Letter Number 88.... "A Week of Miracles and Stuff"

This week really doesn't sound very glamorous...I think sometimes people know that Jake is serving in the Caribbean and it sounds glamorous and fun, this does not sound very fun, but I learned so much about persevering in Faith. How easily I can give up at times.  I am impressed by the members to set up so many lessons for the Missionaries to teach.


We could call this a miracle week, everything about it was miraculous it was really quite a week to be in Gosier. We really wanted to forward plan but we had almost no appointments to do it and there was only one progressing investigator and nothing was really working out. Then, we decided to just have a great attitude and work super hard to achive high goals and man did we work hard! On Tuesday we went out with the plan to set a baptismal date and after having some great lessons of the Spirit we decided to go and change where we were finding. On our way we decided to walk from one place to another and not take the car, in walking we found a young man who is trying to change his life and really needed the knowledge of the Book of Mormon to help him. We had a lesson and set up a schedual to see him three times a week. His name is Caleb. 

Otherwise that day we had lots of lessons and saw some members and the following couple of days were filled with miracles and stories of finding. We have been using our DVD players to the maximum showing people powerful videos of Christ and inspiring messages! We were talking with someone very rooted in his faith and we showed him the "He Lives" video and it was super powerful, he felt the Spirit and his heart was changed he allowed us to come back to teach him at his house. Faith is amazing, we do so little and the Lord truely does so very much, the last three days were completly planned and the next three are too. This week we have coordinated 7 member lessons already and we could easily have 3 or more with that. On Sunday we really had everything fall in water and really wanting to give up under the hot sun we sat down on a bench in the shade out side of the less actives house and looked at our plans for the week to come, we used the time to forward plan and set up the previously mentioned member lessons and then got up, changed places started talking to see another less active who wasnt there, and then as we decided to go finding a guy stopped on his bike asking for the missionary lessons. The first door we contacted that opened was super interested and it turned into a double contact as another young adult was coming up the stair case both were great people who gave us return appointments. Durring this time the first less active called us apoligizing and inviteing us back over.  It was great. We doubled the lessons of last week. The Lord is merciful. Great things are happening.

Love you all,

Elder Lewis

Letter 87...

It's weird to think of Jake in a different place than his bungalow on the hilltop, wear he slept on the veranda overlooking the city of Fort De France.  But Mother's adapt when their kids are on missions. I'm sure he's having a great time with Elder Savage. 

I need to speed up my reading in the Book of Mormon to keep up with this inspiring missionary.  I hope you will all join me. I will be reading 2 chapters a day until Jake comes home. It's a great goal.

Bonjour,

It is interesting to e in the branch where I started my mission, a very warm welcome by all the members there who are all in a certain measure friends. I had a bitter sweet good bye to Martinique and my zone, I really do love them.

This week was great. We are teaching an unmarried couple, one is a member from Brazil who was inactive for years and jsut randomly showed up at church one day and brought her boyfriend. The other, Olivier (which means olive tree in French, (I'll never think of it the same) has a baptismal date for the 16th of May. It is really close and we helped them by lots of persuasion and long suffering and patience and what not to take the dicision to get married for time before then. They said it will be really hard but they can do it! I love when people exercise their faith, you can watch the miracles come to past. It is always a pleasure to watch someone truely seek and truely knock and truely find and have things opened unto them. I love my mission because I see the same thing happen in my own life and it helps me teach others how to better come unto Christ to be perfected in him. 

Im reading the Book of Mormon again in French, I hvae kept to a mission schedule of once every three months, I will finish agian before I go home. I was thinking about the begining of Nephi's vision how the Spirit asked him what he desired and what he would believe. There is  a perfect parallel between that and the questions the Lord asks to The brother of Jared....something to think about!

Love you all dearly,

Elder Lewis

Jake and a member in Guadeloupe, even when he passed the sacrament he would lean down to the kids..love that about him.

Elder Lewis and Elder Petersen
Two great friends

Letter Number 86 "Back to where it all began",,, Guadeloupe!

I chuckled to read how little Elder Lewis cares about his Birthday while in the Mission field...just something to be put up with..very funny how set apart from the world he seems. 

I don't have a lot to say, other than, I was touched to be able to read the letter he wrote to his Mission President..I hope it will full your spirit like it did mine.

So I got my birthday all passed and done. Also, I am being transfered to Gosier,  Guadeloupe,  the other side of the island that I served first upon.  It is oppisite of Morne à L'eau. I will be with a long time friend Elder Savage who was in Capesterre when i was in Basse Terre. Pretty cool eh? 

I am pretty sad to leave Fort de France, but I know it is in the Lords hands, and I will return one day. 

General Conferance blew my socks off.  What a wonderful opportunity to hear the will of the Lord be revealed and receive a testimony of livining prophets on the Earth. This computer has a French key board with english spell check. Weird. 

I wrote a pretty good letter to my Mission President and so i will just forward that along. 

A great P-day by the Waterfalls of Martinique

Hey President,

I would just like to start off by saying thank you. Thank you for sending me to Fort de France and entrusting me to be a Zone Leader for such a long time. It was truly a miracle what happened. The Lord really taught me many wonderful and important lessons. I learned how to rely on his infinite goodness and grace to, at the end of each day, get the job done. I remember when I was first with Elder Dayton. We walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, just like the primary song says about pioneer children. I have a pretty high arch on my feet and I had horrible pain in them for the most of my time here. I learned to tune it out, If we were always in motion always looking for the next thing to do the pain was less. I remember walking on a darkened highway at about 7:30 at night when passing a big looking guy. I still remember the shocked feeling I had when, as we passed him and he turned to us and immediately asked us for a Book of Mormon. Renaud would later quit smoking and be baptized with me and Elder Christensen. I remember feeling inspired after a mission leadership council on how to present the many instructions we had received. I remember sacred moments on exchanges giving training and council to different missionaries. I remember so many wonderful lessons about the Spirit and learning to walk in the small portion of the path that he illuminated before my feet, seemingly not more than a half a step ahead. This area is incredible. It has changed me and my mission and probably my whole life, yet it was as a small moment in it all. I am filled with thanks as I will be headed back to Guadeloupe where I started to finish my mission. What a sacred and beautiful experience that I have had here.  Again and again and again, I love this branch, I love these people, I love the Lord.

The joy of the Gospel is immense,

Elder Lewis

Letter Number 85

I had a great email from Elder Lewis that talked about how he has a testimony of Fasting and how  his French gets mangled when he bears his testimony...I wanted to tell him the same thing happens to me and I'm speaking in English.  This letter is short, but I am still inspired to try to fellowship the people who are investigating the Church.  His good friend Elder Roskelley said the same thing in his letter this week.  I will try harder to be aware of these people, and to be more welcoming and friendly.  

Sorry to not be very inspiring this week, I'm a little pressed for time,

The Vestrice family is back from their Cruise and they had so many questions about the gospel! They are reading and studying the Book of Mormon like crazy and are slowly coming to know the truth of it all! they are also integrating nicely into the Branch! We saw them with the Branch President on Saturday and it was wonderful.

I have a testimony of Fasting!

I love my mission!

I love you!

Elder Lewis

Elder Lewis and Elder Petersen treated to a Mexican dinner with Brother and Sister Turner