Week #33

Hello People of America,

This week was pretty good. Those darn mosquitoes just love me, can't get enough of my blood lol. But I am dong good! Nothing can keep me down. We made some pretty sweet progress with Johnathan this week. He keeps all of his commitments and is just doing awesome. We had a really cool experience with one of our investigators this week. His name is Ravi and he had not kept his commitment to pray about the Book of Mormon so we, at the end of the lesson, kneeled down with him and prayed together that he would get his answer and he did. It was so so so so cool. That next day since Elder Hardy had to go to Trinidad for a couple days I was with Elder Hood and Elder Burr in their area. It was fun to learn and grow from them. I gave my first baptismal interview on Friday and that was a scary cool experience. But one thing that was super funny is when I asked him about the Word of Wisdom. He said "Elder, I am so serious about that. I was addicted to smoking...quit that. Even my bunnies are following the Word of Wisdom." And I was like uhh your bunnies? Yes Elder my bunnies were addicted to Cola as well, that's all I gave them and they refused to drink anything else but I am slowly leaning them off of it so don't worry it's under control. I just thought that was so funny. Feeding his bunnies coke lol. But it was just such a sweet thing to experience. I asked him if he was prepared to endure to the end and he said "Elder, if you, the prophet or the scriptures say it, I will do it. My goal is to be perfect." I had to sit back for a second and think boy, are we all that converted? I sure as heck wasn't when I was home. And that leads me to my next experience this week. It was fast and testimony meeting for us this last Sunday and a long time member gets up to bear his testimony on the temple and how his only desire is to go back to the temple before he turns 60. I really have come to appreciate the temple here on my mission. Ya know these people here in Suriname don't have too much....and their number one priorities are not to have a nice house, or the newest technology, the newest car (or to even have a car) or have the best clothes... no, their number one desire, that I have seen, is the desire to go to the temple. How many of us take that for granted? There are couple here waiting to have children just so their kids can be born into the covenant. How inspiring is that? We truly are blessed to be in a place (in the United States) where the church is popular enough to be able to have a temple within 15-20 minute drive from us. That just inspired me so much. I hope ya'll had a great week, I did and I am excited for the upcoming week!

Lobi, Elder Lewis

This was a special Baptism for me. Edmondf Weerwind (the short one) I was not i the area when he was baptized but Elder Hood and I found this guy. He had been smoking for 15 years and decided to change his life and has quit cold turkey and stopped smoking completely and hasn't smoking since January 1st... Just nuts. Very cool to see.