Po-Fou

Dear friends and family:

We had a wonderful week. It was my first week together in a tricompanionship with the two Spanish missionaries in our ward. I've never been in a tricompanionship before, and I have to admit, it is much harder to teach coherently or to stay focused. There are many benefits - for example, we can go on splits and get twice as much work done with only one member, and it's much harder to fall into the rut of being rote when we meet new people because there's too much variable in who talks when. And all in all, we worked hard and accomplished standards! ... almost.

If we had had two more investigators in sacrament, two more lessons with recent converts or less active members, and just one more member blessing, then we would have accomplished standards. It was going to be my second week on my mission where we do it. We were so close! But no cigar. That's what this next week is for, I guess.

We had three people come to church early enough to see the sacrament.

First, there's William. He speaks English, and he's very intelligent. So intelligent, in fact, that he takes almost nothing we say at face value and insists on looking everything up. He's had a lot of experience with religious theory, and some of the issues he has right now are that he doesn't believe in modern-day prophets, and he doesn't believe in eternal marriage or families. But he's willing to listen, and he comes to church, so we're going to focus on the Book of Mormon and help him resolve his own questions and issues. He's very fun to talk to, but unfortunately just a little bit too fun.

Next are Jacquito P-L.  and his wife, Marie Margarette. They are friends of some Haitian members who just recently moved here from Haiti. (Jacquito's friend was the branch president over there, in fact.) They loved church, but Jacquito is still unsure about baptism because he doesn't like the idea of organized religion. We're going over to see them again tonight at 6:15.

Other than that, we have a few other people who we're working with who came late or had decently legitimate excuses not to come to church.

In other news, my family just got a new dog! They are trying to decide between Po and Lexie. I like Po, but I suggested Po-fou as a possible alternative because it means "crazy skin" in Haitian Creole.

I was accepted to BYU-Idaho, I still don't know about BYU-Provo, but either way I was looking at the courses that they offer and BYU-Provo has a more extensive computer science department from what I can tell. I'm going to try to get permission to look online for a few other colleges that I might try to apply to as well.

Thanks,

Elder Slade