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

Yay for Carl!

Christmas in Florida!

Hey everyone! So this week was a very good week for us. I forgot to bring my planner with me so I'm going off of memory, so here we go!

This week we were pretty busy, which is great. We got lots of referrals from other missionaries and got to teach a few of them. We were able to exceed in pretty much every category compared to last week, and even exceeded a couple of the goals we had set, so that was awesome!

This week we started the #LightTheWorld campaign. It's pretty cool, similar to last year on mormon.org there's a new scripture and video every day about how to serve others in little ways. Check it out!

The highlight of this week was probably Carl. Can't remember if I mentioned him before, but he was a referral from another set of missionaries. We got to teach him once before, but after that he vanished. This week, we randomly stopped by one night and he was there! He was so happy to see us again. He said he lost contact because he left the house after some problems [...], but he decided to come back. He had even read a little bit from the Book of Mormon and wanted to know more. We read through the introduction with him and then taught him the Plan of Salvation. After that we asked if he would be baptized on the 23rd of this month and he said yes! He even came to church this Sunday and loved it! He said he's been talking to his wife and friends about everything he's learning and is excited to be baptized. He asks thoughtful questions, and takes notes on the reading assignments that we leave him. So elect, he'll be baptized, I just hope I'm here to see it. 

Honestly that's pretty much it, just lots of visiting people this week. It's been nice teaching lessons instead of knocking doors though haha.

Some last items of business though. My next pday will not be until Wednesday because of a special zone conference. And the next 3 weeks after that pday will be on Tuesday because of transfers and Christmas and new years. Oh, speaking of transfers, transfers are soon so please send mail to the mission office instead of my house in case I leave. The address is 7951 SW 6th St Ste 110, Ft Lauderdale FL 33324. Thank you!

I'll leave you with a thought that I love from this last general conference. It's [from] Stephen W. Owen and is called Repentance Is Always Positive. I've taken some editorial liberties to splice parts of it together to make my point:

"When we speak of repentance, we aren’t just talking about self-improvement efforts. True repentance is more than that. True repentance inspires us to make our obedience a commitment—a covenant, beginning with baptism and renewed each week at the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament. The joy of repentance is more than the joy of living a decent life. It’s the joy of forgiveness, of being clean again, and of drawing closer to God. Once you’ve experienced that joy, no lesser substitute will do."

Hope you all have a great week!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson