Nov 20, 2011

Good Morning,

I hope you guys have fun today with the whole gang! Tell everyone I miss em!

I actually just bought a new hoody last week, but I wouldn't mind some thermal underwear. And a scarf and/or a sweater would really be nice. But I know you just sent the Christmas package, and I can wait till it gets really cold if you want to wait a couple of months to send anything else. Or I could just buy stuff on my card.

Okay, that homework assignment you are doing sounds awesome. It sounds like you picked four amazing books, and I think you could really write an amazing paper based on that. I'm really impressed.

I miss scone fridays. I'm gonna miss about 100 of them in a row, so we will have to be making up for lost time when I get back and have scones everyday. I even miss the drop in center. I didn't use to like doing service projects like that very much... but now I love it.

Have you heard anything about Mike Cooper? How is he doing? What happened with him?

The Steed Christmas' are always so much fun. I am really sad I am going to miss it, but I will at least get a taste of the big skating party today. I don't know if you can read the email I sent to dad, but we are going ice skating today. Actually a really crazy thing happened yesterday. I was eating dinner at a members house and we had one of her friends, and investigator, over as well. I mentioned where in Canada I was from, and she asked me if I knew any Bauldries. I said ya, and she asked if I knew a mark Bauldrie. I said no, but I did know a Ryan and a Nathan. So it turns out, Nathans dad, Mark, served here in Penzance in like 1978. Sis Maddern, or Mo as we call her, was really good friends with him. Mo had a picture from Nathan and Whitneys wedding! I thought it was so cool, such a small world.

I actually havent even got your Christmas package yet. They keep trying to deliver it but keep missing me. It will be like 20 quid. I'm excited to set up a tree! That is too bad about Riley... especially the saturday night hockey. I think it is pretty sweet that he is still keeping that tradition alive, but lame that he isn't making everyone pay. I did sometimes feel guilty about always bugging people who never payed for the money, but I think you just have to do it. I miss hockey... no one here knows anything about it.

So how come Lolo (lauren) is coming back? And I just realized, you never seem to answer any of the questions I ask in my emails. Like last week I asked why you were worried about me when I first left, and also I asked how Tyler Skinner is doing because you said Janae is worried about him. I think I asked a few more things as well...

I had two pieces of toast with nutella for breakfast. Thats what I have everyday now.

It is really going to be so fun at the end of my mission when you guys come pick me up and we can go tour around all the places I've been in. Especially Helston. You will love to meet all these people.

This has been a really good week for us. A crazy week even. The work here in Helston is lighting on fire. In my four months, we haven't had much success outside of Ken and Toni. But the last two weeks, we have picked up 5 new investigators and we have like maybe 3 or 4 more that will probably be investigators this week. We had 6 people at church yesterday! We are getting lots of chances to serve people, things just seem to be looking up right now. Early in the week, we were asked by our High Priest group leader (Eric, one of my really good friends, he is the one who bought me my cornish tie) to go help a less active lady who is REALLY struggling. So we helped her clean her garage, and we are going back this week. She is still amazingly vibrant, and happy and full of life, and really mobile and witty for a 90 year old. I really did just enjoy chatting with her afterwards, we were able to have some good laughs even in this rough time in her life. Other than that, everything has been really good. We managed to teach a refferal we got from the bishop, and it went amazing! We taught him about the restoration and BoM, and he was really receptive to it and open to finding out the truth for himself. He even offered a kneeling prayer with us at the end. We are going back wednesday to show him the joseph smith movie. His wife is currently investigating the j-dubs (jehovas witnesses) but we will see what we can do about that. We also are starting this week to teach a grand-daughter of a less active lady. I think I might have mentioned her before, but she is only 17 and kind of a rebellious kid, and had a crush on a previous missionary. So I don't really know her motives yet, but she claims she wants to take the discussions and be baptized. She told me the only reason she didn't when she last took the discussions is because she had a boyfriend who was opposed to it all. But now that is over. So we will see.

On saturday we had like an hour to kill before some teaching appointments, so we just went and knocked a road me and Simmons had felt good about like a month ago. It was incredible! It seemed like everyone was really receptive and just nice, we gave out a bunch of Boms and pamphlets, and we booked four return appointments for this week, and all 4 of them were families! I don't know if that even sounds amazing to you, but I have never had anywhere close to that much sucess in knocking doors before.

Then at church yesterday, a lady just walked in. She was a tall, young african lady, and because one of our less actives is a tall young african lady, I figured it was probably just her and so I just introduced myself and didn't really talk with her when she first came in. Then as I am up on the stage after Elder's quorum, the relief society president comes flying out of the hallway and grabs me and tells me I need to get my butt over to the front doors. Turns out this african lady has never been to our church before. Her friend who usually goes to the Redruth ward was going to meet her here for church, but for whatever reason her friend never came. So this lady just ended up at our church all by herself. So we grabbed a couple members and went and taught her about the restoration in gospel principles. Actually we also had Chris in there, our 10 year investigator, and he was even helping to teach the restoration story, which was really weird. This lady, whose name is Friskani, was really cool. She normally goes to a born again church in Truro. And, as it turns out, the same church Ken and Toni used to go to! So when Ken and Toni rolled in for sacrament meeting, they were all like What the heck? They apparently knew each other from that church, and started talking. Friskani has a 4 year uni degree in buisness administration, but can't seem to get ajob with that so she just does some part time modelling jobs. She is really smart, and knows the bible really well. But she loved the idea of the restoration, and the priesthood, and stayed for all three hours. The ward really made her feel welcome. It was just crazy. She said she will come back to our church, and we are going to teach her again on Wednesday. She has some serious marriage problems though... some really weird stuff, but has two young kids.

Then after church and eating with Mo, we went and stopped by a refferal we got. We got the refferal from the less active grandma of the 17 year old I mentioned earlier. Apparently this lady who cuts her hair every week has shown a lot of interest in the church. I guess they just talk about it as she cuts her hair. And the hairdresser, whose name is Paige, is going to New Zealand in a month to live with her sister, who is lds, and whose husband is in the bishopric there, and wants to learn more about the church before she goes. So we knock on the door of the house, and this big, tough looking bald guy opens it. He just eyes us down looking angry for an awkward amount of time, then just smiles and says; Come in! I was really taken aback, we hadn't even spoken to him. So we went in and introduced ourselves. Turns out Paige, the daughter, is 18 and lives with her parents. Her mom used to be a member, but got exed when she moved in with her non-member husband like 30 years ago before they were married. So they were really cool and nice, and knew a lot about the church. Although Paige knew like literally nothing. She didn't even know who Moses was. But we had such a good time with them, we just seemed to hit it off with them right away and were having a good conversation and laughs. They invited us back next sunday, we shared a really great verse from the BoM with them, and they aren't opposed in anyway to the church. We are going to try to teach Paige about the church, and hopefully dunk her before she leaves. But there really isn't much time to.. so we will see what happens.

It has been a crazy week. Sorry I wrote so much.

Thanks for everything, enjoy this precious time without Joel,

Love Elder Steed