Elder Nathan Steed: Email received December 23, 2013

Hello! First of all, Merry Christmas to you all! I hope that it will be a great day! We definitely had a better week this week. WE HAD 3 MEMBER PRESENT LESSONS THIS WEEK. That's a lot, considering I had only had 4 to this point on my mission. Member present lessons are the best. Last Monday we had dinner at the new Ward Mission Leader's home. We talked about what the ward needs. He is awesome. He's young, single, an attorney, and he's on fire. We are very excited.

On Tuesday we had another lesson with Laura, our top investigator. We had a member there named Lauren. She is the sister-in-law of a sister in our ward. She was only in town for a few days but is planning on going on a mission so she came with us. We talked a little bit about the Holy Ghost and Enduring to the End. Laura said that she knows that she committed to be baptized last time we met, but that now she isn't ready. I testified that the reason she said yes before was because the she felt the Spirit so strongly testifying to her that the things we teach her are true and that it's the right thing to do. The Spirit is always so strong in our lessons with her.

On Wednesday we had a lesson with John again. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and were really bold with him about how the people who baptized him before didn't hold proper authority. He wasn't offended and appreciated our honesty. He said that he has some reading and praying to do. He also asked us some questions about the Fall and the fruit. He said that he hasn't talked to a minister yet who could explain it. So we are excited to have the Plan of Salvation lesson with him this Tuesday. If he doesn't cancel, seeing as it's Christmas Eve. haha. We also had another member present on Wednesday. It was at the Smith's home. It was with a lady named Tina. She is pretty cool but our lessons are always on negative stuff she's heard about the church and stuff she's heard from her pastor. Her husband does not like us at all. She texted us saying that we are trying to brainwash her by having her come to the home of a black lds couple. It was pretty ridiculous. The reason we had the lesson at their home was because we accidentally scheduled a lesson with her at the same time the Smith's signed up to have us over for dinner. So we decided to do both at the same time :)

Thursday we had another lesson with Laura with a member present. It had to basically end before it started because some guys game to work on her floor and it was too loud to have a lesson. But thankfully the two of them were able to talk and become friends. So that's good. We also had a correlation meeting with our new WML. We have developed a little ward mission plan and are testing the waters on it now!

On Friday we had Christmas conference. There are now 280 missionaries in the Houston mission so the Christmas conference has 2 sessions instead of one. Anyway President talked about the Atonement. It was so great. He went from the Pre-mortal Christ all the way through now. He talked a lot about the Fall. The doctrine of the Fall is amazing. It's so great to be able to understand it and how it fits into the Plan and the Atonement. I'm grateful that we have The Book of Mormon and revelation through modern prophets to be able to understand it and how it fits into God's Plan and the Atonement. We also met with Laura Friday night. We randomly stopped by and just talked about the church. We talked a lot about faith and how essential it is to finding out truth.

Well that's most of what happened this week. I hope that everyone has a great Christmas. And I'll talk to some of you on Wednesday! Woooo!

Love,
Elder Steed