June 10 , 2013

Gwada!

Elder Santos

Les Palétuviers

Apt 17 Bat A

Moudong Sud

97112 Baie-Mahault

Guadeloupe

Good, well now that's out of the way. For those who have been wondering, anything that shows up for me in Martinique from now on will probably just be held onto until the next Zone Conference. Hopefully they'll remember to bring it.

But anyway! Yes, I am in Guadeloupe! I don't have my camera with me, but now that I know how p-day works here I should have it next time. In general, it's very similar to Martinique, except for the fact that there are less buildings where I am now than there were in Fort-de-France. Just to remind you, I am in Abymes, working with Elder Sosa.

MAIN CHARACHTERS:

Elder Sosa: I think I've already said that he is from Canada-I learned this week that he is also from a family from Honduras. He is the youngest of four children(but the third only beat him by 5 minutes), 22 years old, and has exactly one year more of mission time than me. He is a quiet person, but still enjoys cracking jokes and having fun. So far I've been loving working with him.

Elder Pratt: He came into the field one transfer after me-I actually just recently learned that he knew Elder Millett in the MTC! He was looking through my photos, stopped on a picture of him and I, and was like "hey, the Tahitian Missionary! He was great!" Crazy stuff. He's from Oklahoma (big Thunder fan), a hard worker who's doing his best and is making lots of progress in French. He is in the same branch as me, but one area over.

Elder Heiata: is his companion, who just started his last transfer. He is from Tahiti, and, true to form, loves laughing, people, and food.

The good news is that I've been speaking exclusively in French with Elder Sosa, which I haven't really gotten to do before now. The bad news is that our area is on bikes.

THE BIG THINGS: I'm still alive.

Because really, I wasn't sure about that the entire time. For those of you who don't know, I learned to ride a bike when I was about 9 (by my memory). Then, shortly thereafter my bike broke. So we put it in the shed, where old outdoor toys go to die. Since then, I haven't put foot on a bike. Until Wednesday, when we rode between rendez-vous on the side of a highway, a few feet away from cars going car speeds. So. Yeah. I've been praying a LOT, because this has, without a doubt, been the most mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting experience of my mission. Prayers are, as always, what is keeping me alive. Thanks for that!

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT (kinda):

One great thing about this area is that we meet in the only church-owned building in Guadeloupe and Martinique combined. I know that the people in the building are the most important part, but believe me when I say that being in a place where the church is really established is more of a blessing than I ever could have appreciated at home. For those of you at home reading this, I say that the building you meet in, the stake to which you belong, the church auxilaries available to you, and all those other things around you really are greater blessings than you can imagine. God loves you so much! I hope one day to be able to see these faithful members here enjoying those very same blessings.

So did I mention that we're in a paid computer place now? I'm under 60 seconds left. I love you all though! Until next time, my prayers stay with you!

-Elder Santos

June 4, 2013

Hey all. Sorry I'm late...I actually don't have a good excuse this time. Mais bon But good.

Anyway, it's been a fun week. The big news came with transfer calls-I am leaving Martinique. This time tomorrow, in fact, I will be on a plane to Guadeloupe. What I know so far is that I will be working in the area of les abymes, with Elder Sosa. I've met him at our zone conferences-he is from Canada, and from a spanish family, so he is fluently trilingual. That should be cool, because I decided to try to learn spanish! It's just so frustrating meeting someone and not being able to talk to them. Wish me luck!

Quick story for the week-we were out working Friday afternoon (actually shortly after transfer calls), and were out knocking doors. Found a residence that was open, and decided to go all the way to the top. We knock the door on the right, and then we knock the door on the left. Nothing. Start going down to the next floor, and we run into a woman on her way up. So we start talking with her, explain who we are and all that, and then start talking about the Book of Mormon. She immediately accepts a return appointment for Sunday, and then asks if she can come to church! Okay, so it may not sound exciting for you, but that's the first time anyone has asked if they can come to church.

But yes, she came to church, we had a little lesson with her after church, and then she immediately bonded with some of the members. Like, they're already facebook friends with pictures up and everything.

But anyway, after that came Monday night, when our branch president invited us over for FHE. Everyone said some very nice things, and I must say that I really am sad to be leaving these people. I know that the Lord has got other things in store for me now and I'm going to go meet another great group of people, but still.

...also, this is my first time changing areas on my mission. Weird. Wish me luck with the packing! I should probably start that soon...

Anyway, sorry I don't have an address for you yet-I'll be sure to get it for next week. I'll try to get some pictures and other info too.

THE LITTLE THINGS: Actually, this is one that I've been thinking of for a while-but you've got to love black culture for one thing because it is very proud of itself. My example for this week is store names-since I've been here, I have actually seen stores with the following names-"Black Style"(Useful for being able to show Pono what she's NOT allowed to wear), "Black Hair"(Again useful for Pono), and "Black Nutrition"(Which, in what has to be a blow for civil rights everywhere, only sold protien powder). But then, I guess people must say the same thing about Americans, because I've also seen stores named "American Style", "U.S. Barbershop", and "McDonalds".

