I'm going to Martinique!!

Bonjour tout le monde!

So I guess I'll start with the biggest news of the week, no need to wait on it.  Elder Miyasaki received an email last Monday with the travel plans of an Elder Broadbent who will be arriving on Thursday. So we've known that someone will be leaving from Guyane.  We all said it was Elder Pratt (President Mehr hinted to all the of us that we would be staying, except Elder Pratt) Then on Thursday Elder Miyasaki had a Skype conference for all the zone leaders, I just do my studies while he's in the room doing the conference because I'm not a zone leader.  Anyways, at the end he asked me who I thought was going and I said, "Elder Pratt of course, we've already figured it out.  Stop acting like you know whats going on."  (He kept joking about it throughout the week trying to get everyone freaking out about who would be leaving.  Then he handed me some papers and said, "Well here's your travel plans Elder Call, your going to Martinique."  I had to read the papers all the way through before I finally believed him.  I'M GOING TO MARTINIQUE!  I still can't believe it... I'm leaving on Wednesday at 12:30.  He doesn't sound excited at all does he??  Martinique is where he really wanted to go!

This week was kinda slow, Aline STILL hasn't gotten back yet from Suriname. She'd better before I leave or I will not be too happy, I need to say goodbye to her.  We had a lot of branch meetings and Elder Miyasaki's zone leader meeting and exchanges so we didn't have too much work time.  It was still a good week, we saw Liliette again, finally (she's the one a while back that took us to the restaurant with her daughter, I'm pretty sure I sent those pictures)  This time her boyfriend/soon to be fiancé was there and we gave him a Book of Mormon and as we were talking to Liliette I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was reading the Book of Mormon.  From what I could tell, he read for himself, the entire introduction and a couple verses of the first book!  Both of them came to church on Sunday!  He seems like a really interesting guy.  I'm excited to see, or more likely, HEAR, what happens with him.  President D'Abreu already knew him when he came to church.  Also Elder Miyasaki and I are teaching a TV star.  We met this lady while contacting and taught a lesson with her, a little later we were visiting the Bady's and the News was on in the background, and sure enough, it was her announcing the news!

Speaking of Sunday, that was sad... I had to say au revoir to all the members, I gave a testimony of missionary work during sacrament meeting, then took pictures with everyone afterwards.  BUT! we did have some really good amis de l'église show up! Like I said Liliette and Cedric came and halfway through Yvan, who we met a while ago showed up.  So it was not all bad!

As for the bike situation, I've fixed them up as good as I could get them and we've just had to buy more locks to keep them safe, no problems since then though.  And yes, all the Elder's are still living together.  The Sister's apartment STILL isn't ready.

I love you all so much!  Sorry that I probably won't get your letters if you sent me one that hasn't yet arrived! I will no longer be in the country... But if they do come the Elders here will probably have to get them to me some other way, I'm taking a couple letters that were for Elder Santos with me that I could get to him when someone goes to Guadeloupe or maybe next zone conference.

Thank you all for your letters/emails and most of all for your prayers, I love you all so much and love hearing from you! Talk to you next week, as for me, I'm FINALLY going to the island life!

avec amour,
Elder Call

Our P-Day adventure!

I found a macheté....It's probably hundreds of years old, lost by a famous pirate 

until being discovered by me!

 Sœur Falaye  

Some of the branch members

More branch members

Frère Mondongue

Frère Françiette  

Kettlie

Frère Vivet

The Barnet's (Sean Thalia and Andréa)

French Guiana/Suriname Zone Conference January 2014

Zone Conference and tender mercies

Bonjour!

So I've been taking alot of time trying to get all the picture going through, there were beaucoup... many  So I'm just going to go on a quick run down of everything that happened this week . On Monday I wrote you guys and bought supplies for a barbecue that we were going to throw together after the fireside with the president and we super cleaned the apartment to prepare for the assistants.  They all flew in that night. Elder Miyasaki and I picked them up from the Airport and dropped them off at their hotel.  The assistants stayed in our apartment with Elder Fraley and Elder Pratt while we were gone.  We are finishing up paper work for the sisters new apartment still, so we're still sharing an apartment.  SO Elder Miyasaki and I had to sleep in the hammocks while the assistants took mattresses on the floor and the others in the beds.

In the morning we ate at a boulangerie because the assistants are obsessed with them (they were on Guadeloupe for a week before) then straight to the church for a réunion de district with the president. After that we had our interviews, it was really short I felt.  After the interview we brought in all the stuff for the barbecue and started getting that ready as people arrived.  Everyone said there was a ton of traffic, so we had to start late because people couldn't get there.  Apparently there was another gas strike and lines were hours long to get gas for cars.  Not good for us.  The president then had the fireside and he went over the entire plan of salvation in depth, it was pretty cool.  At one point in time they needed me to translate for him and I got blown out of the water with his deep doctrine and vocabulary.  I didn't last long before Sister Opeta had to take over haha!

That finished most of that day.  In the morning Elder Miyasaki and I got up early to try and beat the lines at the gas stations because we were low on gas and we had a long drive ahead of us.  There were many prayers offered.  We sat in a line of cars for maybe an hour and a half.  Then it was too late and we just had to leave for the border looking for somewhere to fill up.  So needless to say it was very stressful with the president driving in a car behind us and knowing that we might not make it because of gas.  When we saw that we were really going to cut it close making it to the border we pulled over in a town and asked where the nearest gas station was.  Turned out there were none in the town and we had to go maybe 30 kilometers down towards another town to the nearest one.  The road to this town was not on the highway to the border and when we got to the off ramp we had a huge decision to make whether to go for the border or to this town for gas.  We decided to go to the town.  The sign turned out to be a lie, it was a LOT farther than 30 kilometers.  We were praying and praying for this town to show up around every corner but it never came. We were so scared that we weren't going to make it.  We did though...  It would have been shorter to go to the border that to this town I think, but the up side was that there was no line at the gas station, but by the time we got in line there became a HUGE line, maybe 30 cars long, that started behind us.  So I think to be honest, if we didn't take the detour we wouldn't have gotten gas in time at the border and the strike is still going today so we wouldn't have been able to get any on the way back.  Another tender mercy of the Lord.

So we got to the border and crossed on the canoes, it wasn't as cool the 2nd time but it was alright.  The canoe drivers fought over taking us across but President Mehr took care of that. Then we went through immigration and got a taxi to Paramaribo (by the way its about 3 hours from Cayenne to St. Laurent in Guyane where we cross the huge river, and 2 hours from Albina to Paramaribo in Suriname) Finally we crossed the huge bridge into Paramaribo and dropped off the sisters and the president and his wife with a missionary couple, then we were taken to Elders Alpeter and Mercier's apartment where we were staying. That night we went and worked with them.  Elder Miyasaki and Elder Alpeter took the bikes (Hence the styling dutch helmet Elder Miyasaki is wearing) while the rest of us went on foot to contact.  Most everyone in Suriname speaks English, apparently they learn from watching TV, which is incredible.  Who says TV teaches us nothing?!

The next morning we went to Zone conference.  The president talked a lot about repentance and the remission of sins.  We are her to help people change their lives for the better and that is through repentance and baptism.  It was really interesting and deep.  We ate there, including root beer which I haven't had since I left the MTC!  And for the rest of the day we just hung out at the apartment learning Dutch from anyone that passed by the house, and we even went to a store to see all the American products they had there, which are nonexistent on the French side . Like Reese's, we got a lot of Reese's and brought them home with us.

Well the rest was just going home and nothing too exciting happend there, but I am out of time anyways. I think I covered most everything pretty well, I will answer questions next week! Love you all! have a good week!

avec amour,
Elder Call

In St. Laurent at the border on the Guyane side

The drive to the border.  We saw a sign saying Guatemala.  I'm pretty sure it's not the REAL Guatemala!

Waiting for the canoes

Getting in the canoes with all our luggage!

There's that mouse thing on the drive into Paramaribo

A loooong trip!

Downtown Paramaribo, Suriname

Elder Miyasaki rocking the Dutch bike helmet!

With some Dutch Elders at the conference

YAY!  Root Beer!

And KFC!

The apartment we stayed at.  The Dutch Elders are so lucky, they're apartment is HUGE!

It was a LONG day!

The bridge into Paramaribo

Heading home

The President's coming!

Bonjour toute le monde!

I'm glad all of you could have a good laugh at my pain, even if it wasn't real pain.  I hope I didn't scare you too bad with the jam haha!  Luckily though we didn't have any bike problems this week so all is well there! We bought a bunch of locks to lock up just about everything that can be taken off the bike. Good luck taking my tires now! Haha

So with Aline she is doing well . We had to move back the day of baptism to after zone conference because her daughter was in the hospital and we couldn't get all the lessons in on time and now we have to wait 2 weeks because of zone conference, which is exactly NOT what we wanted but I don't feel worried for her, she is very ready and loves learning about the gospel. Her daughter is doing better now though.

