Heather

Dear family,

Today I wanted to share about one of my favorite people in the whole wide world. Heather has been investigating the church for about 5 years, and very seriously for the last 2 years. She has wanted to be baptized for a very long time, but because of some things that happened in her past, Heather has to have special permission from the first presidency to be baptized. We've been teaching Heather since I came here (and many missionaries companionships before me) and her lessons have been some of the most sacred experiences of my mission. I haven't shared about them partly because of how sacred they are to me, and partly because of how sensitive her situation is. Heather has been through the ringer, and in the last few years she has overcome every type of sin and every sorrow you can think of. Because of this, Heather is the atonement in action. Very few times in my life have I felt the love of Jesus Christ as strongly as I have when I have talked with Heather, because for Heather the atonement is as real as it gets. Last week Heather finished meeting with her counselor and he called President Bonham and told him that although Heather will have to stay in the singles ward for life, he sees no reason why she shouldn't be able to get baptized. What we didn't realize is that this was finally the last step in the process, and all that's left is for President Bonham to contact Salt Lake and get the approval for baptism. We talked to President Bonham at zone conference and he told us that he feels confident enough that the first presidency will approve Heather being baptized, that he gave us permission to set a date for baptism, as long as it's far enough away that he can be confident she is 100% prepared. When we invited Heather to be baptized on November 22nd she was completely in shock. It was an emotional experience for all of us. The whole process of teaching Heather has been an emotional experience for me. I love Heather so much. The last thing Heather has to overcome is smoking, and she started the program last night. Please please keep her in your prayers this week!!!

We got transfer calls and I'm super happy to report that both Sister Smith and I are going to be staying in Silverlake YSA!!! We have also been asked to serve as Sister Training Leaders for the nearby zones in this area, which we are excited but a little overwhelmed about as well. It's going to be another transfer filled with miracles!

Love you all!

Love, Sister Slade

We told Heather to show us her baptism "victory pose"

 Us and our grossness after completely cleaning and sanitizing Heather's apartment to prepare for her to start the stop smoking program

 She starts the stop smoking program today. We spend a million years cleaning her apartment so that it's completely smoke free! Oh. And we made her promise that she would wear this sign whenever she leaves the apartment this week. Keep her in your prayers!!!

Christ-like Attributes

Dear Friends and Family:

This week, in Miami Shores Creole: Woodjemi N. was baptized! ...and confirmed! She is a 9-year-old who was not baptized when she was eight, although her parents are members. So our bishop asked us to work with her and her parents to get them baptized. Last Sunday, Gerald N. received the Priesthood, so that this Sunday, he could baptize her. It was a really good service. One of the concerns that the parents had was that the ward didn't care enough to show up at the baptism after church. But, the baptism was announced in all classes, and we and the other people in the ward council personally invited many people to attend, and we had a great showing for the baptism right after church.

Apart from that, we also had a terrific week. Our investigator, Witelane, came to church with her four-year-old son. She loved it, but she doesn't feel ready to be baptized quite yet. She wants to wait until December for some reason. But she says if God helps her to know it is His will, then she will be baptized sooner. So we'll keep working with her and we'll help her recognize the spirit.

One of our focuses this week will be having a better ratio between knocking on doors and blessing people's homes and getting follow-up appointments and new investigators. This last week, we were able to get an enormous amount of harvest blessings, but they didn't turn into quite as many new investigators as we would have liked. Also, we are planning on role playing trading off turns speaking in companionship study this week, so that we can better teach with unity.

This week in my personal study, I have been trying to work on some of the Christ-like attributes. I decided to start with humility, because it's something that I really don't have much of. I made a list of things that I can do be more humble and to rely more on the lord, and less on myself. In addition, our district leader committed both of us to do an act of service for each other each day, so I will also be doing that.

I really enjoy seeing the pictures that you all send, and reading your emails to know what you are all up to. I'm excited to finally see the new bedroom, and to know about the new roof that will be going up "without money and without price". It's almost as good as the gospel!

