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