The Fort Lauderdale temple ground breaking will be on June 18th, so that should be exciting.
May 31, 2011
Dear family and friends,
This has been a more difficult week. Elder Furner is an extremely good teacher, planner, and he follows Preach My Gospel really well. It has been discouraging because he has corrected me a lot. He is not doing it in a mean way, but I see that he is very good at doing missionary work for how new he is in the mission. He is better at knowing what to do than I am most of the time. The one thing he needs to master is Creole. I don't really know how to help him out with it. He has told me that I space out a lot and that I don't listen half the time because I am so focused on something else or because I just get lost in thought. He told me that he hasn't felt like he can share things with me because of that. We are not very unified as a companionship. It has been hard. He has been discouraged since last transfer because he has not had a baptism since he has gotten in the mission and he has seen super prepared investigators who have fallen through and they shouldn't have. Many of them knew that what the missionaries were saying is true, but they chose not to continue. He says that every time he drops people like that, he feels like he is condemning them because he is cutting them off from the chance to receive the gospel. He feels like that has been his job in the mission since he started: to condemn people. He doesn't like it at all because the job of a missionary is to baptize.
He has pointed out my strengths, but he has also given me a lot of things to work on. He tells me that I am not very good at listening to him at all.
Elder Furner is so good at following preach my Gospel and his teaching, planning, finding, and communicating skills are really good. It is hard because I struggle at all of those things. Plus sometimes I have said the wrong thing and people have misunderstood me and might have gotten offended.
I am the senior companion, but I feel like the junior, because Elder Furner is leading out on lesson plans and he is always telling me that Preach My Gospel says different things and that we need to change them. He isn't mean about it, but I just don't feel like I am doing things right.
I have noticed that it is hard to think of others when I myself feel like I haven't had my spiritual needs met. But I am trying.
At the transfer meeting, Sister Hale talked about divine intertwining or divine rendezvous. She said that these companionships were chosen by Heaven and that we were together for a very good reason.
This week we met an amazing family with a woman named Rodeline. She is from Haiti. Her husband's name is Viniel. She ordered a Bible from the church and we gave it to her. We told her that we teach about how people rejected the prophets and apostles after Jesus ascended into heaven and how because of that, they were killed and the church of Jesus Christ fell. We told her about how we have a prophet that God has put on the earth in the last days. We told her that at the door and she immediately invited us to come in and share a message without us even asking. She told us how she has always wondered what happened to the prophets, but no pastor she asked could tell her the answer. She said this was the first time she got an answer to the question. She was excited about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. We met with her husband the next time. We have met with them three times in 8 days and they were at all of their appointments. We had a really spiritual lesson with them and Sister Castillo, the Relief society President. She wants to come back to teach them again. They have four kids and they want to take them to church.
Rodeline is a stay at home mom who is married! Finally someone who is not working (on Sunday), or pregnant but not married. Florida has so many of those. She also told us that she can recognize spiritual promptings. We are going to offer them a date to be baptized in the next lesson and we will start teaching the kids too.
I will talk to you later.
Love,
Elder Seamons
The mission had zone conferences last week and they took a picture of each zone. Eric looks like he is laughing at what someone is saying as he has a big smile on his face. Click on the photo to see it bigger.
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