Keeping Faith

Dear Friends and Family:

This week, China and her family were confirmed in the branch. Marie was confirmed last week, because her baptism was on Thursday, but Shirdie (her daughter) was not able to be confirmed yet because Marie was kept in late at work. Our bishop wants us to do it during this next week, we're going to do it on Thursday hopefully.

We had a great miracle this week. A few weeks ago, we received a referral from Elder Brockbank and Elder Passey in the Palm Beach zone. It was for a Haitian man who wanted to be baptized, but who was there on vacation. So we tried to stop by to see him but he was still away. And this week, we finally had the opportunity to meet with him. It had been almost three weeks since he had met with the other elders, but he still had great desires to come to church and to be baptized. It was a very good experience for me to sit down and teach him for the first time.

Unfortunately, he did not end up coming to church. We had contact with him two hours before church, and he was ready and excited to come, and then... we lost contact, he never came, and we still haven't heard from him. So we'll stop over again tonight and find out "sak te pase."

We had one investigator come to church yesterday. His name is George, and he's a completely white guy, without even a small drop of Haitian blood. It was the Sisters' investigator, but because of extraneous circumstances, we're teaching him anyway. It will be Elder Felkin's fourth white person he's ever taught. (One of the first three being Haitian anyway, because his parents moved to Haiti and then he grew up speaking Haitian Creole.) I served in Boynton Beach, which is a Haitian Creole and English area, so I have taught many, and I've baptized three already, but we are very excited to get Elder Felkins his first white convert!

One of the things we are going to work on this week is keeping faith, and continuously finding. We only had four new investigators this last week, and we need more to keep a strong pool going. So this week we're going to especially work on our harvest blessings, to bring the spirit more strongly into our first contacts with people.

I heard that Elder Austin Bradley left on his mission. I am so excited to hear that! I'm guessing the language he will be learning is Italian? There's an awesome member here, in the Branch, who speaks Italian, English, and Spanish. Her name is Sister Dieste. As anyone who has ever met her will attest, her food is "da best"!

Thanks,

Elder Slade