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

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