Thursday, July 17, 2014

Hump Day!

Bonjour!

I'm sure that you weren't expecting to get an email today!  Well, here it is!  At least its better than not getting an email this week right?  This week was exciting though.  As far as missionary vacations can go.  We went up to Guadeloupe again!  But before that we did do some missionary work. Don't worry.

This week we finally got a hold of Edwin's mom.  We thought her name was Clavel Manuel, but we found out that since she is Cuban she has 2 last names Clavel-Manuel.  We talked to a lot about Edwin wanting to be baptized and she said she was all for it.  She had known the missionaries for a long time in France when she was there. I don't know why she was never baptized but she just keeps falling away from the missionaries some way or another.  But we were talking to her for a while and she told us that she wanted Edwin to get baptized, that it would be really good for him.  Then I told her about the temple, and how if they all go there they could be sealed as a family for time and eternity, never to be separated.  She was really amazed about that and said she wanted to go there.  So I explained that in order to go to the temple she had to be prepared, baptized, and in order to be baptized she has to take and understand 5 lessons given by the missionaries and to come to church.  She thought about it and finally she said. "OK, I'll do it.  I will do what it takes to give you the time to help me go to the temple with my family"  (I just completely forgot how to spell family, is it one l or two? family? familly?)  SO hopefully we can keep in touch with her and her family for these next couple weeks.  She's given consent for Edwin to be baptized, which I am sure he will be.  But I want them to be together as a family, because that's what this is all about.

That was probably the most important part of the week.  We saw Dana again this week, she still hasn't talked with her boyfriend but she gave us his address in Lamentin, so Elder Lewis and Bodily are going to try to get a hold of him.  We also went over the baptismal interview questions with her and she is mostly ready. She has a couple things that she needs to take care of but she just doesn't feel ready yet.

Also, Fr. Coïné came back form France a while back and he came and cut our grass for us again like he usually does, we helped him and asked him if he wanted to come work with us, he said he was free the entire day.  It was the BEST!  He hopped in our car and went to all our appointments for the entire day.  Not a single one fell through.  We saw 5 people with him.  In the car we were singing some hymns and he kept trying to sing along in French but the words were in English, it was really funny.  I was just hit with an incredible realization of how much I love these people.  I really do love them and I would do anything for them.  I'm so glad to be here.

Then we had zone conference, hopefully my mission president won't be too disappointed if my letter to him consists of just a couple lines because I don't have too much time left.  Anyways, we left early Monday morning and got to Guadeloupe. There we played some basketball with everybody.  Even President Mehr! It was awesome!  I even got to see Elder Miyasaki, it was so great to see him and catch up after 6 months. Turns out that his photos of our time together in Guyane got accidentally erased as well.  So basically the ones I sent you is all I got, so take good care of those please!  After that there wasn't enough cars to take all the missionaries out to work so most of Martinique got stuck in the Morne-à-l'eau house and we played Risk for most of the night.  There was some pretty heated playing haha, but in the end I won, naturally!

Zone conference was really great.  Pres. and Sis. Mehr talked about Christ-like attributes and the assistants talked about the Book of Mormon and how we need to stress a lot more the Book of Mormon, like it says in ch. 5 of PMG (which you should be reading this week) It is the most powerful tool that we have unto conversion. So Elder Glover and I are going to be focusing a lot on that.

I didn't see any celebrations for Bastille Day because it was on Monday and we were travelling all that day. I just know that it was hard to find food that day!

Sorry no pictures this week, I can't get my card to work in this computer.

I love all of you so much!
avec amour,
Elder Call