Elder Felkins

Dear Friends and Family:

Elder Felkins and I are doing great, here in Miami Shores Creole. We get along great, and we work really well together too. We are currently attending two sessions of church - one ward and one branch - each week. It can be exhausting, but it is really fun as well. I was here seven months ago, when the ward split, and it's amazing to see the changes that have come in that time. At the time that the split happened, there were about 30 people attending church each week. Now, there are about 70-80 people each week. One week there was 96 people. The progression is great to watch.

This week we saw many miracles. We have had many great experiences with harvesting and finding new people to teach. On one day, we found three separate families who all accepted coming to church and getting baptized. Unfortunately, they were English, so we had to pass them to the sisters... but they will still be awesome and amazing for the sisters to teach and to baptize. Our goals this week are to be the two most diligent and obedient missionaries to exist in the history of the world. (No, I don't have hubris.) Then, we will qualify for the same blessings, but for our own area, so we will have many awesome people for us to teach!

I finished the Book of Mormon again this week, and I've started over from the beginning. The last few chapters are probably some of the best in the book, I really love them. This time through, I am going to make a focus on the spirit. Each time the spirit is mentioned, or someone is guided or directed or comforted, I will pay close attention to that and apply it in my life.

For some reason, this week in the branch, there were professional photographers there, who were taking pictures from all sorts of different angles of the congregation. I don't know why they were there, but it was really distracting for me. I wonder if the Miami Beach 2nd Branch is going to show up in some sort of LDS.org video... :D

Attached is a picture of my companion, a Haitian member, and myself. She wanted a picture of all of us together, so here it is.

Thanks,

Elder Slade

New Investigators

Dear family,

This week we not only met standards, but found......5 new investigators! 2 of them we're especially excited about. They're Carl and Casey, 29-year-old twins that we street contacted on the 4th of July. We had dinner and a first lesson at a members home, and it went really well. Hooray for a bigger teaching pool!

Osh is a married woman! The wedding was beautiful. Demarkeyes is getting baptized next week. A temple marriage is definitely in the works for this one. I think the best part of the wedding though was watching them take selfies together afterwards. Good old 21st century. Gotta love it.

Hayley is amazing. We're not sure where she came from, she's almost too prepared to be true! She was out of town in Oregon this week, so she attended church there, and while there she sent us a message saying that she had gone to the temple in Portland and walked around the grounds and absolutely loved it! A few days ago we taught her about the living prophet and committed her to reading the talk from priesthood session last conference by President Monson, and pray to know if He is a prophet of God. She followed up on herself this week by sending us a message saying "I wanted to let you know I finished President Monson's talk! I loved it!!! Yes, He's absolutely 100% a true prophet of God. After listening to it several times and sharing it with others, I was filled with a renewed sense of strength and to stand up, think and do in the right way. I got the same warm amazing feeling whenever I pray to Heavenly Father." She's so great!

Emma is a girl that Elder Haupu and Elder Martin were teaching. Her mom is not happy about her decision to be baptized at all, and she still lives at home, so that has caused some problems. The Elders thought sisters might have a better chance of softening the moms heart, so we have started teaching Emma. She just turned 18, and last lesson she told us that although she would love her moms approval, she feels she needs to take a leap of faith and prepare herself to be baptized in August, whether her mom approves or not, because she knows without a doubt that this is the right decision for her.

This week I have been studying the first article of faith. I've decided to study an Article of Faith every week. It was amazing to study really in depth the nature of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. What I loved most about it was realizing how much more we know about our own natures just by knowing the nature and characteristics of our Father. Lorenzo Snow once said, "We were born in the image of God our Father; He begat us like unto Himself. There is the nature of deity in the composition of our spiritual organization. In our spiritual birth, our Father transmitted to us the capabilities, powers, and faculties which He possessed, as much so as the child on its mothers bosom possesses, although in an undeveloped state, the faculties, powers, and susceptibilities of its parent." If you get the chance, study the nature of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, then apply what you learn by creating a vision of your own identity and destiny. Increased vision of who we are and what we may become becomes increased motivation. Motivation leads to action, and the gospel would be meaningless without the actions we take to use it in our daily lives.

Love you all!

Sister Slade

Tracting fun!

 Plane attacking.

 Austen's Volkswagon

 Osharrhea and Demarkeyes are officially family ward material!

Back in Miami Shores!

Chè fanmi ak zanmi mwen yo:

I'm back in Miami Shores Creole! I never thought it would happen, it's pretty rare to go back to an area where you've served before. I started my mission here, I left for six months, and now I'm back! Hopefully I'll get a few more transfers here, it really is a great place. The people are all great, you get to speak Creole almost all the time, I've already had four Haitian meals (two of which included griot! Delicious!) and, I'm back in one of the only two Haitian Creole areas in the mission that includes a Krispy Kreme!

Unfortunately, the Krispy Kreme wall has been taken down, as of a few months ago, but the wall itself isn't as important as the donuts.

Also, I love my new companion. His name is Elder Felkins. He came out a transfer before I did,

Elder Felkins and I are getting along really well. Not quite as well as Elder Van Wagenen and I did originally, but still very well. It's a relief that we already have such a great relationship, with little or no tension. We're already teaching together pretty well, and we'll keep working on it as well until we either become perfect teachers or until we are no longer companions.

I'm getting pretty close to finishing the Book of Mormon again. The chapters in Ether have always been some of my favorite chapters, because it shows patterns very clearly that are harder to spot in some of the rest of the Book of Mormon. Mormon even explicitly points some of them out. I love it.

This week, we saw many miracles. One of them was a family that we found while harvesting. The mom's desires are to live a better life, and to do what God wants her to do; and she and her family are both excited to prepare to be baptized. Unfortunately, she got violently sick on Saturday night, so they could not come to church, but they still are excited to prepare to be baptized so we'll keep working with them.

For the record, I didn't know where I transferred to or who my new companion was until Wednesday. I couldn't have told any of you where I went before that.

I realized that I didn't tell you much about my new mission president. That's because I don't really know much about him. I've only seen him in person once so far, we're not getting interviews with him until the 25th of this month.

It's exciting to see the house changing, even though I only ever lived there for about two weeks. Were you going to put carpet up in the loft? I don't exactly know how to install carpet, what the process is or how expensive it can get.

Also, I found out that my release date was pushed back a week. Now it is September 3rd, not September 10th.

Scripture of the day: Ether 14:18: "And there went a fear of Shiz throughout all the land; yea, a cry went forth throughtout the land—Who can stand before the army of Siz? Behold, he sweepeth the earth before him!"

Mèsi anpil, mwen renmen nou,

Elder Slade

Great Week

Dear family,

Another great week! Germany won the world cup, which almost brought Sister Bartsch to tears. I love that girl so much. I still remember that one time when I was on my mission and the Broncos won the Superbowl... that was so great. :) We're singing "Come Thou Fount" or I should say "Komm Du Quelle" in German in Sacrament meeting next week. We'll be practicing every morning!

The highlight of this week was definitely seeing member missionary work in action! On Saturday we saw Hayley 3 times, once in the morning for a lesson, in the middle of the day when she came to tour a new church building at the open house we were asked to help with, and once at night when the recent convert we had dinner with invited her to come. This member, Amelia, invited us over for smores and hot dogs around their fire pit, along with Hayley, a less active that she visit teaches, and another recent convert. Partway through dinner without any hesitation she opened the conversation up to talking about the gospel and her conversion, and the spirit was so strong! The less active really opened up about why she had been scared to come back to church, and it was all because Amelia helped her and everyone else there feel so loved.

Hayley is progressing amazingly. She truly is one of those "Are you real? Where did you even come from?" investigators. She is already so well integrated into the ward, you can hardly tell she's not already a member, and in fact she told us that when she was little she used to tell people she was Mormon, even though it wasn't true. She's always wondered why she did that. Hayley's family is not happy at all about her decision to be baptized, please pray for her to continue to have the strength that she needs.

