Transfers Are Here Again and...BAPTISM! (Also picture spam)

​ADLINE GOT BAPTIZED!​

Hello everyone! So, let's get the big important news out of the way.... I will be TRANSFERRING to the area of HOLLYWOOD CREOLE. As I don't know my new address yet, please refrain from sending mail for a bit ;) . My new companion will be Elder K Hatch! I've heard good things about him, should be fun. Exciting stuff. It'll be weird getting used to a new area but it should be good. Also, all the others will be transferring too except for Elder Bissereth, and they're changing it back to having 2 Creole Elders and 2 English Elders instead of splitting the ward in half. 

So here's the next big news. You may remember a while back when I told you about Adline. She was an "eternigator" [eternal investigator] that was waiting on a divorce [to be final] to be married and then baptized. [When a woman and man are living together, they must be married in order to be baptized. This is because of the law of chastity.] Well, the other day on Wednesday I was on exchange with Elder Taylor again, and I decided to stop by to see her daughter, Alicia, last thing at night since we're working to set her with a baptismal date and had extra time. (I'm glad I did, I could have been like "my creole is not good enough to hold a conversation on my own" but I just went anyways.) Well, she was sick but her mom was there! 

So she and I just chatted and I asked "I'm still curious about how the divorce is going?" and she was like "Oh, I'm divorced already!" 

What?! "That's great! So when do you think you'll be able to be married?" 

"Oh, I'm married already, I just did it at court!" 

WHAT?! (Turns out she has been married for 15 days already!) So yeah, once we found that out we got her to talk with Bishop and got her interview and everything and she got baptized LAST SUNDAY! And I was the one to baptize her! Woot! So many miracles.

Also, last Pday I went to the beach for the first time! Got some great pics. We went fishing on a pier in Sunny Isles. Super rich area- There were ads for apartments that said "starting from 1.4 Million to 5.4 Million!" Jeez louweez.

​My awesome comp and DL, Elder Bissereth.​

​Say "Fishing is fun and not boring!"​

​Panorama of the beach.​

Me at the beach!​

Elder Bissereth dancing with pelicans.​

​My new planner cover.​

​My awesome district! Gonna miss these goofballs.

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

A Little Burst of Speed

Hello Everyone!

Let's just say the Florida sun is doing it's job.

So the work picked up a bit this week! We were able to find 10 new investigators, and 3 of them came to Sacrament [meeting]! That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's the first time we've really been able to get anyone to come to church, so that's good! 

We still do tons of knocking, mostly because appointments are virtually impossible to keep for some reason. Even when we call them or text them that morning and they say we're good to stop by, when we get there they're either not home or sleeping. Maybe it's just Miami, but it seems like everyone just goes to work and then sleeps when they get home. And a lot of people work nights so they sleep during the day. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, we are always getting yelled at for waking them up. haha.

A couple highlights from the people we found:

1. Rudy- A super cool white guy we knocked into (there's not many of those around here!) He has a Doctors degree in Religious Arts and was basically Mormon without knowing it, but when church came around he dropped us over the phone because it was too hard to leave his church of 21 years. Bummer.

​I don't mean to brag,
but we decked out our apartment for Valentine's Day.​

2. Roscoe- A super cool guy that virtually committed to baptism right at the door. He really wanted to come to church and even bring his little brother and cousins with him, but got called to work at the last minute. Bummer. Still working with him though.

3. Kimberly- She's the one that actually came to church, and brought 2 friends with her! Found her knocking as well, seems to really understand the message but still has a little problem with "Mwen batize deja" (I'm baptized already). A common problem, but we can work with that.

That's pretty much it, sorry I don't have crazy stories, my memory is bad sometimes. I included some pictures from Valentine's Day though, aka the lamest holiday as a missionary! Haha. It was great though, cuz we got an awesome care package from home (thanks!). 

Love all y'all!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Trials and Tribulations?

A picture of our Zone Training

Hello everyone! Not too much exciting happened this week, mostly just a ton of knocking all day long.

So a little update about Amy from last week: Turns out she lived in the other Elders' area :( and has been super hard to get a hold of since she doesn't have a phone, and every time they stop over she doesn't answer. She didn't come to church yesterday either :( , so it's likely that she'll just get lost and fall away. Kinda disappointing, but such is missionary life. 

We had several exchanges this week since Elder Bissereth is the DL [District Leader], and I took over the area for the day while he went to work in the other areas in the district. It was the first time I've been the one to stay, and the most interesting one was when Elder Taylor, a "greenie", was with me. It was the first time that I've been the more experienced missionary! Haha, it was kinda a boring day anyways because we literally had no appointments, so we knocked all day long. It was funny too because we only ran into Spanish speakers, so he did more work than I did haha. He said it was the first time he's had to do a whole door approach in Spanish by himself so hopefully that was good. I want to learn some good Spanish while I'm here too, but I'm gonna focus on Creole first haha.

