Week 26 12/22/14

Hey everyone!

This week has been (as usual ) Packed with all sorts of amazing things! We've been working our little tails off up here in Huntsville and been having a blast!! So here goes a little run down of what went on this week!

monday: We had an awesome p-day and then ended up being able to obtain a violin that will last me my whole mission! I spent that night practicing a melody of Christmas hymns with another elder so that we could perform at the talent show on Tuesday!

Tuesday: As i said, we had a talent show, but more then that we had our Christmas party as a mission. It was fantastic! We started of with a silent devotional. We listened to music and looked and pondered on how we can honor our savior this christmas. It was a very reverent and really spiritual expirience. I learned a lot about how to 1) Love my savior, as his mother. 2) Serve him, as the angels do. 3)to use his atonement, like those who seek him 4) to give all we have, like those who adore him. It was awesome! I invite you all to ponder those things :) After that we had a great dinner and the talent show. (it went well for me, as well as it could with like no practice, and some others sang some of the most amazing songs too! really cool talent show) Then we got to watch Frozen haha, it was just as fantastic as ever and all the older sister missionaries who hadn't seen it loved it! So it was an awesome day all in all!

Wednesday: We taught a few awesome lessons and a really good english class!

Thursday: We had an exchange. Elder Jordan (one of our zone leaders) came with me and we did some awesome contacting and then went out to Decatur. He served there like a year ago and so he was able to show me where the hispanic areas are so that me and Elder Kellogg can work more effectively. We also were able to teach a few lessons to some investigators out there and will be going by again on Tuesday to continue teaching :)

Friday: We exchanged back and had an awesome district meeting! We each trained on something relating to captain moroni. I trained on how to better an area... theres a scripture in alma 53 verses 1-6. i realized you can take Moroni's example of taking a strong area (the city of mulek) and through dedication and trust in your fellow men (Lehi)(aka your companion) you can change an area to be even stronger! Thats one goal me and my companion have set is to make our area the strongest it has ever been by following the qualitys of moroni found in alma 48: 11-17. So the whole district meeting was awesome. Definitelly one of the best of my mission!

Saturday: We again had just an amazing activity giving out hot chocolate. We also had a bunch of people tell us they would like to hear a Christmas message and so we are going to send out some texts and calls and hopefully go out and teach a bunch of people!!! :)

Sunday: We had church which is always a blast in a spanish branch! they love to be loud and funny and make fun of eachother. its awesome! Then we went to the chessmens (an awesome english family) for dinner. 

So all in all, a really good week! Some stuff that happened that i cant remember the dates exaclty are we ran into martin again who now wants to prepare to be baptized!!! So we are shooting for the 31 of january! He kind of fell of the map before but now seams to have had a change in heart. we are hoping to keep working with him and see that date happen! :)

Its also christmas and my birthday this week so we are very excited to skype and just have a fantastic holiday season! If anyone hasent seen the he is the gift video, please go watch it at...

Christmas.mormon.org

and if you have seen it, here is a video that holds the world record for the most people in a single nativity scene! Check it out! It was made in response to he is the gift and is an awesome song to say the least!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrLoWt2tfqg

I think thats the adress! If not, look it up on youtube, it has david archulleta in it so it shouldnt be to hard to find haha.

Anyways, i love you all so much, have a very merry christmas!

-Elder Steele

Week 25 12/15/14

12/15/14

Hey Yall! 

This week has been a super crazy week! we had Transfers and a huge Christmas festival and so many cool things have happened! I got a new comp here in Huntsville, his name is Elder Kellogg and he is awesome! He is from Omaha Nebraska and has been out a bit over a year. We live in a different appartment as well. its the one i first lived in here in Huntsville. (670 julia st NW apt 8. huntsville al, 35816) We have found like 5 solid new investigators and we've been having a blast! Tomorrow we also will be having our mission Christmas party and a talent show! Ill be playing a cool Christmas duet with an elder named elder shirts. He is a super talented pianist and i can play the violin so it should be great!

Alright, so on to more details from the week haha. Monday and tuesday nothing super exciting happened, mostly tracting and talking to people but sadly nobody was really interested those days :/

Then on Wednesday we went to transfer meeting in Birmingham and i met elder Kellogg as my new comp! we drove back to huntsville and then had to move our stuff to the apartment and thus our day was pretty much gone haha. We had some fantastic trainings from p-Hanks about having traditions though! how much they can build and edefy your family, create good memmorys, and how they are just fantastic all in all. So... Me and Elder Kellogg really took that to heart whilst shopping the next day...

So Thursday we had to go shopping and get some food. So we are at walmart and we were like OK. if there is a tree here for 10 dollars we will buy it. because a tree is something we both loved about christmas!  So low and behold there is a little live tree back in the back marked down to 10 dollars. we put it in our car and then spent some time setting it up and putting some christmas lights we had on it! Then we went and visited donna (a cool old lady we teach on occasion) and she just happened to have ornaments! so we now have a really cool Christmas tree in our apartment! for a total of about 15 dollars (including the stand we had to buy haha.) im supper stoked for it! We even made the tree a name badge, his name is stan and he is small but he is mighty! haha. That night thursday got even better though! We drove down to Decatur to contact a few people we found last week and we ended up teaching 3 amazing lessons all in spanish and finding 5 different people that really want to know more! Ill make sure to keep you all updated next week. This Thursday we should be able to see them so as long as they continue to progress we will be happy campers haha.

On Friday we helped out at the Huntsville Christmas festival!  It is a one of the biggest activities of the year here in Huntsville and is insanely beautiful! They turn the entire back of the church into a walk through live nativity. It is phenomenally well done. costumes and sets are just amazing! then you walk into the gym and the entire thing is filled with nativity sets from all around the world and amazing Christmas trees all decorated on the professional level. But to top it all of, there is a choir that performed 8 times over 3 days. They Were AMAZING! when you think church choir you do not think super good... but these guys are mo-tab status! they had a full orchestra and the organ and all sort of cool bells and it just blew me away! so many people were crying because of the spirit present there. It was an amazing experience.

Then to top off the week, on Saturday we had once again an amazingly successful hot chocolate in the park activity! in the course of an hour and a half i bet we talked to over 80 people easily and gave away over 160 cups of hot chocolate! We even saw some of the people we invited to the Christmas festival there the next day on Sunday! 

So all in all, This week has just been one of the best of my mission. Lots of good work, lots of success, and lots of fun! i think thats kind of the key too. 

Working hard becomes hardly working when your having fun doing it! 

Thats our goal this transfer, is to work harder then we ever have on our missions as of yet, but to have more fun doing it then ever before. We have our attitudes turned all the way up as high as they can go on the enthusiasm scale and we are ready for an awesomely successful 6 weeks!

Thats my little spiritual though for the week. that you can choose to be as happy as you want to be, so why not choose to be happy!? abraham lincoln even said "Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be." So i challenge everyone to choose to be happy this week. Watch the difference it will make in your life, and the lives of others. 

I love you all so much!

Week 24 12/8/14

Hey everyone!

So here is whats going down. I am staying in huntsville but moving back to the julia St apartment on friday!! (the address is 670 julia st. nw apt 8 huntsville alabama 35816)  and i am getting a new companion! Elder mayer is getting transfered we think to tuscaloosa and i think i will be getting elder Kellog up here (dont know for sure yet though). im praying it will be a good companionship!! :) Im way stoked to stay here though! the branch will have lots of partys and ill know everyone,  So im excited for everything :) If you have any christmas stuff  to send, send it to this address because it will be safer! this address is a member in my branch here in huntsville...

100 wickham rd. 

Madison AL

35757

This week has been pretty eventful too, our English class has been successful as we have been pulling in around 6 people every Wednesday, we hope that as we continue to work with these people they will come to church as well. Some have expressed massive interest. On Thursday we also were able to drive down to Decatur and work in some Hispanic areas that Elder Mayer knew about. We have 8 return appointments from that forThursday so if some fall through we should be able to still effectively use an evening there. it really seams like there is enough Spanish there to justify working there maybe once a week, so i think we are going to try and plan to save miles and set aside one day a week to go the 20 miles there and see investigators and members there. Im excited to see how it goes!

