God's Plan

We got soaked in the rain.
Elder Charles and Elder Stevenson

The most interesting thing that happened was zone conference. We had a member of the seventy, Elder Klebingat, come and speak to us. It was a long conference, took the whole day, but it was worth it. He knows the scriptures so well. He started off by explaining exactly who we were in the pre-earth life, and what that means we have to do now. Super good, here's some of my favorite quotes:

• Tell yourself "I am here to fulfill a pre-mortal covenant to gather Israel"

• The pain of discipline is always better than the pain of regret

• Once we yield to temptation, we give the adversary ammunition with a memory

• You need to be better than yourself tomorrow

• Fear, typically, is not to be overcome, but to be managed and controlled

• You are choosing today where you want to be for eternity

• Everything you do today is a reflection of the depth of your conversion

• Never make the first mistake once

• You cannot teach what you don't know, and you will not teach what you are not excited about

Lots of good stuff.

God's Plan

We also had our best lesson with Astrel and Saintana this week. We taught the plan of salvation with some little toys that my family had made for me and gave me last Christmas. It really made it all click for Astrel, he really liked the part about the spirit world and how nobody burns in hell haha. He took pictures of the final setup, each one moving the people down. I reenacted it to show you what I mean. He asked us to get some Scriptures from the Bible that talk about it so he can share it, so we went back yesterday with one for each of the major parts. They also got a car now, so hopefully Astrel  can drive them all to church. Good stuff!

We also had our first member meal appointment since coming to this area haha. We got permission to go to Lehigh to have dinner with the Knoop family, and they made us a really nice meal. Grateful.

We didn't have any investigators come to church yesterday, but Saintana was there which was great. They had the baptism of the lady that wanted to get baptized after seeing Saintana's baptism, that was pretty neat.

That was pretty much it from this week, just a couple highlights but it was a good one. It's been raining off and on all week here, which is kinda nice. We've been needing some good rain, it keeps us cool while biking haha. Anyways hope you all have a great week!

Getting chases by a dog on our bikes. haha

Rain

Vulture drying out in the sun. There are tons of vultures here.

Saintana had this on her TV last night, snagged a pic haha

Lanmou,
Eldè Stevenson

Like A Fire Is Burning

My large calzone.
Very yummy, one of my new favorite meals in Immokalee

Hello everyone! So this week ended up being kinda crazy, not really what we were expecting haha.

We did a lot of service this week, mostly for a family from the Spanish branch. On Monday we spent the evening helping the Brown family, with some members of the Spanish branch, cut down trees and move logs left over from the hurricane. Who would've guessed that I'd still be doing hurricane cleanup. 

Saturday we went back, just the four of us, and raked leaves into piles and burned them then went to his fishing shop and helped load metal sheets onto a trailer. It ended up taking most of the day, but we made good friends with the dad. He's like your classic country dad, his wife is a member from Columbia and their daughter I believe was baptized as well but he is not a member.... It was good that we've been able to start breaking down the barrier, like Ammon, through genuine service. Even if we did smell like campfire afterwards haha. 

Speaking of smelling like campfire, yesterday we were surprised to come back from church to a very smokey Immokalee. Apparently there was a pretty decent fire burning in the everglades, and we were getting smoked by it all night. So I bet there's gonna be a lingering campfire smell for a little bit still. Coincidentally we also had the first real storm in a while yesterday evening, it only lasted a few minutes but I think it did the job. Things are nice and clear today.

On Wednesday we did an exchange and I left the area to go with Elder Latu in Lehigh acres, and coincidentally they also had a service project set up that day. It was a youth service project for one of their investigators. We were trimming back some hedges away from their house. It was a nice little project with good participation, and the investigator had chips and things and made everyone sandwiches.

Thursday we were surprised to get a call from Elder Latu with a "code red". Apparently there had been a mixup with the ZLs, and interviews with President were supposed to be that day, right then, and he was there waiting. This was after we'd already had our district training on Tuesday. So we quickly changed into our suits and went. Not every week do you get two DTs haha. Our interview was good, just checking up on things.

On Friday we tried a restaurant in town we'd never been to before named Roma in Havana. It turned out to be a nice little sit-down Italian restaurant. I ordered a large meat lovers calzone, and boy it was large haha. I ended up taking half of it home. It was very tasty, but a little expensive to be a regular thing.

