Aug 12, 2012

Hey,

Thanks for the fishing photo. That was good to see and bring back some memories. That was actually a pretty good looking fish.

Training is pretty tough sometimes. Especially here where there is no breaks and no one else. When I was here with Elder Martins I was desperatly praying that I would get a new companion. I don't think I could have survived 6 more weeks with him. But I was actually really hoping to get to stay here for one more with Erickson, and I got my wish. I think that this will be my last transfer though. Just a gut feeling.

I'm glad you guys got those photos. It was really nice of them to help us out. And ya when I get back to the mainland, I will probably be on a bus again. So my current level of fitness will fall back I am sure.

Maybe when we come back here next summer we can all rent bikes at this one bike shop and we can get around the island like that so you can see what it was like. That would actually be pretty fun.

So now you are mountain biking? Downhill or just normal mountain biking? But I really do want to get back into the triathalon thing when I get home. Hopefully I don't get too busy with school and work and everything.

So you did a week home alone? And you didn't cook for yourself? That's usually what I did as well. I could use a subway. I haven't had one for at least 6 months now.

This week was alright. I was exhausted yesterday and just collapsed when we got home. I sat down and told myself I would just rest for a minute then get up and make dinner. As soon as I sat down I was asleep for like 20 mintues. We found 4 new investigators this week which was nice. We had a really spiritual and awesome teach with one of Holly's friends, Hannah. She said near the end she was feeling something in her heart she had never felt before. And she said she wanted to read and pray and all that and come to church with Holly. Sadly, she moved to France 2 days later. Hopefully there is a seed planted though and something good will come of it. We had a lady named Bernadette come to church with us. She is really Portugese and catholic and I don't thinks he fully understands what we teach but she loved church and loves to have us come by. She is a bit lonely. Ursula is still going slowly. She has dropped us three times now. Each time we will teach her, she will text us a few hours later saying come see me anymore I can't do it I just need to go back to my old life, and then I will wait a day or so and then text back (I call it text-testify) and get her to let us continue teaching her. It gets really old really fast though and it is hard to work with that all the time. We really want to find a normal family to teach. That's always the dream.

Okay, I think I need to share the funny story of the week. We had a branch council this week. You would have to understand the branch better to get the full impact of the story. But there were us, the senior couple, the Lingads (branch president and primary president), Manuel (1st counsellor in branch) and Holly (1st counsellor in

primary) at this meeting. The only one who was really missing was Fiona (the relief society president) and Shirley (the sunday school president). So Fiona is seriously crazy. She has some major health issues. She always like staggers and falls into walls and is skeleton thin. The first time we went there for lunch and she had one of these attacks and staggered and stumbled back into the wall to catch herself, me and her son and husband didn't even flinch and erickson jumped out of his chair and was freaking out. But she just is really a character and maybe you will understand when you meet her. But so we were in branch council and Manuel mentioned that he noticed our church was listed in the phone book. We all thought this was really strange, because we have no church. So Holly called the number that was listed as ''The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints' in the phonebook on speakerphone with her phone in the center of the table. And no one was really suprised when Fiona answered it. I was just dying, trying not to laugh audibly, I thought it was so funny that she had listed her home phone number as the church, but the branch president was furious. Those two don't get on at all. I just found it pretty hilarious. Especially when everyone was like 'Oh, we've always wondered why she always seems to be the first to know when visitors are here.'

Have a good week,

Love Elder Steed