Other good things this week were the temple! Such an amazing experience every single time i've been through the temple. its way beautiful and just a place of peace and happiness! It also really helped boost my spirituality which carried over to Saturday where i had the opportunity to baptize Leonor! She is the sisters investigator but was an amazing Emmaus experience for me to watch unfold. I met her with Elder Jackson one day on the way to visit a different investigator, she loved that we taught about the savior and invited us to come to here house in an hour. so we taught one investigator and then went to her house and taught her. She was waiting and ready for us. She loved the Book of Mormon from day one and she was just so ready to make commitments and change! because she is a single older lady we handed her off to the sisters and through out the past few weeks we have talked to her and supported her at church and the sisters have done an amazing job teaching her and preparing her for baptism. Last week she asked me to baptize her and i had that opportunity on Saturday. Im so grateful for it. One of the highlights of my mission so far! You could see a literal change in her from day one until now. She has the light of Christ burning in her eyes now. it was literally like seeing the spirit radiate off of her when she came out of the water! baptism is such a cool thing! Its symbolic of so much too!

first off, we make commitments when we are baptised and confirmed. mosiah 18: 8-10 and moroni 4 and 5 are some of the commitments we make. We promise to build one another up, to mourn with those that mourn, to strengthen those that need it, and to take the name of the savior upon us and always remember him. Its so cool to make those covenents becuse we are blessed so much from it! We are blessed by the remmision of our sins and the continual renewal of our covenants from the sacrament. 

As we are baptized we go from a sinful state to under the water, almost like being burried. We are washed of all of our sins and then symbolically are reborn into a new life of following the savior. It gives us a chance to change. to stop our sinful life, and to come into the fold of our great Shepherd. Jesus christ. It is one of the most important things we can do in this life because it shows our willingness to follow our savior. i have a firm testimony of baptism and the special power and importance it holds. for more information i encourage everyone to go read those scriptures and the seccion on baptism in the bible dictionary! Also... go check out this talk.....

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2000/10/the-covenant-of-baptism-to-be-in-the-kingdom-and-of-the-kingdom?lang=eng&query=baptism 

and this video :)

http://www.mormonchannel.org/bible-videos?v=1621646767001 

So yeah... thats whats going on in my life haah :) 

I love you all so much! keep up the good work! yall are amazing!

Week 23 12/1/14

12/1/14

Hey everyone!

This week has been a petty crazy week. We had branch partys and thanksgiving and crazy cool contacting ideas and we went to a baptism and so much!! ill run just a quick summary of my week for you!

monday, was p-day and so we emailed and had a really good day, you guys got a email then so i wont say more haha.

Tuesday, We had an amazing zone conference in the morning and then we had a branch party for thanksgiving in the evening! Thats one thing i love about being a spanish missionary. spanish culture is just fun and a party all the time!!! it was such a blast! Some of the highlights of zone conference where the "He is the gift" Initiative! If you havent heard of it go to ....
..... Christmas.mormom.org...... and check it out! then share it! the main goal of this is to help people remember what christmas is really about! not the hustle and bustle and presents, but about christ our savior! :) -Discover the gift -Embrace the gift - #Sharethegift  :)

wednesday, we ended up spending a long time at the doctor, Elder mayer needed to get an MRI just to make sure his knee is going to be fine, so we did that and then contacted some cool new people! I talked to one lady that was a professional basketball player in Romania before she came here! crazy right!? (we get the MRI results back today but he is improving daily and he should be doing totally fine. It was more of a precaution anyway haha)

thursday! Thanksgiving!!  We got up and went and played some really fun "turkey bowl" games at a park with some wards and some none members and then we came back to the house and stated cooking!! i made a grean bean casserole which i did not eat but people loved it! The other elders made some easy pies and some mashed potatoes and then we took all of the food over to our branch presidents house where we had a big thanksgiving party! It was so cool cuz it was like half american food and half hispanic food and it was way fun :) after we went black friday contacting at walmart... It was Crazy! Im not sure if i can handle black friday shopping ever in my life, but it made for some interesting contacts thats for sure!