It was a good week. On Saturday we knocked a door and a lady from Saint Domingo let us in and was really nice.  She gave us juice and we offered to help her finish painting her apartment. We didn't do it right then and there but she said we could come back and help her next week, we taught her a lesson and she seemed very open.  Another day all four of us put on P-day clothes and drove around looking for some guys playing basketball. We found some and asked if we could jump in and we played for about an hour, it was something different and fun and we met some good "potential-priesthood-holders".  We got their numbers and we gave a good first impression while having fun.

The president gets here tonight and that'll be the last thing we do today.   The president and his wife will stay in a hotel and the AP's will stay with us in our apartment.  It's going to be pretty crowded with 6 of us in there! I've also heard that it's one of the smallest apartments in the whole mission!  Tomorrow we will have a réunion de district with the president then our interviews.  After that the president and the assistants want to go on splits with us to see how we work (yikes) then at 5:00 we have a fireside with the branch that the president will speak at.  Afterwards we planned a barbeque in order to get people to come haha, just like at home. The Elders are making hamburgers!  Then Wednesday morning we will drive to the border, take a canoe across into Suriname, then a taxi to Paramaribo.  Then depending on the time we'll probably work with some Dutch Elders for the rest of the day.  Thursday is zone conference for most of the day and Friday we drive back and life returns to normal.

So that does cover most of what happened this week. Not too much happened different. We did go to Sister Anthony's house and she taught us how to make rôti. She is from Guiana anglais, which is mostly Indian. We made rôti with cracked peas in it and ate it with fish curry.  Its good stuff but you need to sit down a while after you eat it. You have to do that with a lot of food here haha.

I love all of you so much! I'm so glad to be here on a mission, I've learned so much and have seen the hand of the Lord work in peoples lives.  I know this work is true and I know that he loves all his children.  There is no way I could be here without His help.

Have a good week! I know I will!
avec amour,
Elder Call

Here are some pictures of us making the rôti‏.  It's a flat, round Indian bread, sort of like a tortilla.  You cook it on a griddle and then you eat it with curry.  You rip off a piece and you use the rôti to pick up the curry. In the picture I'm "clapping" it to make it all flaky.
 

Bike accident...or not...

Bonjour ma famille!!

comment allez-vous? Things are going alright down here in Guyane Française!  Well I should probably start off explaining the pictures.  I assume I almost gave you a heart attack, Mom.  So first off we were on an exchange, I went with Elder Pratt on the bikes and we visited the Bady family as the last thing of the night except for our studies . We locked up our bikes and went up the stairs of the complex.  When we came down, the tires and seats were gone with no trace of them.  So we had to carry the bikes back home.  Our shirts were already pretty muddy because it had rained all that day as we were biking (hence the purchase of raincoats) and we said it looked like we got mugged or something, so naturally we couldn't just leave it there...  So when we got home we messed up our shirts and rubbed chain grease on our faces, it still wasn't enough.  So we rolled around in the dirt and put some rasberry jam on our faces to make it more realistic looking.  When Elder Fraley and Miyasaki got home we told them that we chased down the guys that stole our tires and beat them up.  We had them going for a little while, until Doctor Fraley started his medical diagnosing haha.

Also this week we had the first baptism in Guyane since maybe last year in March!!  And the first one I've seen on my mission!  We were all going crazy with excitement, Elder Fraley especially.  I'm so happy for him, he's been working really hard and deserves the success.

We had a cool experience this week!   The sisters gave us a referral a little while back and we kinda forgot to call him for some time.  We called him one morning but he didn't answer.  A little while later we went to pull out some money from the bank and a car honked at us and pulled a demi-tour u-turn and parked right by us.  The guy called out to us and said that he got our message this morning but he didn't think to much about it and deleted the message.  He told us that nothing happens by chance and that when we called him and then he saw us he knew he needed to talk with us.  We set up a rendez-vous for this week I believe!

Ailene is still heading towards baptism but we've had to move it back because she couldn't come to church or have the lessons because her daughter has been having some problems.

I don't think that we will need to pay for the stolen bikes, they have the bike fund that every missionary contributes to when they arrive, which we already paid for.  And to be honest the bikes are pretty well used. We have a lot of spare parts that we have been able to draw from up to now.

The President is coming next week on Monday.  He'll have a fireside and work with us, then we are going over to Suriname together for zone conference.  I can get pictures this time because I'll have a camera!

We teach English at the church every Thursday, switching off which companionship teaches each week. Sometimes there is a good amount of people that come but sometimes nobody comes and we just do studies as we wait.

