Zone Conferences!

Dear Family,

This week has been awesome! Office Elders are always busy when the week of Zone Conferences comes! During every Zone Conference, while all the missionaries are inside being taught by President and Sister Eaton, we are outside choosing which car is the cleanest in each zone! Thankfully, every day we did this was bright and sunny! The car in the zone that was the cleanest, we awarded the Gold Plates and an additional 100 miles each month until next Zone Conference. Its a competition! Some cars were vacuumed out, dusted, washed, and waxed. Some weren't. We gave the Gold Plates accordingly. When the time came around for Elder Palmer and I to go to our own Zone Conference, we had a past Office Elder, Elder Davidson and his companion to do the car inspections for us. The topic in Zone Conference was repentance, both for ourselves and how to teach it to others. It was awesome!

On Sunday, there was another Mission Devotional! This one was held down in Puyallup. Now that I am the senior Office Elder, I run the slide show while Elder Palmer ran the lights. It got pretty stressful at one point. The Assistants came and made some last minute changes to the slideshow program, but they didn't save it. Brother Egburt (The computer guy) decided to restart the computer 5 minutes before it started to be sure that it would run smooth. When it restarted, we had to quickly make all of the changes over again to the slide show in before the devotional started (about 2 minutes). But after that, all worked out! All of the videos played just fine, the choir was amazing, and the convert testimonies were powerful! I love these devotionals!

At the beginning of the week, Sister Eaton called us and said that some Sisters in Federal Way discovered bed bugs in their apartment. It was already fumigated, but the bugs didn't go away, so they figured that they burrowed into their wooden bunk bed and survived. Our mission was to go destroy the bunk bed, throw it into the dumpster, give them new beds, and not spread bed bugs. At this point, I was already starting to get nervous. Our week was already booked until Saturday, so that was the day set to go fight the bed bugs. You know when you dread something, it just makes it seem to come faster? That is what happened this week. Saturday morning came and a funny, familiar tune from a movie went through my head, only it had different lyrics. "Who do ya call? Office Elders! We ain't afraid of no bugs!" When we got there, we applied bug spray and the bed bug luggage spray (that you bought me) on our clothes. The Sisters left to go proselyte and they left us at their apartment. We started to use the drill to undo all of the bolts in the bunk bed, but a lot of them were stripped and wouldn't come out! Thankfully, Elder Palmer and I brought a couple of hammers, too. Elder Palmer did the first hit. The top bunk broke and fell to the side. Then we looked at the mattresses (They had bed bug covers already) and they were covered with bed bugs that weren't there before Elder Palmer hit it. We ran outside and said a prayer before going back in. Eventually, with lots of prayers and fears, we got the entire bunk bed into the dumpster across the street. Then the Sisters texted us and told us that they decided they didn't want any of their furniture anymore. So we grabbed everything else and put it all in front of the dumpster (We can't take it with us without getting bed bugs in the truck or trailer and that would be very bad). Then the exterminator came again for the second fumigation right as we were leaving. We did everything that Sister Eaton told us to do, put our clothes immediately into the dryer and take showers. Then we went back after dinner (after the fumigation had settled) to bring them their new beds and also a table with some wooden chairs to study on. It was just as scary because the bugs were still alive! The exterminator told us that they will eventually die from the fumigation, but it might take a couple of days. After all was said and done, neither of us could sleep because we were afraid that we had brought bed bugs into the truck or even our own apartment. It was a rough weekend. Anyway, Elder Palmer says that he got an answer that the bed bugs didn't spread into the truck or the apartment. I hope he is right!

Cool experience, huh? 

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Bretton Steiner.

Here is a past picture that I have taken that shows what the Gold Plates look like. This was back when I was training with Elder Nelson (now the new Assistant to the President) and we cleaned this car so much!

​Elder Palmer and I doing car inspections in Auburn while everyone else is at Zone Conference! Oh yea!