Break Out the Bikes!

Dear Family,

This week has been pretty good. Elder Palmer and I have been struggling to find new investigators, so we have been "breaking out the bikes!" We talked to the vehicle coordinator and got a bike rack for the truck so we don't have to squeeze our bikes under the canopy of the bed of the truck. One thing that I have noticed while biking is that Maple Valley is a beautiful place! It is so much fun to bike around here (on sunny days)!

The Office is busy, as usual. We finally closed down the 4th and last apartment this transfer. We tried to clean it out and close it on Wednesday, but we mixed up the time to meet with the housing coordinators and so it didn't happen! We ended up closing it on Memorial Day. It was a 3rd floor apartment and there were some pretty heavy desks! My favorite part was concluding that we didn't want to keep the large couch, so we threw it off the stair way. THUMP! It was hilarious! Surprisingly, it stayed all in one piece. The housing coordinators tried to take a video of it, but accidentally didn't press the record button on the phone.

I hope you all had a great Memorial Day! I am doing well and am just getting over the fact that I have been out for 11 months. I love you all!

Love,
Elder Bretton Steiner.

Thanks for the many letters from Amelia! Those quotes are so great!

​We would have this be a companion photo, but someone had to hold the camera. :)

Biking in the forests of Maple Valley!

Dinner Over At Candy's House

Dear Family,

This week has again been pretty busy. There is so much to be done for the Office Elders. This week, we closed 2 apartments, organized the storage unit, and moved cars with Elder Young (the Car Coordinator) out of the church parking lot so it could be re-paved. That list actually doesn't sound long now that I write it, but it did take a long time.

I want to write about a miracle that happened on Tuesday. During District Meeting, Tuesday morning, we got 2 texts on the phone. The first one was a member saying that we needed to cancel our dinner tonight, the other one was Candice W. (she goes by Candy) inviting us over to her house for dinner tonight! I was pretty excited that we get a dinner! We went over at 5 pm to have dinner. Candy's caretaker, Deanna, and her friend, Tony, the maintenance man for the apartment complex, were there. We stayed there for our usual Book of Mormon reading at 6, but Brother Bean (the Ward Mission Leader for Lake Lucerne ward) was late because of a serious car crash that happened outside of the apartment complex. Here is the miracle. That driver (who was going +60 mph in a 35 mph zone) was driving around a corner, lost control, and swerved right into a mid-sized pick-up truck. If we had not already been at Candy's house, we would have been driving around that corner at that same time and could have ended up in the crash. I know that Heavenly Father made changes to our plans to make sure that we wouldn't be there on Tuesday. So, crash avoided. :) Also, all the people involved in the crash are okay.

I love you all and hope you have a great week! Tomorrow will be my 11 month mark. It is going too fast! I love you!

Love,

Elder Bretton Steiner.

I have a feeling we shouldn't park on this side of the street...

The mountains in Enumclaw! Yay! I really miss mountains.

Service at the Cemetery! It was really rainy! From the Left to Right: Elder Nelson (District Leader), me, Elder Palmer, Elder Clayburn.

A wide view of what I get to see everyday! Elder Palmer is in the truck.

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!

Happy Mother's Day!

Dear Family,

This week has been awesome! It included Mother's Day and a family being united in baptism! Ja. and Is. have been working towards baptism for the last couple of months and just last Tuesday, they passed their baptismal interviews! They got baptized on May 7th, 2016! They asked Bishop M. to do both the baptisms and confirmations for both of them. The rest of the family has been working on reactivating and getting temple recommends. LJ is 15 years old and both he and Ja. got the Priesthood on Sunday after church! Ja. got ordained first, and so was able to stand in the circle to ordain his step-son!

Can you imagine how Sister C. is feeling? She just got one of the best Mother's Day gifts ever: Her family united by baptism and activity in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! They plan on going as a family to do baptisms for the dead this week!

As for me, I got to call home and talk to my family over skype! It was awesome! You make me laugh so much! If you want my opinion, it was far too short! Thank you for all of your support, love, and care for me! I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Bretton Steiner.

Elder Palmer and I in the Mission Office!

It was a sunny day outside, so that's where we took the baptismal pictures! Is. (left) is the step-son of Ja. (middle) and Bishop M. (right) baptized both of them.

Big group picture at the baptism! Missionaries starting from left to right: Elder Palmer, Elder Davidson, Elder Steiner, and Elder Brown. Everyone else from left to right: Is., Ja, Ni, Me, Bishop M., (I forget her name, but it is really cool), and LJ.​

This is a picture of the whole mission! This was taken at the top of the Skyway Ward in the Renton Stake, and you can see all the way to the bottom of the mission at Mount Rainier! I got this picture from a different missionary, so sadly, I didn't take this picture myself.
​

Transfers Have Come Again!

Dear Family,

First off, I want to tell you how the C family is doing. They are doing great! We are teaching them their final lesson this week and they are getting baptized on May 7th! I am really excited! This week we taught them about the 10 commandments and showed them the hand signs for each one. The signs are actually pretty cool!

I got to do typical office work. I moved beds into apartments for upcoming trios, took bikes around, etc.  I also got to drive another brand new Corolla off the lot. That never gets old! (Get it?)

This week is the start of my 8th transfer! Thanks to being an Office Elder and having IMOS privileges, I got to see what is happening in the transfer early! Elder Davidson is being transferred and my new companion is Elder Palmer! That is funny because the bishop in the Lake Lucerne Ward is Bishop Palmer. I think he is going to get a kick out of that! Because it is transfers, I got the opportunity to drive to the airport and kill a bunch of missionaries (In missionary language, Kill = when a missionary sends another missionary home)!

I love you all! Have a happy Mother's Day! And I will see some of you on Skype!

Love,

Elder Bretton Steiner.

The Maple Valley district! It was awesome!