I'm glad you saw my story in the WIM newsletter.  She failed to mention that the Chinese restaurant sold Dim Sum, which I felt was a very important factor, but oh well :)  The others have been teaching him and he's scheduled to get baptized the same day as Aline, but things can always change.

Oh, I got a boatload of mail this week and most of it was from Ellen Millburn, but two were from Sadie.   Tell her thank you!  We fixed the address on our mailbox and I guess that was the problem because all of the sudden we're getting letters. I even had a letter sent to the other Elder's apartment.  That was weird, don't know how it ended up there!

Well I hope you enjoy you trip! I wish I could could go now that I can speak French with the Tahitians!
You pronounce hello like 'your-ona' in Tahitian if you wanted to know.

I love all of you so much!  I hope you have a good week!!  à bientot!

avec amour,
Elder Call

The infamous raspberry jam and bike grease hoax.  The joke was on the mom I guess!

 Elder Pratt rolling in the dirt

Our new raincoats.  I've decided we're wizards and if I wear this tie with it I'm from Hufflepuff

Playing soccer in the parking lot

The most amazing part of the past 6 months!

The French Guiana Missionaries

Bike Problems!

Bonjour ma famille!

So this week was an alright week.  The theme of the week was easily bike problems...  At the beginning of the week Elder Miyasaki bent the tire on his bike right in front of our house at the end of the day.  Luckily we have a spare bike that we use while we work on fixing the usual bikes. (If that makes sense)  Then the next day we were visiting Aline, who is still doing really well, and we are still pushing for the 25th  for baptême, but we left our bikes outside and mine got stolen....  We were late and in a rush and there wasn't anywhere to lock it up to so we just hid them a bit.  But when we got out mine was gone.  They left my helmet though.  SO... we had to walk home.  The next day I spent a lot of time fixing up the bent tire bike Elder Miyasaki was using and it took a long time because we had to change the handle bar column thing in order to fit the other tire rims we had.  That worked well for a day but when we came home for lunch the next day the handle bars up and broke off...  We have other beat up bikes in the sisters apartment that we use for spare parts that I had to grab, its not the best but we can work with it.  And that brings us to now.  It was pretty stressful because we had to cancel our rendez-vous once our twice a day because of bike problems and it was usually my bike too. Other than that this week was OK haha!

That's so cool how many YM we have in our ward.  Whenever I tell other missionaries how many YM we have their mouth always drops.  I've never realized how incredible that really is until I came to a branch that just doesn't have as many priesthood holders in it.  Its completely different.  Its incredible how many missionaries will be heading out soon as well!  That's so cool that Dallin is preparing to go out.  Tell him it's the greatest thing he could possibly do.  I've learned that for myself!

Nothing too major happened this week.  We are still just moving along slowly.  Aline is still super awesome, we invited her to fast with us for the health of her family and when we visited her two days later she said her mom and her sister were both now out of the hospital and doing much better!  It is incredible just seeing how ready she is and how much the Lord loves her, and how quickly we saw the blessings from our fast.

This week we didn't have too much time to find people again, but every time we go into the city someone comes up to talk to us that seems interested, which has been really cool.  I can tell the Lord has his hands in the work because he keeps putting people in our path.  We haven't been able to get a lesson with most of them yet but I'm feeling really good about a lot of them . One lady just showed up to our English class on Thursday and said she had a card from 4 years ago saying that we had English classes at the church every Thursday.  She just decided to show up!

You asked what my daily schedule is.  Here you go.
We get up at 6:30, get ready, eat, workout
7:00 we start personal study
8:00 companion study
9:00 we head out to work
12:00 or 13:00 lunch.  After that we work again
8pm language study
9pm plan for the next day
10:30 sleep

The new sisters are doing really well!  Sis Gill is adjusting just about the same as I did. haha  It's weird seeing her handling all the changes because it reminds me of how it was for me and how far I've come.  Sis. Opeta is really cool though and she's going to help her learn French really fast!

We still haven't gotten the sisters apartment ready so there are still the 4 of us here.  Its so much fun with 4 Elders in an apartment but its hard to keep all the dishes clean.

I love all of you so much!!  I love all the letters I get and all the prayers I've felt!  Thank you also Todd and Michelle, Grandpa, Grandma K, and Chris for the money you sent me!!  I'm really going to enjoy myself down here thanks to you all hahaha!

I hope everything goes well and I'll talk to you all next week!!

Avec amour!
Elder Call

The mission van and our apartment.  We live on the bottom floor where the stairs are going in.

Bike trouble...

A night of volleyball

Lunch at the boulangerie (bakery)