The Temple and Teaching

Hi Mom and Dad!

I am sorry that I am writing this so late. We went to the temple for the first time yesterday. It was a great experience. Elder Caldwell and I were planning on doing it after temple time and before dinner/class, but there was a shortage of temple workers for some reason, so it took us a half an hour or more to get into the celestial room at the end of our endowment session. So it is before a large group meeting and after lunch, so we went and got permission to use e-mail now. The Large group meeting is at 1:25. I sent home my camera card yesterday in one of the padded envelopes. I sent a key that tells who is in some of the pictures, since some of them are of some of the Samoans, who are now gone.

Our district is getting along very well. We are all very good friends. They all work hard, but they are not as serious as I am, so I get impatient or irritated. I have been working on being more tolerant of other people's sense of humor. Elder Caldwell is a jokester and teases all the time. I am not that way at all, so it bugs me. He says that he needs to be more sensitive to other people, since he teases his siblings all of the time, and they don't always like it either since they are more like me. But he is a great companion apart from that.

We did 14 contacts this week. We also taught a whole lesson at the TRC in Creole for the first time. It went very well! At least, compared to what I was expecting. We used all the scriptures in Creole. We have to use a French Bible because the church hasn't made a LDS version of the Bible because of Copyright issues, so they can do the LDS version with the footnotes. That is fine, because most Haitians can read and speak French. We learned food vocabulary this week. The scenario was that we had been transferred and there was an investigator in our new area that had previously been taught by the missionaries. They felt prompted to invite the missionaries over to their restaurant and feed us for free. We ordered, then we shared a spiritual thought out of the Book of Mormon. Then we asked them if we could have a return visit to teach them. So we thought them the first lesson again. Elder Caldwell got flustered a few times because he didn't know what to say in Creole. I was there to help him. I am glad that he was there for me too, because I get on tangents and I don't always do what I need to. But I am there to balance Elder Caldwell too, because he just flies through the lesson, instead of always taking time to relate the message to the investigator. We need to work on balancing teaching the person, and making sure we teach them what they need to know. We are also working on teaching to the investigator's needs better.

I haven't seen Elder Kaleb Christensen yet. Half the MTC consists of Spanish Elders, so I don't think the probability is high that I will ever see him. I also just went to go visit President Brown to say hi and to talk to him about him being related to Great Grandma Geisler and him being your Bishop so many years ago.

The gym floor is closed the rest of the time for putting in the bleachers, but there is a track above to jog on. However, we have been going to the field to play Frisbee. I have gotten a lot better at Frisbee since I first got here. I am not as scared about being hit in the head with it any more. I have been able to catch many more too!

I would like you to send the Creole-English picture dictionary. That has some very useful vocabulary, which I can study in the field, so that I can know how to talk about everyday things in the language. There is one in the classroom, which is very useful, but I would like to have one while I am in the field.

I am sorry it takes so long for me to send my written letter. It might take longer since I had two and a half hours less yesterday. I will probably have to make it shorter, because I am so busy, and I end up using a ton of MDT time for writing, instead of studying. I need more time to study definitely, and writing has been a little bit of a distraction, so I will have to start writing less.
I have to go now. Bye, I love you! Continue to write me.
Love,

Elder Seamons