Oh, This Is Why People Live Here

The banner. Hooray for cheap supplies.​

Hello everybody! So this week was another kinda slow week. Still haven't found any new investigators, but we've got a little trick up our sleeves for Halloween! But first;

IT'S ACTUALLY NICE OUTSIDE. The weather has been amazing these past couple days, staying around low 70s or below! I might actually need a sweater haha. This is what people call "the season", meaning all the snowbirds are coming in and things are gonna start kicking. It's made me reminisce about California a little bit, although I've found that my cold tolerance has definitely taken a hit (yes, Elder Lund, you were right). Utah will be something else.

This week was zone conference! It was a good one, no major announcements though (darn, no smartphones yet haha). Sister Garns had a lot to say though, one thing she talked about was doing what hasn't been done before to find new investigators. More on that later. Really zone conference is awesome because you get to hang out with old friends and companions. I talked with Elder Foster, Elder Celestin, Elder Bissereth, Elder Dick, and a bunch of other people. I'm at the point on my mission now where I actually know a lot of people. It's also the point where a lot of people I know start to go home. That'll be crazy.

​My "blueprint"​

So, our master plan for Halloween was inspired by Sister Garns' call to "do what hasn't been done." So we're setting up a table in front of our church building, which is on a major road, with the sign "THE BOOK OF MORMON: TRICK, OR TREAT?" This idea came to me the morning after zone conference during my personal study. We've already got everything pretty much made, see pictures below. We're going to do this during the "dead hours" of the day and hopefully have some success. Should be fun! Also if you didn't know, for holidays like Halloween and stuff where it get dangerous after dark, missionaries have to be home by 7pm. So it'll be nice having some free time too haha.

Another thing out of the ordinary that we did this week was help out at a local soup kitchen run by a catholic church. It's funny because they have a big mural on their wall of the Jesus from our bible videos. Anyways it seems like missionaries have been regulars there, but when we went we didn't really help with much. We were in the back trying to help the Spanish ladies put plates together and move stuff around, but we ended up just watching them most of the time. Also they had TVs in the church playing some old Halloween movie, that was weird. Overall it was a weird experience but glad we could help.

On our way to email. Chilly haha!

As for Peggy, we've had a little bit of a rocky week. We had an awesome FHE lesson with her at a member's house on Monday, but then 20 minutes later she called us because apparently the "friend" she was living with was kicking her out. So we spent all night scrambling with our bishop and relief society president to find a place for her to stay. The relief society president offered for her to stay with her a few nights, so the bishop and us went over and picked her up and brought her there. She was a little shaken but still optimistic. She stayed the night there but apparently the next day or so the "friend" asked her to come back. Not sure what the whole deal is there, but Peggy is at least trying to get out of there now. Everything was still good for her to come to church, except that she texted us right before and said that she started work that day so she couldn't come. And just now she said that since she's being trained this week we won't be able to meet this week. Still not sure where she's working, but oh well. So her baptism is going to be pushed back, which isn't a big deal, we just don't want her to get in the habit of always pushing back. So we're still working on her, it'll just take a little more time.

Anyways that's pretty much it, hope that you all have a happy Halloween! It's weird to think that last Halloween was my last day home after the surgery, which means I've been in Florida for a year straight, which means almost 14 months overall. Time is flying, especially when I think that transfers are next Wednesday. It'll be my 10th transfer, that's crazy haha. I don't feel that old! 

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Two Worlds Collide

Brother Lund, Elder Lund, and the Stevensons

We went to Elder Lund's (he was Hunter's trainer) homecoming talk this morning and it was great. It only took about a half hour to drive from our house to his ward building in Camarillo. We got there a few minutes early and had a little time to chat with the family before Sacrament Meeting. Elder Lund gave a good message in his talk about the Atonement of Christ and finished it up with his testimony in Haitian Creole. We had a little more time to chat after the meeting and it was fun to talk to him and get a few stories. It sounds like they got along really well with each other. From what we could tell of his personality, it seems they were a good match. His family was all very nice as well and his dad is in this picture too. 

-Mom and Dad 

What A Week - Transfer!

​All the creole missionaries at meet the president.​

Hello everyone! So, first off this week is transfers, and I will be TRANSFERRING to the area of NAPLES CREOLE and my new companion will be ELDER DICK. Wooooo! First time being companions with someone from the MTC! It is a car share though, which means I'll be biking for the first time my whole mission, and lots of it. Naples is a big area. I've heard very good things about Naples too, it should be a fun time! Also President Garns told us that we can expect to "stay in our areas a little longer than we may be used to", so I guess I'll find out what that means. Just got the new home address, [ask my Mom for this if you want it.]

​Our 4th of July dinner.​

Lots of stuff happened this week. First we had 4th of July. We mostly just chilled in our apartment all night, we tried to go out on the golf course to see some fireworks but there were trees blocking them all. It was still a fun night though, our member fed us lots of really good food too. 

We also got to meet President Garns this week. We basically had a mini Zone Conference with just us and the Coral Springs zone. Him and his wife shook each of our hands and then told us about themselves and their family and all that. He was still kinda in general authority mode which was funny. He started off his talk by talking about all the amazing things about his wife, giving the men marriage advice, and then giving her a kiss on the forehead hahaha. He's a super great guy, I already love him. He gave a little training based on analyzing the painting of Christ and the Rich Young Ruler (Bible story video below) that was super good. He's coming in strong with a few changes, like our investigators need to come to church 3 times to be baptized instead of 2. He also wants to get rid of "mission slang" like "dad, mom, baby, born, died" etc. I think he's exactly what this mission needs right now.

 

​President Garns!

Elder Celestin made the whole district matching planners.​

​Me with my trainer, Elder Lund! He's going home!​

That day we also went to a super fun meal appointment with one of the sisters in the ward. She had a bunch of family from New York over and we were talking about New York slang and all that. Elder Celestin taught us a lot of terms already and they were surprised we new them "YUUUUURP." Plus the food was super good, we had ribs and stuff. Then, we heard some "skurt skurts" outside and there were 2 guys street racing right outside. the member kinda lives in the ghetto so we all went outside to watch. It was like a Nissan vs a beat up tricked up g-whip and the Nissan was creaming him. Then we hear someone say "sheriff!" and a cop car rolls around the corner. The guys in the Nissan just pulled into their driveway and the cop didn't notice them and went after the guy in the g-whip, he pulled up next to all us and is like "which way'd he go?" and we kinda pointed (snitches get stitches??) and he roared off. it was super cool. Then later we go outside and see that the g-whip had gotten away somehow and was back in the driveway! Talk about dinner and a show haha.

​Our poor Malibu​

So, this week I may or may not have gotten into an accident in our brand new Malibu... We were going to a member's house to pick up food, and got to an intersection where I had a stop sign but the other way didn't. I stop at the sign and head forward and out of nowhere a guy on a moped comes on and even though I swerved to avoid him he hit the back bumper and fell off the bike. He was laying on the ground for a bit which was kinda scary, he wasn't wearing a helmet or anything, but while I talked to 911 Elder Celestin and some other people helped him up and he was just scraped up and bruised a bit. He's an older Cuban guy that speaks like zero English, and we speak zero Spanish. The back bumper on our car got pretty banged up. Hopefully it doesn't come out to more than $3,000 damage otherwise the whole mission bikes for a day, oops haha. Everyone's fine in the end, and we got our member food so all is well.

Missionary work wise things went pretty well this week. We had dinner with Bishop and they invited their neighbor friends over for us to meet. We taught them a quick plan of salvation lesson and they committed to baptism! They've been a little slippery since then,. They had to cancel our return appointment but they seemed really sincere so hopefully they don't completely fall off. Bruce unfortunately fell off, he wasn't there for our appointment and didn't answer texts or calls and wasn't home whenever we stopped by. Oh well, it happens.

I think that's it, there's probably more I'm forgetting because it's been a crazy week but that's definitely the main points. Hope all is well with all yall, It'll be an interesting change going over to the [Florida] west coast, it's WAY different from over here, lots wealthier so Creole should be interesting. Apparently it's still a really good area for missionary work so we'll see haha. Thanks for all your support! Also, got lots of pictures this week!