Thanks,

Elder Slade

Terrific Week!

Dear Friends and Family:

We had a terrific week! We improved or were consistent in all of our key indicators, except for recent convert and less active lessons. Those went down drastically, but we will improve on those this week. We're already off to a good start, we had one yesterday and we have two planned for tonight.

We have several investigators this week that we are excited about! One in particular.

Her name is Jislaine P. She is an old Haitian lady, and pretty much from the moment we talked with her, she felt the spirit and she followed its promptings. She already knows that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and she enjoyed church immensely. She has several good member friends already. Part of the Haitian gospel principles class was spent with all of them having a discussion about all of the lies that pastors and other people have told them about Mormons, about polygamy, whether or not we are Christian, and a bunch of other anti subjects. She put in several good comments! She has a strong commitment to come to church every Sunday. We can't wait for her baptism this weekend!

Elder Fisher and I have been blessed so much over the last week and a half. We have found so many miracles. One thing that I feel like I relearned was that the harder we work, the harder God works for us. We've really been focusing on always working hard, and continuing to spend all of our time during each day. We've been able to find many awesome people from just going out and working more, even when we feel fatigued and lazy.

We will be having a specialized mission training on the 24th of September. We can't wait for it! My guess is that it has something to do with iPads... but we'll all have to wait and find out.

Thanks,

Elder Slade

P.S. Quick miracle that just happened while I was emailing: someone called us. Someone had harvest blessed her husband recently, and she heard about it and wanted to learn more about the church. She called us, and asked what principles we follow in the church. I briefly touched on following Jesus Christ, the Law of Chastity, the Word of Wisdom, and the Book of Mormon. She asked how someone can become a member of the church. I told her. She wants accepted a date for the 14th, and we're going by tonight to see her. Yay!

As Easy As Learning to Ride a Bike

Psych. It is not all that easy to learn how to ride a bike. I don't speak about myself, don't worry Dad I have not forgotten how to ride a bike in the past two months, I do still speak from experience. Something that I absolutely love about Sister Munive is that she is so creative in ways that we can teach people the gospel. As a missionary you see that many people are not so excited to stop and talk about the gospel, but they love talking about their families or things like that. Sister Munive has this talent that she is able to see a way that we can help people while still managing to share the gospel. Among these beautiful roundabouts are teaching piano lessons (in French), Learning how to draw (in French), and other services. I myself have had the opportunity to teach how to direct music in church, and I have been able to continue my study of voice through teaching beginner voice lessons. I am so grateful that my family and my lovely voice teacher Rebecca have been able to prepare me for these moments that I may share the love of God through my works and services. (Speaking of Family...HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY CLAYTON!!!!!!!!!!!) But one of the main services we are right now doing, which is the influence of the title, you guessed it. We are teaching a wonderful twenty-four year old investigator named Luna, how to ride a bike! I applaud you Dad and/or Mom who helped me learn how to ride my bike (my memory is a bit fuzzy on who actually taught me...might have been from the frequent falls) because by golly is it hard!! You don't want to let go of the bike but you know you have to if you want them to learn. I have come to realize more of Gods love by teaching someone how to use a bike. God wants us to be like him because that is what we want. It is just as painful for him to watch us fail or struggle as for a father watching his little girl falling and failing on a bicycle. He doesn't want to let go of our bikes as we learn how to live but if we are to progress and learn fully He has to let go. And so he does. But he is always there to catch us when we fall. He may not be holding the bike anymore but he never leaves us alone.

Wow..that got deep quick...I guess that just means that I am becoming even more a missionary. Another way we as missionaries have taught is through the teachings of English classes or French. Me personally its only English, sorry everyone I'm not that good at the language yet but I'm working on it. Anyways we are teaching a less active sister who is from Brazil and only speaks Portuguese, how to speak English. She has a wonderful dream to live in Utah where the church is so strong, which is amazing! But here's the difficult part...neither of us speak Portuguese. However Sister Munive has been able to explain things through Spanish and I am able to teach grammar and pronunciation principles by insane hand gestures that I like to think is an interpretive dance. Seriously though, the gift of tongues, or the power given through God to speak other languages, is so true. As part of a previous lesson I had given this sister the English Book of Mormon that I had brought from home. Inside of it was a written testimony who I am assuming was written by either Jesse or Clayton my brothers. I had completely forgotten about that when I gave her the book and then the next time we came over to teach her she said "I want to read this in my language, will you help me translate it." She was so touched by the spirit she felt when she read the testimony that she started crying. The next Sunday she was at church! Thank you to whoever wrote that testimony, it has been translated into French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Not to mention it has helped bring someone back to church.

This week as a district we fasted, or in other words refrained from food and drink for twenty-four hours. This is a way that we can feel closer to our God by our sacrifice and in return he gives us even greater blessings, whether it be through answers to specific questions or help and comfort when we need it. We had begun to feel a little discouraged. Our appointments kept getting cancelled and no one we talked to seemed to be interested in our church. We decided to fast together for the missionary work of our area to become what God wants it to be. We definitely felt the effects this week. Sister Munive and I received two new investigators, and others in the district received similar blessings. I am going to take the time  to tell you about one of our investigators. Her name is Sarina. And this is the story of how we met her. Sister Munive and I were feeling down after both of our meal appointments canceled, the sisters serving in Terrebonne invited us to their wards corn boil (and yes that is a thing here, imagine sacks and sacks of corn. Why did this never happen in Illinois??) We were talking to the members when one member comes up and talks to us. He said he was walking by the road cleaning up the church grounds when a woman walks by. She stopped and looked at the church sign and so he went up and talked to her. He invited her to the corn boil that was happening in the parking lot. This brother introduced us to Sarina, we gave her a tour of the church building and when she saw the chapel she called up her friend to come and see it. She said that it was the most beautiful chapel she has seen. In my eyes I have always thought the church buildings of our church to be more functional than beautiful, so out of curiosity I asked her why she felt that way? She replied with how beautiful the feeling of the building was. I honestly don't think I'll look at our chapels in any other way than beautiful just from hearing that simple little phrase.

I am loving the work here. And I am loving the opportunity to have these amazing things happen. In my mind I see miracles everyday and it isn't until I look back at those moments through writing these emails/blog posts that I realize just how miraculous the things I have seen are. I love Mascouche and I love the people. And I am loving being a missionary for my church, and spreading the happiness and love that I have found through these gospels.

Je vous aime

Soeur Cummings  

Miracle story

Dear family,

So here's the crazy miracle story from the week! Both Sister Smith and I were completely caught off guard last Monday when our miracle investigator Haley that I have been writing about texted us telling us that she felt the church wasn't for her and that she was going to explore different churches so that she could "find herself." Haley has had the spirit testify of truth to her over and over again and she has seen so many miracles happen while investigating, so we decided to stop by so that we could talk to her in person. When we did Haley expressed some surface-level concerns to us, but it seems that the real concern is a matter of not wanting to live one of the commandments we taught her. Sister Smith and I were very bold with her. We basically told her that we loved her too much to allow her to say no to something that we knew would bless her so much. This was one lesson that the spirit was definitely the one testifying rather than Sister Slade. Then I asked Haley if I could share some scriptures with her and we read some of the verses in Alma 32. Afterwards I started to share my testimony with Haley of how I knew just taking action and planting a small seed, then nourishing it patiently and diligently, would allow her testimony to grow into something great. Haley stopped me mid-sentence completely in shock. She told us that she had had a dream the night before where she saw herself planting a seed, with a voice in the background saying word for word what I had just been saying. It wasn't until I said it that she realized that it had been my voice she heard in the dream. The spirit was so strong. Although her baptism will need to be pushed back, we are still going to be teaching Haley because she knows that Heavenly Father has given her so many signs that this is the path she needs to be on. Such a miracle! Please keep her in your prayers.

Emma's baptism was amazing! The miracle there was that her mom agreed to come to the baptism, when up to this point she has been completely antagonistic about Emma's decision to be baptized. Her mom cried and cried throughout the whole thing, and would hardly talk to anyone there because she was so mad about "losing her daughter." You would think the world was ending. It was cool to see how Emma handled the whole thing. Even though she comforted her mom and tried to make it the best possible experience for her, she was very firm in her decision. The strength of many of these investigators who choose to follow the Savior amazes me! They inspire me to be more devoted and more resolute in choosing what's right, especially in the face of opposition.

I'll close with a quick quote from an amazing talk by President Hinckley called "Find the Lambs, Feed the Sheep." (read it! It's amazing!): "Let there be cultivated an awareness in every member’s heart of his own potential for bringing others to a knowledge of the truth. Let him work at it. Let him pray with great earnestness about it...My heart reaches out to you missionaries. You simply cannot do it alone and do it well. You must have the help of others. That power to help lies within each of us. But you must do all you can. You must be anxiously engaged. When you are not working on referrals of members, you must be developing those referrals yourselves through tracting and related means...Now, my brethren and sisters, we can let the missionaries try to do it alone, or we can help them. If they do it alone, they will knock on doors day after day and the harvest will be meager. Or as members we can assist them in finding and teaching investigators." Thank you so much for everything that each of you has done for me and continues to do for me. The missionaries need YOU!!! Your brothers and sisters need YOU. Heavenly Father needs YOU. I would love to hear about the amazing missionary experiences you are all having! (Remember, success is not when they say yes, you succeed every time you invite!)

Love you all!

Love, Sister Slade

Wallace and Korena took us to tour the USS NIMITZ for P-Day today!

 Sister Glancy and Sister Bartsch were able to come to Emma’s baptism!

Area Changes

Dear Friends and Family:

Elder Felkins transferred and trained, but at transfer meeting we found out that that meant that our area was splitting. He now has the south part of the Miami Shores Creole area - his new area is called Miami Beach Creole. Me and my new companion, Elder Fisher, are still in Miami Shores Creole, although our own boundaries have changed a lot and so now it's not even close to the way that it was when I started my mission here.

Our area now covers just the ward, not the branch. This is unfortunate, because all of our current investigators had been in the branch. So, I don't know what has been happening with Steve and Gasner, who we were teaching before the area split. And Elder Fisher and I have been working hard to try to find new investigators.

Our area also expanded more to the north. We now cover all of the new Fort Lauderdale Stake, although we only attend the Miami Shores Ward, which is the new Haitian Creole magnet ward for the stake. This means that our area now includes the temple! Yay! And our area still includes the Krispy Kreme on 6th avenue and 167th street! Yay again!

At the moment, we have two progressing investigators who we are very excited for. We found both of them this week.

First of all, Raymond F. Two days ago, we were knocking, and we knocked into a member's apartment. Viola F. was baptized in Haiti, but she hadn't been to church for several years. After she went inactive, she married her husband, and only recently they moved to America together. They have one baby boy, who keeps vomiting when they try to feed him, and who cries almost constantly when he is not sleeping, and the doctors have no idea what is wrong with him. Viola Francois was praying for help when we knocked on her door. We prayed with the family, and we invited them to come to church. She took this as a sign that God wanted her to start going to church again, and she and her husband came to church yesterday! (They were there late, and we didn't see them come in, so they missed our ward's sacrament, but somehow they were herded into the Spanish ward's sacrament after going to Sunday school, and so they saw the sacrament!) Raymond Francois is excited to be baptized. He has a soft date for this Sunday.

Also, Jean P. came to church, but he was too late to see the sacrament, and we didn't think about trying to sit with him in the Spanish ward's sacrament meeting, so he didn't see the sacrament but he's still very excited to work towards being baptized on the 7th. The sisters knocked into him, and he called us asking for us to come over and teach him. We were happy to oblige.

