Trying week

Dear friends and family:

This week has been one of the most trying on my mission. Occasionally in missionary life you have a day where nothing works out, and the day comes and goes and you feel like you've done absolutely nothing. This week, for the first time in my mission, the same phenomenon occurred over the course of the whole week. I feel exhausted, almost all of our investigators are dropped... but I'm ready and excited to get up and work harder next week!

Lest you all think that because of that, we didn't have anything good happen or we didn't see any miracles, I'll include a few highlights. The week would be a success even if only one of the following miracles had happened:

1. A less-active member, who shied away from the church about four years ago and started smoking, came to church for the first time in forever. She is determined to quit her addiction and to become active again in the church. It was a miracle that we found her, at exactly the moment that she was again ready to receive the gospel, and it is a miracle that we can

2. We had a wonderful zone training on Wednesday, where we received additional instruction on how to be effective missionaries. The zone training was mostly focused on how to use the missionary pamphlets to teach each of the lessons simply and compactly, in a way that anyone could understand. We are excited to use the pamphlets more in finding and teaching, and we have already seen our lessons improve as we do this!

3. On Sunday, some time in the evening, we were knocking in a place that a member had referred to us as a place to knock, and we found a miracle. We found an educated Haitian man whose biggest problem with religion was that there were so many of them, and that all but a few of them seem to be built with the intention of getting gain or power. We taught the restoration simply, using the pamphlet, and committed him to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it. He is intrigued with the idea of Jesus Christ having a church, and he is excited to be baptized as he finds out for himself that it is true.

As far as college applications go, my first choice at this point is to go to Neumont University, but I am struggling to get the funding required to attend. I was accepted, but my circumstances will not allow me to afford it unless I receive the presidential scholarship, which they have already denied me. But they are allowing an appeal, which they will review on this Friday. Because of that, I have to type up a quick appeal letter explaining why they should permit me the scholarship regardless of their past decision. I have to send it in today. So I apologize if my letter to all of you is a little rushed, I don't have a lot of time and I need to make sure I get that done in my 1.5 hours today.

Thanks,

Elder Slade

P.S. About my mission and iPads: I am not sure what happened, why our mission never received iPads, even though it has been repeatedly scheduled to receive them over the last two or so years. I don't know when the mission is getting iPads, but I know they are doing another big push in May, and that currently my mission is not on their list of ~20 missions to receive them then.

This means, unfortunately, that unless something changes soon, the earliest my mission could receive iPads is in July, less than two months before the end of my mission. If that were to happen, I almost certainly would opt out and stick with paper material for the last six weeks of my mission to avoid wasting money. So, as far as I am concerned, I will never receive an iPad on my mission.