​​​The ZLs getting egged for a competition they did last week.

​Elder Briggs chasing Elder Celestin haha​

​Brother Pablo, our "gangster" member that takes us out teaching every week.​

​Some cool evening storm clouds.​

 Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

​

Not Too Much To Talk About

Hello everybody! So, this week was pretty standard missionary work wise. We found some cool people but they all dropped off by the end of the week. All I need to do is look under the face of the earth and they'll all get baptized! A couple random things that happened this week:

We had zone conference! Our last with President Richardson! President Garns comes in this Saturday. The APs said that there have been missionaries slacking on the rules because they think that President Garns is going to come in and make sweeping changes, especially with the only-Motab [Mormon Tabernacle Choir music] rule. They said that rule in particular has been in the mission for 9 years and President told us that when they set apart a new mission president they tell them to not change anything for several months. So the transition should be pretty smooth at least on our end of things. Still exciting though! President Garns will do a tour of the mission as one of the first things he does so it'll be interesting to meet him.

We also went to the North Zone Conference instead of the South conference like we normally do. Our zone is like right on the dividing line so President switched us up. That means I got to see some of my previous companions, including Elder Lund! I got to see him give his "dying" testimony, meaning that since he goes home at the end of this transfer he gives a short testimony at the conference. It was pretty funny, he got the biggest laugh out of all of them. He said " I'll always be a missionary, except I'll be undercover since there's no more name badge and dress code. They won't see me coming until it's too late!" Haha, it's crazy that he's going home. Elder Alexis was also there and is also going home. It was a really fun time talking to them again.  

This week we also did a zone-wide exchange. The ZLs switched up all the missionaries in the zone for a day, and I went to the YSA [Young Single Adult] area. Definitely a different experience. We ate lunch at the food court in the mall, went OYMing on a college campus, and taught some investigators that are my same age. I felt the closest to a normal teenager since I've been out haha. The YSA area is also huge. They cover 2 stakes. We spent most of the day way up in Tamarac.

[Added from another email to me: So family search did a thing where they give you profiles about early church missionaries in your line, pretty neat! Here's the link https://familysearch.org/missionary?ancestor_pid_1=KWZQ-R4V&et_cid=52545303&et_rid=1496767150&linkid=CTA&cid=em-mc-6331 Turns out I have several ancestors that served out here in the "southern states" mission, including John Carter, the one I took to trek with me! Also the 2 hours a week for family history are gone, it's now 1 hour a month! Bummer, but we're called to save the living not the dead and now that we have a handle on how to do it we can teach our investigators and others.]

That's pretty much it for the week. We're keeping the finding work up as usual. Our teaching pool basically resets every week with how fast people drop off but it's all good. Bertina and fam wasn't at church this week either. We need to see what's up. She got a new job which is good/bad. It's better pay but weird hours that make it hard for us to get in contact. Hopefully all is well. I'm not too worried about her though. She has one of the strongest testimonies I've ever seen. Even still, the first year is a critical time so we're gonna stay on it! Anyways, hope all is well with you! Thanks for your support!

 

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

The Georges Coincidence

The intersection by the Krispy Kreme.
There are THOUSANDS of these little black birds that
just swarm EVERYWHERE and sit on the power lines. Every time
 one squeezes between them, all the rest shift down the line and
it's pretty funny.​ Photo by Elder Blood

Hey everyone! Another pretty slow week, so this will probably be a pretty short email haha. Hang in there I'll promise not to make this boring, okay?

The most exciting thing that happened this week happened Saturday. We were knocking doors in an apartment complex that we've knocked dozens of times before. We decided to knock a building where we had a member family, the Georges family, living on the bottom floor. We went and knocked on the top floor of the building and met a cool young Haitian guy named Georges! It was funny because he lived in room 520 and the Georges family lives in 502. We said a prayer with him and invited him to church the next day, and he said he would if he could find a ride (a common problem around these parts). 

The next morning we texted him to see if we found one and he hadn't. So Elder Blood and I went on a little exchange while the other Elders were in ward council and drove to the Georges family to see if they could give him a ride, and they did! He was the first investigator we've had at sacrament meeting, and he stayed for all 3 hours! We're going over today to meet with him and the rest of his family! I hope he gets baptized, he's a really cool 24 year old Haitian guy living with his cousins I think.

Not much else really happened this week, other than I became the main driver to learn the area if Elder Lund transfers. The streets of Miami are all either 3-5 lane roads and freeways or run down little side streets. If I can drive here, I can drive anywhere haha.

Transfers are next week, and I'll officially be done training! I'll be [finished] being "greenie-broken". It'll be interesting to see what happens. I'll let you all know. Because of transfers, Pday will be on Tuesday (again). We had a lot of Pday Tuesdays this transfer.

Talk to you all soon!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Bonne Anne!

A picture from Christmas that Elder Blood took at the Doxey's​

Hi everyone, Happy New Year! The missionary work is still a little slow, not gonna lie. This week we had set up several appointments to meet people and literally every single one fell through somehow. There's still some crazy cool stories though, so stay tuned!

​Here's us sitting in the Tesla Model X SUV at the mall.
Photo by Elder Blood

Last Pday we went to the Aventura Mall, a crazy big rich-people mall. Like Lamborghinis-just-sitting-on-display rich. It was super fun. They had a Tesla showroom that I definitely made everyone come and look [at] with me. I think I converted Elder Lund to the Tesla. haha-yes!

​Elder Blood and I being super bored on New Years Eve​
Photo by Elder Blood

So this week was new years! For new years eve, all the missionaries were required to be home by 6:00 at night. It was crazy, we had so much time we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We ended up just shooting each other with Nerf guns haha. Elder Lund's dad sent us pizza, which was awesome.

​Eating Soup Joumou at the Victors​
Photo by Elder Blood

So Haitians have a new years tradition, called Soup Joumou (pronounced zjoo-moo). It's a special soup that they only make at new years, and all the Haitians make it. Joumou means pumpkin, so it's a pumpkin soup that they put meat and pasta and vegetables and spices in. It's really good. We went over to the Victor's house and had some in the morning. Then another member gave us some leftovers in the evening. Fun stuff, I think I can steal some pictures of it from the other Elders for you guys.

One cool story actually happened 2 weeks ago that I forgot to write about. Elder Blood had lost his wallet and was looking everywhere for it all morning. We had no clue where it was, and it had like credit cards and drivers license and everything in it. I said a prayer that he'd be able to find it, and then Elder Lund and I left to go work. As we walked to our car, the lady that parks 2 spots over from us was just getting out of her car. She saw us and said, "Are any of you missing a wallet?" Turns out she had found his wallet in the parking lot near where we park our car and had kept it with her to return to the security guard that works in our building. Pretty cool, right?

I also went on exchange with Elder Blood one day this week, and we saw a pretty crazy cool miracle. I knew I wouldn't have the time or the energy to fully transcribe it, so I made a recording talking about it that I'll attach to the email, so take a listen to that. [Coming soon]

Yesterday was Elder Bissereth's 20th birthday! He's old! Haha. We went to Olive Garden for lunch, his choice. It was pretty fun, we even got the workers to sing for him. Then that evening we went to the Victors' for dinner and they had set up a big party for him. They gave little speeches for him, and we all said what we liked about Elder Bissereth. They made a lot of good food for us, complete with birthday cake. After we ate, they had me and Elder Blood sing a duet. We chose to sing The Spirit of God. It was pretty good, pretty fun haha.

That's pretty much it for this week. Hope you're all doing well! I pray for you every day!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

A Creative Christmas

​Here's my district when we crashed the Spanish Ward's
Christmas party after choir practice one night.​

Hey all! So there was a lot of things that happened this week, mostly Christmas, but I'll try to cover everything else too.

