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

​

Another Week

​Here's the river that formed behind our house.

Hello friends and family! This week was, astonishingly, another week. Not too much has been going on recently, which is all right except that it makes writing my letter super hard haha. 

Of course Bertina and kids are all doing super well, and we're getting everything set for their baptisms on the 30th. We taught them about the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity, and it was like water off a duck's back. Bertina said she stopped drinking coffee 2 years ago and committed herself to throw out her tea. Nice! We also gave them one of the children's Book of Mormon story books, so that should be good to. We still have a couple things to go over before the baptism, but she lets us come by pretty much every day so it shouldn't be a problem. I'm super grateful for the privilege to have found them, taught them, and soon see them baptized. It's so satisfying, it's literally the ideal, a family! There will even be 2 priesthood holders that might even go on missions themselves! I feel like once they get baptized I could end my mission totally satisfied. I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch, but either way I'll definitely stay in contact with them because they're just that cool.

Another thing we focused on this week was visiting some recent converts and checking in to see if they have home teachers, visiting teachers, callings, and have been to the temple and all that. The bishop is super on top of things, so he's working really hard to make sure everyone has those things. He's very missionary minded, which is super awesome. He even will make time to come out teaching with us! He's really young too, like 28, and has an 18 month old. I admire him a lot for all he does even though he might be able to make excuses. Sometimes I feel like he's going to burn out at some point, but as long as he's going I'll take it!

​When the Polynesian guys in your ward buy each of you
a large pizza with toppings, a 2 liter of soda, breadsticks, and brownies,
and then when you see them at church and tell them that it was a lot of food
 they say "Yeah, I guess there's usually leftovers."​

Other than that, we just spend our time knocking in Dania Beach (aka The Skrait-Up Hood). It's like the only place people will really talk to us, the rest of Hollywood is pretty much just upper to middle class white people, so we're just making our way through it all. You never know what to expect, I thought about making a series of all the weird people we find, but there's just too many. Keeps the day kinda interesting at least.

We also randomly got a lot of rain yesterday, fortunately we didn't have to knock in too much of it. It did form a river behind our apartments though, so that's kinda fun.

That's pretty much everything, all we really do for the time being is knock doors, try to find some of the 700 less actives on the ward list, teach Bertina, and talk to everyone we see and hope something sticks. It's not as bad as it sounds, something must be working because we are still happy and see random little miracles every day. Let me know what cool stuff you guys are doing, and keep up the good work!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

​

The Minister Gone Bad

Half of the Zone. Photo by Elder Alexis

Hey everybody! This week was an interesting week, especially with Conference! I'll share some of the quotes and insights that I liked down below for easy reference.

So we're working with a couple interesting people now. First we had Stanley. He's the nonmember husband of one of our Haitian members. He still lives in Haiti but came up to visit for 10 days, and wanted to start taking the discussions. Elder Hatch and I were able to teach him about the Restoration and The Book of Mormon before he went back to Haiti. He's super solid and accepts everything, pretty much a free baptism for the Haiti mission. We gave his information to the mission office and they passed it over. Cool!

We also have the two B... kids, Sara and Denard, who were baptized a couple years ago but have been inactive. We randomly stopped by to visit one day a few weeks ago, and Sara said "because you stopped by I'll go to church again this week." She came by herself last Sunday and again with her brother to conference yesterday, is reading in The Book of Mormon, and seems committed to coming back to church. Once we can get them to meet with the bishop they'll be rescued!

Finally we have the N...-O... family. They're a less active family that the bishop is working to get back to church. The mom grew up in D.C. and her best friend was Mormon, and they even went to BYU together. She was going to get baptized there but her friend started to rebel against the church, and she didn't want to stay in school anyways so she moved out here (I think there's more to the story but I forgot it.) She didn't see missionaries again for years until some knocked on her door a few years ago. She had a girl in foster care that wanted to be baptized, so she and her family decided to be baptized with her. After that though the girl had to leave because of legal complications and it broke the mom's heart, so she suffered from depression and anxiety for a while and is just now getting out of it and wanting to get back into church. Very interesting story, and it seems like the whole family is ready to come back too (the dad and oldest son came with the bishop to priesthood session.) Nice!

But the highlight of the week was definitely General Conference. We were even able to get investigators to come! Yay! Between the two sessions on Saturday we went out knocking, and we met Bertina and her 2 kids. We shared a prayer and a little bit about the restoration (as usual), and she said she'd come to church (as usual). Except this time she actually came! She watched the Sunday morning session and seemed to really love it. We told her about how church usually is, and we're seeing her tonight to start teaching them. Very promising! 

Now for a couple funny things. We talked to this one random old black guy in his front yard a couple days ago, and everything was pretty normal until he randomly stops and dramatically says:

"Lemee tell you a secret. I'm a minister.......gone bad."

It was super funny. It was literally like a movie. He even like looked away and walked a couple steps while he was talking, and then turned to look at us for the punch line. Probably one of the funniest things I've come across. Our whole house quotes it at least twice a day, and it's earned a spot on our quote board.

Another funny thing was that yesterday between sessions of conference we randomly had a TON of member food. A family fed us lasagna and salad and breadsticks at the church right after, and then we left to go to our actual meal appointment with a younger couple in the ward. (They had Disney music playing on Pandora for us, and I was in heaven. Definitely sang under my breath every song that came on. It was awesome, I decided that I'm gonna be the super chill member that feeds the missionaries when I get home haha.) We had sausage and pasta and mashed potatoes, and cookies. And then we went back to church for the next session and someone had ice cream sandwiches for us. We were all pretty full.

So as promised, here's some of my notes from Conference. There's lots more, but here's some of the first:

The use of the marvelous technologies that will come will require the Spirit of the Lord within us.

-President Eyring

(Prophesy???)

The phrase "The Atonement" is doctrinally incomplete. The Atonement is non an amorphous entity that we can call on for help. We must connect it to the life and mission of Jesus Christ.

-Russell M Nelson

(Haha this funny, something I've thought about before.)  

Stand close to the Savior as you would stand next to someone with more perfect pitch

-Jeffery R Holland

(I loved his talk for all the singing analogies.)

When we are not all in or only partially in, there is a disturbance in the force.

-Gary B Sabin

(His talk was good too because of all the pop culture references.)

I'm so grateful for living prophets and for general conference, it was such a spiritually uplifting experience and very different as a missionary. Sorry for the long email, but there was lot's I wanted to talk about, so I did haha. Hope you're all doing great! Keep up the good work!

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

Thanksgiving on the Mission

​Bought myself fruit like a responsible adult haha.

Hey everyone! This week has been kinda slow too. There were a few exciting things though that I'll talk about. 

Elder Lund and I went to the first practice of the Haitian choir and boy was that interesting. I could hardly understand what everyone was saying. I was just like "I'm just gonna play the piano" haha. They threw Elder Lund under the bus a bit though. He practiced one of the songs so much and then at practice they were like "We sang that one last year, play this other one" and he was just like "uhhhhhhh I've never seen this song before and haven't played in 10 years" so we'll see how this works out, it'll be very interesting to say the least. Also Haitian parents are intense. One of the dads there started yelling at his kids because they didn't want to sing in the choir, then he started yelling at someone else's kids for not wanting to sing in the choir. Then he just turns to the rest of us and is like "If you don't do that they'll just do whatever they want." 

​Pretty sunset sky.

Let's see... our car was rear ended twice this week. Both times while we were just stopped at a red light. The first time it was just some kids that gave our car a little tap, but the second time it was some lady in a Dodge Caravan and it was a pretty substantial hit. No airbags or anything like that, and we have a bike rack on the back of our car (chevy cruise) that absorbed the hit anyways so no damage done. She just sped away though and we were like "what the heck?" Elder Lund was driving so I snatched the license plate number. Crazy stuff.

So Thanksgiving on the Mission. We had our Thanksgiving with the Johnsons from the ward, a nice young couple with cute little kids. There's a lot of students in my ward. There's a nice pediatric school nearby so most people are studying to be nurses or something. The ward is pretty good about feeding us too, we usually only have about 2 days a week with nothing planned. Anyways we had a pretty traditional thanksgiving with them and were all really full and it was great. But then... we get a phone call from another lady in the ward like "You guys are coming over tonight, right?" And we couldn't say no, so we were all really scared that we weren't going to be able to eat any more food. We go over and it's like 2 hours until the food is ready. So we're just hanging out, playing with their kids for a longgg time. Then we eat and there wasn't as much food as we thought so we were fine. Both families gave us leftovers to take home so that's nice.

Haitian food. Don't know what it's called,
but you basically just scoop it onto a bed of rice.

One of the solid Haitian families in the ward, the Victors, sent their daughter Kamela on a mission this week. She's going to the Mexico MTC (Missionary Training Center) and is speaking Spanish somewhere, which is crazy cuz she's Haitian. It was a weird thought that she left on her mission while I was on my mission, and that when she gets back I"ll still be on my mission, like with 6 months left. Super weird,

Yesterday we found a cool potential Haitian family while knocking, which is our first solid potential in a while. The mom knows a lot about the church already since she went every week for 6 months in the Dominican Republic with a Haitian friend. She said she met with missionaries but was never baptized. Hopefully we can get them going. We also found a cool less active to work with, he's 33 and went on a mission in Madrid Spain but hasn't been to church in a while. He has little kids that are fun, hopefully we can help resolve some concerns there.

I think I'm going to discontinue the song lyrics, it was fun but takes too much time to try to think of something. Sorry, I'm just too popular, have so many emails to write! :P

 It's got veggies and beans and meat, plus some crabs, just for fun.
Also the bones of the meat are in there too, avoid those.

​Elder Lund made this light fixture out of a bowl, parachord and some hangers. Why didn't I think of that?

​Our getto Christmas tree. A member who was going out of town gave us some Christmas lights to borrow,
 so Elder Lund made this. He goes hard, man.

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Thanksgiving is a Holiday

Bonjou Fanmi ak Zanmi mwen yo! Kijan semen ou pase? Tout bagay enfòm, wi. (Have fun with that Google Translate. If there's one thing about Creole that I've learned it's that spelling literally has no meaning, as long as it makes the right sound it's all good.)

Google Translate: Hello Family and Friends my! How you spend weeks? Everything informal, yes.

Mom translation of translation: Hello my family and friends! How was your week? Everything cool, right?

​Me in my Pday tie.​

This past week was a little slow, not gonna lie. We don't have anyone we're teaching right now, all the cool referrals we had were dropped because we couldn't contact them anymore. So now we're doing lots of knocking. We found a big apartment complex where like literally everyone is Haitian. I've been practicing some Creole door approaches, which is good. 

I feel like my language skills are slowly improving in general, both English and Creole. It's hard to talk to strangers about the gospel in general, and to not sound boring and lame (a particular struggle for me :) ). Another thing I've learned too is that the Gift of Tongues is not only for learning a new language, but also being able to communicate in your native language. I had one experience where we were teaching a lesson to Nasya, a young single mother (our only lesson with her), and she was asking us why the Bible was harsh and condemning sometimes. If God loves us shouldn’t the Bible give me peace? And without thinking really I told her "The Bible is harsh sometimes because God loves us, it's like as if he's our own father and we're a little kid running around about to touch a hot stove and he says DON'T TOUCH THAT! He's not mad at us, but it's because he loves us so much and knows that what we're doing will hurt us." That seemed like exactly what she needed to hear, and the Spirit was there.

Last Sunday Frè Tony (an active Haitian member of the ward) recruited Elder Lund (and therefore me as well) to help him play the piano for a little Haitian Christmas choir, even though he hasn't played in literally 10 years! Frè Tony didn't care though, he was just like "But you played 10 years ago, so you'll do it?" Haha. What's probably gonna end up happening is Elder Lund and I will each learn to play one of the songs on the piano. That'll be interesting. We haven't had a practice yet but we spent a chunk of last Pday practicing the songs at the church, and will probably do more after we email today.

So apparently Walmart doesn't believe in Thanksgiving or something? Walmart here is like the main thing- tons of people all day long and practically its own police force. They've had Christmas decorations up for the past few weeks now. No mention given of Thanksgiving or anything. They even have a big sign that says "34 days till Christmas!" But I guess it's all good because I bought myself Egg Nog today. That's some good stuff man.

