Baptism in Trinite

Bonjour ma famille!

Hello!! So apparently the cyber base is closing in 5 minutes so I don't know if I will be able to get a full letter off in time I am so sorry!!  This week was a little slow, we couldn't find too much time to get to people.  We had a long ways to drive and there were a lot of lessons that fell through as soon as we got to the place we were supposed to go to.  But there were a lot of fun things that happened this week.  First of all was the baptism on Saturday and then that night we had the Celebration 2015 at the church.  Honestly the preparation wasn't the greatest, but they ended up having some pretty fun stuff.  The best were the Créole dances with President Occulier, his wife, Sr. Jean-de-Dieu, and some other guy they got to join the dance. He was really funny.  He was kind of a party crasher and when there was some technical difficulties he grabbed the microphone and just started talking, nobody knew who he was haha.

So I'm sorry I don't have a lot of time, but with the PMG study I think we are going to have to change it to 1 chapter a week and I am starting ch.2 this week.

Things are going FINE mom... Things are tough sure, they'll always be tough but I am doing fine, I am studying a lot about hope and faith and there are some really cool talks by Uchtdorf about that.  I haven't seen to much success from my own work but I have come to know the Lord and I am learning so much about how the gospel works.  I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I love you all sorry!!!!!

Oh and I got your letter!!! Thanks!!!

Love,
Elder Call

Short letter, no pictures

Bonjour tout le monde!

This past week was a little tough on the numbers and we werent able to get more than one lesson with a member and 2 lessons with a recent convert or less active. We had quite a bit of other lessons which is fine, but I would rather the others.  Fr. Coiné left for France for a month and Sr. Martial's phone stopped working at her house which took out most if not all of our regular membership work. We finally were able to stop by at a time where Sr. Martial was at home Saturday.  I had been a little worried that we hadn't seen her for some time but all is well.  She was really excited to see us and she even got up the courage, on her own, to call her friend Betty that she had been telling us about for a long time.  I am really excited to see Betty.  I am praying very hard to be able to see her and teach her.  Apparently she has asked Sr. Martial if she could come to church and meet the missionaries.  ALSO she has a 7 seater van that could very well be the answer to many prayers and fasts of finding a way to get people to church!   Sr. Martial should be seeing her today and inviting her to talk with us throughout the week as well as to church and also the celebration 2015 AND a primary activity that will be going on soon with her kids. This can go so well and I pray it does. First is to make contact though.

We still havent gotten contact with Ricardo, Dana was not able to come to church because her kids had something going on, and René was supposed to come to church but there was a problem with our member and picking him up, if I understand correctly. He is hard to understand on the phone. I'm going to talk to the Fr. Occulier to find out what really happend.

This week had been really good for my studies. I may have to bump up the PMG reading a little faster or it could take a while to finish it. Anywho some things I learned going through ch.1 is that most of the chapter is just a quick description of most all the other chapters. Our objective is explained and defined throughout all of PMG.  Most of the first chapter is referring to later chapters.  Another thing is a good scripture I found in Alma 62:45 if I sited that correctly it should talk about having power and authority in teaching (I read it in French so I can't make a good English translation) It said he talk with "a great power and authority, to the point of converting many" or along those lines.  How I understood it was that we HAVE to teach with authority but the comma gives me the idea that the conversion of many was just an added bonus, not and actual effect or reaction to how he taught.  With no authority, there is no conversion. But no conversion does not mean there is no authority.

No time to write more!

I love you all so much! à la semaine prochaine!
avec amour,
Elder Call

Mother's Day

Bonjour!

Wow that was so fast yesterday!  I can't believe we actually skyped, I can't believe we spent most of the time talking about cheese either. haha Oh well, it was enough to see all your faces and hear your voices again!  Sadly I really can't think of what to talk about now after we skyped! 

This week was a little rough, I had to take over the area with Elder Glover coming in with no idea what's going on in the area. Its tough having to take over the planning all by yourself.  That's probably one of the toughest things for me, I have a hard time thinking of what to do throughout each day. Usually I try to make appointments a couple days in advance so that when we get to the nightly planning session I have a full day ahead of me with maybe a couple hours to fill up. But every so often I get those days where the page is blank and I have no idea what to do during the entire day. I would love to fill in time by seeing members and trying to help them with their lives or missionary work, but most of them live really far away. 

I am really excited to do this PME (prêchez mon évangile) with you.  I think it will help me focus a lot more in my studies and to help me reflect and think about what I have read when I write to you.  I would also like to get your thoughts and ideas from a different point of view.  So thanks for being willing to help me out!  I am planning on starting on page one tomorrow for personal study!

My new companion is Elder Glover... I like him, we have been getting along really well.  He is from New Mexico.  Everyone thinks he is actually from Mexico so he has to explain that its a state a lot. So I like to bug him about that haha. He went to BYU for a year before he left on his mission and when he gets home he wants to study to be a neuro surgeon. 

One thing that I would really like is if you could print off the pictures that I have sent you through email and send them to me.  I like to look at my pictures but its really hard to find all of them, I bought a USB card and I have all of them on there but I can only see them if I go on a computer, I also am storing my new ones on it so I don't have any more trouble with lost photos....

The most important thing I have learned on my mission is agency and consequences. That's a little deep I know haha.  But just thinking about it I have realized that there are good choices and bad choices, and then there are good choices and better choices.  All of them have their consequence whether good, better or bad. I have seen people I teach making bad decisions and not realizing that there are bad consequences coming because of their actions. They tell me that they don't understand why bad things happen to them and that they should be able to decide what consequences come with what choice, but they can't. Then we have missionary work, and hopefully we are not deciding between good and bad, but good and better. We could go knock doors and find a really cool person that wants to be baptized, or we could talk with the members and have them invite their entire family, who invites their finds and their friends.  Every choice has a consequence, hopefully I can learn to find all the greatest choices that bring the greatest blessings.

Well that went a lot longer than I had thought, but I want you to know that I still love all of you so much! It was great to see you!  Have a great week!

avec amour,

Elder Call


Here are some pictures from our p-day adventure last week.  We toured the island and saw some waterfalls, Mt. Pele, some rubber trees and even toured a Rum Factory!  I learned lots about making rum.  Just what every missionary needs to know!  No rum was consumed, although a lot was offered.

Elder Johnson's last day

Transfers and p-day fun

Bonjour tout le monde!

SO... this week we changed P-day to Tuesday so that we could go with the Sillon family on an adventure, they've been trying to get us to do it for a while now and Tuesday is their only free day.  So this week we're doing it and they said its going to take a long time so we had to get up really early to come and do our emails before we leave.  I'm finally going to see some waterfalls!  Its about time!  Other than that they say its a surprise, I should have some good photos for next week! And lots to talk about on Sunday!

We got our transfer calls this week, Elder Johnston is going to be leaving to Guadeloupe on Wednesday. He's been here for almost 10 months now... It's about time he gets to move around.  I'm glad I didn't get stuck too long in Guyane.  I do miss it a lot but I don't think that I could last that long in one place.  Elder Glover is going to be coming down to be with me.  I met him during zone conference, I didn't get too much time to talk to him but I think I'm going to like him, he plays soccer, it should be fun.

It was a good week, I don't think we got too many new investigators.  We had one day up in les Desmariniers when we walked into a little neighborhood and were talking to one guy, then everybody started coming outside and talking with us.  We met about 10 people in a good 15 minute span.  When we gave the first guy a brochure someone else called out, "Hey can I have one too?"  and so on and so on.  We are going back on Wednesday and Elder Glover will be with me

I did get the package.  Thank you for the tie from New Zealand!  The tie with the All Blacks team is really cool!

On Sunday we are going to be Skyping at the church.  I'm getting on at 7:00 (19:00) and that should be 5:00 for you but I expect you to know the math better than I do... haha I'm so excited!!!!

We taught Dana this week and we shared a mormon message about coming to church and the spirit was so strong.  Sr. Martial who was there with us then shared an incredible story about a miracle of finding money to go to the temple.  She said that she was about to leave and she had no money but a member came up to her and said that she had set aside money for her, though she wasn't sure why she did it.

I love you all!
TALK TO YOU ON SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

avec amour,
 Elder Call

Watch out for men riding cows!

Pot luck dinner after church 

Teaching this boy to tie a tie

Visit to rocher du diamant last p-day