Week 69 - The Weather Can't Stop Us... Ok Maybe a Little!

written: 4/25/2022

Week 69

A cold, cold, cold and rainy week here in Coyhaique! (forecast of potential snow this week!) The entire week was filled with rainy and cold days, but that didn't stop us from getting out, although sadly Elder Levar is currently sick :(

The beginning of the week was a lot of tracting door to door trying to find people! Up and down success, and even though it was raining, we decided it was better to be out trying our best and not sitting around in the house waiting for the weather to get better (knowing it likely won't as we are really getting into fall/winter weather after little hints of the season). On Thursday I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Tomney, someone I've known for the last year, but only through phone calls and messages. We finally are in the same zone and we got to go on our exchange. Best part of Elder Tomney is his first name, yet he spells it Colin with one L hahaha. We had an absolute blast!

We have been working really hard with one family and one person specifically. His name is Fredy and his wife, Pamela, is the funniest person ever, we get along super well! This week we focused super hard on personal revelation and receiving answers to our prayers, and we've invited him to ponder and pray to know if he should be baptized. The entire time he's been in teaching by the missionaries, not a short time, he told us he's never prayed himself. As we taught that lesson, we really saw the need to basically do this with all our amigos ASAP because a confirmation by prayer is vital in any conversion!

This weekend was filled with more lessons falling through and door to door knocking in the rain. We bundled up our best and even went and chopped wood for a member, that was actually super fun in the rain! But all the rain and coldness must've caught up with Elder Levar as all day yesterday he was feeling bad and had to stay in bed all day. It was definitely weird not going to church and I really missed going! But shout-out the branch! All day they were texting and asking where we were and once they realized my companion was sick, they constantly texted to see what they could do to help, and all day they were dropping off food, drinks, Gatorade, medicine and anything they could think of! The members here are the best!!! The best news of the day was when a ton of members kept texting us telling us one of our friends, Patricio, had shown up to church!! They all ministered to him and afterwards we called him and he said he loved how inclusive the church was and he felt really comfortable! 

Let's hope Elder Levar starts feeling better to have a great week :) 

Love, Elder Collin Steele

pictures include: Chopping wood in the pouring rain; Me and Elder Tomney

Week 68 - Miracles Are Often Disguised as Coincidences

written: 4/18/2022

Week 68

This week flew by and before I knew it, here I was typing this email again!! Last P-Day was very busy, as we had to take a flight in the morning and travel to another part of the mission, in Puerto Montt! I was able to see a member that I got to spend a lot of time with when I was in Portal Del Mar, so that was an awesome experience! I also got to eat completos and the next day I got McDonalds, so a pretty successful trip if you ask me, along with the leadership meeting of course.

Once we were back in our area on Wednesday, the days just blurred, but we did have a few good things happen! We had a great lesson with someone who has been taught by a number of missionaries and is the husband of a member. We had a lesson about personal revelation and invited him to pray if he should be baptized, something he said he has never done! We are hopeful! We are going to be doing the same with another person who has been in teaching for a very long time and we are excited to see what the future holds for them! 

One day in the afternoon we had a short time planned to make a cake with a member and his family. Making the cake took only 15 minutes and we were told we were going to have to wait 40 minutes for the cake. Elder Levar and I both agreed we were going to go knock on the doors on the street during this time. We went out and began knocking and after about 5 or 10 houses, we said our typical "alooooo" outside of the fence. A man came out of the door and we introduced ourselves as missionaries and he invited us in! (This has only happened twice in the last 2 or 3 weeks we have been tracting). We began to teach him the restoration, find out about his family and situation, and see he was someone who was really interested! It is a family from Colombia and we are hopeful we will continue to teach them, especially because a recent convert from Colombia lives with her family 5 houses down from them! It was just confirmation that we were doing what we were supposed to and that it was great we both acted on the prompting to go knock doors and not just wait for the cake!

This Sunday being Easter we imagined a lot of people would attend church, but much to our faith, not only did we not have a lot of the people we were teaching show up, but the members didn't really show up either! Remember that mythical campo I mentioned last week? Well it seems like everyone went to the mythical campo this past weekend as well, but we were still able to have a good sacrament meeting and we were able to see a lot of progress in the branch as we are finally having meetings and everyone is getting more organized :) 

To end, especially after the story and experience we had out tracting, it really goes to show you God's hand in the work! I am excited to see what God has in store for the people here in Coyhaique and I am excited to see what happens these coming weeks! I am hopeful and there is a lot of potential!

Love, Elder Collin Steele

pictures include :Me and 4 missionaries from the "original crew" L-R: Sister Weight, Elder Baum, Elder Abegglen, Me, and Elder Solis; My homie, Elder Petty; Jorge is a member missionary! Look at him sporting my name tag and the Book of Mormon; Homemade shrimp ceviche with banana chips and popcorn (yes, popcorn!)

Week 67 - More Time in Coyhaique

 written: 4/11/2022

Week 67

This week started off with some nerves as we waited for transfer news and I really didn't want to leave Coyhaique! On Tuesday, after much anticipation, we received news that I'd be staying in Coyhaique with Elder Levar, another transfer together! At the end of this next transfer it'll be just under 6 months in Coyhaique, and I'm definitely going to be taking advantage of every moment!!

