.

I´m enjoying the mission a lot and I´m enjoying being a trainer. I´m trying to help my hijo enjoy the mission and I think he´s excited for his first baptism tomorrow. I´m pretty excited too. 

Love you guys!

-Elder Steele

MORE EMAILS TO FAMILY...

As a family we felt bad that he didn't receive any of our emails we sent last week.  It was hard when we received ours from him, but he didn't hear anything from us.   He mentioned in the email last week that he didn't get any emails.  We kept trying to say Hi, but nothing was going through.  It was sad as a mom to hear this.  

We were very happy as a family to hear that he got all of our letters today from last week.

Technology can be so frustrating when it doesn't work, but it is SUCH A BLESSING overall!

Elder Steele..."I got the letter as I logged in today. But that´s fine. It just gave me more to read today."

Mom...I asked him how is training went last week... 

Elder Steele responded..."It turned out that I didn't give my training. It´s because the mission president talked for a long time and didn't give me time for it. But I'm alright with that. I was pretty nervous. It wasn't just our zone, but it was a multi-zone conference with the mission president.  Actually at the end of the conference they gave us vaccinations-Flu shot. I was so nervous about my training and then letting other missionaries inject me that I almost passed out. I felt super light-headed that I laid myself down at a table after the injection.

Mom...As soon as he said the word vaccinations, before I read anything else I thought, Oh NO! I hope he didn't passed out.  I think that is a hereditary thing to pass out around our family.  His younger brother Tanner does that too. When he was getting shots for his mission, he passed out really bad at the doctors office.  I'm so glad he recognized it and laid down before he did a full pass out.  

The tough guys have the hardest time with needles right??

Elder Steele.."Things with my new comp are pretty good. It´s interesting to be with a new missionary and remember what I was like what I got to the mission. He left a girlfriend that he had been with for 5 years, I imagine that would be pretty hard. We have a lot of work to do when it comes to his teaching. I will teach one principle and motion for him to teach the next principle. He will talk for about 15 seconds about something and then give the time back to me. He is super shy and doesn't talk very much."

"He also has a really cool accent being from El Salvador. I think the sister missionaries are in love with his voice. His city, San Salvador is extremely dangerous; he´s told me a few crazy stories. A member told us that he saw a list of the most dangerous cities in the world and San Salvador was number 2. (He also said that Ciudad Obregón was number 10."