Week 45 Villa Bonita

Hey guys, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Elder Steele

Week 44 Villa Bonita

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

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

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

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

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

-Elder Steele

 We baptized Chuy´s grandma, Elvia!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week 43 Villa Bonita

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

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

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

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

That´s it for the week. Congratulations Royals!

-Elder Steele

My new companion, Elder Rojas

Week 42 Villa Bonita

Hey guys. 
I´m writing late today because today was transfers and everything was a little bit crazy. I´m still in Villa Bonita though. I was supposed to train a new missionary, but he didn´t show up.  This morning I went to the church to meet all the new missionaries that just arrived. I was there all day in the training meeting getting to know all the new missionaries and was super anxious to find out who my "son" would be. 

It wasn´t until the end of the 6-hour meeting that they read who the companions were, but they never called my name and I just sat there by myself awkwardly while everyone else had their new companions.

What a waste of a P-Day right? Anyway, it´s fine, here I am with 2 other missionaries for tonight. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. I might have a temporary companion for a while until my "son" shows up. I just hope that I can keep working in my area in the meantime. There is too much to do to have any sort of complications.

We have a lot of really awesome investigators that want to be baptized. Chuy´s grandparents will be baptized in the next few weeks for sure. There are also a few other kids that we are teaching that want to be baptized. Everything in my area is amazing. Also, I get to continue being District Leader for this coming transfer.

Tonight I am with Elder Herzog (from my district in the MTC) and his "son", Elder Ruiz.

I don´t have much more to write for this week. It will be interesting to see what happens. I´m excited. I miss you guys and enjoy the awesome fall weather for me!

-Elder Steele

Here is a photo of our zone

Here is the last picture of my district

The Elders are: Me, Elder Morrison, Elder Juarez (my companion), and Elder Calvo.

The Sisters are: Sister Perez, Sister Palmer, Sister Zambrano, and Sister Patraca.

Here are some photos with my comp this morning

Me and my old comp Elder Juarez and Elder Morrison 

Elder Juarez transferred to an area called 4 Milpas, which means 4 cornfields. 

It´s only a small branch and there is nothing there, just 4 cornfields. Pobrecito.

I had to take a picture of the dog chilling on the roof

Week 41 Villa Bonita

Hey everybody! This week was a pretty good one. We had a baptism on Tuesday! When we got there on Tuesday to start filling the font, we noticed that there was no water in the church, so we found an old hose that we connected to the mission office´s water. It wasn´t long enough, so we used that hose to fill buckets and with those buckets we filled the font for the next 3, almost 4 hours. It was all worth it in the end.

The kid that got baptized, Chuy, invited a lot of people to his baptism and it was really nice to see so many non-members there. They all felt the spirit and Chuy´s grand-parents were crying. The members got so excited to see them too and they were very friendly. We took advantage of the moment that the members were motivated in the mission work and we showed an awesome Mormon Messages Video and then asked referalls from the members and we got about 22.

We visited some of the referalls during the week. Chuy´s grandparents told us they want to be baptized, so that was awesome. At a lunch appointment, a member invited two of her friends so we could teach them, and we are finding a lot of awesome people every day. Basically a lot of awesome things happen every day that make me glad I´m on a mission.

Not every day this week was exactly perfect. Late Thursday and Early Friday I got sick. I think the heat got to me and I got dehydrated. To avoid details, I felt pretty bad. The good thing is is that I said a prayer that I could recover quickly so that we could visit people. I rested for a little bit, drank a lot of water, and quickly I recovered. As soon as I felt better, we left, and that whole day we were blessed with amazing lessons and by the end of the day, I felt completly better.

I know some things that we´re doing that are making us successful. My companion and I get along really well, and we have faith in our area. That´s is how we are able to teach effectively, and gain the confidence of members and investigators.

That was the week, and here are the pictures of the baptism.

-Elder Steele

 The two that got baptized are Chuy (pronounced Chewie) and Yu-Yo (the little-kid). 

Elder Calvo and Elder Morrison are the missionaries on the left. 

My companion Elder Juarez is on the right.

The sisters are Sister Perez and Sister Palmer.

Week 40 Villa Bonita

No photos again this week, but here is his latest letter:

This week was a lot cooler! Except for today, we played soccer some of the young men from the ward, and it was extremely hot. One of the young men was Chuy, who is getting baptized tomorrow!

We were able to get Chuy´s grandma to go to church, which is amazing because she is extremely Catholic. We were very careful when we started teaching her. Normally we would invite her to be baptized in the first visit, and if she rejects we could just stop teaching her and everything is fine. She is different because she is Chuy´s guardian and he is going to be baptized.

We started off just by being her friend and buying ice-cream from her, the next time we sang her a hymn, the next time she just listened as we taught Chuy, and the next time we taught her and invited her to church, and she came! Apparently she liked church and tonight we will invite her to be baptized. That´s an example of teaching spirit-guided lessons and preparing the investigators to learn. She is going to be a great support for her grandson when he gets baptized.

We have been working with the young men a lot in the last couple of weeks and we are teaching a lot of their friends. It´s the best way to do missionary work. When their friends get baptized, they get extremely motivated to help more of their friends.

The sad news of the week is that on Saturday, two sister missionaries in my district got robbed. They got back to their house to find the door broken and all their valuables taken, including camaras, an ipod, money, speakers, and a few other things. One of the sister missionaries has only 3 months left in the mission and all her photos from her whole mission were on her camara. I was amazed with how well they handled the situation, not even worried about all the things that were stolen and just happy that they weren´t there when their house was broken into.

Awesome news of the week. Wal-Mart delivers in Mexico without charging extra. Nuf said.

This week the district will have 2 baptisms and it is going to be really awesome. I love you all and thank you for your letters.

-Elder Steele

He told us in our family letter that:

We have noticed that our door has been messed with too. Cholos have tried breaking in, but luckily they have been unsuccessful.  A cholo is a Mexican gangster. There are a tons of them here, they just smoke marijuana all day, and try to rob people´s houses. 

As his parents, that's crazy to hear, but we know he will be protected as he is out serving the Lord doing Missionary work and doing what he's suppose to be doing.  There is great comfort in that!

Week 39 Villa Bonita

This week was a tough one. I was ready for the heat to be over, but this week the heat was insane. The heat isn´t too bad if we can contantly be in lessons, but this week was a lot of walking around from plan to plan until we could find someone who was home or willing to listen to us. It was frustrating to not be able to find those investigators that had accepted baptism dates.

We do have one investigator named Jesus (Chuy) who will be baptized next Tuesday. He is a really good kid. We have visited him almost every single day for almost 2 weeks, and in that time, we have been able to teach all the missionary discussions. It is the fastest I´ve seen someone progress in all my mission. He will have one of his good friends baptize him, which is always really cool.

General Conference was the highlight of the week. We made picks on who the three new apostles would be, and none of my picks was one. It probably isn´t something that we should´ve made a game out of, but it made it even more excited to find out who they would be. All the gringo missionaries were able to watch conference in English in a different room. I really learned a lot from conference. It seemed that they really "plancharon" all the members for not keeping the sabbath day holy. (I couldn´t think or remember what the word for planchar is in english)

That´s about it for the week. A lot of walking, a lot of heat, and a really awesome General Conference to finish off the week.