This week marks 5 MONTHS as a missionary! (This includes the MTC, 3 1/2 in Florida) That's crazy! Almost 1/4th is gone already! The days go slow but the weeks go fast, it's true.

So no one came to sacrament this week (except for Adline and Alicia of course), which is kinda sad, you know? 

The only other thing of interest is that we ran into a bunch of Hebrew-Israelite folks this week, which is annoying. For all those in the mission you know who they are, and for those "watching" at home you have Google. There was one guy in particular that was just hounding us. It's worse when there's a black and a white person in the companionship. He was shouting profanities against us and against God, "breathing out threatenings" as the scriptures would say, (it didn't help that he was obviously high on something) and that was probably the first time I've felt my faith so visibly and physically attacked. We ended up just walking away, "smile and wave" as it were, and letting him yell as we went back to the car. It was a learning experience for both of us I'd say.

SO yeah! That was my week, hope all is going well for all y'all! Keep up the Good Work!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Story Time

Hello everyone! This week has been an interesting week. Adjusting to the new "flexible" schedule has been weird, there's a lot that is different about how we do things now. Sometimes it's hard to know what we're supposed to be doing, but we just kinda work and do the best we can.

We haven't been able to find much time to teach the family from last week when everyone is home, because the dad (Patrick) and the only other 18 year old guy (Billy) work and are always in and out. We'll do what we can, but one of the things about this mission that's different than most places is that we don't hang on to people very long. With so many people that live here and the mandate to be teaching the "Lord's elect," when people aren't keeping commitments or appointments keep falling through they just get dropped. Hopefully we won't have to do that with the family, because they seem interested but just aren't making it a big enough priority.

We did find someone that is making it a priority though! Her name is Arjenae (pronounced are-jen-ay). She's a 15 year old African-American girl who's been through a lot in her childhood. like A LOT. Just about everything you can think of has happened to her. She really wants to turn her life around though, and seems to be doing well. She accepted the date to be baptized on the 19th, so hopefully that will happen! We even got a member to bring her to church, even though it was stake conference!

Speaking of stake conference, that was interesting too. We were asked by the stake to translate the saturday adult session into creole, but our mission president was there and since Saturday nights are prime proselyting time, he wanted one companionship to stay and one to go out knocking. So Elder Bissereth and I left while the others stayed. Turns out that no Haitians even showed up, so they were just sitting there getting stared at by President the whole time haha. They booked it as soon as it ended.

The next day during stake conference, we had a member of the seventy come speak to us. During his talk, he had President and Sister Richardson stand up with him and asked all the missionaries to stand up. Then he had us all come to the front and sing Called to Serve for him and for everyone else. That was a pretty cool and unique experience.

One of the last things that happened this week happened last night. The ward was having a "confidential baptism" and asked us to fill the font. Then we ended up staying because the person who was doing the confirmation couldn't come, so they asked one of us to do it. 

A member of the bishopric, Brother Roa, arrives, and so does the member performing the baptism. While we're waiting for the person being baptized to show up, a lady with 3 little kids walks in. Brother Roa has us go talk to her to see what she wanted and to give her a tour or something. Her name is Amy and she has 3 kids, one 10, one 8, and one 5. She asked us "How much longer?". We were confused, and Brother Roa said "Well we have a baptism that you can come in and watch?" and she was just like "Ok great!" So we set up a table and some chairs and chatted with her. We had songs and prayers and she watched the baptism and everything. Then while they were changing clothes Elder Bissereth and I taught about baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and she said "Great, so do you think I could be baptized by the end of the month?" We were just like "uhhhhhh... Yeah!" It was crazy. Turns out she has a Christian background and several Mormon friends, and met with some missionaries 6 years ago! We're going to meet with her again later today to get all the details and figure everything out, there's a pretty good chance she lives in the other Elders' area and she doesn't have a phone yet, so we don't know much yet. Will let you guys know how it all goes.

So that's my week! Hope you enjoyed, leave a like and a comment down below and subscribe to my channel! ;)

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Miracle Family and Changes from Headquarters

Hey everyone! Just a couple things to talk about this week, but exciting nonetheless! 

So one the coolest miracles we saw this week was that we ran into a awesome family that Elder Bissereth knew before the mission! We ran into them because we went to visit a former investigator but they weren't home, so we decided to knock around them. We walk up to the next door and the door opens a little bit. Elder Bissereth peeks his head in and says "Hello?", then turns to me with his classic "surprised face" and is just like OHHHHHHHHHH and the lady inside is like OHHHHHHHHH and I'm like "Ou konnen yo?! (you know them?)" and he's like YEEAAAHHHH. It was pretty funny. 

Anyways, now we're going over to teach them. The 2 parents with 8 KIDS. Only 3 are baptismal age, but still. The dad, Patrick, is pretty receptive and loves the church videos we've been showing him because of the focus on families. He also wants his 18 year old son to serve a mission like us, so we'll see! Elder Bissereth said that when he got called to this mission he immediately thought of this family -because he lived with them in Miami- but they had moved from their old house so he didn't know where they were. He said he had been praying to find them. Miracles!

Other than that, this week was a lot of knocking. A LOT. We didn't hardly have any appointments or anything all week. But that's alright, it's not so bad to knock.

The other exciting thing from this week was that we had the Worldwide Missionary Broadcast. In it, the church announced that our daily schedule will no longer be strictly rigid, but flexible and adaptable to local and daily circumstances. They said that they want to give missionaries their agency to form their own schedule and provide a smoother transition to after-mission life. Oh yeah, and Pday will be from 8-6 instead of 10-6. Awesome! They also announced that instead of having 9 "key indicators", we will only have 4 so that we will be more focused on our purpose. Those 4 will be: new investigators, investigators at sacrament, investigators with a baptismal date, and baptized/confirmed. We're having a zone conference this week so that President Richardson can train us on how he will make his own adjustments, but big changes!

Hope all is well with you all! I pray for you every day!

​

​Here's a selfie of me wearing an awesome Star-Wars shirt I found at a Latino warehouse store that I couldn't help getting. You're welcome.

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Please Bless Me With Skrenth

Hello Friends and Family!

This week was a good week! It's the first week of the new transfer. Elder Bissereth and I are getting along great, he's a lot of fun. Elder Duvinston (I spelled his name wrong last week) is really cool and fun too. 

The other day Elder Bissereth and I were invited to go with the Spanish Elders to a meal appointment. We got there and they were playing the inauguration live on tv (dubbed in Spanish of course) and we got to watch MoTab [Mormon Tabernacle Choir] perform! That was cool. I had completely forgotten that was happening that day so it was a cool surprise that I got to watch it.

We had a really good day this Saturday! It was probably the Best Day(TM) I've had so far. It was weird, because we were so happy and having so much fun together, and yet we were able to teach a recent convert, wash her car, deliver 2 Bibles, and got 3 new investigators who all said they'd be willing to be baptized if they knew it was true! It was by far the most "missionary work" I've done in a day but also the most fun day.

Two of those new investigators were a newly married couple that are very "Miami". One of the most prominent slang terms here is when people replace "str-" with "skr-" (i.e. skrenth for strength) and they were doing it so much it was hard not to laugh. The husband also has all gold teeth and showed us a video of him reciting a poem he wrote from the perspective of AIDS. It was interesting, but they both said they want to get closer to God and would be baptized, so we're going back later today!

We were also able to bring Brother and Sister Murray to our lesson with the Cruz family and they got along super well! Hopefully that will give them a little more push to come back to church. It worked out well too because they didn't know we were bringing them with us. I'm glad they didn't get upset about it or anything haha.

That's pretty much it. Keep me updated on how everything is going, I love getting your emails!

​

My new district.

From front to back: Elder Blood, Me, Elder Bissereth (right), Elder Duvinston (left), Elder Mears (new ZL), Elder Riggs, Elder Widney, Elder Taylor (brand new, Elder Widney's "son")

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Transfers Are Here Again

Hi everyone! Let's get the transfer news out of the way, since that's probably most important. I am.....staying! Elder Lund is.......transfering to Fort Lauderdale to be with Elder Ajayi! Elder Bissereth is......transfering to The Next Bedroom Over to "greenie-break" me and will stay the District Leader! Elder Blood is......staying and his new companion will be Elder Dubbison! So the most important thing to get from that is that my mailing address is still the same. ;)

Not a whole lot to talk about this week. I got a snazzy new haircut at a Colombian barber shop.

Classic self-portrait of my new haircut.​

Modern selfie of my new haircut!​

Georges is still cool! He has a car to get to church now! He didn't come last week because he didn't have gas but hey, baby steps. We've taught him about the Restoration and so far he seems okay about it. Lots of questions, we usually spend most of the time answering his questions but that's okay. He lives with his cousin Patinson and we've been teaching them both. He's the one with the car, so they want to come to church together now. We'll see them tomorrow evening to teach about the Book of Mormon. Georges says he wants to learn more before he commits to baptism, which is understandable so hopefully he stays cool.

