Temple and Transfers

Belle Glade couple that were sealed

Hello everyone! Just a couple highlights this week. First off is the transfer news, I will be staying in Hollywood! Elder Hatch will be transferring (for his last transfer)! My new companion will be Elder Celestin! I've heard good things about him so it should be a fun transfer. I'm glad I get to stay in the Hollywood ward, it's honestly one of the best wards in the whole mission, even if I am running out of places to knock haha. This transfer will also be 7 weeks long instead of 6 as it is the transfer the President Richardson goes home! That will be an interesting transition, looking forward to any new changes coming up.

So the main thing that happened this week started Wednesday night. We got a random call from President. We actually missed it because we were on the phone with our bishop so we called him back. He told us that he had a special assignment for us, that he needed us that Saturday to go to the temple and translate a sealing ceremony for a Haitian couple getting sealed! The couple came from Belle Glade, a tiny little farming town in the north of the mission, just south of Lake Okeechobee, and where Elder Hatch was trained! It worked out well because we were planning on going to do baptisms that day with Bertina. We ended up not being able to for other reasons, so we got to go to the temple anyways! That was a really cool blessing, especially being able to go inside! The Haitian couple was very nice, and things went pretty smoothly. It was cool being able to use my language skills for something outside of missionary work, and I definitely got some pics!

The couple after the sealing

Another random miracle was that for the first time, one of the random people that we gave a card to on the street ACTUALLY called us, and we were ACTUALLY able to teach her! She was an older lady that was mostly just curious about the church and wanted to learn more about the Bible, but we were able to teach her about the Restoration and she seemed to understand, so we'll see if she's able to come to church and keep progressing.

Other than that we've been doing more stuff with our less-actives, and were able to get some to church on Sunday! We were able to find a ride for Erika and some of her kids, as well as one of the random people we met while going through the Blackbird came to sacrament! He's an older guy that feels like the church has abandoned him a little bit. He hasn't had a visit from anyone in a while and was happy when we came by. He also says that the 9:00 church is a little too early. We're working with the High Priest's group leader to get him some good home teachers and fellowship so that he can be active again.

Also on Sunday one of the young Haitian members brought her friend! Her name is Laila, and we're going to try to visit her on Wednesday and start teaching her! Member referrals are always the best, so hopefully this will go somewhere too!

That's pretty much it from this week. It's weird that I've been out for over 8 months now, this is my 6th transfer in the field! It's also weird that my birthday is around the corner, I'll be 19 in 2 weeks! (Finally, maybe now everyone will stop being surprised when I tell them I'm 18.) Anyways, thank you all for your support!

​Driving to the temple​

​You can see the temple from the freeway

​Elder Hatch loves having his picture taken...​

​Artsy pic​

Fort Lauderdale Temple

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Day By Day

​Here's a picture of the invitation to today's zone activity.
Picture credits to yours truly.*

Hello everyone! Surprise, I'm emailing early this week! This week was a fun week, I'll try to go day by day.

Monday was Pday, and we pretty much just did the stuff we had to like clean, shop, and email and then napped. It was pretty great actually. We also had our ward's first FHE, which is geared towards getting recent converts, less-actives, and investigators into the church for a little activity and gospel lesson. It was pretty successful, we got all our recent converts from the other week there. We played 2 truths and a lie and then our ward mission leader gave the lesson. Pretty fun, it's only going to be once a month though to start.

Tuesday we didn't do much other than knocking and visiting people in the blackbird. We also had correlation meeting, and a little Book of Mormon class afterwards with some of the ward missionaries and recent converts. That was good, we started reading through the book of Enos and talked about prayer.

Wednesday was pretty much the same thing, but we got to do a little family history! So far I've just been scanning through everything I already have and looking for people ready to do ordinances before I do too much tweaking, but pretty soon I'll start trying to find new people and get rid of duplicates and resolve errors and whatnot. It's hard to do much with only 1 hour a day twice a week, but it's still fun to look at stuff and find work to do.

Thursday we had interviews with President, that was pretty fun. I didn't have any questions for him though so it was super short. He just asked me if I was having fun a bunch of times haha. He also gave some cryptic hints about transfers to the other elders, so I have no idea what to expect. We also went to the Netane's house, one of the counselors in the Bishopric, with Bertina and her family for a pizza night! It was super fun but really hard to get the spiritual thought in haha.

