Monday, October 14, 2013

A new companion and a fresh start!

Bonjour ma famille!

C'est très différent ici en Guyane! D'abord Elder Fraley et moi sont plus tout seul et j'ai reçu un nouveaux collège missionnaire!  Well I'll leave the French there so I can write faster.... haha.  But things are going awesome down here and I'm really starting to have fun doing the work!

I think I'll just start where I left off last time! So All 4 of the missionaries drove to St Laurent du Maroni to the Suriname border (oh by the way we are going to zone conference on Wednesday, in Suriname, just thought I'd slip that in there in case I forget later on... but I'm super excited, and I'm certain that its zone conference this time) anyways, we dropped of Elder Maoni and Santos to cross the river in the canoes and Elder Fraley and I had to drive back by ourselves, which is why we stopped and took pictures along the way.  We had to stop at a checkpoint and I was super worried about it because we weren't sure what to say and I forgot my I.D. haha  But luckily they just waved us through.  We stayed at Elder Fraleys residence while it was just us two.  Most of the time we spent in their area because they had a lot more set appointments and people to see and, well... we didn't.  But I felt great with Elder Fraley.  I know that the Lord helped me out with the language a ton!  Without that we would have not done too much haha! To be honest, I took over a lot of the lessons and I was able to understand a lot, it was cool!  Also, we were contacting and as we were about to get into our car I waved at a guy across the street and he said that he didn't want to talk to us, so we just got into the car.  But as we were about to leave he waved us over and gave us some mangoes that he had just picked and we got his information and everything.  Then that night we were teaching a lesson with this family that I had contacted before, we went over most all of the restoration and Book of Mormon and I gave one to them to read.  I'm not sure if they've gotten any farther because they are in the other area, but at the end of the lesson they handed me a big 'ol "Pistec" which is creole for watermelon. haha.  It didn't look like a watermelon but sure enough when Elder Fraley and I ate it the next day, by ourselves, it was a watermelon. You may not believe me but it was actually really good! haha!
Braden doesn't really like watermelon so this is a surprise!

On Wednesday Elder Fraley and I drove to the Guyanese airport and picked up Elder Santos with my mystery companion.  I didn't get a transfer call or anything telling me that I was staying here or who my new companion would be, which I hear usually happens every transfer.  But when we got there I met Elder Miyasaki.  I love the guy!  Me and him  are going to change things here in Cayenne!  I've been doing A LOT of work and I'm super tired a lot of the time but I love it!  Since Elder Maoni and I honestly didn't get so much done we had to start doing a lot of contacting so that we could get some lessons.  We contacted 41 people in half a week!  It was the best!   The goal I had set with Elder Fraley, since we had to do weekly planning while it was still just us two, was 15... Now that we have some contacting in I think we'll start getting some lessons with some people!

Here are some things going on with the people we are teaching.  Eveline, I don't remember if I've talked about her before but she is Haitian and about 40 years old or so, its really hard to tell age here.  She has come to church once before but doesn't have a car or bike and so she hasn't been coming for a while.  She has a hard time reading and also a hard time understanding our lessons so we've been going really slow. When we invite her to be baptized she always says "no no I'm not ready" or the creole equivalent even though I feel like she is, or at least it would help to set a date and we could get her ready.   But the last time she said she would be ready in 2014, haha its not great but its a step forward!  She also said the next time we see her she's going to make us banane pesé.  I'm excited.

Elder Miyasaki is from Hawaii and he's been out 7 months and we are getting along great!  Also we are working hard, its the best!

About conference...we missed the first session because we were driving to and from St Laurent du Maroni. Then Elder Fraley and I went to the rest but we watched it in French and it was really difficult to understand...

I got the letter from Kenzie and Sabey two weeks ago or so and I got one from.... oh man I forgot her name, if I had the letter with me I would know but she lives in Shadow Mountain and she sent a letter that went to the MTC and they forwarded it to me.  It was really nice, next week I'll tell you her name and I want you to thank her for me.

I love you all so much and things are going great here! Je vous aime!! Merci beaucoup pour toutes vos prières et toutes vos lettres!

Avec amour,
Elder Call