We helped Bishop Robles clean out a shed at the church, it was pretty fun. We got to rummage through the stuff for anything we wanted to keep. We found some cool fake books you can use to store things and a giant pink glass diamond in a fancy box and everything, so we took those home with us. There was also a wheelchair in there, so naturally I rode around in it while taking stuff to the dumpster. At one point Elder Blood started tipping me backwards, and some kids drove by in a car a little ways off and thought he was bullying me. They started yelling at him so he put me down, and I dramatically stood up and started walking. They started screaming and laughing and drove off, pretty sure they thought it was a miracle but it was funny. Maybe they'll come to church now.

I can also say that I now have a testimony that TV turns your brain to mush. We went to get an oil change for our car and ended up waiting there for 4 hours with nothing to do but watch the TV they had on. After almost 3 months of no media stimulation, it was taxing. The shows weren't even good, there was a boring documentary about frogs, then highlights from X Games Motocross, then depressing stories of cancer patients getting their final wishes from Make-A-Wish. I was so tired after that, but we still worked for the rest of the night. Fun times.

That was pretty much it for this week. Keep up the Good Work back home, and let me know how it's going! 

​Elder Bissereth with Elder Smith in the Tesla. Included this since Elder Bissereth will be my new companion. He's a really cool and fun guy, it'll be interesting. Especially since he's still the District Leader!​

My latest planner cover. It shows how I've logged out of all these things and locked them away. All taken from pictures in this month's Ensign. 

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

Surprise! Transfer Week!

P-Day in Miami

Hey everyone! So I feel like I should preface this letter by saying that I forgot to tell you that during transfers, P-day is on Tuesday instead of Monday so that you can pack if you are leaving. So I didn't forget about you. More on all that later!

So this week was kinda slow and boring again. One of the main things we did this week was help the Murray family in the ward move. They're a middle aged couple that's pretty well to do and they were moving from one ritzy apartment place to another ritzy apartment place. So naturally I made sure to ride in a rolling office chair through the halls. I definitely know that they have security cameras set up everywhere and that I probably shouldn't have but eh. It was a pretty rushed move too because only Sister Murray was there to help us, and then after we loaded everything into the Uhaul the other Elders had to leave, so then it was just me and Elder Lund helping her move all the stuff into the new place. On top of that we were only allowed to be there for 1 hour because you had to reserve the freight dock in advance if you are moving in. In the end we went 30 minutes over the limit and made friends with the maintenance guy so that we could keep using the freight elevator. But we did it! Then Sister Murray took us out to eat at a pancake place afterwards. I got biscuits and gravy and it was super good.

We also are doing the Haitian Choir still. It's pretty fun. We got a lady in the ward to play piano for us. Her name is Sister Vogel and she used to play organ for MoTab! She even learned to play organ on the tabernacle organ. She's down here for retirement now. She had shoulder replacement surgery so she had to retire. Also she has arthritis in her hands but she still wants to help us out. Cool lady. We're singing Premier Noel (first noel in French) on Christmas. Should be good.

So transfers were yesterday! Elder Lund and I are both staying put (thankfully) but Elder Ajayi and Elder Child are being whitewashed ["whitewashed" is when both missionaries transfer out at the same time] out. The new Elders coming in their area are a Haitian named Elder Biseret (I don't know how to spell his name yet, it's pronounced bee-sir-ette) and Elder Blood! Yes, the very same from the MTC. That makes 2 Elders that I knew in the MTC that I'd have lived with in 2 transfers. 

Almost forgot, on Sunday we had The United Methodist Church of Opa-Locka come sing to us in sacrament meeting. Apparently a few months ago the ward did a service project for them so they wanted to come sing for us. They sang a few hymns which they were pretty timid about, didn't seem very well prepared, and then the last song they got all out singing this song that goes like "JESUS! JESUS! OHHHHHHHHHH WHAT A WONDERFUL CHILD" and it was all gospel-y and stuff. Pretty fun, never thought I'd see something like that in sacrament meeting. 

That's pretty much it. We have 1 cool potential set up though. His name is Franz Pierre, he was a Bible referral and wanted a BoM [Book of Mormon] as well. He seemed really interested in going forward and was going to come to church on Sunday with his girlfriend (who he said would also be really interested but lives up in Fort Lauderdale) and we were going to teach them afterwards. But his work schedule changed so he was working all day and couldn't come. Hopefully we can start teaching him.

​I made Donna's [our neighbor] banana bread this week! It was pretty good, but I started it kinda late so I had to take it out of the oven with flashlights (lights out is at 10:30) and I covered it until morning. It got a little bit

dried out but still really good.​

Here's my planner for this transfer. Made it myself. I think it turned out pretty good!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson