Jwaye Nwel! (Joyous Christmas!)

I had a great time talking to my family. It was great to see them again, after 3.25 months (Dec. 25 - Sep. 17 ~= 3.25 months). My mission is going by so fast. We've already had one mission conference; I'm about halfway through my second transfer in-field; there are only two days left in my first year on my mission!

This week in my study of the Book of Mormon, I've been nearing 3 Nephi 11. The suspense is killing me, but I've still got a few days to go before I'm there. One thing that I learned is that secret combinations are bad. I've said it before, but this time I'm actually applying it to myself. The point of secret combinations is to hide your own evil works and to get out of punishment for them. With that definition, it's not just knives in the dark that count as secret combinations, it's any time you undertake to cover your own sins. Secret combinations always detract from your own agency, and infringe on the agency of others. And "when we undertake to cover our sins, [...] in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the spirit of the Lord is grieved, and when it is withdrawn, Amen to [our] priesthood or authority".

On Christmas Eve, we were harvesting in the morning, and we had a miracle. We found someone who was hesitant to be baptized; she had already been baptized, and she didn't feel like she needed to again. But she decided to come to church. When we told her it was called "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," she opened up and told us a story of how a couple days ago, she had been invited to the same church by Cash Monestine (an RM - returned 2 weeks ago, leaving for college this week) and she said she thought it was a funny coincidence. We testified that it was not a coincidence, and that it really is Christ's church, and God was giving her a second opportunity to accept the invitation. It was an great experience.

Last Saturday, we were having a terrible day. We were driving down extremely far south for the day, because we had an investigator to see and a potential investigator to follow up with. We drove down with our member; it turned out that the potential investigator gave us a fake address; we decided to harvest until our appointment with the investigator. Then the member said that he had to be home before the appointment could start. We tried to call and reschedule with our investigator, but she said she couldn't get there earlier; so we drove back north again to drop off our member. We proceeded to look for another member to take out with us for half an hour, last minute, but nobody could come. So we drove back south to get a non-member-present lesson with her, and it turns out she had to cancel on us because she was being held up. So just like that, we wasted 5 hours and 50 miles without anything to show for it. We still hadn't eaten or harvested for an hour. We only had time to do one or the other before we had more appointments, so we chose to sacrifice in order to be exactly obedient. That's when the day started turning around, and we started seeing miracles. We had three very amazing harvest blessings, and for the rest of the night we had three amazing member present lessons, and three new investigators. What's funny is that none of the three lessons we had were with the people we had scheduled to see. I firmly believe that none of this would have happened if we had not chosen to be exactly obedient. It was a very humbling experience, and it may have been the best two hours I've had on my mission so far.

We're going to be doing an exchange some time this week, but we don't know when or any of the details.

Thanks for everything!

Eldè Slade

Some Christmas lights both of my companion and I.

 I'm practicing my Haitian pose. I need to work on my frown a bit, it's too much like a smile. (Part of their culture is that they don't smile in photos. At least, the Haitians that aren't too Americanized.)

Miracle of the Week!

It was so nice to talk to you guys on Christmas! I feel like it was just a teaser- there is so much more we could have talked about and the time went so fast! Oh well. Next time we talk it will be mothers day, then after that we'll be talking in person after I finish my mission!

I've been sick the last few days so that has been absolutely horrible. We've still been able to go out and work, but we haven't slept well and both Sister Glancy and I feel totally wiped out. Hopefully we can get some good sleep later today if we have time. Dave and Marg sent me some money and a Christmas card, and I think we're going to use it to go get pedicures later today!

A less active named Alexandra came to church on Sunday! We've decided to have our less actives begin fellowshipping our less actives, so we took her to our lesson with Juan and had sort of a joint teaching appointment, and what do you know, she was at church! So that was exciting.

Unfortunately we weren't able to meet with James, but hopefully this coming Tuesday. Our return appointment with Keith fell through as well, so hopefully we will be able to contact him again. Member missionary work really is the way to go. We found out about transfer calls today and both Elder Combe and Elder Caruso are staying, so we are really excited about some training we are going to be doing with the ward in the next few weeks! The format that Elder Caruso came up with is a "Mini MTC" with break-out sessions and a ward pizza party at the end. I will be teaching the break-out session on "setting goals and making plans" and we are using the rest of our ward activities budget to buy copies of "The Power of Everyday Missionaries" to give to each person in the ward. (If you have not read that book then you need to get a copy!!!!) The stake president and President Bonham will be attending, so we're hoping to make this a successful event!

