Elder Santos

Elder Santos

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

December 30, 2013

We wish you a merry christmas...


and a happy new year!

I loved seeing all of you, thanks for being there. 

anyway, since wednesday we've had a fun time working our tails off (because Christmas kind of cut in to some of our productive time this week), and we got to have a lot of fun. I don't think I told you, actually, but on Christmas day we got to watch one G-rated movie. After much deliberation and surprise at how many movies are PG, we finally decided on Monsters Academy. Don't know if you've seen it, but I liked it.

Other than that, the big news is that we got transfer calls on Friday, and I'm going to be leaving Guianne in two days. I'm heading up to Guadeloupe to be zone leader with my new companion, Elder Tolman. Crazy story, Nathan Tolman and I actually were in the same building at Wyview for the Fall 2011 semester. We figured out the connection a few months ago. Elder Fraley will be staying here with one of my good friends, Elder Pratt, who is coming down from Guadeloupe. I'm a bit sad to leave all these great people down here, and a little apprehensive to go from a zone of 4 missionaries to a zone of 18, but I'm sure it will all work out.

My address should be the same as it was last time I was in Guadeloupe. I think it's supposed to look like this.

Residence “Les Paletuviers”

Appt 17, Batiment A

Moudong Sud

 97122 Baie-Mahault, Guadeloupe

Yeah, that's all the news that I've got. Keep praying for me! It's always interesting, the adjustment period going into a new area. Next email comes from the 9-7-1!

Love,
-Elder Santos


Pictures: So as we were leaving church yesterday, there was a big crowd around what turned out to be a huge snake that they had found. This is probably a couple hundred feet away from church.

Second one is the family that I talked about in the call, the family that gave us ties. We're all wearing our new ones (I got the coolest one).



December 24, 2014




First one was from the Trinidad trip-me with all the other french side ZLs and Elder Dohrman, one of the assistants. Second is from our ward christmas party. You haven't seen the nativity until you've seen it black and in french. Third is...sort of self explanatory.

December 16, 2013

Hello Trinidad...


So, I'm 4 for 4 on leaving the country during transfers since I've been down here. I got to take a trip to Trinidad this past week, for a mission leadership Council. All the zone leaders in the mission got to come to Trinidad for a little bit of in-person training with President and Sister Mehr and the assistants. And since there's no way flight-wise to get from Guianne to Trinidad in the same day, I ended up being gone for 4 full days. Left Tuesday morning, spent the night in Martinique (which, already, I barely recognized-there's a scary thought), and then flew to Trinidad Wednesday. Conference started that night, went all of Thursday, and then I woke up at 3:30am to get back to Guianne at 8:30pm Friday night. Lots of travel. I've got tons of stamps in my passport.

And that doesn't even count the conference itself! It was amazing. I think one of the big takeaways from that had to do with spiritual impressions, learning how to follow the spirit. I'll super summarize what I learned. First off, having received the gift of the Holy Ghost, all that we need now to actually have Him with us is worthiness and desire. But even then, there is the element of faith in following His promptings. Yes, He will be there, but we exercise our faith by acting humbly and with confidence, sincerely believing that He will guide our steps. My new mantra is "If you feel like you should do it, do it. If you feel like you shouldn't do it, don't do it". Note that this is something that does not work for the natural man being unable to receive the spirit in the first place (1 Cor. 2), but for those who really seek to do the right thing and be guided by the Lord, it will lead us in the light (D&C 93)(I don't have the verses off the top of my head).

Then, a great quote from Neal A Maxwell about stress and trials. I'll paraphrase; the doctrine of foreordination means that before the foundations of this world, we were each weighed, and given a measure of trials and tribulations equal to our abilities. None of us would ever be given trials that we could not support, but we must notice also that God cannot expect of us less than that of which we are capable, if we are ever to grow as we could. So, as Elder Maxwell concluded, when we are "weighed and found wanting", the real solution to our tribulations is to be more determined disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that even if it requires all that we have to give, we will never be beaten.

I don't have my notes with me...darn.

Oh yeah, but this week we had someone start to sing to us in the middle of their prayer. ...I had mixed feelings about it.

So Christmas-so long as it's still good for Pono, we're going to do the call at 11am New Cal time. I don't actually know what time that is for any of you...or for me...so if someone could let me know I would be very grateful.

That's my time! Love you!

-Elder Santos

December 9, 2013

Dear family, friends, and avid blog followers all over the world,

...yeah, so the story about that is that in our last Mission Leadership council, our mission president's wife reminded our blogging missionaries to make sure to be professional in their blogs, because although it is a good way to do missionary work, it can also become a negative influence if we are careless about what we put on it. As she said, "You're now missionaries on a worldwide stage!". So, as such, I would like to give a special shout out to my readers in Botswana, the Vatican City, and Kyrgystan. (psh, so much for "I'll never even look at my international drivers licence!") 

Anyway, this week has been another fun one. I met two people named "Santos". Well, actually, one of them was Dos Santos, and the other was Dos Santos Rodriguez, but hey.

I think the most fun that we had was on Saturday, when our relief society and the missionaries went to sing a christmas program in an old folks home. I was suddenly reminded that I've done something similar once before, in high school with vocal jazz. What reminded me of that was seeing some of our old folks sing along with us. I hope I'm still singing when I'm that old! Afterwards, we were out socializing with old folks, and an older gentleman from St Lucia was talking with Elder Call. The following conversation occurred.
"Where are you from?"
"St Lucia. And where are you from?"
"I'm from America."
"You? And american boy?"
"Yeah!"
"No, you're a liar! You can't be american, you're nice!"
I also was apprached by a very old woman who held my hand and told me that when she's around men, she's young again, so she had to take advantage of the opportunity. I'm not sure if she was 100% there though.

I've got to be more efficient with my email time. Sorry...

I love you though!
-Elder Santos

Pictures.
1-A totally kosher parking job for a service project, by yours truly.
3-The most recent picture that I have of myself. Mom, this one's just for you.

2 got deleted-email was too big.



Tuesday, December 3, 2013

December 2, 2013

Décembre dit quoi? December say what?


Can you believe that we're there already? I really quite honestly have no idea what happened to November.

Also, I was just sitting here looking at this screen, and then it hit me what we did this past week-thanksgiving! So, last week, after a frantic last-minute email for recipes, we decided to go for it, pretending that we knew how to cook. Elder Call made garlic mashed potatoes, Elder Miyasaki made fried chicken and cucumber salad, Elder Fraley prepared the ham, and I got to try my hand at cheesecake and broccoli cassarole. Which, I didn't think I would find the ingredients for here, but, magically, we went to the high class grocery store here and were able to find both a sort of cream-of-mushroom soup thing, and genuine ritz crackers. The broccoli cassarole actually wasn't that bad-I almost got the taste right, even if it had a consistency a lot closer to soup than what we're used to (probably because the cream of mushroom stuff was much more liquidy than what I remember, but also potentially because I was supposed to cook it longer or something). The Elders aren't begging me to make it again, but they ate it of their own free will, in any case. Then there was the cheesecake, which actually turned out pretty stinking good. Yes, it was brown on the top, but hey. Maybe I'll come back knowing how to make a couple things.

Other than that...so we had a mini-miracle this week, in that we made it up to 8 days in a row visiting a recent convert or less active member. One of those was especially interesting-we had set a goal to have one the night before, and the one that we had planned quickly fell through. But later that day, as we were driving away from a fallen-through rendez-vous, I took a wrong turn. Well, that wrong turn took us through a roundabout, where we happened to see a less-active young boy that we had tried to get a rendez-vous with the day before. We pulled over to say hi, and he said "actually, if you wanted to see me, I'm available right now!" And so, the streak continued.

Now for your regularly broadcasted random bits of information:

So, fun fact; next week I get to go to Trinidad for a mission leadership conference. That will mean that for each of my four transfers down here, I will have left the country-either to Suriname, Trinidad, or both.

We also restarted reading the Book of Mormon this week, and this time through, I decided to read it in Haitian Creole, which is derived from french. It's basically like playing mad gabs, but in french and with scriptures. m ap palé créole! Or something like that.

I got my international drivers licence from AAA a little while ago. I'm now legal to drive in 150 countries! 

Yep, that's it. 



I love you all so much! My thoughts are with each one of you.

-Elder Santos


Good news about my camera!



November 25, 2013

Gobble gobble.


Bonjour à toutes et a tous, Hello to all and to all

that's how everyone starts their talks. But anyway.

It was a really good week. Church, investigators, it was fun stuff. Stories...oh!  got one.

So on Thursday, we went for a rendezvous with an ami, and they weren't there. That happens pretty often. And recently, we've been trying something new-every time that a rdv falls through, we talk to the first person we see. Well, we walk down the stairs, look around, and all there is is a group of children playing. So, I kinda ruled that one out and started walking away, but as we were leaving, one of the little girls ran after us to tell us that boys like us used to come see her family. She had barely said it when she was like "okay, bye!" and she ran off again. Elder Fraley and I look at each other, and we're like "sure, let's go for it." So we go find her again, she shows us where her family is, and we go talk to her mom. Surprise surprise, she tells us that she was baptized in Macapa (brezil)! She pulls out her phone and goes on her friend's facebook (she said that he was president-something in brezil), shows us pictures of church buildings, men in suits, and missionaries in plaques. So, we're going back this week!

I'm sorry, I didn't manage time well this week. But happy thanksgiving! Next time it will already be December! CRAZY.

Love,
-Elder Santos