A Busy Sabbath Day

Coral Springs Zone - The Coolest
Photo from Elder Webster

Hello everyone! Here are a couple of highlights from this week.

First, we had a zone training! It's been a while since we had one, with all the holiday conference things going on. It was good, we talked about forgiving and watched the 12 step video about Larry (drug addiction recovery and forgiveness). It's a good one, led to a lot of good discussion. Kind of surprising how intense those 12 step videos are.

I also went on an exchange with the ZLs this week! It's the first time I've left my area for an exchange since I came to this zone. It was good to work with Elder Flake, even though I don't know Spanish haha. It didn't end up mattering too much though, the appointments all fell through. It was just one of those days. He gave me a good training about faith too, which I appreciated. And Elder Bullock handled the area like a champ, they found 2 new investigators!​​

Speaking of new investigators, this Saturday we had like a mini mission thing with some of the youth in the ward. We had 2 young men come with us Saturday morning to visit some potential investigators, and we were able to teach them both! Also got a little bit of knocking in with them before we all met back up for lunch. It was a fun little adventure.

Yesterday was a really productive day, even though it was a Sunday and most of our appointments fell through. We rearranged our schedule several times so that we could meet with one potential investigator that we have been struggling to meet with, and after talking with him we discover he's the non-member father of a recently returned missionary in the branch! Pretty amazing, he was mostly just curious about the church and our basic beliefs, so we talked about prophets and Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith with him and he seemed pretty interested. 

Then while we were knocking, the 2nd door we knocked let us in and we shared a little Plan of Salvation lesson with an older Haitian lady. 

​Our district leaders doing a fake rap battle at zone training

Finally, we met with a less active family that's really solid in the church but just can't get there on Sundays. We had a really good lesson where we talked about the scriptures and read Alma 32:26-43 together. The dad really felt the spirit and opened up to us, and even asked if we could eat some of his dinner with him haha! First time I've actually sat down and eaten Haitian food with a Haitian family in a long time. Classic "diri nwa" [black rice] with chicken and "griyo" [fried pork]. Have fun looking those up haha. [Haitian Recipes]

I almost forgot to mention that Yesterday Elder Bullock and I gave talks! It was only the 2nd talk I've given on my mission, and the 1st in Creole! It was good, it seemed to go over well. I talked about why we do missionary work (putting it in the context of the plan of salvation a little bit) and then told the members that we are here to work together with them and to help them do missionary work. Several people said thank you afterwards so I assume it was well received.

Also almost forgot to mention that Laurette came to church with her son Alex! We really had to scramble to find a ride for her, we ended up having one of the ward council members bring them early and they sat in the foyer while we were in our meeting. They seemed to really enjoy it, Alex looked like he was loving primary. We haven't been able to meet with her since to follow up about it, but we'll try to go by tomorrow. Brother Ca..... also came with his family for the first time in a little while, and it was nice to see him there. 

That's pretty much it from this week. We've still been pretty busy, our days are starting to get booked up which is nice. Crazy that we're starting into the last week of the transfer now, a new transfer starts on the 31st. I'm starting to realize just how old I am getting in the mission, and I don't like it haha! For example in his talk Elder Bullock said that he came out in August 2017. Then I said that I also came out in August, but August 2016! That was a weird realization. Anyways hope you all have a great week!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Happy New Year!

Hey everybody! Happy new year! Crazy to think that 2017, my full calendar year as a missionary, has come and gone. 2018 is going to be a year full of new changes and challenges, but I'm looking forward to it!

So this past week was pretty good. We did a lot of teaching and finding. A couple experiences stood out however. The first was teaching a family of 4. We had talked to the mom a few days earlier, and she had expressed to us that she wanted us to teach her kids about the gospel since we knew both English and Creole, and she felt her kids didn't understand anything from going to her Haitian church. We went back and taught her 2 kids and their neighbor friend, aged 15, 11, and 10. We taught them the Plan of Salvation using some awesome 3D-printed cutouts that my family had just sent me for Christmas. They were all involved and interested and asking all sorts of questions. The mom was there too, kind of in the background. Afterwards we gave her a pamphlet to read over and see what we were teaching her kids. It was a great lesson, but it felt weird to be teaching to younger kids like that. Then we went back a few days later and taught them the Restoration, and I realized that if we claim that Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ at age 14, then what's to stop these kids from accepting the gospel. It was a cool learning experience for all of us.

Another interesting experience happened that same day. We had been knocking doors and found 2 ladies sitting in a car in the driveway. We go up and talk to them and end up saying a prayer with them. Come to find out that one of the ladies has a mom in the nearby hospital recovering from surgery after a stroke, and she asked us if we could come back to go pray for her mom. We said "of course!" So the next day we go back and follow her and her 2 little boys to the hospital. We heard her speaking creole to the boys before we left, so when we got there we started speaking Creole to her. She was so amazed, and asked us if she could snapchat us during our prayer! We were like "sure...?" And then as we're checking in, the lady's boyfriend shows up out of nowhere, which was kinda weird but we spoke Creole to him and it was all good. So we get up to the room, and there are already 2 Haitian ladies there praying over the mom, so we stand there awkwardly as they finish and then strike up a conversation with the mom. Then I make Elder Bullock say the prayer while the one lady videos it for snapchat! He did great. Definitely one of those "I never thought I would be in this situation" type of moments haha!

We've been keeping up with Laurette, and we were able to take one of our awesome members to a lesson with us! We talked about the Priesthood and the member was able to connect with her and explain it in a way that we just couldn't, it was great. She can't read, so today we'll be getting some CDs to burn some chapters from the Book of Mormon in Creole for her to listen to. We gave her one that we had already, but it wasn't in order but we figured that we should at least give her something to listen to. Overall it's been going great, she's going to ask her husband about being baptized so hope all goes well.

Another great thing that happened was that last night we found Carl again! Turns out he went to Haiti for an unexpected funeral and that's why he's been missing. He's still super on board for meeting with us, and had talked with his member friend back in Haiti about the church and stuff which was great. We've scheduled to teach him tonight, so hopefully we can get everything back on track for him to be baptized.

A pretty long letter this week, I have a couple pictures that are pretty unrelated so I'll just throw those down at the bottom for ya. In other news, it's raining today for the first time in weeks so that's fun. Anyways hope you all had a great holidays!

We went bowling with a member after Christmas, and I caught the moment where his 4 year old son stuck his head in the ball return waiting for his ball haha!​

My Christmas present to myself haha, thank you Walmart clearance isle!

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Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson