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.

Transfers Are Here Again and...BAPTISM! (Also picture spam)

​ADLINE GOT BAPTIZED!​

Hello everyone! So, let's get the big important news out of the way.... I will be TRANSFERRING to the area of HOLLYWOOD CREOLE. As I don't know my new address yet, please refrain from sending mail for a bit ;) . My new companion will be Elder K Hatch! I've heard good things about him, should be fun. Exciting stuff. It'll be weird getting used to a new area but it should be good. Also, all the others will be transferring too except for Elder Bissereth, and they're changing it back to having 2 Creole Elders and 2 English Elders instead of splitting the ward in half. 

So here's the next big news. You may remember a while back when I told you about Adline. She was an "eternigator" [eternal investigator] that was waiting on a divorce [to be final] to be married and then baptized. [When a woman and man are living together, they must be married in order to be baptized. This is because of the law of chastity.] Well, the other day on Wednesday I was on exchange with Elder Taylor again, and I decided to stop by to see her daughter, Alicia, last thing at night since we're working to set her with a baptismal date and had extra time. (I'm glad I did, I could have been like "my creole is not good enough to hold a conversation on my own" but I just went anyways.) Well, she was sick but her mom was there! 

So she and I just chatted and I asked "I'm still curious about how the divorce is going?" and she was like "Oh, I'm divorced already!" 

What?! "That's great! So when do you think you'll be able to be married?" 

"Oh, I'm married already, I just did it at court!" 

WHAT?! (Turns out she has been married for 15 days already!) So yeah, once we found that out we got her to talk with Bishop and got her interview and everything and she got baptized LAST SUNDAY! And I was the one to baptize her! Woot! So many miracles.

Also, last Pday I went to the beach for the first time! Got some great pics. We went fishing on a pier in Sunny Isles. Super rich area- There were ads for apartments that said "starting from 1.4 Million to 5.4 Million!" Jeez louweez.

​My awesome comp and DL, Elder Bissereth.​

​Say "Fishing is fun and not boring!"​

​Panorama of the beach.​

Me at the beach!​

Elder Bissereth dancing with pelicans.​

​My new planner cover.​

​My awesome district! Gonna miss these goofballs.

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

A Little Burst of Speed

Hello Everyone!

Let's just say the Florida sun is doing it's job.

So the work picked up a bit this week! We were able to find 10 new investigators, and 3 of them came to Sacrament [meeting]! That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's the first time we've really been able to get anyone to come to church, so that's good! 

We still do tons of knocking, mostly because appointments are virtually impossible to keep for some reason. Even when we call them or text them that morning and they say we're good to stop by, when we get there they're either not home or sleeping. Maybe it's just Miami, but it seems like everyone just goes to work and then sleeps when they get home. And a lot of people work nights so they sleep during the day. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, we are always getting yelled at for waking them up. haha.

A couple highlights from the people we found:

1. Rudy- A super cool white guy we knocked into (there's not many of those around here!) He has a Doctors degree in Religious Arts and was basically Mormon without knowing it, but when church came around he dropped us over the phone because it was too hard to leave his church of 21 years. Bummer.

​I don't mean to brag,
but we decked out our apartment for Valentine's Day.​

2. Roscoe- A super cool guy that virtually committed to baptism right at the door. He really wanted to come to church and even bring his little brother and cousins with him, but got called to work at the last minute. Bummer. Still working with him though.

3. Kimberly- She's the one that actually came to church, and brought 2 friends with her! Found her knocking as well, seems to really understand the message but still has a little problem with "Mwen batize deja" (I'm baptized already). A common problem, but we can work with that.

That's pretty much it, sorry I don't have crazy stories, my memory is bad sometimes. I included some pictures from Valentine's Day though, aka the lamest holiday as a missionary! Haha. It was great though, cuz we got an awesome care package from home (thanks!). 

Love all y'all!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

Trials and Tribulations?

A picture of our Zone Training

Hello everyone! Not too much exciting happened this week, mostly just a ton of knocking all day long.

So a little update about Amy from last week: Turns out she lived in the other Elders' area :( and has been super hard to get a hold of since she doesn't have a phone, and every time they stop over she doesn't answer. She didn't come to church yesterday either :( , so it's likely that she'll just get lost and fall away. Kinda disappointing, but such is missionary life. 

We had several exchanges this week since Elder Bissereth is the DL [District Leader], and I took over the area for the day while he went to work in the other areas in the district. It was the first time I've been the one to stay, and the most interesting one was when Elder Taylor, a "greenie", was with me. It was the first time that I've been the more experienced missionary! Haha, it was kinda a boring day anyways because we literally had no appointments, so we knocked all day long. It was funny too because we only ran into Spanish speakers, so he did more work than I did haha. He said it was the first time he's had to do a whole door approach in Spanish by himself so hopefully that was good. I want to learn some good Spanish while I'm here too, but I'm gonna focus on Creole first haha.

This week marks 5 MONTHS as a missionary! (This includes the MTC, 3 1/2 in Florida) That's crazy! Almost 1/4th is gone already! The days go slow but the weeks go fast, it's true.

So no one came to sacrament this week (except for Adline and Alicia of course), which is kinda sad, you know? 

The only other thing of interest is that we ran into a bunch of Hebrew-Israelite folks this week, which is annoying. For all those in the mission you know who they are, and for those "watching" at home you have Google. There was one guy in particular that was just hounding us. It's worse when there's a black and a white person in the companionship. He was shouting profanities against us and against God, "breathing out threatenings" as the scriptures would say, (it didn't help that he was obviously high on something) and that was probably the first time I've felt my faith so visibly and physically attacked. We ended up just walking away, "smile and wave" as it were, and letting him yell as we went back to the car. It was a learning experience for both of us I'd say.

SO yeah! That was my week, hope all is going well for all y'all! Keep up the Good Work!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson