March 13, 2011
Great news! We had the baptism of Laudia and Morelson Petitfrere yesterday after stake conference. We had the service at the stake center. Peterson, their 12-year-old brother is not getting baptized yet because his mom doesn't feel they are ready. They are Haitian. We had a really good baptismal service and President and Sister Hale stayed after for it. We had seven baptisms in our zone yesterday. It was awesome! I will send you pictures of the baptism in the future. Peterson has his baptism scheduled for April 3rd, so we are hoping that we can help him meet that date. He still gets in arguments with his mom, so his mom might delay it because of those problems. But we can tell that he feels bad and wants to change. We are excited for when he can get baptized too.
We have a ten-year-old girl named Odline who has read through the kid's book of Mormon 3 times in a row. She loves the church and definitely has a testimony of the Gospel. She is living with her dad and her step mother. Her dad said that she can get baptized, but he wants to get the permission of the real mom before he tells us yes. Odline asked her and she said that she would think about it and tell her when she talks to her again. We are hoping to get permission this week. The only problem is that her step mom and her dad work, and they can't take her to church, so we are trying to find a permanent ride for her.
We also have an awesome investigator named Cherline who is Haitian. She loves the church, made friends without us introducing her to a whole bunch of people, and she really wants to get baptized and stay in the church for the rest of her life. The only problem is that she works two jobs, has no one else in her family who has one, so she is trying to scrape a living to pay for the house as well as get money to go to school. We need to find time to meet with her, but between her two jobs, she works twelve hours a day sometimes. Pray for Cherline and that she will find a way to meet with us and come to church more. She is awesome! We have several people in this area that are ready to be baptized, but they are stopped because of their circumstances. It is really sad. We are having a fair amount of success though.
There is a place in Fort Lauderdale that is well known called the "Swap Shop" It is like a mall. Different businesses come in and pay a tiny bit to set up a stand, and they sell new stuff for a very low price. A few weeks ago on P-day, I bought three ties for 9 dollars. They are really good looking ties too. They also have shops outside too. Anyone who wants can buy a spot and they can sell stuff. Last transfer the missionaries put up a stand, made a poster, and contacted everyone really close to the stand. They got several people's information out of it. It was a pretty good way of contacting. Elder Chandler and I did it again for four hours on Saturday. We had so many people reject us. I am now beginning to realize how fortunate the Creole missionaries are. Americans can be wonderful people, but there are a large number of them that are extremely intellectual, prideful, hard-hearted, and rude. I have met a lot of rude people in the last week, especially at the Swap Shop. It amazes me that anyone would ever treat another person like that, no matter what religion you are from. The Haitians were so much nicer to us, and even if they declined our invitation to hear more, they didn't treat us horribly. One person went by the stand and said, "You missionaries are so easy to spot, I could recognize you from a mile away." He sounded negative about it too. I walked toward him as he was walking away. I asked him where he had seen missionaries and if it was okay if I gave him a card. He told me that it was not okay and that I was harassing him. He didn't even turn around to talk to me. He just walked away from me the whole time. This other guy came up and told us he had a friend who was Mormon and he started bashing on us. He told us that we were going to burn in hell and that we believed in a different Jesus because we believe he was "a created being." He told us that he prayed that we would be brought to the truth. But despite all of that we got thirty to forty people give us their information to contact them again. We were very happy about that. Out of the forty potential investigators that we contacted, only three of them were in our area. Luckily we got this awesome woman and her husband who has met with the missionaries before and she loved them. She remembers a lot of what she learned.
I don't know what makes the youth come despite the fact that their parents are not members. Actually, most of the young men/ young women are converts. There are 19 young women, and out of them, there are 11 of them that were baptized in the last three years--same thing with the young men. Most of the ward is converts to the church. Our Bishop, Bishop Bethel has only been a member of the church for 8 years.
We have explained the fact that someone doesn't have to be perfect to get baptized, but for a Haitian, that is very hard to understand. They feel like you have to be very, very, very prepared to be baptized.
Often, the missionaries find the youth, but they become friends with the youth in the ward very quickly. Recent converts in the youth are fellowshipping each other. This ward is different, because a large portion of it is recent converts.
Lezly and Tilia, our recent converts from this transfer are at girl’s camp right now. We are so excited. We want them to have a really spiritual experience so they can have a strong testimony of the Gospel. On Wednesday night near the end of mutual, we had a lesson about the temple and eternal marriage. We have been teaching them a lot about the temple. We also had a talk with them about getting to church. They have been to mutual almost every week, but because of their parents making excuses not to take them, they haven’t' been to church on Sunday for 3 consecutive weeks. Their parents don't mind that they are baptized, but sometimes they make excuses not to drive them their because of laziness or some other excuse. We told them a whole bunch of alternate options if their parents fall through on them. We told them that the church is only a mile away from their house and that they can walk if their parents are doing something else. Plus this will show their parents their dedication. They agreed to that, so we will see them at church next week.
The youth are by far the most receptive. The only reason the youth program is not growing faster is because of the hard-heartedness of their parents. I have run into dozens and dozens of youth who are ready for the gospel but can't progress because their parents told us never to pass by the house again. We had three awesome teenagers we passed by last night, one of which was a friend of Lezly and Tilia. But then the dad came home. When we left the house, the dad came out and told us that their minds were impressionable and that he didn't want us to lead them off of the good path. He told us to never go back to the house or else he would call the police. We were both sad. But despite that, we are spreading the gospel and finding a pack of amazing youth. There are many prepared people in South Florida who are ready to receive the Gospel. It has been promised by President Uchtdorf and many others. I have seen many fulfillments of that prophesy. I know this is God's work and no barrier will be able to stop it. I am so excited for the success that we are having. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that he can bring us strength and healing. What a great message to bring to the entire world. No one else has a message that is more important than that. I love you all! Keep writing and pray for the hearts of the people to be softened!
Love,
Elder Seamons
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