Weird Week

Dear friends and family:

We had a really weird week. One of our strengths was that we had nine lessons with recent converts and less-active members, and we had ten lessons taught with a member-present. One of our weaknesses is that we had only two new investigators. So we're praying that we will be able to find the people we need to find quickly, so that we can teach them and get a good start for the month of February.

We still have a few different potentials to be baptized this Sunday. They all have baptismal dates for this Sunday, but they all have different things that might prevent them. We'll be praying and working for the best, and hopefully we'll be able to see all of them baptized this Sunday. That is: Mike, Mary and Ghandi, and Jacquito and Marie.

Life in a trio is so fun. It's still hard to stay focused, but we have been blessed because of it. We were able to go on splits two times last week, and we'll be doing it again tonight.

My mission is completely different than it was at the beginning of it. And there's still a lot of time for it to continue to change.

A big change that just recently took place: the Fort Meyers stake was added to our mission, including 30 missionaries, 8 of which are Haitian Creole speaking. They came from the Tampa mission, which had iPads already. When they transferred missions, their iPads were confiscated. (Sad face.)

In other news, we just received another noncommittal confirmation from a general authority that iPads are coming to our mission! ...soon. The keyword is noncommittal.

I really don't know what to do about colleges. The more I think about it, the less I feel like I actually have a solid direction to go.

Here are a few deciding factors:

- I will not be released early to go to school, there is a new mission policy in regards to that, so if the semester starts before I get home or too soon after it won't be a possibility.

- I want to have a good education for my chosen field, but I also want to be able to use my mission language. This means learning French, probably, because it's really close to Haitian Creole and it's an awesome language besides.

- I want to be close to my family, and I want to be in close contact with many of my mission friends as well.

- I want it to be cheap...

I'm about out of time, so I'll send this as it is.

Thanks for everything,

Elder Slade