Yesterday the other Elders had a baptism! Stephora is a girl they've been working with for a while, she's cousins with an active Haitian family in the ward and wanted to get baptized. There was a bit of a struggle with Frè Chauvet, who was performing the baptism, forgetting the words to the prayer and just making up his own words. Elder Child had to stop him a few times and restart. He was going off about it later at home, "He made up his own words!!" So that was kinda funny. I stood in the confirming circle and gave the closing prayer, so that was fun. Afterwards there was a big linger longer with awesome turkey and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie for the whole ward, and they gave us containers to bring some of it home with us. That's gonna be great. I want to lose weight though, so if anyone knows of some good low carb-low sugar-low fat-low calorie-cheap-easy to make meals that'd be great. Also send me song titles, it's so hard to think of normal songs these days. I might end up stopping the song translations. But until then...

Here's some lyrics for ya:

"M ap chante nan lapli, jus chante nan lapli!"

​

The other Elders' phone broke, so we invented the "GettoPhone."
We rubber banded a Bluetooth speaker to notify of calls and a portable headphone jack speaker to hear the other person talking.
It was super funny, that's Elder Child modeling it off.​

The mission got a prototype of the iPhone 8! We, however, have the GettoPhone.

Some random crazy looking birds I saw while cleaning the car.

​

​

 

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Week 3? Already?

Alo fanmi ak zanmi! Mwen kontan ke mwen ka ekri nou jòdi a. MTC a ki pral byen. Mwen renmen Levanjil a JeziKri. Di mwen tout bagay w ap fè. Si ou gen kèk kesyon pou m, mwen pral eseye reponn byento. Mande mwen tout bagay, konsènan levanjil a oswa konsènan lavi mwen. Mwen manke tout moun, mwen pral wè ou pita!

Translation: Hello family and friends! I am happy that I can write you today. MTC is going well. I love the gospel of Jesus Christ. Tell me everything you're doing. If you have questions for me, I will try to answer soon. Ask me everything about the gospel or about my life. I miss everyone, I'll see you later!

Hey all! It's already week 3 at the MTC! Time is flying by it seems, the days are long and the weeks are short. I'm already almost halfway done in the MTC.

This past week has honestly been pretty uneventful. Sunday I watched “17 Miracles”, that's such a good movie. We've been teaching fake investigators with our teachers. This week we started teaching Ivan (Brother Augustin). On our first visit we knock on his door and he barely opens it and peeks his head out and is like, "What do you want?" It was funny, but we were not prepared for that. We go into the room and barely can say anything except questions like "Kijan ou ye?”(How are you), “Èske ou gen yon fanmi?” (Do you have a family), “Kisa ou fè pou travay?” (What do you do for work) and Ivan is all like, "You come into my house to ask questions?" and kicks us out. He did that for all the groups, and none of us were expecting that. It's funny now, but we were all like "Is this how it's actually gonna be?" Turns out it was mostly our teacher messing with us, Ivan has been very receptive since then. I'm sure that'll happen at some point though.

No apostle for Tuesday devotional this week. Rumor had it that Elder Holland was coming because he was in town for Education Week, but instead it was Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson, Young Women's General President. Her talk was really good, took good notes. She's on the missionary board or whatever they call it, so it was all pretty relevant. I can't remember what she talked about now, but she showed the video of Hugh B Brown's currant bush. I love that story.

Food here is good, it's pretty much cafeteria food. I like the chicken cordon bleu we sometimes have, it's not as good as the ones from home though. None of it really is, of course. I've been doing the weight machines every day still, some days more than others. Last I checked I had gained about 2.5 pounds (all muscle weight, of course ;) ) and I haven't been drinking chocolate milk as much as you might think. I think the real reason we get fat in the MTC is not because we're eating unhealthy food (which is debatable) but because we get 3 full meals a day. I'm surprised I haven't gained more weight to be honest.

That's pretty much it. Tell me all about what's going on in the world right now (heard we're absolutely dominating the Olympics, no shocker there *cough* Michael Phelps *cough*). Tell me about school and what not. Mr. R sent me a nice email saying he ran into you guys at Mod Pizza (I'm gonna miss Mod Pizza.)

Here's my spiritual thought for this week, figured I should start doing that:

"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a seed there a long time ago."

One of the Elders in my district told about a friend who went to the same mission as his dad, and in his farewell he said, "My dad planted a seed, and I'm going to check on the tree." I think that's really powerful and inspiring.

Love,

Elder Stevenson