Lucky Leap Year!

Monday (2.29.16)

Because it was Leap Year I was lucky enough to enjoy an extra day on my mission! That phenomenon only happens every four years so I was pretty excited about it!  P-day was really nice today. Elder Kim and I have been working our hardest every day so we took an opportunity today to just rest and chill out. 

Then in the evening we were able to meet the Havili family in a massive park and have an awesome family home evening with them! It was a lot of fun and it is so exciting to see how the Spirit can make things better for all families! They seem so much happier with everything! They have definitely experienced some challenges since they have made the effort to have the missionaries over and come back to church but they are doing amazing with what the adversary is throwing them! :) Then we went over to the Sili's and had a family home evening with them as well! We showed them a video about how through "Faith in Jesus Christ we can Achieve Anything!" I love this video because it does a great job of showing that when times get hard and we choose to act on the particle of Faith that we have that amount of faith WILL be enough to get us through the stormy times in our lives. It was a great night and we were blessed to be able to be part of two wonderful Family Home Evenings with two great families that we really love!

Tuesday (3.1.16)

Today we got off to a later start due to language study for Elder Kim. Heavenly Father is blessing him for his obedience to language studies because he is doing really well with understanding English. By the time he finished with study and his lunch it was about 12:30 pm and we had to head straight to the library to do our K-report (report for President Maxwell detailing the kilometers we drove on our car) Our K’s were pretty crazy on the February report. We actually drove about 3,000 K's! If you remember from the last few weeks we had to spend a lot of time in the car with all of Elder Cook’s Eye Dr. appointments but it was totally worth it because his eye is fully recovered now! What an awesome miracle! We are so happy his eye was spared and he is back to being an great missionary full time now! 

Following our time at the library we had a feeling to go over to Monica’s house.  On the way to her house, as I was driving along I saw a Less Active Member that I met about three months ago. As soon as I saw her I knew it was my chance to connect with her again and quickly pulled over the car and knocked on her door. Sadly, she is still not too interested but just as we were finishing up talking with her, her mother drove up and said that she lived there as well! Her mom’s name is Sister Inu. She is a member also, and she is trying to get back to church. She kindly asked if we had a dinner appointment for that night. We let her know we didn’t have any dinner plans so she arranged for us to meet her at Food Star, an all you can eat place in Narre Warren, a bit later in the evening. We were super excited to do missionary work and chow down at a buffet!  

By this time we were really close to Monica’s home so we stopped by and we were FINALLY able to meet and teach her 19 year old son Tafa. He is really shy but he seemed interested in our message and I think we have the potential to really help him out!  So that was a HUGE miracle! He also trains at an MMA (mixed martial arts) gym that is owned by a member of the church so we are super excited that we already have a friend lined up for him when we decides to come to church! :) 

Then it was time to go to Narre Warren for our feed with Sister Inu. It was awesome because we found out that she works at the restaurant, Food Star.  We ate and talked and she would come and go (a great excuse for missionaries to eat a lot without being embarrassed…haha!) but it was great evening with her and she told us that she knew she needed to come back to church. She said she just needed a little  push because she was finally able to get work off on Sundays:) What a miracles that we showed up at the right time! I bear witness to you that God is Good ALL the TIME! 

All you can eat buffet.....for a missionary, that's like dying and going to heaven.

Wednesday (3.2.16)

We had our Mission Tour Zone Conference today. We were privileged to have Elder Hallek tour our mission. It was a great session with him and I was able to receive specific revelation from the Holy Ghost for some of the people that we are working with. It took most of the day but it was great being able to see about 1/3 of the mission and the missionaries! Then it was time for the drive back and we had to drop off some Elders on the way home!

Everybody's happy when you're rolling down the missionary highway.

  

We then were directed to Durnoch Place for the rest of the night! We were able to tract the street and give away two Books of Mormon! It was really amazing because we were able to secure return appointments with each Book of Mormon we placed! We were also to visit a Less Active Part member family that lives on that same street. They are the Elmer family and they are amazing. It was nice to be able to break the ice with them and have them feel comfortable with us.

Thursday (3.3.16)

We started the day by driving into the Mission home for a Special MLC (Mission Leadership Council – Zone Leaders, Sister Training Leaders, APs and President and Sister Maxwell) with Elder Hallek. It was only just a mini MLC because Elder Hallek, the AP's and President and Sister Maxwell had to fly to Tasmania for their zone conference the next day but it was a really great follow-up from what I learned the previous day at the Zone Conference Tour. Elder Hallek really tried to help the MLC  start to think outside the box. I couldn’t help but thank Heavenly Father for placing me into a home where I was taught this principle from a very small age. SO THANKS MOM AND DAD:) I was able to share a comment in MLC with Elder Hallek about how I have developed an idea to spend a good part of our time tracting on the streets where Part Member families live. I decided to do this so that when we find someone who would like to investigate the church, we can call on the Less Active Part Member family to help friendship and fellowship them and this will help them in their journey into the church. In addition, it also brings the Less Active family back to church as well. Elder Hallek commented back to me saying, "Elders and Sisters... did you hear that?  Elder Steele knows exactly how to think outside the box!" It thought it was really nice of him to say that but I can’t take credit, Heavenly Father guided me to try it and it has been working really well!  I was able to leave the meeting really excited about missionary work and right after the meeting we were able to meet two really good people that we set up appointments for later in the week! 