We were able to do some service this week, which was good. The other Elders knocked into this old Jamaican lady and she asked us to help pull weeds out of her lawn. All of us went over the next day and she was super grateful. She was like very stereotypical sweet old lady. She made us this super sweet Kool-Aid with cranberry juice, it was awesome. We also helped one of the student families move, which was fun mostly because they lived in a building with 25 stories, so when we finished we all went to the top and looked at the view. I'm not allowed to take pictures while proselyting otherwise I'd have some here. Florida is so flat, we could see for miles.

Adline has a date for her divorce now! She needs to be divorced from her husband in Haiti so she can be married to the man she's living with now so she can be baptized. Her divorce will be finalized in 8 weeks, which is a long time for us to wait but at least things are moving again. She's been taught almost all the lessons twice already, but I went and taught a very simple lesson about the Word of Wisdom with her in Creole yesterday. It was my first time doing a lesson in Creole with an investigator, mostly because she's our only investigator but still. It went pretty well.

They gave these ornaments to all the missionaries,
and they have my favorite quote on the back!​

We had Christmas Conference as a mission a few days ago, that was pretty fun. Each zone presented a song, and in ours we had the Creole missionaries (aka just us 4) sing the first verse in French. It was cool, kinda like singing in a barber shop quartet with only bass and tenor. We also did a white elephant exchange, I gave a weird carved stone Medusa head looking thing that was in a frame that I found in goodwill. I don't have any pictures though. I got a 2017 inspirational psalms calendar, which is actually useful. Also a giant bag of buttercream mints. Also no pictures of that either.

So Christmas happened too! It was pretty fun. My parents sent me a Gingerbread house in the mail, but it wasn't packaged very well so all the cookies were cracked. We tried to glue them together with icing but it didn't work, so instead we turned it into a post-apocalyptic earthquake destroyed house. Some of the other elders got... Creative. Viewer discretion is advised.

A big thank you to everyone that sent gifts! They were all super thoughtful and generous and I feel so loved.

On Christmas our Haitian choir sang! It was pretty good, I mean we put hours of practice into a 2 minute song so yeah. I have a recording of it down below that I sneakily took on my nifty new voice recorder that I got for Christmas too! Enjoy that.

The final product. Elder Lund even cut out a G-Whip for the front lawn.
Those are everywhere around here, and people just park on their grass all the time.​

Most of Christmas was spent at the Doxey's for Skype. It was super fun to see my family. It wasn't as weird as I thought it would be either. We ended up staying at the Doxey's for a while since Elder Bissereth was having trouble contacting his family in Haiti. He got it figured out eventually. Fun stuff.

After that we went to a less active family for dinner. That was fun. We went there for thanksgiving as well. They're a cool family. The husband isn't married [Editor thinks he might mean baptized, not married] but the wife really wants him to be.  They're in the other Elders' area so hopefully they can do something there.

So that's about it, I want to hear about how all your Christmases were back home! Send pictures too if you have them, I love seeing pictures of everyone. Talk to you soon! 

My haul from Christmas Conference. Lots of goodies!​

​Missionary: Noun​

​The Making of a Monster. WARNING: MAY BE SHOCKING TO SOME VIEWERS.
VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.​

​Here's a picture of my new invention: "Grown-Up Chicken Nuggets"
I'm keeping the recipe a secret.

​​

Here's a recording of the Haitian choir singing!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

WINTER IS (never) COMING

​Here's my district! From right to left it's Elder Smith, the ZLs Elder Alexis and Elder Riggs,
Elder Widney in the back, Elder Lund and me, and DL Elder Bissereth with Elder Blood.​

Hey all! This has been a pretty good week. Lots of excitement for Christmas!

So this week we had transfers and we got to meet the 2 new elders! They are Elder Blood and Elder Bissereth. There's a picture with my new district and everything so check that out. They are cool guys and look like they're good missionaries too. It'll be a fun time with them. Elder Bissereth is pretty much straight from Haiti, he's been living in the States for about a year before his mission. He speaks pretty good English but is still learning a few things, which is fun haha. I figure if he can learn English then I can learn Creole haha.

