A Busy Sabbath Day

Coral Springs Zone - The Coolest
Photo from Elder Webster

Hello everyone! Here are a couple of highlights from this week.

First, we had a zone training! It's been a while since we had one, with all the holiday conference things going on. It was good, we talked about forgiving and watched the 12 step video about Larry (drug addiction recovery and forgiveness). It's a good one, led to a lot of good discussion. Kind of surprising how intense those 12 step videos are.

I also went on an exchange with the ZLs this week! It's the first time I've left my area for an exchange since I came to this zone. It was good to work with Elder Flake, even though I don't know Spanish haha. It didn't end up mattering too much though, the appointments all fell through. It was just one of those days. He gave me a good training about faith too, which I appreciated. And Elder Bullock handled the area like a champ, they found 2 new investigators!​​

Speaking of new investigators, this Saturday we had like a mini mission thing with some of the youth in the ward. We had 2 young men come with us Saturday morning to visit some potential investigators, and we were able to teach them both! Also got a little bit of knocking in with them before we all met back up for lunch. It was a fun little adventure.

Yesterday was a really productive day, even though it was a Sunday and most of our appointments fell through. We rearranged our schedule several times so that we could meet with one potential investigator that we have been struggling to meet with, and after talking with him we discover he's the non-member father of a recently returned missionary in the branch! Pretty amazing, he was mostly just curious about the church and our basic beliefs, so we talked about prophets and Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith with him and he seemed pretty interested. 

Then while we were knocking, the 2nd door we knocked let us in and we shared a little Plan of Salvation lesson with an older Haitian lady. 

​Our district leaders doing a fake rap battle at zone training

Finally, we met with a less active family that's really solid in the church but just can't get there on Sundays. We had a really good lesson where we talked about the scriptures and read Alma 32:26-43 together. The dad really felt the spirit and opened up to us, and even asked if we could eat some of his dinner with him haha! First time I've actually sat down and eaten Haitian food with a Haitian family in a long time. Classic "diri nwa" [black rice] with chicken and "griyo" [fried pork]. Have fun looking those up haha. [Haitian Recipes]

I almost forgot to mention that Yesterday Elder Bullock and I gave talks! It was only the 2nd talk I've given on my mission, and the 1st in Creole! It was good, it seemed to go over well. I talked about why we do missionary work (putting it in the context of the plan of salvation a little bit) and then told the members that we are here to work together with them and to help them do missionary work. Several people said thank you afterwards so I assume it was well received.

Also almost forgot to mention that Laurette came to church with her son Alex! We really had to scramble to find a ride for her, we ended up having one of the ward council members bring them early and they sat in the foyer while we were in our meeting. They seemed to really enjoy it, Alex looked like he was loving primary. We haven't been able to meet with her since to follow up about it, but we'll try to go by tomorrow. Brother Ca..... also came with his family for the first time in a little while, and it was nice to see him there. 

That's pretty much it from this week. We've still been pretty busy, our days are starting to get booked up which is nice. Crazy that we're starting into the last week of the transfer now, a new transfer starts on the 31st. I'm starting to realize just how old I am getting in the mission, and I don't like it haha! For example in his talk Elder Bullock said that he came out in August 2017. Then I said that I also came out in August, but August 2016! That was a weird realization. Anyways hope you all have a great week!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson