Elder Kyle Steele: Eagle-Shield-Bay

Email written: 5/14/18

Roof access picture of Äldste Steele and Äldste Hansen

Hejsan!!

I don't have a ton of time today, but I just wanted to let all of you know that I arrived safely in my new area and life is great. The area I'm serving in now is called Örnsköldsvik, which literally translates to Eagle Shield Bay. How cool is that??

Elder Hansen and I have already had some amazing experiences together and it hasn't even been a week yet. We work so well together, mostly because we both love these people and also we're both willing to work really hard. With the combination of those 2, miracles happen all the time.

On Wednesday, we're going out to a farm to do some service for one of the members here. It'll be my first time doing real farm work...kind of crazy since I grew up in Texas, but I'm really looking forward to this service opportunity. We have so many other awesome things planned for the week including some finding work in between and I know it's going to be a great week.

We've been having a lot of success tracting (knocking on doors) recently, and I thought to share a quick experience about Maria to end off the email. About a week or so ago, Elder Hansen and Wilson (missionaries that we here right before I came) had gone by and had met Maria's daughter and had talked for a bit, and were told that they could come back. So, Elder Hansen and I were the ones that were able to go back, so we went and knocked on her door, and Maria answered. She had never seen us before, and so it was a little awkward at first, as it sometimes is knocking on doors, but then her daughter came by in the background and she remembered us. We just began talking and we became instant friends. We then remembered that we had an extra plate of cookies in our car and so we told her we would love to give them some cookies. She was completely shocked and didn't really know what to say. She then wanted to know what the catch was, but we just told her no catch whatsoever, we are here out of the goodness of our hearts to serve people and help them come closer to Christ. We then grabbed the cookies and delivered them to her and she was so happy she almost began crying. We said that we would come back some other time and that we could keep in contact through Facebook. Well, today as we were buying our groceries, we happened to see our good friend Maria working. We went and started talking to her and asked her about her hurt finger as she had sliced it open peeling some carrots or something like that, and then she told us that yesterday was just an absolute stressful day and it made things worse with the finger and she didn't know how to stop the bleeding, but then she remembered something. She had cookies in the fridge that 2 young missionaries had given to her just a few days prior. The cookies, while they might've been something so small, gave her a lot of comfort when she needed it and was so thankful for it. We then said goodbye and instead of us saying it first, she said 'Vi ses', meaning we'll be seeing each other a lot more in the future! It's experiences like these that Elder Hansen and I have been having. Experiences that have been so powerful and so touching for the people that we meet. Because really in the end, it's not about numbers, it's about the people. About caring for individuals and reaching out for love. It's something I've always focused on and I'm glad my companion Elder Hansen focuses on it as well.

Hope you all have a great week! Jag älskar er!

Pictures:

We have roof access on our apartment building and so we took a couple of pictures up there and then the other picture is our good friend Tea we met in the middle of stan who made us some pancakes. :)

-- Äldste Steele