When the other Elders left they gave us one of their recent converts to work with. Her name is Pierline, she's cool. The morning before transfers we went out at 7:00 in the morning so the other elders could say goodbye. We walked with her and her son to school which was fun, brought back some fun memories of walking the girls to school.

Probably the most exciting thing this week was the ward Christmas party on Saturday. It was one of those things where they set up the gym to look like Bethlehem and everyone came dressed up and brought authentic food platters and stuff, it was pretty fun. We helped set it up though for hours before hand, and then when it was time to take down it was already getting late so we had to rush everything and it was pretty crazy. We had our car packed with stuff to bring back to a members house and then it was a scramble to get home on time, but we did it. Overall it was a stressful experience, but it was still fun to see the members having a good time.

Haitian Choir is sounding pretty good now, we have one more practice before we sing in church on Sunday. That should be really fun. Our zone is also doing a song for Christmas Conference, the mission wide conference with the Mission President also known as when I get my Christmas presents! I'm a little excited haha.

My advice to get into the Christmas spirit is to study the Atonement, that's what I'm studying now and I can see that it's starting to change my life. Maybe it's just because I have a new perspective while on my mission, but I'm starting to understand just how huge and important and wonderful the Atonement of Christ is. My suggested reads for that are the Book of Mormon (of course), I think the first 20 or so chapters of Alma kind of talk about it, so does Mosiah a bit. I don't really remember where, that's just where I am reading right now. There's also a really good talk from Elder Scott that my parents sent me a copy of. It's called Personal Strength through the Atonement. My parents will link to it in post I'm sure. 

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Some of the food from the party. I say some because there was a ton more that people brought later.​

Ward Christmas Party​

​This is our bishop, Bishop Robles.​

Ward Christmas Party​

​I found my family in the Bible videos! Here's me posing with them.​

​Here's a better picture of it. Emma's on the left and Mom's on the right, with Jesus in between.

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

A Week in The Life of a Missionary: Photo Journal

Hi everyone! So I have a ton of pictures this week for some reason. So I'm just gonna explain each of the pictures and that'll be my email for the week. Plus I have lots of emails from all of you (#ChristmasPerks) so that'll take some time but it's all good. If there's anything that the pictures don't talk about I'll include a little thing at the bottom about it so we'll still get to everything, don't worry about it. 

​

Here's our gator with one of the santa hats from my Christmas package! Thanks mom! ​

Elder Lund was practicing piano last week, so I just went ham on the chalkboard. Repost if you understand any of it. ​

​We had a temple trip this week! So in our mission you only go to the temple once, on your last day in the mission. UNLESS you do a tour with one of your recent converts, or one of them is taking out their own endowments or something like that. So we took one of the recent converts in our area, Niviane, on a temple tour! It was fun, got some good pictures. Maybe I'll make Christmas cards out of one of them or something, that'd be fun.

​Here's Niviane out front of the temple.​

​Me and Elder Lund. 

​I like this one better, you get the whole temple in it.​

​

Cool statues they had out for christmas time I'm assuming. 

​​

Dramatic side action shot of the fountains.​​​

Generic Wallpaper Photo ​

Here's some of the lights I got in the Christmas package that I strung across my desk. Matches my Frozen bedsheets.​ 

​

On the left is a stocking that the Johnsons, an awesome young student family that feeds us, made for me. They are going out of town for Christmas so when we went over on Sunday they had everything all Christmasy and said it was our Christmas dinner. The house was decorated, they made a roast and potatoes, served eggnog and light a pineapple sherbet punch, and made each of us our own stockings with treats inside! They are so awesome, the Johnsons are my favorite. And their little kids are so cute. The stocking had some chocolates, mandarin oranges, and a tie! So cool.

On the right is an awesome package from Sister Cuillard! She sent letters with little treats and quotes from general authorities in them for every day leading up to christmas. Thank you so much!​

​Here's a little tree I made with lights from the christmas package. Also you can kinda see the nativity that the girls made for me next to it.​

​

A better picture of the nativity and stocking. Thanks!