Friday was pretty much the same as Wednesday. We did get in contact with an "eternigator" that we met at the beginning of last transfer and haven't seen since. She's super Mormon, but can't be baptized because she's not married to her boyfriend she's living with. Super lame, but she made us good food so that's good.

Saturday we got to take Bertina out teaching with us! It was super awesome, she's like a naturally good teacher and awesome fellowshipper. She was using like all the missionary teaching skills, it's almost like we didn't have to be there!The investigator kind of dropped off though, which is lame, but it was cool to have Bertina with us!

Sunday was Mother's Day! Yay! I got to facetime my family, which was super fun. It's weird that people still have lives while I'm a missionary haha. Our member also had Star Wars Episode 7 playing in the background, which was pretty distracting even though I've already seen it haha. Elder Hatch hasn't seen it, so it was really distracting for him haha. Other than that refer to the above knocking/blackbird.

That's pretty much it for this week, thank you all for your support!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

*Editor's Notes:

1-The Elders don't know what it is going on with politics. They just hear snippets here and there. We think this is funny even though it could be offensive to several different groups.  ;)

2-Transfers are coming up, so please wait to send any mail until we get his address confirmed next week.

Family History and The Blackbird

Here's a picture of my district for #MuchoMay:
Elder Hansen, Me, Sister Osborne, Sister Sweetnam,
Sister Wertz, Sister Dees, Elder Hatch, Elder Foster​

Hello friends and family! This week was pretty good, seemed to go by pretty fast. Here's a couple things that happened.

First off I was able to do a little family history for like an hour, it was actually pretty fun. I was able to find 3 people on my tree that haven't had any ordinances done for them, and hopefully we can get Bertina to the temple so I can do baptisms for them. Hopefully I'll be able to do more family history work, it's really fun to be able to look at your tree and trim it up a bit. To any reader that has tips and tricks for that it would be appreciated.

​Crazy looking rain clouds part 1​

Another thing we've been working on this week is something we call the 'Blackbird." Basically it's just a map of all the members on record that live in your area. The only thing is that since we don't have iPads, we have to make it by hand. Fortunately the church has a map on lds.org, but it just shows a dot for each household so we had to go through and label them all. We were able to get it all finished and nice, we have 213 households in our half of the ward and about 10% of those are active. So we've been going around to all the less-active names whenever we have time, and we're finding that most of the people don't even live there. One of them had been moved for at least 13 years, and no one knew. That's pretty sad, it seems like a couple years ago missionaries would just baptize a ton of people that almost immediately went less-active and now are missing. Our ward is now working on cleaning up the ward list and really emphasizing Home/Visiting teaching to keep it from getting worse. Hopefully that helps, it's so sad when a recent convert gets no support and goes less active.

​Crazy looking rain clouds part 2

This week we were able to find a pretty good Haitian knocking spot! We have not been able to find Haitians in this area, they're so spread out and even though we cover creole for the whole stake we don't go out that far because of time and miles. But we found a little complex with Haitians in it and have found a couple investigators! They haven't progressed very far yet, but could be promising. It's nice just to be able to teach in creole again, even if it is still a little stressful. I almost had to translate for Sacrament meeting yesterday, which would have been my first time, but the people that usually need translation weren't there. I'm sure I'll have to later on in some other ward, I've just been blessed that both my wards so far have had equipment and members to do the translation.

That reminds me that transfers are coming up on May 24th! There's a good chance that I'll be moving but you never know. Also Mother's Day is this Sunday, I'll be able to Skype my family!

This week we also got a little taste of the "Florida Summer" aka Rain. There was one day where is was pretty clear, and then out of nowhere some crazy looking clouds come and DUMP rain on us. We ran from the house we were at to our car for like 2 seconds and got SOAKED. Then after like 5 minutes the dumping stopped and in 15 minutes it was gone and sunny again. I got some pictures of it though so that's good.

