Fantastic Week

Dear friends and family:

This week was a fantastic week. As you know, last week was a struggle for both me and Elder Parker. But this week, we rebounded about as fast as I've ever seen it done. Usually, when an area is struggling, it takes a few weeks to get it into a healthy state again. But this week, despite the fact that things sucked last week, we saw huge miracles all week long.

The largest miracles that we saw happened after church on Sunday. We were adamant that we would achieve our goal for member-present lessons, and so we brainstormed and resolved to call our recent convert to get him to come out teaching with us. He came, and we had several incredible lessons with him.

After he taught with us, we returned him to his house, and then knocked in the neighborhood around his house. We had a miracle when we found one neighbor who had just moved back to Fort Myers from New York. He had been attending church in New York for several months now, and he really loved it. He wanted to get baptized. We set him with a date to be baptized on May 9th.

Later in the evening, we followed up with a referral from the English missionaries in our area. We had tried to see him on many occasions already, and we had little faith that he would be home, but we stopped by and found another elect soul, completely ready to hear and to accept the gospel. He had been preparing to be baptized in Haiti, when the US immigration process was completed, and so he was flown in to live with his family here, and his plans to be baptized were foiled. But he is still a deeply spiritual person, and he has been feeling the need to be baptized as well. He also has a date, also for the ninth of May.

One other investigator is worth mentioning: we have been teaching Elando, a young man who wants to be baptized but who doesn't feel ready to do it. He came to church with us yesterday, and then in the evening, he went down to Bonita to a youth fireside about trek. He's hesitant to accept a date, but we'll keep working with him. He could be baptized as early as May 2nd, but we haven't decided if that's the best thing for him yet. (We want his parents to have more participation in it as well, and he has to be converted to his own baptism date.)

Finally, another miracle happened this last Friday. After reviewing appeal letters, the scholarship board at Neumont University decided to award me with the Presidential Scholarship, which amounts to about 75% of tuition costs for the three years that it requires to get a bachelor's degree there. So, I'm withdrawing my housing agreement and application for BYU, and I'll be preparing to go to Neumont University, starting about two weeks after I return home from my mission.

All of the college stress is gone! Now the biggest choice I have to make is to decide which degree to pursue. And that choice doesn't have to be made until about eight months into my college career, so I'm fine for another 14-16 months!

Thanks,

Elder Slade