Miracle of the week! We were in the apartment complex that Alvaro lives in (One of the less actives/ recent converts we've been working with) and we decided to stop by even though we were pretty sure he would be working, in hopes that one of his older brothers would answer the door (Missionaries are sneaky that way :)) Well Alvaro's brother Chudokan answered! We had sort of a mini restoration lesson there on the doorstep, but Chudokan was hesitant to set up a time to meet and talk some more, even to join one of our lessons with Alvaro, so we weren't sure how interested he was. The next day we met Alvaro for a lesson at McD's and apparently Chudokan told Alvaro we had stopped by and was asking him questions, including if he could read "that book that you have." We role played with Alvaro and he is going to invite his brother to meet with us!!!

Fun fact for ya- we learned from a high councilman that we ran into this week that apparently 90% of the people baptized in many of the Seattle Mission YSA wards are from China. There are a few in our ward that were recently baptized, so the Elders have organized a mandarin sunday school class with one of the RM's that served his mission in Taiwan, while Sister Glancy and I attend the Gospel Principles class.

Love y'all! Don't forget to keep me updated on all of your amazing missionary experiences are going!

Sister Slade

Christmas!

Dear Family

This week while I was studying the Book of Mormon, I started making a list of ways that faith is strengthened - my own, and my investigators. The list is still in progress so I'm not going to share it. Also, in reading the scriptures, I've tried to apply them to myself so that I can know how to become a better missionary. Some of the things I've noticed are that we need to teach with meekness; and in D&C there's a scripture that asks something along the lines of "why will you continue to be blind guides" that I found by accident. I have scripture references that were meaningful written down, but they are not with me at the moment.

Yesterday, during companionship study we were studying chapter 11 and we both had a very revelatory experience. We both realized that PMG says pretty clearly that we should leave almost no conversations with anybody without inviting them to do something to come unto Christ. So we have committed ourselves for this week to do that with everybody we talk to, with the exception of other missionaries. We feel like this commitment was inspired of God and that he was guiding our studies through the spirit. It was a very meaningful study all in all. My relationship with my companion is getting much better. (Not that it was ever bad, it was just not as good.) I feel that that is the main reason the study was so great.

Thanks for the 12 days of Christmas gifts! We were able to guess all of them so far except for the pictures of Nathan and Mom and Dad, the hot chocolate, the jam/jelly, and the nativity set.

We used bikes a ton today. It was fun, I'm getting much more used to it, but it was also very physically exhausting. But we got back on track with our miles, so that means this week we'll be able to use our car more.

I don't have much time to email today so that's where I'll end.

Thanks,

Elder Slade

Christmas!

Hey family! I LOVE YOU!!!!

We had a mission Christmas program this morning and it was amazing! The spirit was so strong!

We have seen so many miracles this week! It seems that the Lord likes to test us- He leads us right to the end of where we think we are about to reach our limit, just to see if we will still give Him our all. Then right when we're not sure how much longer we can do it, He showers us with blessings!

The first miracle of the week is that we made contact with Samantha! Samantha is a former that the Elders taught. She's been through the discussions twice, has a testimony, and has been on date for baptism twice, but the adversary works hard, and both times she fell off date because she got so busy and I think the commitment started to scare her. We've been trying to contact her since getting here, and we finally found her at home! We sat down with her and had a great time getting to know her and talking about how she has come to know that this is the direction that she wants to pursue! Now that she is not as busy she is going to talk with her aunt who is a member about the best date to be baptized. When we meet with her again on Wednesday we're going to take Elder Combe's advice to "Just baptize her already." haha :)

So many fun things this week! Friday night we had ward Karaoke, and it was a BLAST! I seriously have not have that much fun in a long time! It was like I was a totally normal person or something... :) Everyone has been telling me that once you go YSA as a missionary you never want to go back, and I think I agree! We also had a huge turnout to volleyball, and F.H.E, both of which had a few not-yet members attend! Oh! And we invited Mark, one of our potentials to Karaoke, and he texted us later saying he couldn't come, but when he gets back into town in the new year he would like to sit down with us and learn more! :) Saturday we went caroling as a district and it was the greatest! Some of the Elders weren't too fond of the idea, but I think they secretly had fun.

HUGE miracle from yesterday- we were in the foyer talking with people right before sacrament meeting and this guy walks in with his pants soaking wet because he rode his motorcycle to church. (Why would you own a motorcycle in Washington!?) It took us a few moments to recognize him, but he pulled out one of our cards and showed us the address we had written on the back of it- turns out we knocked on this guys door last week and invited him to church! Don't you love it when random people you invited to church show up out of nowhere!? We were able to talk with James right before he left, and we set up an appointment for later this week, and he is also going to be coming to Christmas Eve dinner at Bishops with us and the zone leaders. In the words of Bishop Knoblaugh, "That's how you net them... oops, I mean... reach out to them." :)

We had a stroke of inspiration from the spirit and took an inactive individual we've been working with as our fellowshipper to a lesson with Jose this week. The spirit was strong and she did a wonderful job! Afterwards she said that she wanted to come to church!!! Unfortunately she got really sick so she wasn't able to make it, but next weeks the wek!

Oh! So crazy thing that happened- we went to visit this less active guy named Juan, and when get there he starts talking about the "Elder Burgi" that baptized him when he was in California. Sister Glancy was like, "Hold up, hold up!" Turns out, Elder Burgi is Sister Glancy's best friend that got back from his mission a few months before she left. Juan called Andrew Burgi right there, and put him on speaker phone and said, "Hey Elder Burgi, you'll never guess who's sitting in my living room!" We didn't talk to him of course, but it was crazy! Juan ended up having a really great conversation with "his missionary" afterwards, and I think that that connection meant a lot to him. The best part is... Juan showed up to church yesterday!!!! The Lord works in mysterious ways, let me tell you.

So many more things to talk about... I guess I;ll just have to save them until Wednesday. :) Love ya!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

love, love, love, Sister Slade

 Sister Glancy and I (above) and it snowed - my little snowman (below).

God sees you us as we can become, but loves us as we are!

Hello family,

This week has been a test of my faith. Sister Glancy and I have been working really hard. I don't think I've been more exhausted my entire mission, but I also have never had fewer people to teach. Nevertheless, the Lord ALWAYS keeps His promises, and even when he decides that He wants to test my patience and diligence, I always know that if I hold out until the end, He will bless me. Sister Glancy and I have had some WONDERFUL tender mercies this week. Here are a few of them:

Last Tuesday Sister Glancy and I focused a lot on less active work and were blessed to teach 5 lessons to less active individuals- 2 of which were unplanned! Some of these individuals have agreed to be taught the missionary lessons, which we are really excited about, especially since I have seen this help a lot with reactivations in the past. A few of these individuals even showed up at our ward Christmas party on Saturday, so that was really exciting!

Towards the end of the week we were starting to lose steam. We had 5 or 6 lessons with potential investigators scheduled, and all of them had fallen through. Very few times on my mission have I had a week where we did not find at least one new investigator when I could honestly say that we had worked as hard as we possibly could. Saturday came around, and we were SO grateful to hear back from a guy named Yassine that we were still good to come over later that day! Yassine is 27 and he going to school here although he is actually from Morocco. We found out that he is a nonpracticing Muslim, but he stayed with a Christian host family a few years ago here, and he said that he went to church with them a few times. He said that he would get emotional whenever he was in church, and there was one time that he saw somebody be baptized and he felt really warm and like he was going to cry. Ever since then he has been experiencing a growing curiosity about Christianity. We focused our lesson around recognizing the holy ghost and his purpose in testifying of truth. It was touching to me to hear how Yassine has had these experiences that have helped to prepare him to learn more about the gospel of Jesus Christ!

One thing that we are going to have to work out this next week is that we found out that we need special permission from President Bonham to teach a Muslim. Hopefully Yassine isn't too intimidated to allow President Bonham to join us for our lesson on Tuesday. Not only that but if someone who is Muslim decides that they want to be baptized, a member of the seventy has to come to interview, and the candidate for baptism essentially has to promise that they will never go back to the middle east again because of the potential violence that could happen to them there. I've been going over different scenarios in my head, and over the last few days I've asked myself a few times- Do I have enough faith in this message that we share that I could invite someone to be baptized, knowing full well that the implications of that may be complete loss of family, friends, and culture? Another question I've been contemplating that I've actually wondered a lot on my mission, is why is it that I was born into a family that has the gospel of Jesus Christ and taught me about it from a young age?

I had an amazing experience during my personal study one day this week where I felt like everything that I needed to study was being given to me. It was like the spirit was enlightening my mind; a continual flow of thoughts and questions and scriptures and it was the coolest experience that has happened to me a few times on my mission so far! The topic that I felt was given to me to study this week was sacrifice. Why are we required to sacrifice, and what examples of sacrifice have we had in the past? I don't have nearly enough time to express everything that I learned, but here are a few quotes I thought about during my study that I will leave for you to think about too. The first is a quote by Elder Holland in a talk called "Missionary Work and the Atonement"- I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionaries and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary. Now, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about anything anywhere near what Christ experienced. That would be presumptuous and sacrilegious. But I believe that missionaries and investigators, to come to the truth, to come to salvation, to know something of this price that has been paid, will have to pay a token of that same price." The other quote I loved is from an individual who was in the Martin Handcart Company: "The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay, and I am thankful that I was privileged to come in the Martin Handcart Company."

Sister Glancy's family sent her some Christmas decorations, so we decorated a little tree earlier this week. I'm loving opening my 12 days of Christmas, by the way! Sister Glancy and I did find some ugly Christmas sweater vests from the local Goodwill, in case you are wondering. And yes, we do make ugly sweaters look good. Maybe if we proselyte in them enough we'll find more investigators. Or perhaps we should just proselyte in Seahawks jerseys- i don't know if anyone else is aware of how the football season is going, but based off of hearsay at people's doors I've been predicting a Seahawks-Broncos faceoff in the Superbowl for a few weeks now!

I love you all and can't wait to talk to you next week!

Love, Sister Slade

Harvesting

First of all, thanks for all of the letters and packages! They mean a lot to me. Especially thanks for the 12 days of Christmas package. I opened day 11 on day 1, and I'll open day 1 on day 11. Thanks for everything!

This week from my study in the Book of Mormon I have been reading in Alma, near the end. It's a bunch of war chapters. One thing that I noticed that I am going to try to apply to my own life is that the 2000 stripling warriors are obedient because they have faith: "according to their faith it was done unto them." So even though it's hard to be 100% obedient in everything, I know that if I have faith and rely on the Lord he will help me do it. Also, in the same chapter, it states that faith is a gift from God, and if we pray and sincerely ask for it, then he will bless us with an increased testimony and greater faith.

Probably the greatest spiritual experience I had this week was on Monday. We were harvesting after helping install a printer for a member, and we were both doing our best to make the harvest session meaningful. We only received two blessings, but I felt the spirit very strongly and I want to do my best to have the same sort of experiences every time we harvest. Another time this week, we harvested into a husband and wife - the husband was stuck in bed because of a car accident, and the wife had to work to provide for the two of them. That blessing was another spiritual experience, and it really increased my faith that the miracle of healing can happen through faith.

Transfers are this week, that's why my P-Day is a Tuesday. My companion and I are both staying, but we live with the zone leaders and one of them is going home this week. The other is returning at the end of this next transfer. So I'll find out who the next zone leader is tomorrow, who I'll be living with.

The ward I'm serving in is going to split at the end of this year. When it does, we will be going to both the ward and the branch that is splitting off. So each Sunday we will have 6-7 hours of church. Add in our 3 hours of studies somewhere, an hour of harvesting, an hour of round up, and an hour between the two meetings, and that's our day. Busy, busy.

The language is coming slowly, but it is coming. I understand much more today than I did a month ago, but I still have a long way to go before I can actually speak Haitian Creole fluently.

A funny harvesting experience: this week after we said the prayer, we all stood up and the person we were praying with ripped his pants while he was standing. That was awkward.

