A Broken Heart

Birthday Dinner

Hello everybody! This week was pretty normal, and it wasn't at the same time haha. There were just a couple things that were out of the ordinary this week.

We had the zone leaders come over for a shadow exchange with us, and now that we have Elder Dick as our zone leader he was able to do some Creole work with us. It was good, had me remembering when we were together in Naples.

We've been focusing our finding a lot on visiting formers and past potentials for the past few weeks now, and we have been having some good success. This week we hit our finding goal of 5 new investigators, the most we've had for one week since we came into the area, all with spending less than an hour knocking the whole week! It was pretty amazing, these people have all had contact with the church to some degree before, and we were able to spark some of the interest that they first felt again.

Our area is a somewhat unique one in this mission, where there are plenty of people who have desires to learn more about the gospel, but because of circumstances they cannot come to church. I've been feeling a bit frustrated again, I feel as if my knees have been kicked out from under me. I know that some things are just not in my control, but anyone that knows me knows that I'm the type that wants to fix everything, and if it doesn't get fixed I get frustrated haha.

We weren't able to get rides for anyone this week for church... No one else was able to come out. Saintanna and Neftalie were busy anyways, so was Christopher, but it's still frustrating knowing that we wouldn't have had rides for them if they weren't. 

But I guess things are still going well, Saintanna is still committed to baptism. We went by last night, and it was Neftalie's son's birthday. He turned 2 yesterday and we had a nice little party with them. Christopher, our recent convert, came with us too, and we had a good time. Some problems will need to be addressed, not for Saintanna..., and that just kinda topped off my frustration yesterday I guess haha. I'm feeling a bit better now, I'm staying optimistic, but Immokalee is kinda breaking my heart.

"The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." (Psalm 34:17) 

That's pretty much it for this week, hope you all have a great week!

Oh, This Is Why People Live Here

The banner. Hooray for cheap supplies.​

Hello everybody! So this week was another kinda slow week. Still haven't found any new investigators, but we've got a little trick up our sleeves for Halloween! But first;

IT'S ACTUALLY NICE OUTSIDE. The weather has been amazing these past couple days, staying around low 70s or below! I might actually need a sweater haha. This is what people call "the season", meaning all the snowbirds are coming in and things are gonna start kicking. It's made me reminisce about California a little bit, although I've found that my cold tolerance has definitely taken a hit (yes, Elder Lund, you were right). Utah will be something else.

This week was zone conference! It was a good one, no major announcements though (darn, no smartphones yet haha). Sister Garns had a lot to say though, one thing she talked about was doing what hasn't been done before to find new investigators. More on that later. Really zone conference is awesome because you get to hang out with old friends and companions. I talked with Elder Foster, Elder Celestin, Elder Bissereth, Elder Dick, and a bunch of other people. I'm at the point on my mission now where I actually know a lot of people. It's also the point where a lot of people I know start to go home. That'll be crazy.

​My "blueprint"​

So, our master plan for Halloween was inspired by Sister Garns' call to "do what hasn't been done." So we're setting up a table in front of our church building, which is on a major road, with the sign "THE BOOK OF MORMON: TRICK, OR TREAT?" This idea came to me the morning after zone conference during my personal study. We've already got everything pretty much made, see pictures below. We're going to do this during the "dead hours" of the day and hopefully have some success. Should be fun! Also if you didn't know, for holidays like Halloween and stuff where it get dangerous after dark, missionaries have to be home by 7pm. So it'll be nice having some free time too haha.

Another thing out of the ordinary that we did this week was help out at a local soup kitchen run by a catholic church. It's funny because they have a big mural on their wall of the Jesus from our bible videos. Anyways it seems like missionaries have been regulars there, but when we went we didn't really help with much. We were in the back trying to help the Spanish ladies put plates together and move stuff around, but we ended up just watching them most of the time. Also they had TVs in the church playing some old Halloween movie, that was weird. Overall it was a weird experience but glad we could help.

On our way to email. Chilly haha!

As for Peggy, we've had a little bit of a rocky week. We had an awesome FHE lesson with her at a member's house on Monday, but then 20 minutes later she called us because apparently the "friend" she was living with was kicking her out. So we spent all night scrambling with our bishop and relief society president to find a place for her to stay. The relief society president offered for her to stay with her a few nights, so the bishop and us went over and picked her up and brought her there. She was a little shaken but still optimistic. She stayed the night there but apparently the next day or so the "friend" asked her to come back. Not sure what the whole deal is there, but Peggy is at least trying to get out of there now. Everything was still good for her to come to church, except that she texted us right before and said that she started work that day so she couldn't come. And just now she said that since she's being trained this week we won't be able to meet this week. Still not sure where she's working, but oh well. So her baptism is going to be pushed back, which isn't a big deal, we just don't want her to get in the habit of always pushing back. So we're still working on her, it'll just take a little more time.

Anyways that's pretty much it, hope that you all have a happy Halloween! It's weird to think that last Halloween was my last day home after the surgery, which means I've been in Florida for a year straight, which means almost 14 months overall. Time is flying, especially when I think that transfers are next Wednesday. It'll be my 10th transfer, that's crazy haha. I don't feel that old! 

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

LEMONADE!

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Group picture with our friend working the counter​

Hello everyone! So this week definitely went by much quicker than last week, and a couple cool things happened that I can talk about.

First off, TRANSFERS are TOMORROW! I will be STAYING in Naples. Elder Steed is going home, but both Elder Dick and Elder Spotts are TRANSFERRING! Meaning I'm the only one staying in the house... Elder Dick is going to the Creole ward in Boynton Beach and Elder Spotts is going DL in Alapatta. Taking their places will be my new companion ELDER BLOOD, as well as Elder Anderson and a new missionary in Naples English. Lots of changes, looks like I'll have to make sure I know everything about everything. I guess I just need to figure out how to mount a gps to a bike haha... 

This week we also had Zone Conference, which was pretty fun. It went pretty long, but we got some good training about following the Spirit in all aspects of the work. I also got to see some of my friends from past areas again which was fun. The biggest news of the conference is that we will now be able to go to the temple 2 TIMES A YEAR! That's in addition to any time we go with our recent converts for baptisms or endowments. Pretty exciting!

I also went on exchanges with the ZLs this week, I went with Elder Webster in their area. It's a Spanish area, so I didn't really talk much the whole day haha. It was fun though and I got a good comp study from Elder Webster about staying positive and keeping the Spirit. A good thought that I liked from that is that we need to be transparent so that the Spirit can shine through us, and I took that to mean being yourself and not trying to make yourself into just a "missionary" if that makes sense.

The last cool thing from this week was that some of the Sisters in our district came up with an idea to set up a free lemonade stand in a park as a finding method. To be honest I was a little skeptical, but we all went and set up this lemonade stand. There were hardly any people at the park, and no one was coming over so we sent teams out to "recruit" people to come to the stand. 

It was nearing the end of the time that we could stay when one of the teams comes back with a Haitian young man! His name is Jovensky, and he was super open to talking with us and coming to church. We set up a time to meet with him and he said he'd come to church too. When we went to his house, his cousin came out and told us that he didn't live there anymore (we thought she was lying, but turns out he gave us the wrong apartment number) so we decided to knock around his building. This was an area that had been knocked a lot, so we never went there the whole transfer. 

As we're knocking doors, we run into the Sa[.....] family, a couple straight out of Haiti that we had met with a couple times but had dropped off the face of the earth because they didn't have a house or a car to get to church to meet. Turns out they're living with some family now in the same complex! It's still a hard situation since they still don't really have transport but at least we know where they live. And after all that, Jovensky actually came to church and loved it! Our return appointment fell through again, but he should be coming to the English class on Wednesday so that'll be good. 

Moral of the story is that I can never make fun of the lemonade stand ever again hahaha. 

That's pretty much it. Today marks 11 MONTHS as a missionary and the start of my 8TH TRANSFER in the field! Time's flying by, this is the transfer where I hit my year mark! [I think he's counting his time after the MTC, because it's already been a year since he became a missionary] I definitely don't feel like I've been out for that long. I'm going to do my best to finish off my first year strong, even if it means lots more biking haha. It's worth it. Love you all! 

Thank you so much for your support! Here's lots of pictures! 

​​​​​​​​​​​

​Elder Spotts stole my camera at Uncle Louie G

​​​​​​​Clearly ice cream makes me happy...​

​​​​​​​​​​​My companion with his dream bike. haha

​Driving across all of Florida to zone conference​

​So I finally got around to using the live composite feature
 on my camera to capture some lightning. Here's the outcome.​

This one was taken over a period of 4 minutes​

​This one was over a period of 7 minutes.
All the light from these pictures come from the lightning, it's about 9:30 at night

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Kind of a Long Week

​Here's a selfie of me soaked through after biking in the rain!

Hello everyone! This week has been pretty average, felt kinda long to be honest. There's not a whole lot of updates, but here are a couple highlights.

The weather has been kinda crazy this week, it's either 90deg or 90deg and raining haha. We've still been doing lots of biking, still averaging about 25 miles a day. It's definitely taking it's toll but I'll get in the groove eventually.

We did our English class again this week, and it took some struggling but we had a couple come! We've been trying to work with them for a while, it's just hard to meet because they don't really have a house and have to walk everywhere. Kinda a weird situation, but they love meeting with us and want to learn English too so that was good. We taught just a basic introduction, kinda in MTC style where we talked in English the whole class. We taught them some phrases like "Hello! It is nice to meet you! What is your name? My name is... How are you? I am fine. Where do you live? I live on..." as well as the alphabet and numbers 1-20. It was a fun class, hopefully we can really get this going.

We've been struggling a lot to get investigators to come to church, this week no one came. We had to drop our only investigator with a baptismal date because she's going back to Haiti. We did find one cool family, Darline and Frank and Lisa, and we knew they couldn't come to church but when we showed up for our appointment yesterday no one was home. Kind of a bummer since we biked an hour to get there, and hopefully we don't completely lose contact because they are very interested.

Another side-fact about Naples: our ward is made up of almost entirely "snowbirds", meaning they stay here during the winter but leave during summer. So this being the off season, we only have like 30 members in our ward. An interesting situation for sure.

That's really all that's going on, we spend most of our days biking and knocking when all our appointments fall through haha. 

Hope all is well with you! Thanks for your support!

​

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Some Scattered Thoughts

We got a 50% off coupon for Marcos Pizza in the mail,
so naturally we each bought ourselves a large pizza hahaha

 Hello everyone! So here's the kinda scattered thoughts on everything that happened this week.

So this week we started up an English class for Haitians at the church, it's a good way to get new people into the church. Unfortunately no one came, but we just need to spread the word more. We have some investigators that should come this week so that should be fun. I'm looking forward to teaching English in creole, it's going to be super fun!

We went on an exchange this week with the English elders, Elder Spotts was with me for the day in our area. It was a lot of fun, he's trying to learn some creole too so that was fun. I also learned that teaching an entire lesson by yourself is much harder than you would think, transitions are tricky because I can't pass it to my companion. It was a pretty choppy lesson but the point was made so that's good.

This week we also did some service at a Habitat for Humanity home store, it was pretty fun. The first time we went we were hanging rugs, and this time we were measuring and rolling up rugs. So now we're the rug team haha.

We also did our hour of family history for the month, that was pretty fun. I could just sit there and do that for hours, there's always more to look for. I did get 2 more names ready for baptism so I feel like it was a successful hour!

Here's an action shot from this morning, playing racquetball at the ZLs complex.
Elder Dick played racquetball in high school so he taught us all how to play,
it's pretty fun.

As far as the missionary work goes, it's still been kinda slow. None of our investigators came to church again this week, and the only person there was a random friend that a member brought. We're going to be meeting with him later this week, so hopefully we can keep in contact so that he doesn't fall off. Sherlie and Iglesia dropped off the face of the earth, and we haven't been able to get in contact with Janette either so we're kinda back at square one. We did, however, find Robert, a cool Haitian papi guy that's the dad of a former investigator. They seem like a cool family, and Robert loves us and is super on board with everything. If only they didn't live an hour and a half away.

Other than that, everything else is pretty much the same. It rains pretty much every day and it's still super hot. Biking is still a thing too, It's exhausting but I think I'm getting more into the swing of it. It's helping keep me in shape too which is good. Next step is to actually work out and watch my diet closer haha. Anyways hope all is well with you guys! Thanks for your thoughts and prayers! 

Keep up the good work!

​
​Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

PS. Thought from an email to Mom:
I just need to allow life to take take me where I need to be and make the best of it. As long as I make choices based on eternal principles it doesn't matter so much what the actual choice is because it will always work itself out in the end.

Holy Biking Batman!

Pic from Elder Webster

Hello everyone! This week has been an exhausting one, that's for sure. Mostly because of all the biking I've been doing. On average we bike around 25 miles per day, but depending where we go it could easily top 30. Naples as a city is already spread out, so you can imagine what it's like trying to get to Haitian spots. Our main spot is about an hour and a half away if we don't stop. If I'm not mistaken it's the largest bike area in the mission. Great for my first time biking in over a year! Needless to say I'm still pretty slow and I've had to dramatically change my lifestyle, but hey if that's what it takes. Hopefully that all doesn't sound complainy hahaha! 

This week we had our first interviews with president Garns. It was mostly just for him to get to know us better. We struck it off pretty well once he found out I'm from Simi. Most of the time was spent talking about the great stake presidents we have. Didn't get to ask any questions really but that's ok, I'll just ask them in my email today.

Our zone also had 4 baptisms this week, and Elder Dick got to interview all of them! One was from our district and the others were for the ZLs, so it was a busy night for him. 

As far as people we're teaching, we're still trying to work with Janette even though she didn't come to church, and she still has some concerns we're working to overcome, so we'll see how that goes. Also just last night we found another person named Iglesia (yes, she is Haitian). She's the sister of another person that Elder Dick found on exchange and taught the restoration to. Apparently she was pretty cool, and her sister is pretty cool too! We're excited to work with them, even though they live in that hour and a half away place haha.

Other than that, not too much else happened. After sacrament yesterday one of the Haitian members came us to us and said "can you teach the class, my dad isn't here." Of course we were like "...Sure!" So Elder Dick and I taught a lesson about Gifts of the Spirit. A lesson that can definitely go awry with Haitians hahaha. It went well though, everyone stayed pretty much on topic which was great. We also had a visitor in the class. We tried to see her yesterday evening but didn't end up having enough time to get there. Bummer.

Oh and I almost forgot, as we were biking home last night Elder Dick got a flat tire just shortly after we started! So we patched it up and the ZLs came and drove us back home. I was very grateful that I got to take the 20 minute drive instead of the hour and a half bike ride late at night. 

Another biking related incident I almost forgot about: The other day we were biking home at night (fortunately we were closer to home) and we went through a golf course to take a short cut. Elder Dick was in front and I was doing my best to keep up (golf courses actually have HILLS, what are those? haha) but somehow I biked past him at the spot where we were supposed to get off. 

I ended up following the trail, hoping that Elder Dick was somewhere ahead. I get to a fork in the path and I look at my GPS (which was pretty useless since golf courses aren't really mapped) and pick a path to go. Shortly thereafter the path stopped. I turned around and went the other way, and got to another fork. I picked a way and the path stopped again. I went the other way and made it out at the top of the course. 

I bike across a parking lot to get to the road, look at my GPS to plan my route home and just as I put it away and am about to start, the ZLs pull up in their mini van and honk and flash their lights at me. Perfect timing. Elder Dick had called President as soon as he knew I was lost, and the ZLs were driving around to find me. So everything worked out, and I made sure Elder Dick didn't beat himself up too bad about it either haha. I believe there are many lessons that can be learned from this story, I'd love to hear of the ones you find! Thank you all for your prayers and support!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Welcome to Naples!

​New house: Elder Spotts, Elder Steed, Elder Dick, Elder Stevenson.

Hello everyone! My first week here in Naples has been an interesting one, that's for sure. I'm officially on the west coast now, about 100 miles away from my last area. It's weird being in a "full creole" area now, meaning we only really teach creole speaking people and all the English people we find we have to refer to other missionaries. One thing I've noticed too is that it's WAY more chill and calm over here, and the average age is WAY higher. Our ward is basically a branch now because all the "snowbirds" left haha.

So transfer day happened, and I got to see a lot of my old companions and missionary friends, several of which were going home. It was a big group of missionaries leaving and probably the first where people I got to know well left. It's weird to see how old I'm getting! 

My new companion is Elder Dick. He's from Tualatin Oregon. He came into the MTC the week before I went home for surgery, and I was his DL there. Now he's my DL for his first transfer as DL. Crazy! The other people in my house are Elder Steed and Elder Spotts. Elder Steed is from Texas and this is his last transfer, Elder Spotts is from New Mexico. It's been pretty fun so far so we'll see how it goes! On the transfer call, the APs informed us that President Garns wanted us to know to expect to stay in our areas longer than we may be used to, whatever that means haha. 

Transfer day was also my first day EVER biking as a missionary! I was hoping I could keep the streak going at least to my year mark but oh well. It's been alright, definitely an adjustment. We've mostly been staying pretty local so far, so it's only been a couple miles a day. However, this area is HUGE. I'll see if I can send a picture of the map or something. We haven't found hardly any Haitians yet, apparently because they mostly live farther south. We'll be heading down there pretty soon though.

Driving into a rainstorm on our way to Naples.​

This week we helped a family move out. It was pretty smooth it just took a long time. He thought it would only take an hour (it never does) and it ended up taking 3 and 1/2 hours. It was fun though, everything was organized and in boxes already so that's good. He was also pitching becoming a Nurse Anesthesiologist pretty hard, it's tempting if it didn't take 9 years of school, but we'll see.

Friday I went on exchange with Elder Long, one of my ZLs. It was fun, even though everything was in Spanish. It's amazing how much Spanish I can actually understand. I can't speak it to save my life but I can follow a conversation pretty well. Maybe it's just because I speak missionary haha.

So far we really only have one solid investigator that they were working with before the transfer. Her name is Janette She's the daughter of one of the members in the ward. She seems pretty solid, she came to church on Sunday even though she was out late and got into a car accident. She has a [baptism] date for the 30th, so hopefully everything keeps working out for that.

Other than that, it's just been knocking and biking all day. Fortunately it hasn't dumped rain while we were biking yet, but it'll come. It rains at some point every day pretty much, which I love because it brings lightning! I don't know if I'll ever get sick of lightning haha. Anyways hope you're doing well and thank you all for your support!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

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

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