Letter Number 93...The Mission Comes to an end!

Hearing these words from my Missionary Son is very fulfilling.  As a Family, you expect your Son whose been gone for two years to want nothing more than to race home to you...then you realize the Son you sent out has changed into the Man you always hoped he would become.  You realize he loves the Lord and the Gospel of Jesus Christ more than himself.  How humbling to realize how the mission and service can transform a Human being....! All I can say is I am so grateful for Jake's opportunity to serve a mission at this critical time in his life.   I know the Gospel of Jesus Christ is True and I know Jake knows it too. Awesome! 

Dernier bonjour,

My dear friends and family, these past two years have been the best of my life, there is nothing i would have rather done, no other place I would have rather been, than here. These have been the most sacred experiances of my life teaching me to do everything which is so very necessary for the rest of my life. There are no regrets. I realized this last week as I saw the families I have been teaching and how attached I was to them and them to me it really hit me. I dont want to leave. This is life, this is were I have found so much happiness and whereas I am so ready to see my family I could stay here much longer. Here I feel conscrated to the Lord, that is what I think about in the morning when I wake up, and what I ponder upon as I sink into the oblivion of sleep. This is not the end. My mission has only been a begining for a life  of service to my brothers and sisters. I love the Lord.

The chruch is true.

Heavenly Father is there. 

I love you and I'll see you soon

Letter Number 92

I cannot tell you the great privilege and humbling experience it has been to blog for my Son's mission in the West Indies.  With every letter, my Missionary Son has born testimony of the Savior, Jesus Christ.  He and his companion's have encouraged me to try harder and do better in my in life.  These humble missionaries are truly inspiring in their work for the gospel.  Their goal, to  help others have more fulfilled lives as they fill their lives with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I will miss having a missionary and the spirit that it brings into our home, but how wonderful to have have Jake where he is accessible in every day life..to talk and share with.  

I know the gospel is true and that what Elder Lewis has been preaching for 2 years with his wonderful hard-working companion's does change lives.  I know we can be sealed to our families and live with them forever.  I know God lives and answers each of our prayers. 

Rebonjour Mes Amis,

This week was a pretty great week, lots of movement with the new transfer and whatnot but good nevertheless. This last week went by quick as a good friend ELder Savage left, he is a great missionary, and so is elder Stewart-Johnson(another 

companion from Texas, what are the chances?) . It is really interesting to be with a missionary under a year, I havn't had a missionary this young since training Elder Sims last April. We are really working on teaching in unity and I find it is a great oppertunity to help him better his teaching skills and French. We are still teaching Olivier and Claudia, Claudia the Brazilian member and Olivier the non-member boyfriend getting married and baptized in August. I'm starting to have quite a few trips to foreign temples that I would like to make. The Vestrice family in Fort de France and this family here. Great things are happining. 

Yesterday was Pentacost and so we moved p-day to today. There are always off days in France. and when everyone is off, it is like the street is just dead. I remember in Fort de France the day after Easter and it was super empty, the city had nobody but us in it it seemed.... untill you walked past the cathédral. 

LIFE IS GOOD

THE MISSION IS AMAZING

I'm ready to do some missionary work back home as well.

Je vous aime tous,

Elder Lewis 

Jake's Last District in Martinique

Letter Number 91

I am sitting at the computer crying!  This will be the second to the last time I will actually blog for my amazing missionary Son, Elder Lewis.  I feel it has been an immense privilege to do this for him as his Mother. He has preached the gospel to me on many many occasions.  I will miss these letters from my Son, but look forward to visits and calls and vacations together.  Jake has a testimony of Jesus Christ as his Savior and Redeemer.  I have seen it grow and change into a different deeper version of conversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I am humbly grateful for the blessing of raising this Son and being a part of his life.  My children are a great gift from God.   May we all learn from these young strong Missionaries serving all around the world. They are so selfless. 

Rebonjour

The last transfer call has been received! I'll be in Gosier (here) with Elder Stewart-Johnson! He started in Basse Terre four transfers ago and it will be pretty good. It was a great week and there was lots That happened and to do still.  The Thai woman Ananya and her husband Xavier came to church and are doing really good in their progression towards baptism.  A family I taught in Fort de France is getting baptized on Saturday (Pierre Louis and Wilta) pretty cool stuff. 

I'm not really in a mood to write lots of stuff as I am a little sick. But the Work cannot stop now nor never, every second becomes more and more precious as the clock keeps on ticking. It is weird to be so close to the end yet not really think about it, it only motivates me to be a better missionary. It is all about the moment. What happened before is in the past and everthing that is in the future will worry about itself. The moment is ours, we make it what it is.

I have learned that communion with God is not by spoken words but as Paul stated " with groanings which cannot be uttered" Rom 8:29 therefore it is truely the Spirit which maketh intercession for us.  Every second we have an opportunity to learn to receive revalation. We teach our Spirits to comunicate with The Infinite. This week I was pondering quite a bit on the 1993 CES devotional "the voice of the spirit" by Elder James E Faust 

i recommend it,

I love you,

Thank you for your prayers

Elder Lewis

Jake posing by some graffiti that summarizes his feeling about being a missionary

Letter Number 90

Our Skype with Jake was wonderful..they all have been.  That was our fourth Skype and gone was the nervous new "Missionary Mom" and in her place sat me..."new confident senior missionary mom"  I am sad to have the spirit of the mission leave my life as this special time and correspondence ends, however the desire to have my Son in my life physically outweighs that.  He is a great Son. I cannot wait to wrap my arms around him and give a great big hug. 

After skyping my family I was just realizing how wonderfully blissful reunion it will be in the mansions above coupled with eternal glory to see again and rejoice with our loved ones. I can only fathom that, it must truely be as it is said a fullness of joy. To add with that coming back into the presence of our Heavenly parents will be extrodinary. What a beautiful plan which was fabricated from before the foundations of this world, which alows us all to go back to the Father and be eternaly linked to our families. That is a knowledge that is so precious in these times, think of how many youth would be more obedient if they only understood the full plan. I love watching people learn and apply these truths to their own lives, there is nothing more rewarding than helping another brother or sister feel the love of our Heavenly Father. It is like light and life and meaning pouring into their eyes. as well as mine. 

This Church is perfect, full of people who are imperfect, all striving to be more perfect in Chirst. 

What a great thing it was to see my family, it was like a small bonjour before saying BONJOUR 

This week I could elaborate upon but I will tell you a temporal story that was pretty funny,

So I was walking around the church grounds where many Iguanas wait on the rocks by a chain link fence. Now if you don't know this Iguanas are super fast, like hyperspeed. But there have been many attempts by missionaries to catch them. Sometimes it works,  not often. So I was walking and there was three. Two were lightning speed and got through the fence before I got close, the third however was much slower and was too fat to fit through the fence. As it repeatedly hit the fence I thought " I could just reach out and grab it by the tail" and BAM! I grabed it and hung it up so it was off the ground. It was super fullfilling. Nothing like catching an Iguana before District Meeting. 

Love you all,

Elder Lewis

Elder Lewis and Elder Savage

Jake Captures an Iguana!

Elder Lewis' Last District

Letter 89..and One Week To Skype!

It seems strange that I will see Jake in 2 months.  Almost surreal that he will sit at our dinner table and chat with us, but that he is the same but even better young man than he was 22 months ago.  I have seen how a dedication to the Lord can hone and change who we are.  I am excited to be with him, but want to testify again, that the mission is a wonderful life-changing experience. 

This week was again great, there were so many things that have happened in the last few weeks there is not really anytime to sit down. This week was for the most part planned and all we worried about was what we were teaching and how to help each person. We had a great desire to turn around this area and it is exactly what has happened. The Lord has heard that groaning of our spirits and has answered it. This area is truly turning around like the sun is coming up. Lots of exciting things. The more we believe people are going to get baptized the more frankly they accept baptism. Great week. 

Olivier (bet you didnt know that that means olive tree) and Claudia are getting married in Agust and he will be baptized just after. We got to their shop where we teach them and we bassically just listened to them talk about how there conversion is super strong and that there is so much to do in the gospel but it is all posible. It all makes for a good life. there is a self relience program that just launched here and it is pretty cool, I dont know if you already had that but it is a great system.

We had to take the Zone leaders to the airport at 5 or so this morning so I'm pretty toasted. Then we played tennis for a few hours, you would never believe how much fun it is to play tennis

Love you

Elder Lewis

Elder Jake E. Lewis' address
Residence les Paletuviers

Appt. 17

Modong sud

97122 Baie Mahault

Guadeloupe

french west indies

Guadaloupe

 caption

Elder Lewis and Elder Savage...ummm those are some big bananas!

Oh The Waterfalls of Guadeloupe

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

Letter Number 84...So Many Blessings!

Jake mentions their astonishing blessings, I feel that way about our family.  We have truly been blessed and I am eternally blessed to have Jake be such an example of faith and Thanksgiving on his mission. With every letter I read and then blog I remember to include the Lord in every part of my life.  I love that with each letter now Jake talks of how much more he has to accomplish on his mission before it is over. He has three months to go.  

Bonjour mes chers frères et sœurs,

I really feel like writing about a line and sending this, nevertheless, I will make an effort.

First read Helaman 3:25

SO MANY BLESSINGS THAT ELDER LEWIS AND ELDER PETERSON WERE ASTONISHED!

That pretty much describes my week.

The Vestrice family came to a family home evening put on by the Branch this last Tuesday, I have attached a photo of them at said activity. They look like such an eternal family. They came in a little late and we were in the spiritual portion and they were really kind of nervous and then we passed to the games and fun and the whole branch started to really surround them and have fun with them and their ten year old daughter played games and they started to laugh and it was a great moment. Later Viviane the wife,  said that they where sad they were leaving on a cruise for this week because she would miss the activity for the Relief Society. They are really a blessing that came down out of heaven. I really love them a lot. As well as Elder Peterson, I love him a lot too, he is a great friend of mine and we are really coming to a unity and power in our teaching that is incredible.

We also had a Zone Conference by Elder Cornish and his wife of the Sevety, it was broadcasted from Gwada Sunday, it was a bummer we didnt get to go to Gwada but it was incredibly edifying in all cases. I really love the power and assurance that General Authorities have when they speak, their words sink deep into your soul to the point where you just know that what they are saying is pure truth.

I really love my mission, I am trying to go faster and faster every day for the end is approaching and there is still plenty to do!

I love you all!

Elder Lewis

Elder Lewis and Elder Petersen at Zone Conference in Martinique