Also to start this week off, I was sick again, big surprise knowing me now. The usual summer into fall change of temperature symptoms came and hit me and I also have a nasty mouth infection #notfun but, hey, still going strong. Didn't stop us from going and knocking on doors in a downpour of rain! We were in a trio for 2 days as another missionary was waiting for his companion to arrive!

We got the chance to go spend a good chunk of Saturday with the Elders Quorum out in the campo, aka countryside. As we've talked with other elders we've come to the conclusion that the campo is this mystical place that basically everyone always mentions and it can mean anything now haha. We drove around 45 minutes to one of the member's houses. As we pulled up, we went into a barn and there was the fire already started. We enjoyed sopapillas, a barbecue with tons of different meats, explored a river and we all got to share our testimonies, definitely a fun experience. Someone we've been teaching also had the chance to come, and he even bore his testimony - progress!!

I really want to focus on President Nelson's invitation which is to control what we can control. There have been many times recently where I've gotten stressed out for little things, but I know I just need to take a step back, control what I can, and go with the flow!  Trust the process. While not easy, it's definitely something I'm going to try and continue to improve on! 

Love, Elder Collin Steele

pictures include: Elder quorum; the barn in the countryside; Now that's some good cookin meat; and Elder Levar and Me exploring

Week 66 - Grateful to be a Missionary

written: 4/4/2022

Week 66

An awesome week! I definitely can't believe it is already April!! Like what?? It was definitely a very busy week with many moving parts, but we made it work with what we had!

This week we had President Meek come to Coyhaique for interviews and finally a zone conference. It has been a few months without a zone conference because of all the changes in the mission and all the missionaries coming from the United States. But nothing ever goes to plan haha and we ended up only having about 1/2 of what was planned, but hey that's what happens when the missionaries in the zone have to travel by bus to get to zone conferences and interviews. The best part was definitely the awesome lunch we had, full of sushi, pizza, and ceviche. Never going to complain if I even get one of those, to get all 3 it was like Christmas! We also got a mountain of things for our house to not freeze and turn into icicles because the temperature is definitely already changing, but we will not have any problems being warm in our house.

This week as we were doing door to door contacts, we had a super cool experience with one of the people we met! He didn't have too much time when we first talked to him, but we were able to teach him about the Book of Mormon and left him with the invitation to read. We checked back up with him yesterday and he told us that he had began reading and then told us that his mom had recently been diagnosed with cancer and 2 tumors. He said that he knew it was time to grow closer to Jesus Christ and he feels that we knocked on his door at the perfect time. Little miracles!

Of course this week was also general conference, which was awesome!! On Sunday, we got invited over to a family's house not only for lunch, but breakfast also. She made massive waffles with all the toppings you could think of and to top it all off, lasagna for lunch! It is impossible to go hungry here in Coyhaique haha the members always take care of us. The talks about missionary work were definitely awesome and I am definitely happy I followed my prompting to serve a mission, even during a pandemic, or I know I would definitely be feeling all the feelings if I had listened to that talk at home. I am definitely blessed to have chosen to serve and even though it has been hard, it has been exactly what I needed. Even though my process to get on the mission hasn't been the easiest and I went through a lot of obstacles, I wouldn't have it any other way! 

Love, Elder Collin Steele

pictures include: Waffles for the win!; Neil L. Andersen, "Following Jesus: Being a Peacemaker" April 2022 General Conference; The "mountain of things" to keep us warm; The Awesome Lunch! (L-R around the table) Elder Levar, Me, Elder Caroll, Elder Tomney, Elder Jones, Hermana Jones, Elder King, Elder Anderson, President Meek, Hermana Meek, Elder Marshall and Elder Cisterna

Week 65 - Patience is a Virtue... Acquire it Quickly!

written: 3/28/2022

Week 65

To begin the week we received awesome news! We are now able to finally go door to door to try and find new people to teach!! This was the first week of my mission that I have been able to find like this, and it was really fun!! We got the chance to meet some really cool people in the few days we were able to get out and find, along with some crazies, but hey, still fun! Coolest person we found has got to be an 89 year old woman who at first when she came out to talk to us told us she was a Catholic, and usually they run us off their lawns, but she invited us in. She went on to tell us she had 17 kids and she has no idea how many grandkids or great grandkids she has haha. Then proceeded to tell us she really enjoyed our message and said it all made sense in her head! 

We had a fun branch activity where we made completos and shared a short message centered around General Conference!! We had the activity planned for 7pm and it didn't really start until around 8pm because everything basically starts 30 min - 1 hour later than what is scheduled, no matter how hard you try. Being in Coyhaique definitely is a test of my patience as the people here run on their own clock and they aren't shy to admit it either. They even have a saying "quien se apura en la Patagonia pierde el tiempo" basically "whoever rushes in Patagonia wastes time". Definitely a truth statement, so it is definitely a challenge for me, but hey, I am here for a reason to grow my patience haha. 

