Transferring again

Dear friends and family:

I'm astonished that I am transferring again. I had resolved myself to serve in Fort Myers for the last four transfers of my mission, but I guess that's not where the Lord wants me to be at this time. Elder Parker and I are both determined to leave the area in a good condition, so the new missionaries can come in and take up where we left off. We're cleaning everything really well, making notes about weekly meetings and future appointments, which members are available usually to come out teaching, and other such information.

The Fort Myers stake has been trying to focus on contacting prospective elders - members who have the Aaronic priesthood, and who have been members for a long time, but who have never received the Melchizedek priesthood. That has been a large part of our efforts this week, and we have seen a few miracles from that. One of them we saw when we tried to visit an inactive member who is married to a nonmember, both of whom lived in Utah for several years. They let us come in to their gated community, which is surprising because as they told us, they rejected missionaries every time we tried to come over for several years. They allowed us to share a quick message from the scriptures, which brought in the spirit. He is not ready to come back just yet, but that gave us the opportunity for God to work in their hearts.

Elando was unfortunately unable to come to church this week, because he was in Bonita. But Jorkens, a 19-year-old Haitian investigator who just moved here from Haiti, came to church and can't wait to be baptized! He's a little hard to get in contact with, because he is still in High School and he is going to college almost every night in order to learn English, but it's a blessing that we were able to work with him and we will miss him a lot, even though we will not be here to see him baptized.

I don't know exactly what time I will be skyping on Mother's day, because I don't know exactly where I will be. But it most likely be in the early afternoon for me, which means late morning for you. What time is church in Rye? Also, which skype account will you be using?

I'm excited to hear about all of my cousins receiving their mission calls. Yes, Austin is in the Milan, Italy mission as well.

Thanks,

Elder Slade

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

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.

Unexpected Event

Dear friends and family:

I finally received the invitation to Britney's wedding a few days ago. It looks nice. I'll only regret not being able to be there.

I thoroughly enjoyed general conference this weekend. We watched all but one of the sessions at the church building. (I still watched the other one, just not at church.) I loved all of the talks. It seems to me that in general, most of the Saturday talks were about marriage and eternal families, and most of the Sunday talks were about staying active and how to love inactive family members (and Easter, of course.) My favorite talk was the "do you dance" talk as well, because it was funny and I most certainly do not dance.

Half-way through the Sunday afternoon session, however, we had a little unexpected event interrupt our gospel revelry. Somehow or other, the fire alarm went off inside of the church, although there was no fire. A fire truck was dispatched, and they came and checked around the building as we continued to watch conference. We lost some of our focus because of that, but it was a funny occurrence. We'll just learn from that talk when we get the ensigns instead.

One of the things that I am most excited about is the newly announced temple in Haiti. I don't know when it is likely to be completed, but I fully intend to be there for the dedication! (And open house, if I can swing it, but if I remember correctly the open house and dedication were separated by two weeks in the Fort Lauderdale temple, and I don't really look forward to spending 2.5 weeks in Haiti... but I'll worry about that in the future.)

For those of you who don't yet know, the church has a great new Easter initiative, similar to the Christmas one that they did last December. It's called "Because He Lives," and this one will continue for most of the rest of the year. New videos will come out in the initiative every few months, each focusing on the miracles and blessings that we receive because of Jesus Christ. You can find out more and watch the first video at HeLives.mormon.org.

This week we struggled a lot to find new investigators, but we are still hopeful for Matt, our investigator from Laos. He came to the priesthood session of General Conference and really enjoyed it. He now has a copy of the book of Mormon in Thai, which is supposedly really close to the language spoken in Laos.

I still don't have any news on Neumont University, although supposedly something is coming soon...

(Note from Mom: Brandon was accepted to Neumont University and was awarded an Achievement Scholarship of $15,000 as well!  This is not the Presidential Scholarship we were hoping for, but I will be researching what we need to do to appeal the decision and maybe still get awarded the Presidential...Yay, Brandon!)

Thanks for all of your help and support,

Elder Slade

Missions are Weird

Dear friends and family:

Missions are such weird things.

We had three investigators in sacrament this last week. They all have completely different backgrounds and desires, but they are all preparing to be baptized in Jesus Christ's church.

One of our investigators who came to church is a man named Matt B. He is from Laos, but he lived in Utah for about 15 years and then moved here, and has been living here for about ten. He speaks English with a definite accent and does not have much of a Christian background, but when the Spanish sisters knocked on his door he accepted a prayer and has since been studying and preparing to be baptized. Because our area changed this transfer, he is in our new English area, and so we have been teaching him. We had a chapel tour with him on Friday, and then he came to church on Sunday. After church we had the opportunity to go over and teach him again, with the help of one of the members in the Fort Lauderdale ward who speaks Thai. We skyped him using Matt's phone and we had a wonderful lesson.

Lillian came to church for the second time this week. She was baptized in some other church a long time ago, and it's hard to meet with her throughout the week, but she has an ex-significant other who is a member and he has been helping her to have a desire to come to church and to recommit herself to Jesus Christ by being baptized again.

Thamous is the daughter of one of our recent converts, named Deliverence. She is only going to be here for about a week, but we're excited to get her to conference and get her pumped to continue learning more with the other missionaries in Cape Coral when she moves back there with her aunt next Monday.

We're extremely pumped up for general conference this weekend. We'll make sure we work really hard, and we'll get tons of people there.

I only have about five more months to serve a mission, and due to the fact that I live so far from the mission office, there's not much chance that I will be transferred to a new area before the end of my mission. Areas that are far away typically stay for longer, for some reason.

As for college, I have definite word that I was accepted into BYU, BYU-Idaho, and the University of Utah. I have not yet been officially accepted to Neumont University. If I am accepted and receive a presidential scholarship, then I will almost certainly go to Neumont and get my degree in the next three years. Otherwise, it's most likely that I'll go to BYU. Scholarships still pending on the others, of course, which might make them more feasable.

Due to odd restrictions on our schedule today, my companion and I don't have even a full hour to email, so sorry this is so short.

Thanks,

Elder Slade

Fort Myers North

Dear friends and family:

Transfer meeting happened on Wednesday, and I was a little surprised by it. My new area if Fort Myers North (Creole), which is about a 2.5 hour drive from the mission office. It is one of the farthest areas. In fact, the Fort Myers Stake was not a part of our mission until a few months ago, so there are many missionaries still in Fort Myers who are used to doing things the way they did it in Tampa. For example, they were allowed to take videos; they already had iPads, and they did everything on them; and their areas weren't by language, they had several companionships covering the same ward, and they taught whoever they found, rather than teaching according to the language or which part of the ward they live in.

My new companion is Elder Parker, who is one of those Tampa missionaries. He is a really hard worker, but it is still odd to see the things that Tampa missionaries do that weren't really a part of the Fort Lauderdale Mission's culture beforehand.

I've had a wonderful five days in Fort Myers, and I'm excited to keep going. The ward seems to be amazing, especially the Elder's Quorum president and the ward mission leader.

We were able to see a lot of success together. One of our top investigators is named Lilian J.; her husband is a member, but they haven't been together for a while. And she came to church for the first time yesterday. She softened a lot after coming to church this one time, and she accepted a date for the 31st of March. We made a plan and we are going to make this month #MiracleMarch!

We had two other investigators who came to church, but one is a youth and so can't be baptized until the 18th of April, and the other came too late to see the sacrament and so can't be baptized until the 11th. As well, we had one investigator who tried to come but his GPS died and he got lost, so he never made it. But we'll keep working with all of them as long as they keep progressing and putting forth that willing effort. We'll make our #MiracleMarch extend into april as well. :D

Tomorrow we have a specialized training about the church's upcoming "Because He Lives" Easter initiative. We're excited for this conference, and for the opportunity to share what we learn with the world. And we also can't wait for general conference on Easter weekend! Unfortunately, it will be the last general conference that I will spend on my mission. That snuck up fast!

Also, I forgot to mention, in my previous email - last Monday, Elder Allen, Elder Peterson, Elder Miller, and I all went and attended a Catholic mass. It was a very interesting experience. But because it was on a Monday morning, there were not very many people there. After I return, I'll have to go again, in the evening, at a time where there will be more people attending.

I don't have any more updates on colleges or things like that.

Thanks for everything,

Elder Slade