Camping in the Keys

​My new district. Starting with me, then up to Elder Shoen (something like that, he's new), Elder Perez my new DL on top, Elder Hasara under him, under him Elder Loftus, under him Elder Flake, next to him Elder Bullock (also new), behind him Elder Norman (not as new but still new haha) then Elder Marshall next to him and Elder Rire under him.​

Hello everyone! So this week has been a fun one! Lots of work but still fun haha.

Transfers were this week, so now I'm in Cypress Creek with Elder Marshall. We're very similar haha, pretty much the same person. It'll be an interesting new dynamic since most of my other companions have been very different from me in some way or another! My new home address is .....Fort Lauderdale, FL 33308. We haven't done a whole lot so far, but it's going to be a transition especially since for the large part it's "business as usual" over here on the east coast since the hurricane didn't hit as hard. Back to "real" missionary work! What I can tell though and what I've heard from other missionaries is that this is a great area to be in. Even though I don't get to teach in creole, there's still plenty to talk to and even though the ward is smaller it's strong. Should be good!

We also have some cool people that we're working with right now. One is named Ray, he's been investigating the church for a while now but is set to be baptized this week! We were going to try to have the baptism last weekend, but with service and everything it just couldn't happen. But so far everything is in order for this weekend. He's passed his interview and everything, so as long as we're in town it should happen! The other person we're working with right now is Peggy, she's a woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo! She's super cool, we're still pretty early on in the teaching process with her. She's been living in America for a little while and understands English pretty well, but her native language is Lingala. So we got her a Book of Mormon in Lingala! Super cool, and she really wants to change her life and follow Christ so I think she'll be baptized.

Me and Elder Marshall
hanging out at our campsite at the museum on Marathon

So the climax of the week was the weekend when we went down to the keys to camp and do service! We drove down with our ward to Marathon Key on Saturday morning at 4:00am, then set up camp and went out to work. Most of the missionaries from the east coast were there so I got to hang out with some of my friends that I haven't talked to in a long time. It was so much fun. We did a lot of helping people tear down drywall and shoveling mud out of houses and hauling out trees and things. It's hard labor, especially with how hot and sunny it gets, but we had plenty of water and food and things so we were taken care of. We camped out Saturday night, it's been a while since I've been camping, it was fun. I got a cool self-inflating chair thing that I intended to use for an air mattress, since we were sleeping on a gravel driveway, but I guess it's not designed for that since it was deflated by the middle of the night. I ended up sleeping just fine though. Hopefully I can figure out the issue because it's a cool chair haha. Then we went and did the same thing all of Sunday until we got back home at around 9:00 pm. Lots of work but it was lots of fun and the people were so grateful for it.

Saturday evening we got to watch the Priesthood session of conference. The talks were very interesting, talking about how the priesthood is like a rocket, and about the significance of light, and of integrity and other things. I really enjoyed it, I'll have to go back and study it some more though. We'll get to watch 4 hours worth of conference during the week this week, the rest will have to be on pdays. I'm excited to watch! I did hear the news though that President Monson wasn't there, and that Elder Hales died. Very sad news, but a lot was said during the priesthood session about how the leadership of the church works and I know that there is a purpose behind these things.

That's pretty much it, but I do have lots of pictures! I'll try not to do a huge dump again haha, but they're all so good! Anyways thank you for your support!

​-With Darwins​

​​​​​​​​​​​​​-Lucy and Darwins​
-​​​​​Lingala Book of Mormon!​
-​Driving to service at 4am​
-Tearing out drywall​
​-destroyed burger king
-​This was the worst house I've seen so far. Flooded, then downed lines burned it.​
​-destroyed gas station​
-​​​National gaurd​
​-Cutting up trees​
​-This boat went over, and one of the cords on it went halfway through a tree, see next pic​
​​-​destroyed sail​
​​​​​-pirate ship​
​​​-Artsy palm tree pic​
​-The Atlantic ocean between keys​

​-A Florida rainstorm ​ 
-​random windsurfer

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Questions From Mom 3

The Week of Weeks!

My poor bike

Hello everyone! So this week has still been pretty not normal you could say. First things first though this week is TRANSFERS. And I will be TRANSFERRING to the area of CYPRESS CREEK ENGLISH in the CORAL SPRINGS ZONE. My new companion will be ELDER MARSHALL. All the other elders here will be staying, and Elder Blood will be training! Definitely didn't expect this one, It'll be a lot different serving as just an English missionary, but the Lord needs me there for some reason so I'll just have to figure it out I guess. I haven't heard anything about the area other than apparently the ward meets in an old baptist church so that'll be interesting.

The weirdness of the week started off last p-day when we got in a crash! We were finally on our way "home" from the chapel and Elder Anderson was driving, and because of the hurricane there are traffic lights out. Well there was this one light that wasn't really a light because it was just for a school and is never on anyways, but a Mercedes 2 cars ahead of us decides to slam on his brakes to stop at it, which caused the mini cooper behind him to slam on his brakes, which caused Elder Anderson to slam on our brakes. And since we had all our stuff along with 4 guys in the car, we couldn't stop fast enough and we hit the back of the mini cooper. Everyone was fine, but our car got bashed pretty bad. Elder Anderson didn't get faulted either so that was good haha.

Our poor car

So then we didn't have a car, and we were living up with the cypress grove elders, Elder Wride and Elder Petersen, because our house still didn't have power. So the next day we tried biking down to do stuff in our area and I got the first flat tire of my mission! A 3 inch rusty screw went straight through my tire. So then I was out of a bike and we stuck with the other elders for the rest of the day.

The next day was Zone Conference, and President showed us his portfolio of pictures he took before his mission. He's an amazing photographer, really cool stuff. He's done photo shoots for some pretty big companies too. Even Disney! We also got a new car after zone conference so that was awesome. And I ate at steak and shake for the first time, which is kinda like the in-n-out of the east coast. Pretty good, not as good as in-n-out though.

We were finally able to go back to our house on Saturday. We have power, but the AC comes in and out still. Better than camping out in a chapel and living outside our area though. This weekend we also did more Mormon Helping Hands. We got in a work crew with the L.......s, the same family that took care of us during the hurricane. That was fun, they're an awesome family. But so many trees. After all this is over I will never need to touch another stick haha. It's exhausting work and there's so much to be done, but I'm glad to be able to help out these people. They're always so grateful for our help.

​Gotta get those yellow shirts!​

​Working in the rain!​

​Working hard or hardly working?

Speaking of that, this weekend is General Conference. However, the General Authorities have asked that we forego watching conference to do more Helping Hands. Kind of a bummer since I was kinda looking forward to a break, and General Conference is like super bowl weekend for missionaries haha. But, since I'll be transferring back to the east coast there's a good chance that I'll be camping (like, ACTUAL camping with TENTS) down in the KEYS to help clean up down there. The Keys got pretty wrecked so this isn't going to be much of a vacation but it'll be an interesting experience all the same. Somehow among all this I am still going to be doing missionary work, I'm expecting a bit of a rough transition at first but we'll see how it all pans out.

So as you can tell, things are really shaking up around here. Things will probably never be the same after this, but it's been a huge growing experience for me which I can really appreciate. Heavenly Father is really putting me, and putting all of us for that matter, to the test and I'm just going to keep making myself do those things that I don't want to do because I know there's a good reason for all of it. Just know that things are working out and are going to keep working out, and I just might be an even better person because of it hahaha. I love you all, thank you for your continued prayers and support!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

​

What a "Birthday" Present

Hello everyone! Yes, I am back online (barely haha). So obviously it's been pretty crazy around here. I can't possibly hope to capture any fraction of everything that's happened these past 2 weeks, but I'll try my best. Here we go!

So the last time I emailed we were prepping our house for Irma. Eventually we got the call that my whole zone and the Fort Myers zone would be evacuating Thursday night (the 7th) to a chapel in Bonita Springs. The next few days were spent mostly helping members put up shutters and prep the house and pack up for the hurricane. We packed our 72 hour kits and enough clothes and things to last us about 3 days. We waited in an hour long line to get gas and topped off our tank and then only used our bikes the next few days. There was lots of uncertainty in the air, and it was eerie riding around and seeing all the shutters and the worried looks on everyone's faces.

Shout out to Elder Anderson.

Eventually we all made it up to Bonita. There were 32 missionaries total living in the chapel, plus our stake president and his wife and 13 year old son. He kept an eye on the storm and would update us every once in a while and instruct us on what we were to do. It was pretty crazy once we knew that it was coming straight for us, especially since it was projected to keep it's intensity of about a cat 4-5. While in the chapel though we all had a lot of fun. We were allowed to play card games and board games, and there was also a lot of basketball and volleyball in the gym. Plus just being around other missionaries is fun so we talked a lot.

The storm ended up hitting us Sunday afternoon. Sunday morning we had a little sacrament meeting where we took the sacrament and shared some testimonies. It was a neat experience. Not too long after that was when we lost power. When the strongest part of the storm passed over us, we all gathered into a hallway to wait it out. We were definitely protected, because we were only hit by about cat 2-3 strength winds. It still caused some damage, which I'll talk about in a sec. After that we were pretty much in the clear and just waited to hear what they wanted us to do.

Monday we started cleaning up around the chapel. We mostly just cleared out trees that had fallen, there wasn't much damage to the building at all other than no power or water. Really most of what we did for the rest of the week was just a waiting game. Waiting for power, waiting for water, waiting for the all clear to leave the chapel, waiting for service to do. While we were waiting we played games and talked and really built up some good relationships with everyone there. It was like if you mixed scout camp and EFY and then threw in a hurricane haha. I'll be honest and say that I didn't really feel like a missionary, I still don't. It'll be tough getting back in the swing of things for sure.

At about this point we were told to evacuate up to Cape Coral to help out the church and people in that area. We were still pretty much on lock-down but at least we had power and water (on boil order). At this point it had been about a week when we had only planned for 3 or so days so we had no clean clothes and hadn't showered, so some members up there opened up their homes to us to let us shower and do our laundry. That was a huge blessing haha. Even though we were only up there for about 2 days, the members really took care of us, some even provided meals for all of us which was awesome. We were definitely blessed and taken care of.

After that we went back down to Bonita and from there split into 2 groups. We had some other missionaries coming from the Tampa mission as well as the Coral Springs zone to help out with cleanup through projects set up through the stake with Mormon Helping Hands. All the English missionaries stayed in Naples while the language missionaries went out to Imokalee, a little town by the everglades that got hit pretty hard. Naples and Imokalee pretty much got the worst of the storm, and it was pretty humbling going out to Imokalee and seeing the trailers that were destroyed and all the damage that was there. Everyone was still in high spirits though and ready to go out and serve.

We were out there from Saturday morning to Sunday night. We all put on our yellow t shirts and went to work all weekend long unloading semis, building wheelbarrows, chopping and hauling trees, and doing anything we could to help out the community out there. Member had come from all around Florida and were camping out to help. I think there were maybe around 200 people that came to Imokalee with us. Sunday morning at 6:00 we had a little pioneer sacrament where we gave everyone a sacrament cup, and after the prayer, came around with water bottles and filled each individual's cup. It was a pretty spiritual experience, especially being able to look up and see the stars since we're far from the cities.

That's the best summary I can do. I have lots of pictures, sorry I won't be able to caption all of them so you'll have to do some inferring. My status as of right now: Our house (in Naples) is still out of power, so as of today I'll be living with the Cypress Grove elders. (AKA Don't send mail to my home address please!) I'm not sure how long it will be, we're expecting at least until Friday probably. There are already some complications that've come up with that, but we're doing our best to handle it. Transfers are next week as well, it'll be interesting to see how they handle that. All in all, this experience has been about rolling with the punches and making the best out of what you've got. It's a learning and growing experience for everyone, and I'm sure it won't be the last. (Just pray that Maria doesn't hit us too haha). I love you all, just know that I'm safe and doing my best to help out. 

One last thing. I've officially been out for 1 YEAR! WOW! My mission birthday haha! Didn't do much for it, since we were hiding from a hurricane, but it's crazy to think that I've been out this long, and that now the time starts to count down to going home. Ahhh! It's going by soooo fast!

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