Missionary work is still moving along. Yesterday our branch president was coming to pick people up, but somehow while he was getting ready he broke his hip or something. Apparently he was bending down to dry himself after a shower and couldn't get back up. But after laying down a little bit and putting a heating pad on it and doing some stretches he still came. It was a bit of a last minute scramble. He didn't pick up Saintanna because she wasn't all the way ready, but he did pick up our new friend Marie. She's been taught by missionaries in the past but is progressing pretty well right now... She came yesterday and liked it. It was a bit long, especially because she had to be picked up at 10 because of ward council and church doesn't start till 12, then there was another meeting after so she didn't leave until 4, getting home at almost 5. We got some calls from her family at home asking where she was, including the husband, and we had to assure them that she was fine and on her way. Definitely wasn't ideal, but that's what it takes.

Saintanna's still on track, we'll probably be having to do her baptism the first week of May though because there are 2 other people being baptized that day and she wants her baby to be blessed, so might as well use the fast and testimony sacrament meeting to do all of that. Should be a big day for the branch.

Overall the mission is doing great, everyone's pumped up, we've been finding 400+ NI [not sure what this stands for] for the past 3 weeks or so and this week we had the most dates in a while, 76. President Garns has been awesome at making sure that we're converted first and teaching the whys and hows of missionary work. Good stuff!

Hard to believe that transfers are next week, kinda bittersweet. This is probably my last week here and my last week with Elder Charles. We'll make it a good one. I've been a missionary for 19 MONTHS now! Crazy stuff! Things are picking up.

I think that's pretty much everything, kind-of a longer letter. Hope you all have a great week!

Lanmou,
Eldè Stevenson

Peggy Coming In Clutch

Hello everyone! So this week was kinda a long week again haha, but it ended on a high note.

This week we finished off our "blackbird", and have been way more effective with stopping by less actives in the areas that we want to work in. One less active member, brother Ja....., even took us out to lunch one day! He took us out to Pollo Tropical, a south-Florida exclusive (I think, haha). It's basically just Latin food, grilled chicken and rice dishes, but it's pretty good and pretty cheap too. 

So this week we also took a hit to our monthly mile limits (seems like the whole mission did), which means that I got back on my bike for the first time since Naples. It was just for one night, but let me tell you that biking on the city streets at night is a much different experience here than in quiet Naples. My biking muscles were sore, but we should have saved ourselves enough to make it through the month. We've been extra careful, planning out exactly where we will drive throughout the day, and like I mentioned earlier using our "blackbird" to get the most work done in each place. It's been pretty exhausting, for example on Saturday we were knocking for almost 4 hours, breaking it up with contacting former investigators and less actives nearby. Very efficient, just exhausting- but that's missionary life for ya.

The highlight of this week was Peggy! She came to church! After 2 weeks of not being able to meet with her, we talked to her and set her with a [baptism] date for November 4th. She still had some concerns about being "baptized again", but we whipped out some scriptures that seemed to help (2 Nephi 31:13-14, 3 Nephi 27:19-20, Acts 19:1-6). We found out the real problem was that she's staying with a friend that she cleans the house and babysits the kids for, and they didn't want us coming over to their house to meet with her (even though we met outside on the front porch, but whatever). So we are now trying to set it up so that we can meet her somewhere else. We got with one of the families in the ward, and they're letting us come tonight and do a Family Home Evening with them and her. It should be great! I'm excited for her, now that we can meet again she should progress well towards baptism! 

I just thought I'd mention something I found on lds.org today, that they now have standardized missionary interviews and are going to be replacing tablets with smartphones and making them available to more missions. These are big changes that show how the work is progressing. And who knows, maybe we'll be getting smartphones soon? (Zone Conference is tomorrow after all...) Anyways that's pretty much everything from this week. Hope everything's going well for you! And since I don't have any attention-grabbing pictures, I'll include one of Elder Perez and the fish he caught last Pday. Enjoy.

​Elder Perez with his "fat fish"

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Surprise P Day for Hurricane Irma​

Hello everyone! So.... as I'm sure you've probably heard, Hurricane Irma is headed our way. I put most of my thoughts for this week's letter in a recording. Here are the highlights:

-Darwins got baptized.... ON THE BEACH! Yes, we got permission from president to combine our baptism with a member's baptism that were good friends with Darwins. Which means yes, we did go to the beach! And yes, I took lots of pictures and will be sending all of those as well.