Unfortunately we weren't able to meet with a few of our investigators this week because of them being out of town, overtime at work, etc... This next week they should be back on track though and we have some potentials that should turn into new investigators too!

Love you all!

Sister Slade

Red Marker - White Floor

Time is passing way too fast here. According to my amazing cousins Sister Britney Slade, it will continue to do so. Not sure how I feel about that. Already I'm dreading the day that I have to take off my missionary name tag, there will be many tears shed then. Anyways the MTC is great! The only beef I have besides it being short is the fact that my body has readily dispensed pounds of food via horrific gas and bowel movement... Don't worry though I'm not going to die of overpooping. Sister Jeter's brother has saved us after he sent literally fifteen pounds of fruit snacks to her. We now eat like Kings! Or toddlers depending on your definitions of the two.

We have just received twenty new missionaries in our zone this past Wednesday, eight of which are sisters. We may or may not have used our assignment as Sister Training Leaders as a way to convert them all to playing soccer at gym time... but hey the white handbook (book with all of the rules) encourages us to take exercising seriously. And lets be honest. Volleyball in the sand is fun but not the kind of workout we as sisters in the MTC need. We play soccer every day of the week that we have gym time, and apparently I'm pretty good. I dribble the right direction and even score sometimes! If anybody would like to inform me as to what a hat trick is apparently I'm pretty good at that too... Either way I think I am working out far more than I did at home! Granted I was semi comatose for about a month #rollerbladingaccident.

Sister Jeter, Sister Hill and I have decided that this seasons new "hashtag" is "parce que" which literally means because in French. You will often hear us say "Parce que Utah" or "Parce que missionaries," we're pretty creative with our Franglais. Elder Sorenson in our Zone has an amazing ability at franglais, he will often approach you and ask something along the lines of "How the ça va are ya?!" which translates to how are you. French is going very well for me, being a sister training leader makes it so everyone thinks that you actually know something, so I am often asked questions about French that I actually have to go out of my way to learn. So ya, I'm getting loads of practice.

In the way of seeing people, boy do I have a story. For one thing I saw Micah Putnam in the Cafeteria on Saturday! We didn't get to eat together parce que I had to PVL (Parler votre langue or speak your language) at lunch so I had to sit with French speakers, it was great seeing him though! Also I had just finished showering and was going down the hall to the water fountain in my residents when I turn the corner and meet a familiar face! Emily Teuscher is living on the same floor as me! She and I were good friends when I was taking piano lessons with her mother for I believe 2nd grade to 4th grade. I could be wrong though. We talked about Normal, Illinois and how our families were doing. It made me realize how much I miss Illinois! Don't get me wrong I miss New Jersey but sort of only because my family is there... Illinois is where my memories are.

Now is the time for my heroic story. *clears throat* Once upon a time my district and I were asked to clean the temple. My companions and I were assigned to clean the chandeliers in some of the rooms. Which is a very painstakingly long process of taking out these crystals one by one, washing them, and then replacing them. The Provo temple was closed these past two weeks for maintenance and resurfacing purposes, one of the projects that had been done was replacing the majority of carpeting in some of the rooms. Our room just happened to be one of the rooms that had gotten the carpeting replaced. After taking out all of the crystals in the big chandelier we were marking the dead light bulbs with, of course, a giant bright red marker in a completely white room. A sister was marking one of the light bulbs and suddenly the marker fell out of her hands! It sailed down towards the recently replaced pure white carpet and almost would have made it. Except somehow I was able to catch the marker before it hit the floor, I guess all those years of color guard certainly are helping out. So yes people I'm a hero, there isn't even a mark to show it! ;D

This past week our district also got to help out with moving in the senior companions. They are just the cutest people on the campus! Which may or may not have anything to do with the fact that they get to hold hands with each other all around campus, I may or may not be jealous of that little fact (granted who would I hold hands with.) I have learned so much from their example too. They frequently come up to talk to us about how our studies are going, and are so warm and inviting I can feel the charity radiating off of them. It is a beautiful thing. And it makes me realize just how much I want to grow my charity so I can help others feel how I feel around those wonderful elders and sisters.

That pretty much is all that I can say has happened this week, I love you all! For those who have written me I'm writing you back in letter form. That means you too mother ;D I'll talk to you next week!

Soeur Cummings

Us bonding over popcorn.

Laughing together.

At the Provo Temple

Sealings!!

Dear family,

First things first, BENNETT AND VERNA HAVE AN OFFICIAL DATE FOR THEIR SEALING!!!!! The date is October 18th, in the Seattle temple. Because I was able to teach them before they were baptized, I should get permission to go to their sealing! I can hardly wait, it's been a year since I've been to the temple, and 8 months since I've seen either of my two favorite "instigators." (Gotta love Verna) I still think about them almost every day. October is a long time to wait but it'll be worth it!!

We had an amazing lesson with our investigator Elizabeth this week. We taught about the Book of Mormon, which she had already started reading, and before we even started the lesson she said, "I really believe that this is true!" Then she smiled really big and said "And you know, that makes me kind of nervous." She was just beaming. She explained how she knows that her knowledge of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon makes her accountable and that that would mean she would have to make some changes in her life that support her new knowledge. I love when the spirit testifies of truth and all of a sudden investigators just get it.

Recently in my study I was thinking about how the repentance process works in our daily lives, not just as a missionary, but in real life too. Every morning immediately after we rise we commit to the Lord that we will do everything that we can to follow Him. Every night before we go to bed we account to the Lord on the days activities. It's important that in this time we are very specific in our gratitude, requests, and apologies for the day. We mentally go through every activity of the day, from morning to night, so that Heavenly father knows how much we really do appreciate His hand in our lives and in the process of us becoming like Him. When we talk about enduring to the end, it means we follow this process for the rest of our lives: commit, account, reccommit, account, reccommit, account, and "so on and so forth and what have you" (shout out to Bennett Harris.)

Hayley and Lily are still progressing amazingly, and our investigator Colton is now preparing to be baptized on August 16th. He lives all the way in Maltby on a ranch with over 30 horses. It's killing our miles when we're not able to get member rides there, so Sister Bartsch and I decided we're going to borrow one of his horses and just ride to our appointments from now on :)

Love, Sister Slade

Transfers

Dear Friends and Family:

Transfer call information came in yesterday. Elder Slade: transfers. Elder Bailey... also transfers. They're whitewashing our area. Elder Harper is transferring across the hall, he's going to be taking over the area with some other, unknown missionary. And Elder Burgoyne is training this transfer. (He said that he's going to train by positive reinforcement - he'll keep a bunch of mints, and every time his trainee does something good, he'll give him a mint.)

Elder Bailey and I are both confused and surprised at what is happening this week at transfers. We were both expecting me to leave, but not that both of us would. So we're both packing up, and setting the area right for Elder Harper and whoever else comes in.

It's really hard to believe that I'm leaving Boynton Beach, I've been here 6 months already, and I've become friends with so many of the members and others in the area. But if God wants that, then I guess that's all right.

We had a terrific week. Matt Ellsworth, who also referred himself to us, was baptized on Sunday. He is here just for the summer, in order to go to medical school. He said that throughout his life, he has always felt that the church is true, and he has always wanted to be a member of the church because they have the spirit with them more. That was one of the reasons that he decided to be baptized. Also, he is excited to go to the temple, and to be baptized for the dead.

Daphne wasn't able to come to church because of food poisoning. Darn.

We had yet another miracle this week as we were harvesting. We found a member who was baptized in Haiti, who didn't know where the church was here. He hadn't been to church in a long time, and he wanted to come. We're so grateful that God gave us the opportunity to see that miracle and to be able to direct him back to church.

I'm sad that I'm missing everything that is happening at home. Seeing everyone grow up, seeing the house be changed around, seeing all of my siblings continue to go to school. I miss all of you!

Thanks, I love you,

Elder Slade