"God has something else in mind"

Hello everyone!

Yes, Mom, we have the GPS and we are using it. It is such a wonderful thing to have. Thank you so much for getting that for me. You are awesome, Mom! I did get it on Thursday and I needed to sign for it. I just got it from the person at the door of my apartment when they delivered it. I don't exactly remember.

On P-days, we wash the car, clean the apartment, study, come to e-mail, go out to eat (almost always Pop eyes). Brother Vega is the owner of three stores and he wants us to come over often and eat there for free. It is very nice of him to do that for us. The members serve the missionaries in so many ways. After that we go and buy groceries at Walmart. After that, we will organize things in the apartment, or sometimes go out and play a sport or something like that. Some people have gotten special permission to go out to the Everglades for P-day.

My camera is still working, but I have not been taking many pictures. I will do that more, I promise. I have been thinking so much about missionary work that I haven't really thought about taking many pictures. I will make sure to do that more often though.

On Saturday we had a thanksgiving activity at the church. They cooked seven turkeys, 8 pans of mashed potatoes, and all sorts of other good foods. The missionaries always help serve people food, greet people, and do what ever else needs to be done. Mesidor, one of our recent converts, came. He is so nice! He has a green card or what ever it is called, so he can be in the country, but he doesn't have papers yet. He doesn't have a job yet, and he isn't living that well right now. But he is always happy no matter what. He is a very nice person. He has very little, but he gave up a lot. He has two kids, Mike and Janick. Mike is two and he is always getting into stuff and is running around. He has to keep a close watch on him 24/7. Because of that, he can't really come out with us and teach.

The activity is a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it very much! Afterwards, there was half of a turkey and a whole turkey that hadn't been touched in the kitchen. They give all the left over food from these activities to the missionaries, so we got quite a lot of food. The turkey was very good.

Laurie, Thank you so much for the pumpkin cheesecake. It was really good, and you are always sending stuff. Thank you so much for all of the support and all of the encouragement. I love you very much and hope everything is going well. Continue to keep me posted on everything that is going on back in Ohio.

One of the people who was planning on getting baptized moved away. Martine. The thing that made me the most sad about that was that she has so many problems and discouragements about life. There is so much she still needs that we can give to her. But God has something else in mind. I know He will guide the missionaries in North Carolina back to her somehow. At least we got to encourage her while she was here.

With the area being combined and there only being 2 Creole missionaries for this huge area, we are going to cut off the people who are not as interested and focus on the ones that are making changes in their lives right now. Some people aren't willing to act and change based on what we have told them. We are going to get a few people out of our pool of investigators this week. We are going to call them, commit them to do something they need to do such as go to church, or read out of the scriptures, and we will ask them to give us a call when they have done that. That way, we will get to the people who are sincerely interested. We also have a huge list of 10-15 members who can come out with us and help us teach. That will be really good. We are going to plan ahead more and call them in advance so that they can come with us.

We are riding on our bikes more this transfer. This first week I have ridden my bike so much more than I used to with Elder Bolz. That is mostly due to the fact that we are only allowed to use 1200 miles a month and we have to travel so far to get to all of our appointments. Biking saves a lot of miles. Our area includes Boca, Coral Springs, Margate, Pompano, North Lauderdale, Lauderdale Lakes, and Oakland Park. Look that whole area up on the map Mom and Dad. That is a very large area that we cover as Creole missionaries. We cover the area that 6 other English companionships all cover. All the Haitian people in the stake are supposed to come into our ward because the Creole missionaries are in the ward, and the translation equipment is in this ward. Besides, there are not enough people to spread all of the Haitians out throughout the whole stake. We also have the portuguese members in our ward. We are getting equipment so that we can do both Creole and Portuguese translation at the same time. Plus we have ASL translation in our ward. We don't have any sign missionaries, but there are one or two deaf members in the ward.

There used to be a Creole branch in the stake, but there weren't enough Melchisidek Priesthood brethren to keep in running effectively. Hopefully we can get it back and running. They said if there are enough priesthood brethren, then it can be started back up again.

Well, I am doing well! Thank you everyone! I need to go now. Bye! I love you all!

Love,

Elder Seamons