Florida Summer

One last thing that happened this week is that we got a Bible referral for someone named Erika, but it turns out she was already a member. She's less active and just moved down here from Boca Raton, but contacted us so that we could help her get active in the church again! She has older kids that are already baptized and one 8 year old that wants to be baptized too. It's hard for her to get to church since her husband is not a member, but she's super solid and really committed to coming back. One of our members offered to give her a ride and she came to church yesterday! That was a pretty cool miracle.

Other than that everything with Bertina is still going well except that she couldn't come to church because of a family emergency. We're still working on getting the boys the Priesthood so that we can all go to the temple for baptisms, hopefully we can do that before transfers. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers! Keep up the good work!

​Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Wow, That Felt Good!

​Zariah, Bertina, Noah, and Donell​

Hello everybody! So here are the highlights from this week, it's a pretty good one so stay tuned.

So, BERTINA AND HER FAMILY ALL GOT BAPTIZED! That's super amazing, I don't think it's quite set in yet that it actually happened! I'm so glad that I got the privilege to be the ones to find them (knocking!), teach them all the lessons, and see them baptized! It was a super great experience. Knocked on their door April 1st, baptized April 30th! I feel like that if I had to go home tomorrow I would be completely satisfied just because of them. The baptism itself went pretty smoothly, and the ward really took care of pretty much everything which is super nice. It's the first baptism this ward has had in a couple months, and between us and the other Elders we had 5 CONVERT BAPTISMS (Bertina+Donnell+Noah+Zariah+other elders' investigator). I even got to confirm 2 of them, Zariah and Bertina. It was a very spiritual experience being able to feel what the Spirit directed me to say in their blessings, and a very spiritual experience overall.

​A picture of us together with Brother Davis,
the member that baptized them.​

There were even a couple laughs. Donell was being super talkative for some reason, usually he's super reserved. After he came out of the water he went into the room to change and said "WOW, THAT FELT GOOD!" really loud. It was pretty funny. After his confirmation too he went around shaking hands saying "Good job, good job, thank you." It was weirdly out of character for him, but at least it made it memorable. Another funny thing was that the Primary and Relief Society were all prepared with lots of books and things to give out, and then the Young Mens [Leader] guy wasn't there so another man from the Presidency gets up and has no clue what to say. He ended up shaking their hands a bunch and saying how much they'll like the Young Mens [Program]. Sounds like Young Mens I guess.

Another big announcement came this week from our Zone Conference. About a year and a half ago, the General Authorities for our region said that we could no longer go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead because some missionaries in another state had been camping out at the temple all day. President Richardson went to a conference with some of them and told them about the temple program he used to do, and they counciled and decided to reinstate it! Which means that we can go to the temple for baptisms! It used to be that you could only go in on the last day of your mission and if someone you baptized was getting their endowment, but now we can go with them to do baptisms for the dead! The only caveats are that it's only for people you baptized in the ward you're serving in, for their first time only, and a member has to be with you. A really great rule change, because the mission saw a huge drop in retention rates when the missionaries couldn't go with them to the temple. Which also means that we can go with Bertina!!

​Elder Foster gave me a haircut last night.

Nice and short.​

Yet another announcement from Zone Conference is that we can spend up to 2 hours a week working on our personal family history, to find family names we can bring to the temple for baptisms! I'm going to try to utilize this time, so that I can learn how to do family history and have family names to take with me to the temple when I go with my converts.

That's pretty much it for the week. We have a couple people that we've met that might progress, but we've only seen them once so it's not solid yet. I'll let you know if they stay cool. Hopefully we can find more people to teach, because now that Bertina got baptized our teaching pool is pretty much empty. We're still going to meet with them for the "new member lessons", which is just going over the lessons again slowly and in depth, without the time crunch which is nice. But the work moves on, and it's time to find more people to be baptized! I love you all, thank you so much for your support! Keep up the "Good Work"!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

​

Emailed Question From Mom

Topic: Describe in Haitian Creole one (or more) of the weird interactions you've had door knocking. Ready, go.... 

Here's a little story in creole about some knocking experiences:

Ok, gen anpil bagay ki vreman bizare ke nou jwenn lè nou fe pòtapòt, m pa ka jwenn yon sèl! Lòt jou a, nou te frappe sou pòt yon nèg, e nou te mande li "Kijan ou ye jodi a?" e li te di "Pye kraze." Li te komik, li te vreman kalm. M te explike "ministè ki te tonnen mal" deja, sa sete ekspiryans pi komik epi bizare. Map pense de sa, epi poutèt semèn pwochen m ka jwenn plis bagay.

(Ok, there's a lot of things which are really bizarre that we find when we do door to door, I can't find just one! The other day, we knocked on one guy's door, and we asked him "How are you today?" and he said "Broken toe." It was funny, he was very calm. I explained the "minister gone bad" already, this was the most funny and bizarre experience. I'll think about it, and maybe next week I can find more stuff.)

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

​

Well... It Was A Week

​My new planner cover!​

Hey everyone! So, this week was a week. I don't know what else to really say about it haha. All we really did was knock doors all day every day. A couple things of note however:

One day while we were knocking we found Evans! He is a less active member from Haiti that no one knew about. He moved here about a year ago and hadn't been able to find the church! He still remembers a lot from when he was baptized 7 years ago, and the second time we saw him he had a friend there visiting that we taught the Restoration to! He'd met with missionaries in the past in Haiti and has even visited the church before. He leaves in a few days, but hopefully it'll spark something when he's back in Haiti. Evans just started a new job too and works Sundays, so we'll just drop by once a week until he can get Sundays off and come to church.

A day in the life

Bertina is still doing awesome! All 3 of her kids are set to be baptized with her too. Her date is for the 29th, and we still have a lot to teach her because she has so many questions. But that's a problem we want to have! She loves the church and her kids are already making friends too. One of them even asked if we could move the baptism up a week so he could go on a temple trip with the youth! We're going to be doing our best to see them every day so they can be ready for baptism. Probably the coolest family I've ever met, hopefully things keep up!

Yesterday was Easter, and I'm going to take the opportunity to share my testimony. I know that God and Jesus Christ live. I know that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and the Savior of the world. I know that His church was restored in our days through the prophet Joseph Smith. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and contains the fullness of the Everlasting gospel. I know that we are led by living prophets and apostles today as in days of old. I know that through faith in Christ, repentance, baptism and other covenants, and continuing to the end of my life that I will return to live with God one day. I am grateful for my friends and family who support me and for this opportunity to preach this gospel to the world.

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Questions From Mom 2

As a way to get a little more information about things he may not think to include in letters, I have started sending Elder Stevenson a page of questions along with a stamped addressed envelope. All he has to do is fill in the answers and drop it in the mail box. It's fun to get some hand written messages and I save them in a missionary binder I keep at home. 

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

Herding Cats

​Us playing pool at our apartment's lounge last Pday. 

Hey everyone! So this week has been kinda slow to be honest. We do all we can, and still can't find people to teach. (And it seems like anyone cool we do find is either leaving the country or we have to pass over to the ZLs). A little frustrating, but oh well. 

We were able to get someone to church though! Yay! Elder Hatch describes it perfectly when he says "I feel like I've been herding cats for the past year and a half." For some reason it's super difficult to get people to come to church, no matter how receptive they are while we teach them. Literally everyone works on Sundays, and no one wants to commit to anything. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard "I don't want to promise you anything, because if I don't come then I'm a liar! But one of these Sundays you'll see me." I think I could pay for my mission. 

We are obviously very serious pool players.

But it's all good, because Nadege came on Sunday! Even though we've only taught her once she still came, which is a very good sign. She's a Haitian lady that was a former investigator and is really receptive to everything so far. She could only stay for the first 2 hours, but it seems like she had a good experience. (Our ward has a creole Gospel Principles class, and it's hard to describe without just experiencing it. It's always an adventure. Anyone that knows Haitian culture will know what I mean, you just never know what's going to happen.) Anyways, they ended up talking about the 12 tribes of Isreal, each of their missions, the sticks of Judah and Joseph, Joseph's prophecies, patriarchal blessings, and baptisms for the dead. Deep stuff for our investigator who doesn't even know about the Book of Mormon yet, but she seemed to enjoy it nonetheless. We'll follow up with her about it later, again she's busy with work which makes it hard to meet, but we'll find a way.

 There's also a bowling alley that we got to use, it's pretty cool but super loud.
Photo from Elder Alexis

That's pretty much it for this week, just doing a lot of knocking and visiting all the part member families on our list. Hopefully more comes up, I guess it just shows that no matter what we do it's really the Spirit that prepares people to receive the gospel. April should be a month of miracles though, so I'm not too worried about that. Hope all is well for you guys, keep me posted!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

From Mafia to... Mormon?!

House pic! Elder Alexis, Elder Foster, Elder Hatch, me.​

Hello everyone!  So this week has been a tough week for everyone for some reason, the people that we find just aren't sticking. Lots of knocking with no solid new investigators. It's disappointing, but I'm sure it'll pick up. We're really pushing hard this month to hit our goal of 100 baptisms as a mission in April, so I'm sure God will provide miracles for us.

Speaking of miracles... we've had some crazy ones this week. Their names are Paul and Laila. Their full stories can be found in the voice recordings below, but here's a little summary:

Elder Hatch and I talked to Paul while walking down the street. He's really jacked and inked up. He comes up to us and says "I've been looking for you." We talk to him and turns out he just got out of jail after 14 years for being in the New York Mafia, and met a Mormon guy there named Ammon that introduced the church to him. He's read all of Gospel Principles and half the Book of Mormon. Wants to be baptized, but is on probation for the next 4 years which makes things difficult. Also he lives in the other Elders' area (bummer)... I've decided that if he gets baptized there needs to be a movie like the Saratov Approach made about him.

​The ganster life is getting to us.​

Laila was a media referral that we finally got in contact with. She's super cool, has a Mormon friend that's been talking to her and she's really interested in the church. She felt the Spirit super strong right when we first started talking with her. She's going on a trip for 4 weeks though and also lives in the other Elders' area (double bummer).

We did get a less active member to come to church though! His name is George and he's super solid now. He's committed to coming to church every week with his daughters now. His wife is a member too but she works Sundays, but she's working hard to get her boss to give her the day off sometimes. Really cool Haitian family, glad they're back.

We had to drop the J... L... family because they didn't come to church, which was super sad. Turns out the dad is super against the church and won't let them come. The older daughter reads in the Book of Mormon every day, and they all want to come to church but the dad won't let them. The little daughter even said "we could just try to sneak out while he's sleeping!" It was really sad, I almost cried for them on the car ride home. There's nothing we can do though, if the dad won't even let them come to church there's no way he'd give permission for them to be baptized. Bummer.

Gilbert might still be solid, but he couldn't come to church because his mom died the night before. He needs a little space for now, but we'll still work with him and see how it goes. Bummer.

​Pic I took outside the church cuz I was bored.

We do have a really solid "Haitian Mamie" that we're working with though, her name's Elvire and seems super interested in the church. We found her from just knocking, something that doesn't see a lot of success in this area (especially for finding Haitians). She understands the Restoration on a really deep level, and as we read in 3 Nephi 11 with her for the first time she would even explain what she was reading as she read it. Super cool, hopefully she stays that way.

Other than that, last night we had dinner with a couple in the ward that lived in Simi Valley! Their name is the Hunsakers. They're an older couple that lived there years ago, but they still knew where everything was and all the wards and church buildings so that was pretty cool. If any of you know them, send a note or something haha (I think they know the Moberlys, but so does every Mormon in Simi haha).

Hope all is well with you, keep me updated on everything you're doing!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

March Conferences - South Zones Pic

Parents of missionaries in the Florida Ft. Lauderdale Mission,

This week has been a spiritual feast for the missionaries in southern Florida. We met together on Tuesday and Wednesday in Zone Conferences which inspired us to move forward with commitment and faith.

Have a wonderful day,

Sister Burdick

Referral Secretary

Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission

Holly-Weird?

Hello everyone!

Zone photo from Elder Ririe

This week has been good, getting a hold of the new area. I was able to meet the new ward on Sunday, and it seems really good. Very focused on missionary work, but there are definitely some characters. Such a wide spread of personalities, but somehow it just works. There's a good amount of Haitian members too which is awesome. Still haven't been able to find where most of the Haitians live though, usually they have their little neighborhoods but here it's very scattered.

So a little update on the lady we found that speaks Urdu. So we were doing our report at our weekly correlation meeting, and one of the ward missionaries perks up all of a sudden and says "My daughter learned some Urdu years ago because she was dating a Pakistani!" That was crazy. (Turns out she doesn't really know much more than Hi, how are you? so that was kinda disappointing, but still crazy nonetheless.) We ended up having to drop her because she didn't seem to understand what we were teaching her. Oh well, still cool.

We do have a very solid Haitian family we're teaching though. Like super solid. It's the J...-L... family, they were former investigators and we stopped by and now they're super ready for baptism. There are like 8 kids ranging in age from 19 to 1. The main ones that are interested though are the mom Silvani and the daughters Ivena and Matilda, ages 19 and 9. They read in the Book of Mormon, pray, and ask really good questions. We took them on a tour of the church and everything last week, but right at the last minute they couldn't come to church [on Sunday] because Ivena had to finish a project for school. Disappointing, but we'll definitely keep working with them!

Also we have another guy we're working with named Gilbert that's pretty cool. He's an old Haitian guy that looks like he could be white. At least Latino or something, he's pretty light. He keeps all our commitments and everything, so hopefully he stays cool and gets baptized! 

So this week marks 6 MONTHS as a missionary!! Woah! Time moves so fast! I'm 1/4th of the way done, that's super crazy. I still feel like a greenie haha.

That's pretty much it for this week, things are going well. Keep me updated on how everything is going, I love you all!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Questions From Mom 1

As a way to get a little more information about things he may not think to include in letters, I have started sending Elder Stevenson a page of questions along with a stamped addressed envelope. All he has to do is fill in the answers and drop it in the mail box. It's fun to get some hand written messages and I save them in a missionary binder I keep at home. 

I'm in Hollywood, 2000 miles away from Hollywood

​Me and Elder Hatch, right now.
 (Dang, camera really does add 10 pounds haha)​

Hello everyone! So this week has been a busy one, still trying to figure out the area after whitewashing [see mission lingo on side bar]. The last Elders left us with basically nothing, so we're starting from scratch. It's going good though. Elder Hatch works really hard, which is good. He's also the District Leader, or should I say Sister-ict Leader, because the other 2 companionships in our district are both sisters. Definitely a change from my last district, should be fun though. There's Sister Murdock, Sister Brown, Sister Stokes, and Sister Osburne (no pictures yet, sorry!)

So the other day we knocked into a lady from Pakistan named Faiza. She speaks Urdu and very little English. We talked to her through her 10 year old son, and she accepted a prayer from us. She even invited us back to learn more about Jesus Christ! We went back and printed off the Plan of Salvation pamphlet in Urdu from lds.org and taught them, again through her 10 year old son. We explained about Christ and even though she said she is Muslim she committed to coming to church on Sunday. (She didn't come though, she had guests coming over at the last minute apparently. Plus it was Stake Conference [when all of the Congregations/Wards in an area come together for one big church meeting] so that makes everything harder.) To the best of our knowledge she is accepting everything. That'd be super cool if she got baptized! We just really need to find a member that speaks Urdu.

Stake Conference was good though, we had a member of the Seventy come speak, Elder Alba. He gave a good talk about the difference between balance and harmony. He had the organist play the melody of How Firm a Foundation, then she added in notes in other keys, still playing the same tune but it didn't sound like anything at all. Then she played the melody again and added in notes that harmonized, and it sounded awesome. The moral of the story was that there's a difference between simply having our lives in balance and having them in harmony. Cool stuff.

Our ward seems like it's very good with lots of strong members, even Haitian members. That also means I'm probably going to get fat, haha. Definitely functions better than my last one. We even have ward missionaries! We're still working on meeting everyone, whitewashing is a hassle sometimes. Most times.

That's pretty much it for this week, doing lots of finding and trying to find where all the Haitians live. So far so good! Hope all is going well for all of you too!

We live next to a golf course.​

​Like right next to it. Fancy.
Also apparently our complex has it's own bowling alley? Will let you know how that goes.

​

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

P.S. Email my mom if you want my new address.