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.

Week 38 Villa Bonita

This week was a great week. My comp and I work super well together, and have had a ton of success. We have 3 investigators progressing very quickly, and a bunch more new investigators that we just need to get them to church. We have a goal to baptize 4 in October, which is a lot for the area that we are in. Our ward is doesn´t have a lot of success when it comes to missionary work, which is kinda ironic because it is the mission president´s ward. The president is very pleased with the work that we are doing.

I feel like we are having success miraculously. We receive a lot of referrals from random people. And everyone we have met recently, is ready to accept the gospel it seems. Some have told us that they want to be baptized sooner than the date we put for them. I just hope that we can keep up with all the work we have here. Every day is super important, in fact one day this week, we had 6 appointments planned. You can imagine how rushed we felt to get to each one.

That´s about it for this week. It was work, work, work in the heat with not a cloud in the sky for the whole week. We're soon coming up to October so it should start cooling down. I heard Wednesday is supposed to be around 46 C. Enjoy the cool weather in the US you guys!

Week 37 Villa Bonita

Hey guys, 
I don´t have a lot of time this week. Here´s some of the big news.

-We baptized Omar and it was a great experience. The ultimate goal of every missionary here is to baptize a Jehovah´s Witness. Challenge Accomplished.
-I learned a ton as it was my first week being the district leader. I never thought it would be this difficult, and my district has a few problems. Every day the zone leaders call to ask what I am doing to improve my district. Even the president called one day. I have a bunch of ideas that I´m going to use, and hopefully we get things going in the right direction.
-This week there were a bunch of missionaries sent home sick, including one Elder from my district. He was replaced by Elder Morrison, who is from my generation. Now there are three from my generation in my district.

I´m really out of time now and have to make it to an appointment, so that´s it for the week, bye everyone!

-Elder Steele

Here´s a photo that you might like to see. We baptized a TJ!

Week 36 Last Week in Castillo Obregón. Now in Pioneros/Villa Bonita

Hey Everyone! Like the subject says, I got transferred again. I was only in Castillo for six weeks, so I was pretty shocked. Maybe it´s because my companion told the president that he wanted to die (finish his mission) in Castillo that he changed me instead of him. Anyway it´s all good, I´ll go wherever the Lord would have me go.

My new area is called Pioneros, but I live a little outside of Obregón in Villa Bonita. It´s a really nice area considering I´m still in Mexico. What makes it even better is that I got here at a great time. The elders before were just about to have a some baptisms, including one Jehovah´s Witness. That is the ultimate goal of every missionary in this mission is to baptize a Jehovah´s Witness, and I´m about to do it.

My new comp is Elder Juarez and he´s a pretty cool guy. He is from Pachuca, Mexico and has exactly the same amount of time as me. In fact we sat next to each other on the plane from the MTC to the mission field. He´s a great missionary and he´ll be a great help to me as district leader.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I´m the district leader of my new area. There are 4 Elders and 4 sisters in my district including the secretaries of the mission. I´m a little nervous because the mission president lives in Pioneros so that means no goofing off for me haha. It is a great opportunity though to progress as a missionary and leader. I´m sure I´ll get a few lectures from the president, but it´s a good thing that he´s so close because I can recieve more counsel from him than other missionaries can.

Over the weekend we watched the re-dedication of the Mexico City Temple. It was really cool. President Eyring, and Elder Holland came. In his talk, Elder Holland began and ended in spanish. It was really cool. His grammar was simple and correct, but his accent was super gringo. What it showed me is that he cares so much for all of the members of the church that he put forth the effort to speak in their language to tell them how much he loves them.

That´s about it for the week. I´m super excited for this next week and tomorrow for my first district meeting as district leader. I love all of you guys.

-Elder Steele

The last picture with my old District

Here is my comp and I with the Sanchez family