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