Dear Family and Friends,
I will be calling you at about 10 o'clock on Saturday morning (Christmas Day). We are going to Oswald's house and we will be doing it over there.
We had a pretty good week, though we didn't have any members come out with us until Sunday night. Oswald came out with us on Sunday night. He came with us to see Mama Julien too. He loves Mama Julien. He loves her food, and how nice she is. They were getting into very random conversations last night. It was a lot of fun though. It helped strengthen member relationships a lot.
This week wasn't as good of a week for me I feel. I have a hard time getting up in the morning and I feel more tired. Plus I keep falling asleep during personal study.
Vonnette, a new investigator, is progressing very well. She has read the 1st 11 chapters in Nephi, and the whole restoration pamphlet. The thing that amazes me is how well she understood them both. She told me about Lehi having four sons, Nephi, Sam, Laman, and Lemuel and she then told us how two were obedient and two were not. She thought it was crazy how Laman and Lemuel tried to beat up Nephi, and then were visited by an angel and were still angry and doubting afterwards. She loves chapter 8 though. She described what she understood in it. She said it had beautiful words in it. "Li gen bel pawol landan li." She loved it. She told us that she wanted to know if Joseph Smith was a true prophet and she said that she is a Seventh Day, but says that if she gets an answer that she needs to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that she will quit the Seventh-day Adventist church. She told us how she got to the seventh day church. She had a dream with three churches side by side: Catholic, Baptist, and Seventh-Day. She tried to enter in Catholic and Baptist, but both times a hand pulled her back out of the churches. Then she entered into the seventh day church and no one stopped her. She told us that that was where God wanted her to be the most at that time. But she says she is always praying for God to tell her where to go. She will join the church when she gets an answer. I just hope she isn't expecting a dream to be the answer and not be paying attention to what the spirit is telling her. She could very possibly get the answer in a dream. I have seen it many times in Haitian Culture. These people are very visionary, and dreams and visions are common. But they need to feel the conformation of the Holy Ghost to back that up. It runs so deep in the culture that I don't know if they expect anything else.
One bad thing did happen with Vonnette. We were going to get a ride for her, because she isn't too close to the church and she doesn't have a car. She told us she was excited to go and very willing, and had a strong feeling that she should go. We weren't able to find a ride for her. Two people fell through in the morning. We could have tried way harder than we did. But we just didn't continue searching. We had a lesson with her yesterday, and everything was great. The only problem is that she says she doesn't want to come to church anymore because we couldn't find her a ride. She told us that today was the day that she felt very strongly about and she said we blew it. I hope we didn't ruin this for good. We are going to be praying very hard for her to receive an answer. She told us after we talked to her for a while that she would think about it and let us know. She ponders, reflects and studies very hard. She is also very into prayer. From what I see of her, she is very able to get an answer. I wonder if Heavenly Father is testing us to see if we want her to get baptized badly enough to work hard for it and pray with real intent. It might also be because she is expecting a different answer and might have gotten it. I do think that our lack of faith could be a huge part of it. We definitely haven't tried as hard as we could have.
I realize now that the only things necessary for a successful mission are obedience and hard work. Because with those two things, faith, desire, love, patience, and everything else. I realize that I can obey the White Handbook rules so much better. I have done many things not right. But at least I realize that now and can fix it.
Widlyne is not doing well. She is never around, she is smoking again, and she hasn't been keeping any of her commitments. We go over there for Edeline and Junior who are both recent converts, but we don't see Widlyne there. We have been trying our best to help her.
Jener is doing okay. He is a really great guy, but he says he doesn't want to get baptized because he can't read and he wants to know the bible more. We told him that the requirements are to have a righteous desire, be willing to take upon him the name of Christ, be keeping the standards, and willing to serve others. He is doing that already. Also, it is hard because he feels that his only problems in life are short memory, not knowing English, and not being able to read. We help him with English and he is excited, but when we teach him the Gospel, he starts to lose focus. We just need to help him have a greater desire to get baptized. He likes the Gospel, but it isn't this huge excitement for him.
Everything is going well though. Hey Laurie! Thank you so much for the Christmas package. You chose really good candy and the BYU T-shirt was awesome! I love getting stuff from you, because it helps me know that you all are still thinking about me.
Bye! Mom and Dad, I will be calling you around 10:00 am -10:15 am. Hopefully we can keep on time and on schedule. The Crance family, who are members will be feeding us breakfast before, so we will try our best. Bye everyone! I love you!
Love,
Elder Seamons
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