Married

Dear Friends and Family:

First of all, Marie E. and Abacu G. were married this Saturday. The next day, Abacu was able to baptize Marie G. (after a little struggle. we didn't go over the process enough beforehand.) We've been working with them for quite a few weeks now to get that going, but we are very excited that they were able to do that. It was the first marriage that I helped organize on my mission so that they could be baptized.

The marriage itself was particularly fun. It was one of the most awkward things I have ever been through in my life, in many ways. It started with the bride and groom getting there 45 minutes late. Well, technically the groom was only 30 minutes late. Then, after the marriage came the reception. The people who were bringing the food for the marriage were even later than the bride and groom, but at least we had plenty of plates and napkins! They came on time!

Once those kinks were worked out, the marriage was really fun. It's the only marriage I have ever attended. I've been to a few marriage receptions before, but only visiting briefly, and they were much larger affairs for the most part. Part way through the reception, Marie's brother stood up and started offering a French toast. I was glad that I understood almost all of it. He concluded his speech by leading everybody in a recited prayer that all of the Haitians knew and everybody else listened to awkwardly. It was a very interesting experience.

This week, we struggled quite a bit to find new investigators. It really started last week, but it came to a climax this week when we dropped most of our investigators because they weren't progressing and realized that we only had one or two people that we were working with. It was a trial of our faith to go through with that, but God blessed us as we continued to work and we had several amazing miracles as the week progressed.

A few things that we have decided to do to continue to improve: we are continuing to study how to teach better during our companionship studies, and we are going to do more roleplays throughout the week. As well, we are going to teach about and give copies of the Book of Mormon during our first lesson. This is something that we haven't been very good about doing recently, but we're repenting and becoming better. :)

Dear family: Thanks for the amazing Halloween package! I especially enjoyed all of the little pieces of confetti. We had fun with that.

On Halloween, we had to stop knocking doors by 5, and we had to be home by 7. That left an extra two hours that we usually don't have at night. It was just enough time to have a Halloween party. We started off by playing don't eat Pete, after which we played various other games, and we finished the night by watching "Our Heavenly Father's Plan" (while we were steaming our mattresses and preparing for bed.)

Thanks,

Elder Slade

P.S. Next week is transfers, but the mission is trying something new, so we will find out who is transferring on Sunday night, P-day will still be on Monday, and then the change will happen and we find out who our new companions are on Tuesday. (In the past, We have found out on Monday night, have P-day on Tuesday, and then have transfer meeting on Wednesday.)