Hello everyone, this is your normally faithful writer Elder Steinkuhler here. I’ve just completed another wonderful week of heavenly labor and am now fully ready to give you a 100% account of all of my actions... the only problem is that I can’t. So we will take out a few key factors and hope that it suffices.
First of all, it is really cold. It feels like about 30º or so. The winds are almost always high in our area and there is always a lot of water, so if you get wet... it is REALLY cold. Sunday morning we woke up to rain... not happy Steinkuhler mood. We went looking for our investigators in the freezing rain/ice sheets and for some reason no one wanted to come with us, go figure. Ha ha, it was fun though. We had a great day in any case. We ended up finding some really awesome people, which brings me to my next point.
Two weeks ago we found a lot of people... families mostly. But none of them really wanted to have us come back... for one thing or another they were busy or didn't want us to come into the homes. Needless to say, they did not read what we left them. So that kind of got us down in the dumps. But this week we found wonderful people. People truly prepared for the gospel. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself....... I don't know how to tell all of this, so I’ll just start with Tuesday.
We had our zone conference with the new president. It was a great conference and we learned a lot of new things... but he also explained a lot of changes going on in the mission field all over the world. For example, our capitations will now focus on 8 lessons... there will be meetings for four days with the mission leaders... etc. I feel like I can share one thing the Spirit hit me with. I realized that although 75% of my teaching is focused on personal revelation, I was not doing enough to help people get their own answers. The conference really made me look at my teachings from the beginning of my mission until now. And I’ve realized that there are a lot of things that I can be doing better. I know that I am suppose to be like the best in the Zone because I'm the zone leader and have been in the field the most time, but I am not really that good at teaching. I realized that this week. I still have so far to go. So I started adjusting my teachings this week to great success. I focused my own personal prayers and prayers with others to help them feel the Spirit and learn how to get a true answer from the Almighty.
We had this wonderful finding experience this week with a young mother and her boyfriend. Last Sunday we did a few contacts during the soccer world cup finals... to our great surprise there was a nice young lady who talked to us for awhile but didn't want to let us in because her family was watching the game. So we set up an appointment to come back and we found not only her but this wonderfully intelligent boyfriend as well (I love teaching couples). It was right after the conference and I had my heart swallowed up in prayer, so when we sat down and started to get to know them, I felt inspired to read something from D&C section 9. We started reading and she told us that she has problems understanding new things and that she never understands things she reads. So we went slow and she understood everything PERFECTLY!!! It was amazing... and her boyfriend seemed to have already known the things we taught him, it is just that he never lived it. ANYWAY, we taught them lesson one very fast. We started with prayer, then why there are so many churches (apostasy), then Joseph Smith, then The Book of Mormon. It was phenomenal! They loved it and the Spirit was so strong. I was blown away, I don't know if it was just because of how well God had prepared them or because of the things I learned in Zone Conference... but that was one of my favorite lessons yet in the mission.
Yesterday we also found a wonderful lady who has a daughter with mental problems. She asked us to give her a blessing of health and I performed the sealing. I really have grown to love using God`s Priesthood. The daughter couldn't really talk, but I could see her pure spirit... I felt so much love for her and her family as we performed the ordinance. The funny story about that is that they were references from the lunch appointment we had. After church we had to walk about 30 minutes in the mud to our lunch appointment at the end of nowhere where this one member lives. The truth is that neither I nor my companion wanted to go... but we ended up going because the member wouldn’t take no for an answer. But what a blessing it was. We had such a wonderful spiritual experience that the member gave us about 35 references more... YEAH!!!!!!
Well, I pulled out my suitcases to start packing this week... and I found all the old stuff (or what I called "ish") that had been collecting up for two years. I felt somewhat like Harry Potter when he cleans out his trunk at the beginning of book 7... and yes, I still remember/love every part of the Harry Potter books. I found old cards, drawings, lesson plans, books, toys, keys, etc. It was sad looking at it all and thinking, "I really don’t want any of this ish, I should probably just throw it all away". It was a sad day. I feel like I threw away a part of two years, but it is a part that I just cannot bring with me. I still haven’t actually packed anything, perhaps today I’ll do it. FYI, I did not get my nap last week, and I doubt I’ll get it this week. All well, I’ll get lots of sleep on the plane.
So, it looks like everyone is telling me that I’m going home in two weeks. I don’t feel like it still, I know what is going to happen... but I can’t feel it happening to me. Life is just going on still... and I don’t see it changing, although I am excited to see the changes. I feel like I’m just going to get transferred again, but this time they told me in advance. Well, I will have one more pday left after this one. So if anyone wants to send me an e-mail before I get home... do it this week. If you want anything I MIGHT be able to get it, but with such short time there are no promises. Anyway, I’m off.... I love you all and hope to see everyone soon.
All a missionaries love,
Elder Steinkuhler
PS We played pool today and my companion whooped me 2/3 times. The last time I BARELY won. I’m going to miss Elder Lucas a lot.
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