As for my new companion: I love Elder Fisher a lot, and I am excited to keep working with him. He is a very good influence, and he makes me want to keep working harder and to see more and more incredible miracles. He was born in Canada, but he moved to California when he was five, so at this point he's probably more Californian than he is Canadian. He likes to collect bugs, freeze them to kill them, and then stick needles through them to make them form a pose until they dry up, at which point he takes most of the needles out and he has a dried up trophy. Yesterday, while we were waiting for my food to cook in the oven, he went and caught a huge banana spider in our back yard, and he is keeping it in a large jar on his desk. It's still alive, for the moment.

Thanks,

Bonjour Tout le Monde!

Golly the time keeps going faster and faster! My beautiful cousin Brittany *cough* I mean Sister Slade was completely right! I heard this phrase often in the mission but I'm not sure if its a quote from something but its "The days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days." I don't think you could get more accurate.

This past week the ward here hosted a blood drive. I have been struggling with allergies and so when I was asked if I am feeling healthy I had to say no. Therefore failing the first question and not being able to give blood. But it is my promise that once I return from my mission I will give blood. (Hear that Mom and Dad? I'm getting over my fear of needles! Your little girl is growing up!) It was especially amazing to see my wonderful companion, Sister Munive, give blood. She having an even greater fear of needles than I. Through a lot of guilt-tripping she started to think "what if I gave blood?" this escalated to the point of her getting her finger pricked. She was so nervous and in my heart I said a prayer that she receive the courage to donate the blood. When the time came she didn't even cry. I am so proud of my missionary Mama! She is such an example to me through everything she does.

Here's a little funny moment. We were cleaning the car and found a Classical music CD that had been left by sisters who had used the car before us. Sister Munive and I, both realizing that we loved classical music, popped it into the player and listened to it. We were on the road heading to one of our appointments when the track switched and started playing the Wedding march by Felix Mendelssohn. We stopped our conversation mid sentence, looked at each other, and realizing we had the same image of a white dress, bursted into laughter. It wasn't until we had driven two blocks that we stopped laughing.

As missionaries we teach many many lessons about the gospel and about Jesus Christ. Each missionary has a different way of teaching, which makes being in a companionship the best thing that can happen. We have an investigator Maria-Claude who is Baptist and attends her church every week, each week taking notes so that she may fully understand what her pastor is talking about. Sister Munive and I realized that she didn't really understand the importance of the book of Mormon. I had no idea how to really get through to her, but thankfully my companion did. She drew out two circles, labeling them as the Bible and the Book of Mormon. She then drew a picture of God on one side of the paper. She explained that churches who believe only the bible have trouble following all the true principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, She named off a few major branches of churches in today's world, each time she drew a line threw the circle labeled "Bible". Each time the line would miss God, it would grow close to God but it would miss it. There was only one line that was able to be drawn to God and that was through the Book of Mormon. When you only have one nail in a piece of wood, that wood would be able to move everywhere, it would not be able to stay in one spot. However when you add a second nail the piece of wood cannot move. This is the same with the Book of Mormon and Bible. Without one, the wood or the line moves making it difficult to find Christ. But together they provide a straight and narrow path to God that cannot be changed. When Sister Munive taught this the spirit was so strong. We asked her what she was studying right now in her church. She replied with Nehemiah 1 (warning my spelling may be off.) The next day for Companionship study we discussed how we could relate this story to the Book of Mormon. After saying a prayer we immeadiatly realized how similar Nehemiah was to Enos in the Book of Mormon. We returned with a lesson to Maria-Claude relaying our findings from our study. And yet again the spirit was so strong. To those unfamiliar with Nehemiah 1 it is the story of a prophet grieving for his people through prayer and asking questions. Enos went through a similar situation, in fact he poses many of the same questions and demands as Nehemiah, however unlike Nehemiah, Enos wrote down the responses of the Lord for us to read in this day. This experienced increased my testimony in the truthfulness of these wonderful scriptures who through divine power teach together all of God's word. I am so glad I was able to experience that.

I love hearing from you! I don't get much time but know that I read every email.

Je vous aime

Soeur Cummings