written: 2/1/2022
Week 57
A difficult week, but still positives... as always! The hardest part of the week was definitely receiving the news that Elder Petty got transferred and we only got an afternoon's notice and then he had to leave yesterday morning, it went by super fast! We had the best 2 months together and I'll be forever grateful for him! We were able to do amazing things together and we built a super strong friendship that developed into brothers from another mother, definitely a friend for life!
My new companion is Elder LeVar from Arkansas! He has the same time as Elder Petty, about 19 months, but has only been in our mission for 6 weeks, as he wasn't lucky enough to be able to get here sooner due to all the covid issues. He's super cool and we already had a lot of discussions about our thoughts on certain things and we have a lot of the same thoughts! I definitely have high hopes for this next transfer, or however long we end up getting to be together as we are still doing transfers every 2 weeks!
This week starting on Thursday we have been with Elder Ochoa, who was assistant for 6 months and is ending his mission by traveling to all of the zone leaders to give them training and to help them out with anything they've been struggling with. It's been great to learn from him and we've definitely learned a thing or two. Things haven't always been perfect, but it was a good lesson in humility to accept where I could improve and try to not think of the bad.
We finally had our long awaited branch activity this past Saturday, MasterChef Desserts! We planned a ton, we were out and about for a week inviting every single person and we has super high hopes. We went to our friend Jorge's house to even make 3 trophies for the activity using parts from his garage including a car part, and they actually turned out super good for a pair of missionaries with little experience (that's me, 0 experience, because Elder Petty is a beast with that type of stuff). However, things don't always turn out how we plan, and we had a super super bad turnout with our activity. It was super sad honestly to see a bunch of hard work and to not see a ton of people. However... there were still some positives of course. Elder Petty made a BOMB peach cobbler (definitely should've won), and a non member and a less active member were in the top 3!! We got to try awesome desserts, we had 3 awesome judges with official scorecards and even played dramatic Masterchef music, it was a blast. We also got to see someone who had never entered the church see it for themselves for the first time and just a lot of small little tender mercies that I saw to make the activity all worth it and more.
Lastly, we met a super awesome person!!! His name is Jose and he is a older man who is more than ready for the gospel! We were going house to house inviting with our old member list and we were finishing up and Elder Petty, with his infectious unlimited energy, said "THERE'S ONE DOT LEFT" and went running. We caught up to him, yelled our usual "HOLAAAA" and out came Jose... actually a different Jose than our list had said. He invited us in, took a first discussion and we actually already had a second discussion. He said he has lots of worldly things and no worries and we asked him "but Jose, is there something that you feel like you are missing" and he replied, crying "yes" and we promised him that it is the gospel and he is super ready for the gospel!
As I write this, I realize that although I had really difficult times and bad moments, the week turned out awesome. Like we told an investigator this week, God doesn't work how we want it, but he sure will help us understand His perfect plan and give us even better things and situations we never would've expected or seen coming.
Love, Elder Collin Steele
pictures include: Check out our matching ties... THAT WE MADE!; Saying good-bye to Elder Petty; MasterChef trophies - handmade by Elder Petty and me; MasterChef chef set up; MasterChef winners
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