May 6, 2012

Hey,

Thanks for those photos. It is great to see everyone. Send more photos! I will try to as well. Are you excited for next week? I can't wait to talk to you guys.

I just wanted to explain something I said in dad's email, how I am going to play basketball. A few weeks ago we contacted this little Philipinno guy who was really born-again Christian. We just compared faith vs. works scriptures on the street. He was cool, but we didn't really get anywhere. Then last week we saw him in Subway and talked to him again. He is a cool guy. Then this morning, we were travelling to the train station in Windsor and he saw us across the street. I am currently wearing my Toronto Raptors Vince Carter jersey, so he yelled across the street at us and then ran over to say hi. He started asking me if I play basketball and invited us out to play with him and his friends. I guess him and a bunch of Philipino Christian dudes play some basketball every Saturday. So I said we would go this Saturday and play. He was pretty excited. I will have to bring Elder Huang here because Pettersen can't play ball at all. So we will exchange that day. Elder Huang is from Singapore and isn't that great either, but this whole district is horrible at bball and he is the next best. It should be fun and maybe we will meet somebody cool there.

Last night was really good. The woods have moved into their new house. We went over after church with the Barals and they made dinner and we had a really good night. We then watched the hour long Joseph Smith video together to help them understand the restoration a bit better. They had a ton of questions as they watched. Elder Wood would go on for like 10 minutes just rambling after every question and just confuse everyone. I would then have to give a very brief and to the point answer to the question but it was still really frustrating. The Woods seem to have this desire to tell everything they know about the gospel and church history they can to anyone they can. Like obscure details and deep doctrine and stuff. But they are old so I feel like I can't really tell them how bad it is. 

We have started working with a new guy named Jeff. He is really cool, from Kenya, and although he bailed on us for church at 915 sunday morning, I think he is genuine. He has been baptized Anglican, but pretty much said 'well obviously...' when I asked if he would be baptized again when he knew the BoM was true. He wants an answer to his prayer about the BoM and then to join our church. That is always nice, and hopefully it works out that way.

Another really cool thing this week was we taught young mens again. We have been working with them a lot lately. We were supposed to do a misison prep activity. So we decided that we would make it fun. We split the boys into groups of two, and gave each one of them an egg, a roll of tape, a sheet of newspaper, 15 straws, and ten popsicle sticks. I think I saw this on ZOOM (the old tv show) many years ago. So they had to design something with the given materials that would protect the egg from cracking while being dropped from the highest height. It was such a fun activity and I think it will help them remember the spiritual things we talked about afterwards (relating the activity to missionary work). I will probably do the same thing in my next district meeting.

Ya so it's been a good week and I think this next week will be even better. We are going to go have a zone football p-day!

Love ya, Elder Steed