Friday, We were fed by a lady in our branch named floridalma. She makes the best quacamole in the world!!! So Good!!! we also had some cool expiriences building people faith by using those "he is the gift cards" super cool :)

saturrday,  I got to watch stephanie get baptized!!! it was so cool! She isnt my baptism, she is like the lords and a bunch of missionarys, but im just so greatful for the oppurtunity i had to be there! and to have ran into her which lead to her being baptized! If i never baptize anyone but because of my efforts other people baptize, then i am happy :) Also that night we had a huge hot chocolate activity! We contacted like 30 people in an hour by giving away free hot chocolate and talking about christ! it was such a success! It was at this really cool park where they have a skating rink and like hundreds of decorated christmas trees! Super fun and effective day! (also, alabama won the iron bowl 55-44, Its a pretty big deal don here ;))

Sunday, We had an amazing day at church and then i had leonor, who is an investigator who is just so sweet and the nicest little hispaic lady ever, Ask me to baptize her on saturday! I am greatly looking forward to that oppurtunity! Me and elder jackson started teaching her and then we have worked with the sisters and now she is ready and really excited to make the commitment to be baptized, its so exciting!! :) Ill keep you updated on that haha.

Monday, Now we are back to today and im basically writing emails! haha i love p-day!

Anyways, i hope that keeps yall updated and i hope yall enjoy the He is the gift thing!!! its really cool! Love yall!

Week 22 11/24/14

11/24/14

Hello everyone!

I do not have much time to write! but i still wanted to send everyone a message to keep you posted on whats going on in Alabama!

We are working really hard here, working with this really cool/interesting man named Angel. we knick-named him hulk hogan. He has huge faith in christ and has many family members that are mormon! We just need to work on getting him to church and he will be awesome! Love this man so much! He was a referal from our sisters here and although he may be a little hippy ish and he may not understand everything i think he will one day choose to come follow christ! we hope that day is soon too :)

(mom, can you attach the picture from my one drive to this? he is the big burly guy in the leather jacket im standing by haha)

Other cool things are im seeing some of the people ive found and work with almost ready for baptism!!! I ran into this awesome lady named stephanie one day and was really prompted to go talk to her! turned out she had read the Whole BOM! The english sisters have been teaching her with an occasional lesson from us and now on saturday she will be baptized! Its so cool to see that because i followed the spirit someone is being baptized :)

Theres also a lady named leonor who is going to be baptized next week! Me and Elder Jackson found her and started teaching her! The sisters have kind of taken over because she is a single lady but she is so prepared and is going to be baptized dec 6th! I also had the oppurtunity to give her a blessing this last week for health! it was one of the most amazing expiriences of my mission. The spirit was so strong there and just truly testified of truth! the next day all of her headaches and sickness were gone! i wont go into more detail but it was just an amazing expirience in every way :)

Just to see these wonderful people choose to come to christ makes every hard day on the mission worth it! i am so excited for both of them :)

Anyways, thats a little of whats going on! I love yall so much! Keep on keeping on! and look to have the spirit of christ in your life this holiday season :)

-Elder Steele

Week 21 11 /17/14

Hey everyone!

Its funny as a missionary, during the week you do so many different things and you think you are going to have to write a novel to fit in your whole week when you go to write emails. Then you get to the computer on p-day and poof! Everything is gone! No one knows what we did that week haha. Its like a black whole. 

Thats ok though! I think i can remember at least enough to be interesting! so here goes!

I found out this week that Alabama is cold for starters, but that's not going to stop the lords work! It actually helped us, we had the idea of doing a hot chocolate stand on Saturday in a park where a lot of people usually walk and hang out. It actually went fairly well as we got many contacts from it. Even better is that shortly an ice skating rink will open and hockey games in an arena will begin both right next to this little park. We plan on doing a few more of these hot chocolate contacts on Saturdays when its busy and hopefully we will be able to find some elect people!

In addition this week I have seen the lords blessings of Tracting, on an exchange with elder Jordan we tracted into a small Hispanic family and their friend. We taught a really spiritual plan of salvation lesson to them and we have a return appointment tomorrow. They are very kind and very open to the gospel. Hopefully this return appointment will go very well. the rest of that exchange was good for me as well, each time i go on exchange i can see different characteristics of my zone leaders that make them good missionarys. Different ones that i can then apply to myself to become better. Things like boldness and kindness, teaching when you find, talking to everyone, etc. Its great to be able to learn from those called, it just helps strengthen all of us here in the mission.