Some other things that happened this week are that I went on exchange with the ZLs (Zone Leaders) for a day. That was fun, I went to their area in Hialeah West and it's all Spanish, so I did lots of smiling and nodding. It was good though. We found some cool people while knocking and met with some less actives and just chatted about stuff.

We also did some zone blitzes, which is where everyone in the zone goes to one area and knocks doors for an hour. Our area was the first one we did it in since we don't have any investigators. We found some potentials from it but none of them were that cool, so still no investigators. We're working on it though, hopefully by next week we'll have someone to teach.

That's pretty much it for this week, thanks for all the love! 

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Thanksgiving on the Mission

​Bought myself fruit like a responsible adult haha.

Hey everyone! This week has been kinda slow too. There were a few exciting things though that I'll talk about. 

Elder Lund and I went to the first practice of the Haitian choir and boy was that interesting. I could hardly understand what everyone was saying. I was just like "I'm just gonna play the piano" haha. They threw Elder Lund under the bus a bit though. He practiced one of the songs so much and then at practice they were like "We sang that one last year, play this other one" and he was just like "uhhhhhhh I've never seen this song before and haven't played in 10 years" so we'll see how this works out, it'll be very interesting to say the least. Also Haitian parents are intense. One of the dads there started yelling at his kids because they didn't want to sing in the choir, then he started yelling at someone else's kids for not wanting to sing in the choir. Then he just turns to the rest of us and is like "If you don't do that they'll just do whatever they want." 

​Pretty sunset sky.

Let's see... our car was rear ended twice this week. Both times while we were just stopped at a red light. The first time it was just some kids that gave our car a little tap, but the second time it was some lady in a Dodge Caravan and it was a pretty substantial hit. No airbags or anything like that, and we have a bike rack on the back of our car (chevy cruise) that absorbed the hit anyways so no damage done. She just sped away though and we were like "what the heck?" Elder Lund was driving so I snatched the license plate number. Crazy stuff.

So Thanksgiving on the Mission. We had our Thanksgiving with the Johnsons from the ward, a nice young couple with cute little kids. There's a lot of students in my ward. There's a nice pediatric school nearby so most people are studying to be nurses or something. The ward is pretty good about feeding us too, we usually only have about 2 days a week with nothing planned. Anyways we had a pretty traditional thanksgiving with them and were all really full and it was great. But then... we get a phone call from another lady in the ward like "You guys are coming over tonight, right?" And we couldn't say no, so we were all really scared that we weren't going to be able to eat any more food. We go over and it's like 2 hours until the food is ready. So we're just hanging out, playing with their kids for a longgg time. Then we eat and there wasn't as much food as we thought so we were fine. Both families gave us leftovers to take home so that's nice.

Haitian food. Don't know what it's called,
but you basically just scoop it onto a bed of rice.

One of the solid Haitian families in the ward, the Victors, sent their daughter Kamela on a mission this week. She's going to the Mexico MTC (Missionary Training Center) and is speaking Spanish somewhere, which is crazy cuz she's Haitian. It was a weird thought that she left on her mission while I was on my mission, and that when she gets back I"ll still be on my mission, like with 6 months left. Super weird,

Yesterday we found a cool potential Haitian family while knocking, which is our first solid potential in a while. The mom knows a lot about the church already since she went every week for 6 months in the Dominican Republic with a Haitian friend. She said she met with missionaries but was never baptized. Hopefully we can get them going. We also found a cool less active to work with, he's 33 and went on a mission in Madrid Spain but hasn't been to church in a while. He has little kids that are fun, hopefully we can help resolve some concerns there.

I think I'm going to discontinue the song lyrics, it was fun but takes too much time to try to think of something. Sorry, I'm just too popular, have so many emails to write! :P

 It's got veggies and beans and meat, plus some crabs, just for fun.
Also the bones of the meat are in there too, avoid those.

​Elder Lund made this light fixture out of a bowl, parachord and some hangers. Why didn't I think of that?

​Our getto Christmas tree. A member who was going out of town gave us some Christmas lights to borrow,
 so Elder Lund made this. He goes hard, man.

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson