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

​

Opposition In All Things

Hello everyone! A couple interesting things happened this week, and they involve a wallet, two bros named Rob and Rod, and the number 428. 

So here's the wallet story. Yesterday we were out and about looking for a member on our "Blackbird" when we spotted a wallet on the ground with sundry cards and identification information held within. We found that the owner lived in the complex we were in, so we tried knocking on the door but no one was home. We decided we'd come back and try later, and if he wasn't home we'd return it to the police station the next day. We went back in a couple hours, and he was home! His name is Bruce, he's a younger guy and was very thankful to have his wallet. The first thing he said after we gave it to him was "can I have one of your pamphlets?" We were like "Sure! Let us take a few minutes to explain it to you first." We taught him the Restoration, he accepted baptism, and we set him with a date for the 15th right on the spot! Pretty nifty how God directs us to find the elect!

Speaking of elect-ness, we met some very un-elect people too. They are Rob and Rod, two buddies from high school living together. We knocked into them late one night, and they let us into their home and bombarded us with questions about ourselves between expletives and alcoholic drinks. Neither of them are religious, and were amazed by all the things we had to do as Mormon missionaries. They were mostly harmless and just curious and accepted a Restoration pamphlet and Book of Mormon. We came back the next night and they had spent the whole day looking up what we "believed" online and fired more questions at us, a little more hostile this time. We would answer their questions and concerns to the best of our ability, but they would just move on to the next topic. We decided to go over one more time, and this time we were with our member brother Pablo. This time it was all a big show, Rob had a list of all the Anti he had found and paced the floor firing round after round at us, and no answer would suffice. He even went so far to say that he had prayed about the Book of Mormon and God had given him a vision of a black "X". He was trying to be so deceptive and showy. Meanwhile Rod was outside on the porch doing drugs and drinking with his friends. 

What amazed me the most was how closely this all matched to the story of Korihor in the Book of Mormon. In that story, Korihor preaches against Christ and refuses to accept an answer until he is shown a sign. After 3 attempts to get him to understand and repent, he was struck dumb. I wish this guy could've been struck dumb haha but that wasn't the plan. Needless to say we're not going back there again.

As for 428, that's the number of new investigators we got as a mission this week, surpassing our goal of 400 to send President Richardson out with a bang!

Speaking of, President Garns is now officially in charge! We haven't met him yet. We're going to this Thursday as he makes his tour. As predicted, no sweeping changes yet haha. Everything's exactly the same, we still listen to Motab only and we still don't have iPads (or even personal smartphones as some missions are testing out.) Maybe something interesting will change in a couple months, but for now it's smooth sailing.

Other than that, Happy 4th! I bet people wonder what missionaries do for the 4th so I will tell you:

-exactly the same stuff.

-EXCEPT everyone MUST be home at 7:00pm

So yeah pretty boring. Cynthia, the ZLs' recent convert will be feeding us though so that should be fun. Plus it's a rare opportunity to just chill at home for a couple hours, that's pretty exciting! It'll be fun, I'll try to take pics. I bought an apple cobbler for us to eat tomorrow too so that's good haha!

That's pretty much it! Hope all is well with you! Thank you all for your support!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Not Too Much To Talk About

Hello everybody! So, this week was pretty standard missionary work wise. We found some cool people but they all dropped off by the end of the week. All I need to do is look under the face of the earth and they'll all get baptized! A couple random things that happened this week:

We had zone conference! Our last with President Richardson! President Garns comes in this Saturday. The APs said that there have been missionaries slacking on the rules because they think that President Garns is going to come in and make sweeping changes, especially with the only-Motab [Mormon Tabernacle Choir music] rule. They said that rule in particular has been in the mission for 9 years and President told us that when they set apart a new mission president they tell them to not change anything for several months. So the transition should be pretty smooth at least on our end of things. Still exciting though! President Garns will do a tour of the mission as one of the first things he does so it'll be interesting to meet him.

We also went to the North Zone Conference instead of the South conference like we normally do. Our zone is like right on the dividing line so President switched us up. That means I got to see some of my previous companions, including Elder Lund! I got to see him give his "dying" testimony, meaning that since he goes home at the end of this transfer he gives a short testimony at the conference. It was pretty funny, he got the biggest laugh out of all of them. He said " I'll always be a missionary, except I'll be undercover since there's no more name badge and dress code. They won't see me coming until it's too late!" Haha, it's crazy that he's going home. Elder Alexis was also there and is also going home. It was a really fun time talking to them again.  

This week we also did a zone-wide exchange. The ZLs switched up all the missionaries in the zone for a day, and I went to the YSA [Young Single Adult] area. Definitely a different experience. We ate lunch at the food court in the mall, went OYMing on a college campus, and taught some investigators that are my same age. I felt the closest to a normal teenager since I've been out haha. The YSA area is also huge. They cover 2 stakes. We spent most of the day way up in Tamarac.

[Added from another email to me: So family search did a thing where they give you profiles about early church missionaries in your line, pretty neat! Here's the link https://familysearch.org/missionary?ancestor_pid_1=KWZQ-R4V&et_cid=52545303&et_rid=1496767150&linkid=CTA&cid=em-mc-6331 Turns out I have several ancestors that served out here in the "southern states" mission, including John Carter, the one I took to trek with me! Also the 2 hours a week for family history are gone, it's now 1 hour a month! Bummer, but we're called to save the living not the dead and now that we have a handle on how to do it we can teach our investigators and others.]

That's pretty much it for the week. We're keeping the finding work up as usual. Our teaching pool basically resets every week with how fast people drop off but it's all good. Bertina and fam wasn't at church this week either. We need to see what's up. She got a new job which is good/bad. It's better pay but weird hours that make it hard for us to get in contact. Hopefully all is well. I'm not too worried about her though. She has one of the strongest testimonies I've ever seen. Even still, the first year is a critical time so we're gonna stay on it! Anyways, hope all is well with you! Thanks for your support!

 

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Christmas in June

Hello Everyone! This week was pretty good, seems like it went by pretty fast. Not a whole lot has changed, but here's an update on a couple things.

The rain has subsided to pretty much normal summer levels, i.e. some scattered rain throughout the day with some thunderstorms that pass through. There was a day this week though where a big thunderstorm passed through in the morning and filled up the moat behind our house again just as it was getting dried up. Oh well, there was some pretty awesome lightning so it was worth it. I even got a recording of the loudest thunderclap ever! Lightning struck pretty close to our house, it was cool! Lightning is my favorite, we never got it back home.

This week we've been working with Darline, a friend of one of our Haitian recent converts! We taught her the first lesson, but since then have kinda lost contact and she didn't come to church either. Hopefully we can get back in contact.

Other than that, it's pretty much been just going out and knocking doors. It's been good though, Elder Celestin made a competition for our district where we earn points for certain things throughout the day, and the area with the most points this week gets to blast the ZLs in the face with a coke/mentos explosion, or the ZLs blast the last place area if they win. Yesterday we all went super hard, we even did a fire exchange [not sure what this means?] while knocking to double our points. It worked really well. We each were able to find and teach some new investigators! Sister Sweetnam and Sister Osbourn won though, because they went out last night to Walmart and talked to everyone in the parking lot. They even got the cops called on them. Cheaters.

Other than that, there was one day this week where Elder Celestin got super sick out of nowhere in the afternoon, so we went back home around 6:00. He's feeling better now though so it's all good.

 

So, you'll notice some pictures of a Christmas tree, allow me to explain. One of the members in our ward bought us Christmas trees because he found them for super cheap online, because who buys Christmas trees in June? Anyways the next morning while the ZLs were off doing something, we set it up in their room blocking the bathroom right before we left. They got us back later by putting it in our shower, and after that we put it back away. Fun stuff.

That's pretty much it for this past week! This week we'll be having our last zone conference with President Richardson, that'll be interesting. We'll see how much will change from now on, if anything. My guess is that the new mission president will come in and things will be the same for a while until he settles in. Should be good! Thanks for all your support!

It's Raining Crabs and Frogs

Hey everyone! This week was interesting, it rained A TON. It rained pretty much all week straight, which is very unusual for Florida. As a result, a ton of crazy critters popped up. Go ahead and look at the pictures and I'll tell each of their stories.

We met with Sharon, the lady that came to church last week, and she's pretty cool! She was referred by her son in law that's a Bishop in another state, her daughter is a member as well so she's pretty familiar with the church but doesn't really know what we believe. She said she's seen the good that it's done for her daughter's family and she wants to be a part of it! She was out of town for work for a while this week though so she didn't come to church, but we'll get back in touch soon!

So here's the stories behind each of these animals. You'll notice the picture of the swamp that formed right behind our house, aka fly and mosquito breeding ground. Where there's flies and mosquitoes, there's frogs. Lots of them. They make a ton of noise at night. Fortunately I'm a pretty deep sleeper but there was one night where it was pretty hard to sleep. One of them jumped onto our window during studies so I snapped some pics of it.

A couple pics of one of the CRABS that appeared in one of our less active friend's yard. She said that there had been crabs running down her street all morning, presumably from a nearby lake that was swelling from all the rain.

​My crazy companion ready to eat some live crab​ ;)

The last one was just a couple minutes ago when we were on our way out to go email. There was a TURTLE just chillin in the parking lot. We took some pics, Elder Celestin tried to feed it a leaf, and then we let it do it's thing and came here to email. Welcome to HollyWeird!

​My crazy companion trying to feed a leaf to a turtle​

Tuesday was my birthday! Again, a thank you to all the people that sent cards and gifts! It's so weird being 19, and it's weirder that means that I'll be as old as some of the Sister missionaries coming in! That's craziness right there. This week also marks 9 MONTHS as a missionary! Woah! Time is going by so fast! Maybe because I've only served in 2 areas so far but I still feel like a greenie sometimes haha.

​My birthday breakfast, definitely the best breakfast I've made for myself haha.​

That's pretty much all the news. The missionary work continues pretty much at it's regular pace. One exciting thing is that Bertina brought her boyfriend to church! We're gonna talk more with him later this week, but we gave him the vision to be baptized on July 1st! That'd be a really good thing for Bertina and her family so hopefully it all works out. Talk to y'all again soon, keep me updated on how everything's going!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

​

Happy Birthday To Me!

​When the bowling alley ACTUALLY works
(feat. Elder Foster)​

Hello everyone! Another early email! The work continues pretty much the same as always, here's a couple of the highlights from the week.

Around the middle of the week we got a call from the mission office. A member in some other state had referred her dad that is not a member and had entered into one of the hospitals in our area. She asked us to give him a priesthood blessing. Apparently he was getting treated for cancer and then fell and hit his head in the hospital and suffered some brain injuries. We got there at the same time as some family members and gave him the blessing. After that we talked to the family a little bit and then left and went on with our day. The next day the mission office called us back with an update. Apparently 15 minutes after we left the doctors were asking him questions. He was able to remember questions that he hadn't been able to answer before. The family was very grateful, but still not quite open to receiving the missionaries yet. There's a few things we can learn from this story; 1) that priesthood power is real 2) seeing miracles is not enough to make someone believe.

​My "chicken pot pie" birthday dinner! ;)

So none of our people came to church, so that was a little disappointing, but there was one person that showed up! She was referred by our Bishop because she has a son or someone that's a bishop in another state. Our Bishop was out of town this week but she still came for sacrament meeting! We're going to talk to her more later today. She said she would be interested in learning more and being baptized! She accepted a date for the 17th, so hopefully all goes well with her! Other than that we weren't able to get in contact with Tanya or any of our other investigators so we'll see how that goes too.

I feel like before my mission I was WAY less interested in family history, haha, now it's like one of my favorite things. I've been using Ancestry.com almost exclusively for a bit, I like the hints on it better. You can link Ancestry and Family Search and move stuff between the two so that's pretty handy too. Really the goal should be to have everything in family search since that has the ordinance information, but ancestry is an awesome tool and since we already have so much work done on it, it makes it really easy to transfer over. Super cool stuff!

That's pretty much everything, other than the fact the my birthday is tomorrow! Probably not going to do much different, but I bought myself some "chicken pot pie" today for a birthday dinner. You'll see what I mean in the picture. It's crazy that I'm 19 now, I still feel like a little high school kid haha. It also means I'm a week away from 9 months as a missionary! It's weird to think that I've been in Florida for 7 months now too, it doesn't feel like that long. Time's going to fly by! Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

​

Woah, It's Getting HOT

​Here's our new district!​

Hello everyone! So this week was pretty average, but with lots more knocking! We literally spent all day yesterday knocking doors. Mostly because we had no appointments, but also because it was Memorial Day. We are also budgeting our car miles to make it under the limit for the month, so we spend longer amounts of time in one area before going somewhere else close by, which makes it feel longer.

Not to mention that it's getting SUPER HOT. I have a picture of the temperature a few days ago when it got up to 100 degrees (not accounting humidity)! But the work continues, even if that means knocking all day in the blazing heat. All I can say is that I'm going to have some crazy tan lines by the time I'm done haha.

Elder Celestin is lots of fun and a good missionary. He's super silly, and I'm super silly so it works out. He was born in Haiti but grew up in New York. Elder Briggs, the ZL that replaced Elder Hansen, is fun too. He's a farm boy from Idaho that loves farming and cowboy stuff. It's going to be an interesting transfer for sure.

Yup, 100 smackers.

We were able to find some new investigators this week, but they're all in the very early stages of teaching so we'll see where it goes. We had a pretty cool miracle where a lady we OYMed came to church! We can hardly get investigators to do that, let alone random people we talk to. Her name is Tanaiya and she has 6 kids! She came with her youngest one and loved it! We're going over to teach them tomorrow, and hopefully we can get the whole family involved. Cool stuff!

Probably the most stressful thing about missionary work is having to fill every hour of the day with work. Since I stayed in the area, we call it "taking over" the area since I already know a lot about it. That means that I need to find things to do when we have nothing to do, which in this area usually means knocking doors. The only problem is that we've exhausted a lot of our good knocking spots already over the past 2 transfers so it's hard to find places to go, especially staying under the mile limit. I have definitely been praying a lot for comfort and strength and being able to find things to do, and somehow things work out. It's still definitely not easy, but at least it's possible.

That's pretty much it, hope that you all are having a good time! It's crazy that I turn 19 next week, and the week after that I hit 9 months as a missionary! Time flies by, even if the days seem long haha. Keep up the good work!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

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