April 8

My questions:
1)  Have you gotten the President Monson DVD and the illustrated Book of Mormon?
2)  Where did you watch Conference?
3)  How are things going with the new Senior Mission Couple?
4)  Are you in need of anything?
5)  It's a ways away, but do you have any ideas of birthday gifts you would like that will help you as you serve so admirably?
6)  How many Primary children come to church on most Sundays?

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Mom,

Not too many people showed up to conference so we watched it all in English. The barbeque didn't have much of a turn out, but we were lucky to have Brother Joseph show up! It was us, him, Elder Harris (the new senior missionary) and President Yazzie. Brother Joseph didn't stay for the entire Priesthood Session and left after Elder Uchtdorf's talk, but that is okay with me. A two hour session can be a long time for someone who isn't fully into the gospel yet haha. We also had a lesson with Brother Joseph last night and he committed to come to church on Sunday--that is, after much deliberation. Haha, he believes that church is a good thing, but not an essential thing to worship God.

We're really hoping to get some of the members, less actives, and investigators here in Steamboat involved in family history. That'd be totally fine with me if you wanted to make a basic four-generation pedigree chart for me. The main things I would like is just a small portrait of each person if available with their name, birth date and place and maybe the death date and place as well. If it's not too difficult, it might not be a bad idea to laminate it so it stays protected as I carry it around in my backpack and whatnot. Here is a really good video about family history work in the Rio Rancho New Mexico Stake. One of the four families they follow is a native American family as well and so I cut those sections of the video so it is trimmed down to 10 minutes instead of 33 minutes and put it on DVD so we can show members here to help them see that family history work is possible on the reservation even though there's not as many records available as other areas of the world. If you get the chance, it's a cool video. https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2013-04-01-the-turning-of-our-hearts-rio-rancho-new-mexico-us?category=family-history/02-member-experiences&lang=eng

Kelly and Kyle are doing well also, we are now going to start meeting with them twice a week which is really good. The youngest son, Kyler, said he wants to be baptized so we're excited! We're still trying to work with his older brother and Kelly to help them understand the gospel and importance of baptism. Hopefully Kyle will be able to get the priesthood so that he can baptize his family too! Serafin doesn't seem too interested. In our last lesson we essentially just hit a stalemate and it just seems too difficult for him right now to accept the Book of Mormon. We've seen Pat a couple of times, he's still doing well. We also have been meeting with a new guy named Leroy and he's really awesome. He has a bunch of deep questions and we're really hoping we can help him get answers from the Book of Mormon! Lastly, we put two long time investigators on date, Iris and Esther. They are sisters and are both in their 70s or so and they are some of the nicest people in Steamboat. They've been kind of slowly investigating the church for about a year almost I would think but things just never really progressed. We met with them last Thursday and invited them to be baptized on May 3rd and they accepted so hopefully we'll be able to progress with them to that date! They went down to Phoenix this weekend so we haven't been able to see them since then.

1) Yes, I have. Thank you so much! The Book of Mormon Stories book will be very helpful. I wish I could get one for all of our investigators because it does make the Book of Mormon make more sense. I told Kelly and Kyle about it so they could use it with their kids and we'll start to use it in lessons with them and go over a story and invite them to read though that chapter(s). 

2) Just at the branch building. Here conference is broadcast to all the buildings in the stake because of the rural nature of the reservation and the fact that not too many people in Steamboat have cable or easy access to drive to the stake center. 

3) Things are going great, and they are from Nephi not Lehi. They seem very excited to be here and willing to work very hard!

5) I don't know. I've gotten stains on all my nice ties that I liked, so maybe just a few nice slim ties that aren't expensive because I'll probably get stains on these ones too. You can usually find some good stuff at Nordstrom Rack and Ross, I think. Maybe CDs. BYU Men's Choir or something else good that is covers of hymns like The Lower Lights does. 

6) It depends, anywhere between 3 to 10 or so.

Conference was amazing as always. I loved the Saturday Afternoon session because I felt like Elder Nelson, Elder Scott, and Elder Hales all hit me pretty hard right in a row. I always love President Uchtdorf's talks, it's impossible not to. He is probably going to be the most iconic leader of the church from my years of young adulthood or whatever you would call the the first half of my lifetime. He always has the best stories to tell to illustrate a point. I really am trying to think about how I can develop that general grateful disposition rather than simply being grateful for things. I also loved Elder Bednar. I love everything about general conference, now I just have to count down the days until the next Ensign gets here and until October Conference!

I love you all so very much, continue to stay true to the faith and strong in your service to God!

With love and regards,

Elder Schaelling