Other then that, Me and Elder Mayer are really trying to find a lot, we need some new solid people and family's to teach. our companionship is doing well and as far as i can tell he is still loving his mission and wanting to get work done. we are really going to try and put our shoulders to the wheel and push this work forward. 

hmm... what else... We got a bunch of referals to new areas of hispanics we have never been before! so that was cool! we plan on going out to these areas in the next few days. they are a little ways away but it should prove to produce some new awesome investigators and hopefully allow some people to come to christ by being baptized! :)

As for me, im still trying to run every morning even though its cold and im still trying to eat healthy and stay warm! One thing i have a strong testimony of is health! When you get good sleep and eat right and work out you just have so much more confidence! You feel heathy and strong and talking to others is just easy! so i definitely am going to try and be healthy! The missionary handbook says we need to anyway haha :)

To end i just want to share a few thoughts about some quotes!

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I really like that! every one of us has dreams, and the future belongs to those of us who have those dreams and seek after them, but also beleive in how beautiful they can be to others. I have a dream of helping others come to christ and i know that can bring more beauty to anyone's life than anything else in this life! The gospel Brings true happiness and beauty to ones life! :)

Here's the second quote.

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

Martin Luther

Thats pretty cool to me! Prayer is so important! god loves us! he wants to talk to us! we need that communication! Often all that is needed for blessings to flow from heaven is opening your mouth and talk to your heavenly father! I have a firm testimony that prayer can help us in every aspect of our lives and as we pray our faith can grow and can "[begin] to be unshaken in the Lord". (enos 1:11)

I love all of yall so much! Keep being awesome and dont forget to pray and dream! 

-Elder Steele

Week 20 11/10/14

11/10/14

Hey guys! well, this week has been a bit wild!

For starters, on Monday we moved apartments. now i live with 2 other elders so there is 4 of us in one apartment. We are all the spanish elders too. So its kind of good cuz we get to better use the car and more effectively work together which is good! On the down side you have to deal with 2 different schedules not just your own so that can get pretty challenging sometimes! Im sure we will work out the kinks though and it will be a good move! For those of you who do not already have the address, my new address is.....

6500 Woods Ln. apartment A. Huntsville Alabama. 35806.

Well, After moving apartments and stuff we did actually end up having an effective week! 

One good thing that happened was one of our main investigators we managed to teach like 4 times and even better we taught a lesson to her boyfriend with her!!! they are now talking about getting married and praying to see if baptism is what they want! They both can really feel the spirit and they are awesome! she has come to church twice now and we are hoping we can get her boyfriend to come next week. The only problem is work! Hispanics work so much its crazy! they are truly the hardest working people i know but because of that they often work on sundays... Pray that he can have a day off to come to church! It would be so awesome for there family!

Other then that this week we taught more lessons and really tried to contact every person we could! We just set a goal today that as a zone we would invite 500 people to be baptized by the end of the year. Not to force people to be baptized but to give people that opportunity to change and to choose to follow Christ. So this week we are going to go and invite more and more people to come and be baptized and come unto Christ. So even though this week was good, im looking forward to an even better week this comming one! :)

Now i want to leave a little scriptural though i learned this week! I cant get lds.org to work so i cant leave any of the scriptures but here goes... The good Samaritan... Its a lot more symbolic then i ever realized! 

In the story the man is walking from Jerusalem (which is the highest point in isreal) down to Jericho (which is the lowest point in isreal). Its cool because as we walks down its kind of like us comming down to earth. and while we are on earth we receive wounds. If we would have stayed in heaven, or like the man in Jerusalem, we would have been safe but not progressed. However by choosing to come down, we all have received wounds both phisically and spiritually. while we are wounded, many would just let us suffer and die... but the the good Samaritan doesnt. He goes out of his way to save the poor man and to make sure he is taken care of. Then before he leaves he says "Whatever more that though spendest, when i return i will repay thee." (or something close to that) Its so cool to compare that to our savior. He came down to this earth to suffer for our sins and pains so that when we fall and when we are wounded he can pick us up, dust us off, and heal us. he has paid for all, not just the first pain or not just the little scratches. Anything you go through, the savior can help you because of the infinite power of his atoning sacrifice. He loves us so much!

i encourage you all to go read about the good Samaritan and see what you can learn from his sacrifice and the saviors. I know i learned a lot about charity :)

anyways, i hope you all have an amazing week!

love yall!