After that, Elder Kim and I were able to go over and teach the Mattocks about the Spirit and help Jordan figure out that he really has been feeling the Spirit all the time we have been over teaching him. It is so amazing to help people understand the workings of the Spirit.  We finished up our night by visiting the Sauvao family.  They are a wonderful islander family. They are American and they have also lived in Utah! It was awesome to be able to talk with them.  The father is returning to activity and he has a very strong testimony! I am hoping that we will be able to find someone for them to fellowship very shortly:)

After leaving our apartment for appointments, Elder Kim said he couldn't find our cell phone. Further investigation discovered he had accidentally thrown it out with the trash... I guess thats how you trash talk in Korea :)

Friday (3.4.16)

It was another day of miracles!! I really want everyone to remember that EVERY DAY WE LIVE HAS MIRACLES! We started the day with DLC (District Leadership Council) and after we finished we went to follow up with one of the appointments we had set on Thursday night. It was crazy because a different lady answered the door and she said, "Elders! I love the Elders….. they always come into my life when I need them the most!" So that was pretty incredible. We then went around to the back and found out that she was a friend of the lady that we had talked to the previous day. They were both a bit drunk but they were so happy we were here! The one we talked to the most was named Maria. She was not the really drunk lady that made the comment about the Elders. Maria said to us before we started the lesson that she had NO idea who we were but she just knew when we came to the door that we had answers for her so she said: GIVE ME THE ANSWERS!! I have to admit I was a bit taken back by this but I just said a prayer and started teaching her the Plan of Salvation. We were able to answer some of her questions and she kept saying over and over that she knew we were sent from God because she had NEVER let any strangers into her house and especially in her back yard before.  It was really great because her husband came home near the end of our lesson and we invited them both to church and they seemed pretty keen on having us back over. (Sadly they didn’t make it to church but we are going to keep trying). Then we went over to the Clark's house because they live semi close to Maria and Sister Clark ended up cooking us lunch as well! Bonus! 

Members take great care of the missionaries here in Cranborne

Then we tried Matt Thompson but he wasn’t home and it really looks like he is probably moving. To finish the night we had an amazing visit with the Havilis and taught them a quick message. As we were leaving, I felt a VERY strong impression to go to Brother Pattison’s home. Wow! it was amazing because he was home and we were able to teach him about the Restoration and the spirit was so strong! He could feel it as well! He really likes us coming over now so that is just amazing! He even said that he can see himself coming to church in the near future!!!! :) It was a great way to end the night! :) 

Saturday (3.5.16)

It was a busy day today! We had correlation meeting in the morning and they fed us and we talked about the ward and how we as missionaries can help serve the ward more effectively. Then we went over to Iain and Suzie’s house and had lunch with them. We shared a message about Faith in Jesus Christ during hard times. Then we were able to follow up with one of our new contacts from Thursday night and we found out that the wife works with a member and sometimes she gives him a ride home! You just have to know that Heavenly Father is setting everything up for his precious children to hear the Gospel. Please talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ with your friends, neighbors and co-workers. Heavenly Father WILL help you!!!  We are super excited because we set up another appointment to visit them next week! After that the Levaos took us to KFC, ordered the food, we sat down and……….they left! We were really grateful for the food but we love to visit with people while we eat! But it was all good!  

KFC puts a smile on me!

To finish the night we went out to Jackie Ann’s house and they were not home. They have a putting green at their house and they said we could try it out so I found a right handed golf club and I was FINALLY able to hit the first golf ball of my mission! It was an amazing feeling! I didn’t think I missed hitting a golf ball but it was really awesome. I don’t mind sacrificing golf for two years though, I have my whole life to golf.

"Fore"

Sunday (3.6.16)

This was the 19th Fast Sunday of my mission!  It was truly a great Sabbath. The Mattocks and Brother Young came so it was great! :) We were able to finish our SMCM report after church and Elder Seiuli (the AP who I loved when I was a newer missionary who finished his mission a while ago) came BACK to Cranbourne!! Then we went to the Suli family for a feed and they SMASHED us with food! It was so delicious and one of the most filling times of my mission. Then we had dinner with the Mattocks and taught about them Temple! It was a great lesson and it made Yvette excited about the temple as well! :) 

19 months down... loving every minute of it.