-Hurricane prep. We are getting things ready, stocking up on water and food. What we know at this point is that Hurricane Irma is heading our way and is a Cat 5 storm. Exciting! We will be well taken care of by the church and by God, so don't worry about us just send your prayers for those that may not be as well prepared as we are.

-Temple trip was cancelled. Because of Hurricane. Bummer.

-If anyone has any good advice on things to have and do to prep for a hurricane, feel free to let me know haha.

-The work is going well here. I am so happy to be doing what I'm doing and to be here when I am. Next week it will official, but technically I've already hit the mark that puts me 1 year out from my return date. That's crazy, I definitely don't feel that old in the mission haha. My mission has definitely helped me to become a better person. I love the Lord and I love the Haitians and I love you all and hope that you have a great week. 

Talk to you soon! Keep up the good work!

​E Anderson and E Rock​

​Beach selfie!​

​Darwins and Pauley, the other boy being baptized​

​Jamesly, the only member in his family until now (and going on a mission)
getting to baptize his little brother 

​Me and Elder Blood​

Obligatory artsy shell pic (good wallpaper)​

Funny...​

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Live the gospel faithfully and with compassion

 Hello everyone! So this week was good, not a whole lot to report though.

So, as you may or may not have already been aware, it's been raining a lot here. Fortunately we weren't hit with Hurricane Harvey, but as it passed by it sent a lot of storms our way. We've been doing our best to avoid being out in the heavy rain, so it hasn't been too bad. Apparently there are some streets and areas that are flooded. We have a little weather radio in our apartment, and at 2:00 this morning it woke all of us up to tell us there was a flood warning. I haven't seen much flooding myself, just some really deep puddles haha. Weirdly there hasn't been much lightning with all the storms, which is kinda a bummer.

Speaking of rain, Saturday morning we helped a family move out of their house in the driving rain. It was a ward service project so the bishop, high priest group leader, young men's leader, and one of the young men were there to help too. It was pretty fun, I was pretty much the designated umbrella holder as we moved stuff in and out of the truck haha.

Yesterday I gave a talk in sacrament meeting, my first one on my mission! I went pretty much a whole year without being asked, that's gotta be a record. It was just a 7 minute talk about the Holy Ghost. I based most of the talk around an analogy with bees (thanks mom). Much like how bees are able to see UV light, and thus distinguish many different pigments in flowers, when we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost it allows us to see in another "spiritual" light. 

Moving service

Taking the analogy further, UV light can reveal hidden messages (think secret ink), cleanse and purify (think camping water bottle filters), and strengthen and solidify (think cementing on braces). In the same way the Holy Ghost is a Revealer, and Purifier, and a Strengthener. And just like any form of light, even though you cannot see it directly you know it is there by observing the things it touches. I could take the analogy further, but I'll let you think about it for yourselves haha.

We've found a lot of success this week working with Jamesly's nonmember family. He's a Haitian young man that has his papers in to serve a mission and he's the only member in his family. Right now we're working to have his little brother Darwins baptized this Saturday. There's a couple more logistics we need to work out, but if we can swing it for this week that'd be awesome. Our next step is to work on the mom, Lucy. She seems pretty open to the message, it's just hard to meet with her or get her to come to church because she works all the time. One thing our mission president encouraged us to do with her is set up a fast with her so that she can get work off to come to church. We're going to meet with them all tonight, so hopefully we can get this worked out.

That's pretty much all I've got to talk about for this week. It'll be a bit longer until my next email, next Friday is when I get to go to the temple! I'm going to print off some family names that I found to take with me. That should be super cool! It'll be interesting to see how it works out, since I'm a 2 hour drive from the temple. We need to have a member take us, and we also have to do all our other p-day things like shop and email still, but we'll see I guess haha. 

Hope all is going well with you! Keep up the good work!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

​

A poorly taken photo of the eclipse

The District

​Elder Rock resting peacefully

No Clue...

​Our new group​

Hello everyone! This week was good, definitely different though.

Wednesday we had transfers, and it was kinda crazy getting everything worked out. The good thing is that we got to carpool with the zone leaders so we saved ourselves the, about, 200 miles it takes for us to get there and back. Now I'm living with Elder Blood, Elder Anderson, and his "sprout" Elder Rock. They're all good guys, it's definitely a different feel from last transfer and will take some adjustment for everybody I think. Now I'm the one that gets asked all the questions about the area, and quite frankly I still feel like I have no clue what I'm doing haha...

We had our English class and Georvensky (that's how he said it's spelled) came! It was pretty fun, we got to answer his questions and then got into a conversation about the church and Joseph Smith. He's kinda the type that says "I don't see why it matters what church I go to if they all talk about Jesus Christ." That concern can either be really easy or really hard to overcome. Later in the week we came by and ended up sharing about the Plan of Salvation with him, and he seemed to really like that. Unfortunately he didn't come to church like he said he would and didn't answer his phone, so we're gonna have to figure out what happened there. Our other person committed to church didn't come either, he said that either him or a family member was sick and he couldn't come. We'll be going by tonight for another lesson and to give him a baptismal date, so hopefully all goes well!

Open House for missionary 

Saturday was probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, bike days I've had so far. A conservative estimate from my GPS says it was about 30 miles. We were able to meet with a recent convert, Jamesly, who has his mission papers in! He's the only member in his family, but he wants his mom and little brother to get baptized before he goes. We'll be working more closely with him to help him with everything for that. Then in the evening we biked down to the bottom of our area to stop by a part-member family only to find that they had moved, so we spent the rest of the night biking back home. It was a pretty long day haha...

Yesterday was a really fun day though, there is a young woman in our ward going on a mission to Long Beach California, and she gave a great farewell talk. Her sister and her dad also sang a song together that was really good. Then after church we got to go to the open house, which was basically right on the beach! You couldn't see it from their house though, otherwise I would've gotten some awesome pictures. It was an interesting experience, this is the second missionary farewell I've witnessed while on my mission. It's weird to think that I'm old enough in the mission now that I'll get back home 6 months before her!

That's pretty much all the news from this week, I'm gonna try to go out and see the eclipse that's going on! We had someone we knocked into last night tell us that it's a sign that the world is ending  haha, we'll see about that I guess. Interviews with President are already this week, and we also got our date for going to the temple, which will be Sept. 8th! Just a head's up, for that week that Friday will be my p-day, so just be aware that I didn't forget to email haha. Anyways hope all is going well with you! Keep up the good work!

​My new district, the "Salt Life" district​

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

PS (Answers for Dad)

Naples is definitely a little tougher to find people than my other areas, definitely more biking, and even though the ward is more like a twig than a branch the people that do come are solid. Elder Blood is great. I use my creole a lot just talking to people, saying prayers, and doing things for the ward members.

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

​

Day By Day

​Here's a picture of the invitation to today's zone activity.
Picture credits to yours truly.*

Hello everyone! Surprise, I'm emailing early this week! This week was a fun week, I'll try to go day by day.

Monday was Pday, and we pretty much just did the stuff we had to like clean, shop, and email and then napped. It was pretty great actually. We also had our ward's first FHE, which is geared towards getting recent converts, less-actives, and investigators into the church for a little activity and gospel lesson. It was pretty successful, we got all our recent converts from the other week there. We played 2 truths and a lie and then our ward mission leader gave the lesson. Pretty fun, it's only going to be once a month though to start.

Tuesday we didn't do much other than knocking and visiting people in the blackbird. We also had correlation meeting, and a little Book of Mormon class afterwards with some of the ward missionaries and recent converts. That was good, we started reading through the book of Enos and talked about prayer.

Wednesday was pretty much the same thing, but we got to do a little family history! So far I've just been scanning through everything I already have and looking for people ready to do ordinances before I do too much tweaking, but pretty soon I'll start trying to find new people and get rid of duplicates and resolve errors and whatnot. It's hard to do much with only 1 hour a day twice a week, but it's still fun to look at stuff and find work to do.

Thursday we had interviews with President, that was pretty fun. I didn't have any questions for him though so it was super short. He just asked me if I was having fun a bunch of times haha. He also gave some cryptic hints about transfers to the other elders, so I have no idea what to expect. We also went to the Netane's house, one of the counselors in the Bishopric, with Bertina and her family for a pizza night! It was super fun but really hard to get the spiritual thought in haha.

Friday was pretty much the same as Wednesday. We did get in contact with an "eternigator" that we met at the beginning of last transfer and haven't seen since. She's super Mormon, but can't be baptized because she's not married to her boyfriend she's living with. Super lame, but she made us good food so that's good.

Saturday we got to take Bertina out teaching with us! It was super awesome, she's like a naturally good teacher and awesome fellowshipper. She was using like all the missionary teaching skills, it's almost like we didn't have to be there!The investigator kind of dropped off though, which is lame, but it was cool to have Bertina with us!

Sunday was Mother's Day! Yay! I got to facetime my family, which was super fun. It's weird that people still have lives while I'm a missionary haha. Our member also had Star Wars Episode 7 playing in the background, which was pretty distracting even though I've already seen it haha. Elder Hatch hasn't seen it, so it was really distracting for him haha. Other than that refer to the above knocking/blackbird.

That's pretty much it for this week, thank you all for your support!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

*Editor's Notes:

1-The Elders don't know what it is going on with politics. They just hear snippets here and there. We think this is funny even though it could be offensive to several different groups.  ;)

2-Transfers are coming up, so please wait to send any mail until we get his address confirmed next week.

Family History and The Blackbird

Here's a picture of my district for #MuchoMay:
Elder Hansen, Me, Sister Osborne, Sister Sweetnam,
Sister Wertz, Sister Dees, Elder Hatch, Elder Foster​

Hello friends and family! This week was pretty good, seemed to go by pretty fast. Here's a couple things that happened.

First off I was able to do a little family history for like an hour, it was actually pretty fun. I was able to find 3 people on my tree that haven't had any ordinances done for them, and hopefully we can get Bertina to the temple so I can do baptisms for them. Hopefully I'll be able to do more family history work, it's really fun to be able to look at your tree and trim it up a bit. To any reader that has tips and tricks for that it would be appreciated.

​Crazy looking rain clouds part 1​

Another thing we've been working on this week is something we call the 'Blackbird." Basically it's just a map of all the members on record that live in your area. The only thing is that since we don't have iPads, we have to make it by hand. Fortunately the church has a map on lds.org, but it just shows a dot for each household so we had to go through and label them all. We were able to get it all finished and nice, we have 213 households in our half of the ward and about 10% of those are active. So we've been going around to all the less-active names whenever we have time, and we're finding that most of the people don't even live there. One of them had been moved for at least 13 years, and no one knew. That's pretty sad, it seems like a couple years ago missionaries would just baptize a ton of people that almost immediately went less-active and now are missing. Our ward is now working on cleaning up the ward list and really emphasizing Home/Visiting teaching to keep it from getting worse. Hopefully that helps, it's so sad when a recent convert gets no support and goes less active.

​Crazy looking rain clouds part 2

This week we were able to find a pretty good Haitian knocking spot! We have not been able to find Haitians in this area, they're so spread out and even though we cover creole for the whole stake we don't go out that far because of time and miles. But we found a little complex with Haitians in it and have found a couple investigators! They haven't progressed very far yet, but could be promising. It's nice just to be able to teach in creole again, even if it is still a little stressful. I almost had to translate for Sacrament meeting yesterday, which would have been my first time, but the people that usually need translation weren't there. I'm sure I'll have to later on in some other ward, I've just been blessed that both my wards so far have had equipment and members to do the translation.

That reminds me that transfers are coming up on May 24th! There's a good chance that I'll be moving but you never know. Also Mother's Day is this Sunday, I'll be able to Skype my family!

This week we also got a little taste of the "Florida Summer" aka Rain. There was one day where is was pretty clear, and then out of nowhere some crazy looking clouds come and DUMP rain on us. We ran from the house we were at to our car for like 2 seconds and got SOAKED. Then after like 5 minutes the dumping stopped and in 15 minutes it was gone and sunny again. I got some pictures of it though so that's good.

Florida Summer

One last thing that happened this week is that we got a Bible referral for someone named Erika, but it turns out she was already a member. She's less active and just moved down here from Boca Raton, but contacted us so that we could help her get active in the church again! She has older kids that are already baptized and one 8 year old that wants to be baptized too. It's hard for her to get to church since her husband is not a member, but she's super solid and really committed to coming back. One of our members offered to give her a ride and she came to church yesterday! That was a pretty cool miracle.

Other than that everything with Bertina is still going well except that she couldn't come to church because of a family emergency. We're still working on getting the boys the Priesthood so that we can all go to the temple for baptisms, hopefully we can do that before transfers. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers! Keep up the good work!

​Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson