Email received November 4, 2013

Hello Family,
I hope that you all had a great week. I did out here in Houston. We had a baptism this past Saturday. Since stake conference was the next day we had to confirm him at the baptism. So on Friday we had our last lesson with Gilbert before his baptism. We taught him some of the commandments that we hadn't taught him last minute but he didn't have a problem with any of them, so that was good. We asked him how the word of wisdom was going and he said that he shouldn't have a problem with it. He had a drink the night before but said that was the last one. Apparently, you're supposed to not do things like that for a week before you get baptized. We goofed because he kinda was under the impression that, like tithing, he had to do it after he was baptized. Anyway, we had to bring some other missionaries with us so that after our lesson the ZL could come inside and have Gilbert's baptismal interview. While the interview was going on, we called President Pingree and asked what he thought about him not abstaining from alcohol for a week. He told us to read D&C 20:37 and to see what the Spirit tells us. We felt that he was ready to be baptized and he sure was! His baptism was on Saturday and it was great. Elder Hillebrant baptized him and he asked me to confirm him. Giving a blessing by the Spirit is awesome. A lot of people said that the blessing that I gave was beautiful, but it wasn't my blessing, it was from the Spirit.
We had a really interesting experience with an investigator this weekend. I have written about him before. He is awesome and last time that I met with him he said that he wants to be baptized but that he couldn't say that he knows that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. So in our meeting with him this week we asked him if he believed that he was a prophet. He said that he does and that the Book of Mormon gives him a peaceful feeling more than any other book. He's so ready. But then he asked us what the church's stance on homosexuality is. We told him that we believe marriage to be between a man and a woman, but that being gay isn't a sin. Only breaking the law of chastity and giving in to those temptations is a sin. He was very emotional and said that he has tried to change but can't. We haven't been able to get a hold of him since that lesson. We feel that now we could address his situations a little bit better after having some time and talking to President Pingree and the bishop, but he hasn't texted back. It sucks. It sucks really bad when someone is so ready and finds out but there is one thing that keeps them from accepting the Restored gospel. I hope that we can meet with him soon and explain to him a little better that being gay isn't a sin and that he can still be baptized. He just needs to commit to live the law of chastity.
We had one other super awesome lesson this week with a lady named Laura. We had a lesson about the Book of Mormon. From our first lesson with her, we taught a little bit about the Book of Mormon and where it came from and left her with one. This lesson we had this past week was awesome. We were able to fully explain that it is just other prophets in the America's teaching the same gospel and that we can pray to know if it's true to find out if Joseph Smith was a true prophet. She was under the impression that it was just a book of Joseph Smith's interpretations. She was so excited and felt the Spirit so strong that she couldn't even speak! It was awesome. Her mind was blown and she said that she would definitely read it. We are supposed to meet with her again this week so hopefully that will go well.
There's a less active family that we've been working with. At first it would just be the mother, who would reluctantly sit on the porch with us for a few minutes. But now we go to their house and everyone loves having us over. Now we have started going through the lessons and reading scriptures with them. It's really cool because everytime we visit them they seem more interested. The mom is interesting because she has BoMs everywhere and still reads it. She also has pictures of temples everywhere. It's weird how many people have felt that it's true but don't really understand the significance of that. She's interesting because she has a testimony of the BoM and Joseph Smith but goes to a Catholic church. Some people just don't fully understand the significance and the fact that this is the Restored gospel, the only one that is lead by Jesus Christ. This is His church and he leads and guides it. We are working with the family to realize what claim actually comes with the Restored gospel.
Well that's just a little bit of my week. If I told everything it would take forever. I hope everyone is doing well and that you have another great week! I'll send some pictures in another email! Love you all!

Love,
Elder Steed

Email received October 28, 2013

Dear Family,

How are you all doing? I hope all is well. This week was pretty good but kind of lame as well. We have a baptism Saturday. His name is Gilbert and I think that I wrote home about him last week. He was having trouble because all of his family is Catholic, especially his mother who is basically on her death bed. We gave him a blessing of comfort that he would be able to go through with what the Lord had told him to do. He seems pretty excited about his baptism. He asked Elder Hillebrant to baptize him and me to confirm him.

We had splits this past Thursday. We were finally able to get some members to go out with us. A member and I went to go visit one of our investigators named Carlos. It went really well (even with me leading the discussion cuz Elder Hillebrant was in another appointment). Carlos is awesome. He really gets it and he has felt the Spirit. He has family members that say bad things about the church to him (mostly Galatians 1:8) but he defends the church, it's awesome. He said that they are really closed minded but that it's really hard on him. I told him that lots of people have that problem. That friends and family members sometimes don't understand or that they are not prepared to receive it yet like he is. I told him that everyone will have their chance to either receive or reject the gospel. I think that helped him a lot. He said that he has been seriously contemplating baptism and he said that its something that he wants to do. He said, on the verge of tears, "I think it's something that I want to do, I want to be cleansed and I just don't want to do bad things anymore." It was awesome. we are meeting with him this Tuesday and are working with him to increase his faith that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and restored the gospel. We are also working with him to quit smoking. One thing that was really cool was that the member that came with me to Carlos' could relate really well. He is a recent convert and, like Carlos, grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school. It's been awesome how well member lessons have worked out. We had one other where the member we brought was a recent convert who was baptist, which is what the investigator is.

We haven't been able to teach Renee or Michael. Renee is out of town and she said she will call when she gets back. We have seen Michael a couple of times and invited him to the Trunk or Treat that was on Saturday. He came with his whole family but he came at 5 instead of 5:30 so he went home when he didn't see anyone there. He didn't go to church because there was a HUGE storm Sunday morning. Yesterday was fast Sunday because next week we have Stake Conference. Testimony meeting was awesome and the Spirit was really strong. Me and Elder Hillebrant bore our testimonies and lots of people seemed to enjoy it.

One last quick story before I go. There was a talk in the MTC that we watched by Elder Bednar. It was all about recognizing the Spirit. He said sometimes we wait for this big manifestation or we wonder if the thoughts we have are the Spirit or if they are just us. He said that as long as we are being good, keeping the commandments, and honoring our covenants, anything that is good is from God or from the Spirit. One night we had all our appointments fall through and nothing to do. Elder Hillebrant said let's just go visit the Patricks and he had me text them to see if we could go over there. Anyway, we went over there and just visited and shared a quick message. Before we left Brother Patrick said that him and his wife had been having a horrible day. The had a bad day at work and got in a contentious argument with another driver on their way home from work. He prayed for the Spirit to be able to re-enter his home. 20 minutes later we sent him a text asking if we could come over. He said we were an answer to his prayer. It's really cool how the Lord works. Anyway, I love you all and hope you are doing well. Thanks Dad and Chels for taking care of the letters and such. Oh, and happy birthday Jeff!

Love,
Elder Steed

There are so many dogs here...

...but none of them are as cute as Indie :)

His District

Elder Steed and Elder Hillebrant

Their small district (Sisters Bonner and Brown, Elders Hillebrant and Steed)

Email Received October 21, 2013

Greetings family!

This week was really good! We have some awesome investigators! We had one who said he would give us his answer about being baptized this weekend on Sunday (yesterday). He came to us and said so I know you guys wanted an answer today and I started thinking oh great and getting all discouraged, but his face changed and he looked all happy and said he would like to and that he feels it's right. He said he's torn though because his mom is a devout catholic and is on her death bed. He said he doesn't want to break her heart especially given the present circumstances, but he doesn't want to do it without telling her. He asked if we could give him a priesthood blessing to give him the strength to tell her. We promised him that he would be blessed and that it is a trial of his faith. We also told him that God has promised that everyone will have a chance to receive the Restored Gospel and I think that really helped him. We gave him a blessing and he said he felt better. It actually has to be rescheduled to the weekend after this weekend because of the trunk or treat but we're all very excited.

Yesterday, we went to visit this lady that we had scheduled a lesson with. She wasn't there, but down the street there was this huge festival going on at some church so we decided to just walk by to see what was going on. We went over there and got welcomed by some awesome hispanic guy that just said walk around go into the temple (that's what they call their church) and to just take a tour. So we went into this temple, its called La Luz Del Mundo (The Light of the World). It was pretty big and it was really cool. It was beautiful and it was really nice but it didn't have the same Spirit that is present in our buildings. Anyway these 4 hispanics came up and basically started like doing missionary work with us. They taught us all about their doctrine. It was cool but they talked forever and we were there for like 3 hours... Anyway there church is very similar to ours. They believe in an apostasy and Restoration. They have a leader who they believe is an apostle. Anyway the difference is we have the priesthood and are the primitive church. They kept telling us that they are the primitive church. There leader claims to have an experience similar to Joseph Smith. Anyway I heard that there leader used to be LDS so it explains the similarities. The only difference is one is truly called of God (Joseph Smith) and one wasn't. We felt bad because it's so close to the truth but it's not. They kept testifying that they have prayed and have got an answer that it's the primitive church and that Joaquin Flores is an apostle. Since I can't use the internet, Dad could you research some more stuff about the LDM church and let me know? It was very interesting.

Friday night we were driving around with nothing to do. We drove by a house and I saw the Dodger game through the window. I said lets go tract that house! So we did and we got a potential out of it. haha. I also watched about 30 seconds of the Dodgers (luckily it was still while it was 0-0, I got to watch Uribe strike out) hahaha.

Most of what has happened this week I sent home in the letter. (sorry chels). The stuff above is what has happened since I sent the letter. I love you all and think of you often! Keep being awesome!

love,

Elder Steed

(Added a couple minutes later: this is the temple we visited and people talked at us for like 3 hours haha (dad its the LLDM church, not LDM. we visited the LLDM temple in Houston)

Letter Received October 21, 2013

Dear Family, 

To start off I want to apologize for my wimpy emailing. Most missionaries have a huge, long email that they send to their families. So far I've done the opposite with having small, undetailed emails but long detailed letters. I guess I'm saying this because I know Chels is keeping a blog and she puts my emails up on there, and they don't have very much in them. I'll try to write better emails because I can't expect to make her type my letters and put them on the blog. I'll try to do better. 
Anyway, Houston is fun! My area is about 15 miles wide and 15 miles north and south. Most parts are really ghetto, but some parts are really nice. The ward is tiny, but the members are awesome. People are so different here. Everyone is friendly, even gangsters are really friendly and respect us. Everyone here is religious. It's really easy to get investigators (we have like 21), but it's hard to get them to commit to do anything. 
So far I've had plenty of interesting things happen. One of my first few days here we went to visit this guy. He pulled out a bong as soon as we sat down and started smoking some marry-Juana. We asked him if he could not do that while we were there and he respected that enough to stop that and to just burn through 4 cigarettes in the next half hour we were there. What made him so crazy was that he's just not right anymore. The things he has taken have messed with him so bad that he's not himself anymore. It's pretty sad. Another thing was he had the most evil, terrifying laugh. It was so loud. His average laugh would last about 5 seconds. The first 4 seconds would consist of this weird, loud laugh that is more comparable to a yell. The last second was a little half-grin at the end of his laugh. He doesn't even smile when he laughs! 
There's another family we visit and the first thing I noticed when I get in the door is me being attacked/humped by some ugly huge dog. Anyway, the family is really cool and they love having us over, but they have a 20 year old special son who is so depressed and so rude. It's not his fault, but it causes so much contention and there's constant yelling. We sit there all awkwardly while they yell and argue. We try to get them to pray together as a family and they do every so often. 
Okay, so I finally had my first real lessons. We have a bunch of investigators, but the two biggest and most recent are Michael and Renee. Before I got here they [the missionaries] taught Michael the Restoration and they said it went really well and that he understands it and said it makes sense. We visited him last night (16th) and since he hadn't read, we read the BOM with him. He seemed to understand it and enjoy it. After we were done he said it was very similar to the Bible. He made the connection that we can apply it to our lives today. He seemed to enjoy it and said he would read Chapters 3 and 4 before our next visit Friday (18th). 
The other investigator that I would like to share about is Renee. She's this really awesome, short African American lady with gold teeth! Anyway, we had our first lesson with her Monday (14th). Before that even began we asked her what she was expecting to get out of our meetings with her. She said that she felt that we know something that she doesn't know and that it was no coincidence that we met (we had no intention on stopping at her apt, but the garage door opened as we were walking by). She said that she knows that we were sent from God. 
So the plan was to do what is called "The Powerful First Lesson." Which basically is the lesson of the Restoration, but if, after stating Joseph Smith's account of the First Vision the Spirit is really strong, then we have a kneeling prayer and ask the investigator to pray to know if what we are teaching is true. After they pray we have them read Galatians 5:22 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith." Then you ask if they are feeling any of those things. When they say they do then we testify that that is the Spirit and then ask them if they will be baptized. 
Anyway, so yeah, that was the plan. We got to the part about the First Vision. My companion asked if we could close our eyes while he said it. The Spirit was so strong. There was such a long silence after he finished and she finally broke it by saying, "That's nice. That's beautiful." She was really touched by it. It made so much sense to her, because it does make sense! So we asked her if she was feeling any of those things in Galatians 5-22. She said all of them and we testified that that was the Holy Ghost testifying of truth. We asked her if she would follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the proper authority of God and she accepted. 
Our next lesson with her was on Wednesday (16th). She was so excited to see us and to talk with us. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and read the first 2 chapters with her. At first she was really reluctant or hesitant at the idea of it, but as we read she liked how it was similar to the Bible and has lessons that we can learn from it. We really emphasized the importance of being baptized and becoming part of the true church because we felt that she didn't entirely understand that. (A lot of people here actually believe the Restoration and feel that it's true, but they don't understand the importance of it, that this is the only true church.) She said she will continue to read and pray and seemed very excited to do so. We meet again with her Friday(18th). 
I am doing well. Me and my companion get along great and have a lot of fun. I'm so glad I get to do this. It makes me sad that so many people don't get to do this. One thing that I've learned is that anyone who is worthy and has the desire to serve can do this. Anyone can become a missionary as long as they have those 2 things. I would encourage anyone who has those to do it! I'm starting to settle in! No more pukes for me (I hate that that's what I do when I'm nervous.) I thought that I would be fine since I didn't throw up before reporting to the MTC, but guess not haha. 
Well, I hope everything is going well back home and that everyone is well and happy! I'd just like to end by saying that the Atonement is REAL. It literally can take away burdens and guilt. It doesn't matter what you've done or how long you've done it, you can fix it and become truly happy. The price has been paid, but we need to use it and not let it go to waste. It's never too late. I'm thankful for it and it is why I'm here. I love and miss you all. I think about you every day. Let my friends know that I love and miss them. Also that I think of them often and hope and pray that they are doing well. I love you all! 

Love, 
Elder Steed