Referrals are Falling from the Sky!

Dear Family,

This week has just flown by. I thought I wrote to you just a couple of days ago. Oh, well. At least I have a story to tell. :)

Elder Scheidell and I have been working really hard here in the Lakota Creek Ward. So hard that we forget almost everything. We set a goal and went about organizing our white boards in our apartment to show everything we usually forget about our investigators and other things. God is a God of order, not chaos. Just a few minutes after we wrote everything down on those whiteboards, the blessings came! So fast! Our Zone Leaders sent us a string of texts with information of 9 people that other missionaries found that live in Lakota Creek! 9 referrals from other missionaries! That is the most I have ever received at one time in my entire mission. We wrote them on the whiteboards and then ran out of room! (Blessings so much that there isn't room enough to receive them!) I guess that organizing things really works!

I went on an exchange with the Zone Leaders from Friday to Saturday and when I came back, Elder Scheidell was telling me about this Samoan guy named Moi. They had met him on exchanges and set up a lesson for Sunday at 10:00 am. Good thing church starts at 1 pm here! On our way to the appointment, my bike had some unexpected problems and we weren't able to make it. We called him and rescheduled for 6:15pm, after dinner, still on Sunday. He didn't make that, so we then called again. Okay, we are going to try for 7:30pm. This time, he was there! (We also found out that we were going to the wrong park the entire time...)

So with the exact meeting place made clear and with all of us there, we finally got to teach him. The message of the Restoration seemed to resonate well with him. He loved it. He felt the Spirit and when we asked him if he would be baptized, he told us that it is too early for him to make a commitment. He worried a lot because he wanted to be in the same church as his brothers and sisters and they seemed very intent with going to another church. We settled with inviting him to read from the Book of Mormon every day and praying about it. We are going to see if we can invite his whole family to meet with us next time, so they can experience it, too!

I love you all! I hope you liked the stories! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Bretton Steiner.

PS: About the bike: The good news is that I didn't get into a crash. I was just biking and realized that the back tire was not staying straight. I looked at it and found out that the rod you put through the axle was bent, so I took it to the bike shop. This was Friday morning. He straightened it, but also told me to take a look at the actual axle of the wheel. When I got back to the apartment, I took the wheel off my bike and the axle just fell out of it. It was in 2 pieces and the bearings were coming out, too. Uh oh! I took it back to the bike store. Phil (who works at the bike store) told me that he would have my wheel fixed by Saturday Morning at 10 am. Well, I went on an exchange, so Elder Covington picked it up instead. he put the wheel back on my bike and rode it for the day. The exchange ended and it was now Sunday morning. We started biking over to Moi and my bike seemed different. I looked down at the wheel and I found that my derailer was bent. It was not aligned with the gears, so it made some noise and Brother Neal from the ward told me that if a derailer isn't aligned, you need to stop riding it and get it fixed. That was how Elder Scheidell's derailer broke. So, to prevent further damage, I stopped riding it and called Brother Neal. He took my bike to see if he could fix it. I got a loaner bike from the Bodily family in the ward until my bike is fixed. Brother Neal just texted us a few minutes ago that he fixed it and it is ready to go.