How do you know God exists?

hola family! this week went by SO FAST! holy cow.

today was the first day of school right? how did it go?! tell me all about it! syd as seminary pres!? YOU GO GIRL! you´re gonna rock it. i just know it.

anyways, we had an AWESOME week. last thursday we were knocking doors and found an ANGEL. seriously. it´s amazing to see that the Lord really is preparing people to recieve the gospel. it´s so true that people are literally waiting for us.

her name is Maria Jose. our first lesson with her was amazing! she understood everything we taught...i´m pretty sure she understood better than anyone i´ve ever taught in my whole mission. when we asked her what it would mean to her to know that the church is true she said "well it would mean that God is giving me the opportunity to be apart of the restoration of the gospel." she told us that we helped her to see a "different vision"...and at the end of the lesson she was like "i want to share this with my loved ones! i want them to feel what i feel right now!" how awesome right? basically she wants to be baptized...tomorrow we are going to have a family night with her and one of the families in the ward...im SUPER EXCITED. it was so awesome to see the spirit testify to her of the truthfulness of our message. when i bore my testimony at the end of the lesson she started crying and said "i know you guys are here for a reason". i really love her so much. i love being a missionary...i love helping people come unto christ. it´s the best thing ever.

yesterday while we were knocking doors, we found a guy...a crazy guy to say the least. the lesson we had with him was weird. he has a lot of weird beliefs. it´s been really bugging me...how the lesson went.

so when we started talking about God we said that God has a body of flesh and bones...just like ours. we read in genesis that God made us in His image. he asked us how we know that God has a body if we´ve never seen Him. we talked a little bit about faith...how we know things are true even when we can´t see them. then he started telling us that God could be a plate of pasta, or the water. he said there´s a difference between knowing and believing. we testified to him that we KNOW that God is real...that we´ve prayed to God to know it and have FELT it through the Holy Ghost. he still continued to say that there´s no possible way to know. he kept asking how and why. SO my question for you is: how do YOU know that God exists? email me your testimonies of what you know and how!

anyways, thanks for the birthday wishes! i love you all SO MUCH! SO SO MUCH. i´m so grateful we are an eternal family. thanks for your examples to me of faithfulness. hey when you can you should watch the mormon message "because of Him"...it´s awesome. have a great week!! 

con amor, hermana steele

our merry missionary!

(part of an email) from Sydney to "Sister" aka Madeline

Hi Sister!

I hope that you have had a better week, we have all been praying for you! It made us all so sad to hear you were sick and in pain. We love you so much sister, so so much. I hope you can feel our love even though we are far away! But you are bringing so much happiness and light into the eyes of those who have forgotten what they once knew. At EFY we talked a lot about missionary work and something that stood out to me that our session director said was that you are only reminding them of what they already know and love! You are bringing that to their remembrance and that is such an amazing thing, they are only kept from the truth because they don't know where to find it. In a room full of light, a little candle would not shine very bright, but in a room full of darkness a little candle will shine so bright. YOU are that candle and light in the lives of those who only see darkness. I can't thank you enough for your example to me. Here is a quote for you, "happiness is the object and design of our existence and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it." You are on the right path, and I hope that even in your times of sorrow and trial, you can find happiness because you are making others happy for the rest of their lives.

 I can't believe how close you are to coming home, these months have gone by so fast. Anyway, I love you so much. You are in our prayers and our hearts. & thank you for your beautiful emails each week, I always learn from you! You are such an amazing missionary. 

Love, Syd

Live, cherish and love the gospel!

first of all SYD I´M SO PROUD OF YOU FOR GIVING AWAY A BOOK OF MORMON! how awesome!! and even better that your following up on her reading! that´s so great. i know you are planting a huge seed for your friend.

yesterday at church there was a talk that i loved. the brother talked about how if we aren´t keeping a commandment it´s because we don´t understand the doctrine. if we aren´t praying everyday, we don´t understand why we pray or why we need to pray. during his talk i thought about how president rappleye always used to say if people don´t acept the invitation to be baptized then they don´t understand what we are asking...they don´t understand why they need to be baptized in our church by someone who has the priesthood authority. they don´t understand that the authority was lost but was restored by Joseph Smith. the other day hermana martinez was telling me that the hardest part about serving in chile is that the people here don´t understand our message of the restoration. it´s really hard to help the people here to understand!! but it´s our job as missionaries to help them understand! but they will never ever know it´s true until they feel it for themselves. until they ask God if Joseph Smith really was a prophet. same with us. we aren´t ever going to pay tithing if we don´t understand why we pay tithing. it´s one thing to understand but it´s another to feel it. it´s our responsibilty as members of the church to understand why we do the things we do. and we need to always make the effort to do our part to keep the commandments. when elder ballard came to the mission he told us to "internalize the doctrine of christ." how grateful i am for my mission that´s helped me to understand AND to feel that what i teach is true. i´ve learned a lot about how to apply and live and cherish and love the gospel.

well, that´s about it. haha i love you all SO MUCH! i hope you have a great week! i know the church is true! i love being a missionary!

con amor, hermana steele

Grace

look at this email i just got.......

Hi, you probably don't remember me, but my name is Grace. :-) You were my ycl at girls camp my second year, and you were the awesomest person i could have had for a ycl! I had not heard that you had gone on a mission until today, and had to email you right a way. you have been an inspiration to me. I hope you know that. :-) You're an awesome person! If you are having a really hard time right now remember you have already touched so many lives in a positive way, including mine, and are all indebted to you. :-) #missyou.

SOOOOO SWEET RIGHT!?

Choose Faith Over Fear!

HOLA!

this week we had ward conference! it was AWESOME! the theme was faith. (my favorite!) the speakers talked about having faith in Christ. it´s not just faith...we can have faith in anything! but the principal of the gospel is faith in Christ because he is the way. there´s no other way to be saved...or changed. they talked about how we can´t have faith and fear at the same time....that faith is the exact opposite of fear.

Jesus walked on the water and when His disciples saw Him they were scared. They thought it was a spirit. but Jesus said to them "be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid." Basically he told them to have faith. but peter said "if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water." and Jesus said "come." and then peter went out of the boat and walked on the water. "but when he saw the wind boisterous he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord save me. and immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, o thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" what made peter sink? his fear. how could peter fear anything with the Savior of the world right in front of him? peter had seen the miracles of the Savior but those memories were not as real to him as the intensity of the storm, and depth of the water. 

it´s the same situation with us. even with our knowledge of the truth we have to always choose faith over fear. again and again. remember the Lords blessings. in matthew it says "if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."  if we have faith as small as a mustard seed, we can move mountains. i´ve learned here in the mission that those mountains will hardly ever be the real, physical mountains. they will be personal mountains we have to climb. sometimes we have fear that the mountain is too big to climb, but with the help of the Lord we can move our mountains...nothing will be impossible.

we have an investigator right now that is super awesome! her name is claudia and she has 3 little kids and loves when we teach her. she came to church last week and loved it! so we are going to work with her to help her progress!!

we´ve also been working with a returned missionary and his mom that are less active. about a month ago hermana clark and i taught a lesson on the sacrament and they both felt the spirit really strong that they need to be at church. ever since that lesson, the missionary has been at church every sunday and is helping A LOT in the ward. so that´s pretty cool too!

well, i love you all so much!! thanks for your prayers and your support. i hope you have a great week. always remember to choose faith over fear! i love the gospel, and i love being a missionary. 

love, hermana steele

ps. i bought my scripture covers! shout out to GRANDMA ORULLIAN for sending me money to buy them! thank you thank you!

I seriously love the people of Chile SO MUCH!

i hate how you never really know how much you love something until it´s gone. last week i said goodbye to hermana clark and i miss her so much! she is seriously one of my best friends...i love her a lot! but this week hermana martinez and i have worked really hard! and we´ve taught a TON of lessons! we really are finding new people everyday. i love it! i love being a missionary. i´m finally seeing the fruits of my work here in Valdivia. i have a very VERY strong testimony that the Lords time is not always our time, but he always keeps his promises. i´ve had to accept the will of God and just keep working hard and never give up, even when it was hard. i know that if i do my part, He will do His. we´ve been working hard with the less active members and a ton of them have started coming to church regularly. it makes me so happy to see so many members in the chapel every sunday taking the sacrament that they haven´t in so long. stan sent me an email today that said "you´ll never regret working too hard" and the other day in a letter he wrote "the lord wants us to wear ourselves out in His work". very true.

so about hermana martinez! guess what? we have the same bday! super awesome right?! we are going to be together so we are going to have lots of fun! i´ve only been with her for one week but i really love her a lot! she´s so sweet! sometimes i just look at her and feel an overwhelming love for her! i donno, it´s weird! every night, we give each other compliments...like something that we liked during the day that the other one did or said. and almost every night hermana martinez tells me that one of my greatest strengths is the love i have for the people here. she said my love is very obvious! i would have to agree with her haha...i seriously love the people of chile SO MUCH! I´m so grateful that God has given me the opportunity to love and serve these people. i´ve realized that the love i feel for the people of chile is what motivates me to walk in the rain when i´m wet and cold and get up at 7 am every day when im tired.

i love the gospel. i love learning new things every single day. i especially love being a missionary and being able to share my testimony with EVERYONE! haha i hope you all have opportunities to share yours with someone this week! i love you all SO MUCH! 

con mucho amor, hermana steele