This Sunday for a family home evening, I got the chance to try my hand at homemade Oreo Cupcakes along with Javiera. Well let's just say that my cookies turned out much better haha. We may or may not have activated the baking powder and our cupcakes were definitely missing the spongy aspect you would imagine. But hey, lessons learned. 

Quick notes! Last P day I got the chance to try Ceviche, which is absolutely FIRE! I got salmon and avocado and it was awesome!! Definitely going to have to get it again!! Also, this week in a service project we had to enter 20 meters of firewood into a members shed.... definitely was a little time consuming haha. 

Definitely a super fun week and I am super excited for General Conference this weekend! Y'all should definitely tune in!! 

Love, Elder Collin Steele

pictures include: Kickin' it old school... tracting in the rain!; Oreo cupcakes; Ceviche; 20 meters of firewood is A LOT of firewood!

Week 64 - Cooking with Confidence in Coyhaique

written: 3/21/2022

Week 64

Super happy week here in Coyhaique!! We were able to see lots of awesome things this week and continue to see progress in the branch here! 

Firstly, last P day after I had already written my email, we had the chance to go around to a few cool places here in Coyhaique with some of our best member friends, Karen and Moises. We were able to go see a super cool waterfall, take pictures by the Coyhaique entrance sign, and see a few statues in the centro! It was cool to get out and about and see a few things I hadn't seen before. Definitely a fun way to spend P Day!

This week, we had the opportunity to offer more service for our friend Jorge, who I have probably mentioned in every email in my time here in Coyhaique! We just love to spend time with him and he has progressed more and more every week! This week, he even offered to drive us around to look for less active members and people we were teaching and how he is excited for the future and how he is preparing for all the things he has never done within the church! 

This week we began to shift our focus a little in how we find people, as we were not finding too much success with what we had been doing. We are now going around our entire area finding all the old less active members. Let me tell you, not getting one door to open in a day is never fun, but hey, now I know what missionaries of old felt like as they knocked doors the entire day. But it has definitely been fun getting to know more members and spending time with them! Not as much as an effect we had, but maybe just a cumulative effect of the efforts everyone in the branch has done, we had the most people this weekend in church and it was so awesome to see as we had to add more seats to what we had planned because so many came back. The pandemic is kind of calming down, so the church is going to be stopping our online meetings and I think it is actually going to be awesome, as we are hopefully going to see more people attend in person church!

Lastly, this weekend we had an activity where we invited the branch for a little movie night, and although not many people attended, we were happy with how it all turned out and those that attended were definitely happy and motivated! On Sunday we had lunch with Moises. Moises made a deal where he would cook the lunch, and we would make the cookies with Javiera. Moises and Karen did not think we could pull it off since we didn't have a lot of the ingredients and had to find a substitute for basically everything. Well, let's just say, somehow the cookies turned out much better than anyone thought! Fun times!!

I am looking forward to general conference in 2 weeks!! It is crazy how the time has flown by, but not complaining as we are definitely going to hear some awesome talks and inspiration that I know that I need! If anyone wants to know, I am enjoying my mission to the fullest and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than Coyhaique right now :)

Love, Elder Collin Steele 

pictures include: Enjoying Coyhaique; Who needs chocolate chips when you can use chocolate sprinkles?

Week 63 - The Changing Seasons

written: 3/14/2022

Week 63

Not as crazy of a week as we've been having, but nonetheless, a great week here in Coyhaique!

The weather is starting to turn into fall and we are definitely starting to feel the cold. There are still sunny days and warm days, but we definitely feel the beginning of what seems to be a very cold time. The rain and overcast weather also started, so walking in the rain is fun, throwback to all my fun times especially in Puerto Montt and my firefighter rain pants (definitely will be wearing those in the coming weeks) haha.

We had a pretty cool experience working with Facebook. I usually don't like to work with Facebook at all, but last week when I was sick I decided to use some of the time to send a few messages to people and someone responded and basically said "yeah, tell me what you want" super direct... So I decided ok, I'll be direct as well. I said we are missionaries and we have a message that will change your life. He said "OK, call me when you want". (usually doesn't happen like that). We had a great lesson with him and he even has the desires to be baptized. We will have to see how things go, as we lost a little communication with him over the weekend, but he said he had been super busy. But nonetheless, he was super excited about learning and it was a cool experience for sure.

We continue with the amazing family that we are teaching and they're progressing A TON! We had a lesson with the girlfriend of the member and they began asking us all about temples, marriages, and baptism. She told us she wants to be baptized, married in the temple, and raise her kids in the gospel!! It was definitely awesome to hear and something we hadn't really been expecting, or at least not that fast! The only catch is to be married civilly, they need an appointment, and the soonest is all the way in June. We are hoping to continue working with the kids, they just weren't there this weekend, but we hope to discuss baptism with them as well!! Teaching families is awesome, but definitely challenging (in a good way!)

Things are still going awesome and I'm super happy here in Coyhaique!! Elder Levar and I are excited about what's in store for us and what's to come! Gotta keep trusting the process!! 

Love, Elder Collin Steele

pictures include: Singin' in the Rain... again!; Elder Levar and me; Elder Levar and me with photo bomber, Karen; Elder Levar, Jorge, and me; and Life is good in Coyhaique!