We had another exchange this week. The difference is that I took over the area, while my companion went somewhere else. I drove for the first time in Miami. I was terrified, but I didn't crash and I didn't make any huge mistakes. I was more than ready for that transfer to end - I wasn't sure what to do at any given time.

We biked a while yesterday because we've used a lot of miles this month. Then we locked the keys to our car in the car's trunk, and the car was locked. A senior missionary had to drive down from the mission office in order to unlock it for us. That was fun.

Now I'm out of time.

Thanks,

Elder Slade

Tracting Lots

Hey family,

It feels like so much happens during the week and then I sit down to write an email and I really don't know what to say. It was so great to hear about the cruise that you guys went on! And I LOVED the pictures! Hopefully I'll get more personal accounts of the trip from all the siblings soon... :)

The highlight of this week was teaching Jose again. He is our only solid investigator in our very shallow teaching pool, and we are very grateful for him! In our lesson on Tuesday he asked us if baptism is important (What a golden question!) and he agreed to a soft commit for baptism. :) Unfortunately he got sick this weekend so we had to cancel our lesson on Saturday and he wasn't able to make it to church yesterday, but hopefully this next week! We also have a few other potential investigators that we have lessons scheduled with, so pray that some if not all of them will follow through!

Being in this area and feeling like we are starting from ground zero has really been making me stretch, and I absolutely love it. I don't think I've ever worked so hard in my life. I feel absolutely exhausted all of the time, and every morning that we fall out of bed I have to pray for a while just begging Heavenly Father to give me the energy and desire I need to give my all that day. He always pulls through for me. In Oak Harbor Sister Anderson and I had built up the area to the point that we had some days we were teaching back-to-back lessons. We thought that we were exhausted from that, but Sister Glancy and I are finding (mostly tracting) all day long and that's definitely harder. It's started to get really cold, which makes it harder because nobody wants their door open, even if they're polite, for more than 10 seconds. As a result of this, Sister Glancy and I have started to get creative. We've sung hymns at doors a few times, we've asked people what they think Santa's favorite kind of cookie is, and we've started carrying a stocking around with us and asking people to write on a sticky note their gift to the Savior for the coming year and put it inside the stocking. It always makes us happy when people agree to participate! ( Side note from my personal study this week- God the Father and Jesus Christ are both creators of circumstances, not creatures of circumstances. I have learned that creativity is a Godlike attribute.)

One thing that I am learning over and over again, is that this work absolutely without a doubt cannot move forward without the members. Some days we knock doors all day long with visibly no success and very few people who even give us the chance to testify, and that's frustrating. If you trust the missionaries in your wards, please please please please PLEASE invite your friends to learn from the missionaries! Invite them to come to church! Invite them to attend your family home evenings! Invite like crazy! You succeed when you invite, whether they say yes or no, and if you are inviting because you care about someone, the invitation will never be taken the wrong way. Can you imagine what would happen if ever member of the church invited one of their friends to learn from the missionaries before Christmas? I can't wait to hear about all of your missionary experiences- both the ones that resulted in a yes and the ones that resulted in a no! In the words of my old District Leader, "GO, GO, BAPTIZE!!"

This week my study has been focused a lot on the theme of how God always keeps his promises. The scriptures are filled with "IF-THEN" promises that are absolutely incredible. Some of the scriptures I have found have been so powerful to me that Sister Glancy and I have turned our door into a "promise door" where we can look at sticky notes that have promises written on them whenever we leave the apartment each day. How about this one: "If ye are faithful, then ye shall be laden with many sheaves." Sounds pretty straight forward to me. I can't wait until Heavenly Father rewards our hard work by giving us more investigators than we can handle ourselves.

Later today Sister Glancy and I are going thrift shopping to see if we can find any ugly Christmas sweaters for the ward Christmas party this Saturday. I think I'm also going to see if I can find some more tights, I've been tripling up on tights and I'm still freezing. We've had a few close calls where Sister Glancy almost had to amputate my toes.

Love, Sister Slade

P.S. We've been trying to come up with a name for our GPS, and so far it's a tie between "Lost" and "Sister Garmin" What are your thoughts?