Baptism

I don't have a lot of time this week, again. But here's what I can fit in what little time I have:

Thank you, dear family, for the Christmas package! I can't wait to start opening them 12 days before Christmas and finding out what you have all sent! I really appreciate it, thank you so much.

We spent a ton of time this week (even outside of companionship studies) watching the district the last couple of days. And I'm excited for this week, we're going to be studying a lot of my favorite subjects, such as recognizing faith. I can definitely see a huge difference in myself now from 5 weeks ago, but I'm still not where I want to be. I can't wait to continue and to learn more and become better.

I've been taking notes and highlighting things that I felt could apply to me personally while I read the Book of Mormon. A couple things that I learned in the last week or so are that we should be fasting and praying with gratitude, not just to ask for things. (I knew this about the prayers, but I didn't about fasting.) Also, I've been to critical - just because there's a logical explanation in things doesn't mean that it's not also a blessing or a miracle from God. (For example, when the Lamanites lose, they say "we are not of your faith; we do not believe" and that the only reason they lost is because they didn't have armor like the Nephites did.) I also thought this scripture was interesting, describing what happens to people who choose evil works: "the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their house". I related it to bad habits.

The best experience this week was probably when Lucy P. was confirmed just yesterday. The room was filled with peace, and she stated afterwards that it was her favorite part of church that day. Also, this last few days, I've started to get more excited about the work itself (teaching and spreading the gospel) instead of the results (key indicators and baptisms) and I've as a result started to feel much less stress and much more peace and confidence.

We haven't been doing our best this week, we've been trying to rely too much on ourselves, and we've been doing terrible jobs harvesting. Our teaching pool has been shallow. After much introspection this last few days, we've come up with some solutions and things that we're going to fix in order to make our harvest blessings and our days run more smoothly, in order to get our teaching pool up to where it needs to be. This next week and transfer will be better, I promise.

There's a couple of funny experiences that I wanted to share this week.

The first one is an experience with harvesting. We knocked into a lady's house. She only spoke Haitian Creole, which I still can't really understand that much when other people speak it, even though I am definitely getting better. We introduced ourselves, asked to say a prayer, entered and blessed her and her house, testified of the spirit, invited her to be baptized... she said no. And then she and Elder Winslow started having a conversation in Creole. I couldn't understand it at all, so I was blissfully unaware when she said something along the lines of "you guys seem to be nice. You shouldn't be here, there are people here like me who want nothing more than to eat you." Sometimes Creole doesn't translate nicely into English.

The second one was while we were following up on a media referral. (Which are super rare for Creole elders, It is my companion's first as well, and he's been out for a year.) The lady who accepted the DVD was introducing her daughters to us, but was speaking too fast for me to understand. She told one of her daughters to "greet us", and so the daughter leaned in in order to kiss me on the cheek. I had no idea what was happening. I made the whole situation really awkward by leaning away from her. My companion was struggling not to laugh. The lady's daughter was extremely embarrassed, she retreated fast.

A couple answers to questions:

I'm not driving, which is a good thing, but Elder Winslow is a reckless daredevil, just like everybody else who has been driving in Miami for a while, which is a bad thing.

I do miss my old MTC companions, but I still get email updates from them, so I get to talk and find out how they're doing.

I don't know my Christmas schedule yet, sorry.

And... now I'm out of time.

Thanks,

Eldè Slade

Chè family and friends:

Yesterday we had a baptism! Her name is Lucy P., and she is amazing. She has an incredible work ethic, and she practically prayed us to the door. She quit her job in order to go to church on Sundays. Pictures will be arriving in separate emails.

We continue to meet interesting people while we harvest. For example, we met one person who said that she was Catholic but also Hindu. Don't ask me how that works, I don't know. We met one person and tried to give him a pass-along card with a picture of Jesus on it. He refused to accept it, because he insisted that it was "fake" because he knew that Jesus was black. But my absolute favorite person what I met so far this week I met while I was doing exchanges with Elder Tesch. She was an older woman, but she was very religious. She had learned several languages and she was in the process of learning Hebrew. She had studied all kinds of religious texts, for any kind of religion, trying to find a church. We harvested into her, said the prayer, and then she in turn said a prayer for us. She prayed that we would become millionaires for Jesus, earning lots of money in order to buy bibles for other people. Then she bore her testimony that when she was very poor, and only had a few dollars but still had to provide for her family, the Holy Ghost told her to go and buy a lottery card and she ended up winning a thousand dollars. I wasn't really sure what to say.

I think the most important thing that I learned while I was reading the Book of Mormon this week is about the nature of God. I was thinking about some verses about mercy in Alma, and about how Jesus Christ will plead to the Father for us, and I was thinking that Heavenly Father must have a lot of mercy as well. After all, he did send his son, even if Jesus was the one who actually atoned for our sins. And then I thought about my own parents, and how while I was working before I came on my mission I didn't have to worry about pretty much anything because if there were any problems then I could always just call my parents and they would help me get it sorted out. And then I realized a little bit more about just how much God loves us, and how much he cares for us and wants us to succeed, just like my own physical parents. And I realized that whatever happens, I always have the ability to call on him, and I can have the assurance that he will always help me. Personal studies are still my absolute favorite part of each day.

Besides this spiritual experience, this whole week has been great. Yesterday I had my first baptism, for Lucy P. The baptism was a little bare of participants, nothing compared to the number of family that showed up to witness my own, but it was still a very, very precious time. I remember distinctly the feeling of peace that was there for the entire baptism. It was a great feeling, and I know that Lucy felt the spirit just as much as I did. Other than that, I have also felt the spirit a lot in various different lessons throughout the week.

I haven't been able to see any beaches yet, but that's really not at the top of my list right now. There are so many other beautiful things in Miami that we see every day. (Too bad there are so many ugly and depressing things as well. If only everybody had the gospel.)

I tried pigs feet this Friday. It didn't really taste that bad, it was just... chewy fat. I ate it all and pretended that I liked it. I honestly didn't think that I would have to eat anything like that on my mission, but I guess I was wrong. Oh well, here's to hoping I never have to do it again!

There has been some very good food so far. My favorite Haitian food is Griot, which is fried pork that tastes absolutely amazing, when it's cooked right. And we ate Thanksgiving last Thursday at a Haitian party (too crowed for my taste, but the food was great) and then at a member family's house. The dinner at that house was amazing. It was just the mom and dad and a nonmember brother, and three kids, and my companion and I. I loved how small and happy everything was. I can imagine that Grandma threw a giant family get-together party for Thanksgiving last week. I wish I was there, but at the same time I would have been overwhelmed by so many people, and I'm grateful that I got to spend it here and to see how other families celebrate Thanksgiving.

After church on Sunday we helped a family move out who had received a 24 hour eviction notice on their door. It was depressing, but I was impressed at how grateful the family was in the midst of their problems. They were cheerful and laughing as we packed up everything for them and moved it into a storage area, because they don't have another place to go yet.

The Ft. Lauderdale temple isn't done for a while, but we pray for it as a mission each day, so hopefully we'll be able to see it completed soon.

Thanks,

Eldè Slade

P.S. Have fun on your cruise, Mom and Dad and Paul and Anna and Gabe and Eliza and Nathan and Evie and other relatives which I will not at this time enumerate!

P.P.S. Britney: we live with the zone leaders, who are in charge of this stake's YSA ward. They bring home some funny stories. And I can also relate to you in that we also have to do a lot of tracting, and we also pass a lot of referrals, and we also depend on other people to pass referrals. We only teach Haitians. (Oddly, we teach all Haitian people - even if they speak English perfectly, and they don't speak a lick of Haitian Creole.)