Monday, March 16, 2015

The Gnomes, er...Dwarfs, nope Gnomes!

Hola mi familia!

Since your all speaking the espanol I thought I'd join in! haha  I hope you had a great time in Mexico!  I could go for some nice toastadas or some Hangman street tacos right now, with some Oaxaca cheese....mmmm memories!  haha

Updates on the eastern coast:  Zone conference will be this Sunday, and, well... I'm not quite sure what else to add to the list, I guess I'll just move on.  But for zone conference, its going to be rapid fire because Elder Cornish (area president) will be blowing through the islands faster than an iguana climbing a tree.  Its going to ALL be on Sunday.  We will have church in the morning at Abîmes, then zone conference right after and then the member fireside right after that.  Should be a crazy day.  I'll be at the church building the entire day.

ALSO! Dd you see David and Cindy's picture on the mission newsletter?  Alright!!

Recently I've been trying to focus a lot more on training the members.  I realized that if we want to have anymore progress we need a better foundation. I've finally gotten my hands on a Handbook 2 and have been studying according to the members callings.  I started with Fr. Duflo (Branch Mission Leader) and gave him the responsibility to call the other members of the branch council and fix appointments for us to stop by their house to do training for their callings.  It went very well!  He's gotten a hold of everyone within 2 days and we now have rendez-vous for this week and next week to talk about our member's calls.  I wanted to simply go to their house and start talking about their responsibilities, most of the time when we ask if we can help, they say no.  I assume it is because they don't know how we can help.  So as we talk about theirs callings, we'll be able to find questions that come up and give engagements to help them further the work in their specific area . I'm going to be talking with Fr. Abenzoar (1st counselor in the branch) and try to get him helping us with the training so that we can get some follow ups going between everyone.

The baptismal interview was a very interesting and spiritual learning experience for me.  I was very nervous going into the interview, because the man said that if he didn't get baptized that weekend he'd never come back and would not be happy.  So yeah, I was pretty nervous, because I felt like he should wait a little longer.  But during the interview I could see the Holy Ghost soften his heart and when he left he was smiling and determined to be ready the next time.  I just did his next interview yesterday and he has changed quite a bit and the baptism should be for this weekend.

As for Elder Stewart-Johnson and I things are going well. We have been taking more time to have fun together which I believe is something that we were missing. He has made a lot of progress with his French. Being a trainer makes me really appreciate how much the Lord has blessed me through my mission. Being able to see Elder S-J at the beginning as I approach the end has made me realize how far I have come and the things that I have learned.  It has been a miraculous year and 3/4, hopefully the Lord has some more tuning to give me, before shipping me back home.

I love you all a ton!
avec amour,
Elder Call






You're darn right...we made a fort!
Well, he always did enjoy fort building as a kid









 Our Roamin' Gnomes



I tried to tell Braden that these aren't "Gnomes", they're  two of the Seven Dwarfs!  But he insisted that the French don't have "Dwarfs" they have "Gnomes!"




Nice lava-lava Elder!

An interview always trumps a letter...

Bonjour!!

I'm really sorry that you aren't going to be getting the super long letter I imagine you were waiting for in Mexico, but I need to go do a baptismal interview with a man from Goyave who wants to get baptized this Saturday.  We have been having trouble scheduling a time to meet because of distance and today is the only day he has off of work this week. I judged that his salvation is worth more than my P-day... sorry.

This week went really well, we had a ton of people to see and members to work with us, but things just kept falling through.  I'm not sure what it was but we just couldn't catch a break.  But we did see some improvement with Fr.Théor, an inactive, he finally read the BoM on his own this week!  That's never happened in such a long time!!

Well they're calling me, I gotta go!  Sorry!  Enjoy Mexico!  I'll talk to you next week!

avec amour,
ElderCall