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: So as I was reading in Ether this past week, I realized something that I had never really thought about before, regarding the story of crossing the ocean. For the actual text, you can go to the beginning of Ether 6. But just put yourself in the shoes of these people for a moment. You just built these tight barques, and Jared's brother just showed up with some glowing rocks, which is pretty cool. But then, you all get into these boats with all your family and belongings, and you just head out into the ocean, "commending [yourself] unto the Lord". Soon enough, things start getting pretty crazy. Lots of wind, huuge storms. "mountain waves" and "terrible tempests", we read. I don't know how much these people knew, but if it were me, I might have started asking questions. "clearly something has gone wrong-I can't believe that God wanted us to be tossed about on the waves like this..."

But then I had an interesting thought-even the most violent winds, tossing us along on the waves of life, can be a blessing from God-so long as we're being tossed in the right direction. We are moving towards something better. Sometimes we wish that the trip were a little smoother, sometimes we want to know how much farther we have to go (remember that these people probably had no way of knowing on day 340 that they would be on dry land in a week). But you know what, the fact that we only see one day at a time allows us to excercise our faith. We don't really know where we are on our trip, or what's in store for us, but I can promise you that God knows just as perfectly where you are right now as he knew where those little barges were, all those thousands of years ago. And if it's going to take a "furious wind" to get you back to Him, then dang it, that's what He's going to give you. He loves you too much to do any less.

Well, that's about it. Picture comes from Church this week-me, the family Occolier, and Elder Johnston, who is also leaving Martinique after just under a year straight on the island.

I promise to come back with a mailing adress!

Je vous aime tous I love you all,

-Elder Santos

May 28, 2013

I maintain firmly that there is no resemblance there

My dear family,

I want to start by copying the beginning of my journal entry from May 25th:

"Happy 0th anniversary to two of my favorite people in the whole world, Kalei and Elaine Santos. I can't tell you how bad I wish I could be there, but know how much I love you, and how proud I am of you. I wish you only the very best things that you can have, in this life and in the next. I love you."

In line with that thought, I want to give a big thank you to everyone for all the pictures-you're all beautiful. Speaking of pictures, I got a wedding announcement in the mail this week (For some reason the other Martinique missionaries think I look like Kalei), as well as a photo from new cal, so I can officially show people three siblings, two sister-in-laws, and two nieces. Thank you!!

As for my week, it was lots of fun (the wedding a thousand miles away was still the highlight). We've been working hard at implimenting what we talked about at Zone Conference, meaning working more with the members. We got to have a couple rendez-vous this week, in which we got to hear a lot of peoples' conversion stories. What I learned; we heard, in one form or another, the stories of how six members rencontréd the church. Four of them came from a friend who was already a member and who invited them to learn more. One of them is the daughter of one of the first four, whose mom was baptized when she was 5, so we're going to count her as "raised in the church". The sixth is the only one who met the church through independant missionary efforts (although actually, the missionaries didn't contact him-he contacted the missionaries). It was another testimony for me that God does not intend for people to discover the truth by having strangers knock on their door. Yeah, it works in some measure, but it's sort of taking the monkies on typewriters approach-if you do anything enough times, it's bound to work eventually. So this week we've been working on finding a better way.

My adventure for the week happened last night-we had one of those lessons at a member's house, and got done around 8:20. We decided there probably wasn't going to be another bus, so we just started walking home. Unfortunately this was a place I had only ever been to in a car, so I didn't technically know the path home, although I did know the general direction (oh yeah, I was on an exchange with Elder Miyasaki who is still in his first transfer, so I was the one leading the charge). For the first little while we were doing pretty well. We got to a point where I definitely knew where I was, and had to choose between two paths. I chose the one that I thought would definitely be quicker, although I had never been there before. Well...you can kinda guess how that all worked out. With a few stops to ask for directions, we finally got home at 9:45. But hey, if you don't walk enough, how are you going to keep the weight off?

Speaking of which, I had no less than three members yesterday tell me that I've gained weight since I've been here...

THE LITTLE THINGS: One fun fact about Martinique is that there's just trashed cars all over the place. Scrapped, tires gone, winshield shattered, just kinda lying around in random places. Well, this past week somebody raised the bar on random places to put your crap car (see photo). 20 euro to the first person who can tell me how in the heck that got there. Hey, it made me laugh. And for that, I am grateful.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: This is one I got to share for French Mother's day. Want to go on a scavenger hunt?!? I've got a couple scriptures for you.

1 Nephi 11:1, Enos 1:3, Alma 36:17, Alma 56:47-48, Helaman 5:13-14.

Notice anything? Think for a second about these scriptures, and what experiences, what scripture came about par la suite. It's a pretty big chunk of the Book of Mormon, and these aren't all the examples. Turns out that the scriptures that we have to day, we have because parents taught their children the gospel of Jesus Christ. I bet they couldn't always tell that they were having an effect at the time (think Alma), and some of them never even got to see the results in their lifetime (Jacob and Enos, for example) But look at how important it is to teach the gospel in your home! Think of how your life would be different if Lehi or Helaman or the Anti-Nephi-Lehis hadn't done it. I am very grateful for my family, and for the home that I grew up in. Yeah, it had it's ups and downs, but my parents taught me who I am. Even if I wasn't always listening.

I love you all! Next week I'll have my transfer calls, so if you haven't already, you might want to hold your mail items for a little while.

à plus!

-Elder Santos

May 21, 2013

Guess who's totally got more random holidays than Pono...

But yeah. Because we're both good little catholics, we had Pentecost on Monday. Happy Pentecost! I hope the gift of tongues abounded. Then, for those of you who don't know your Martiniquaise history, the 22 May is the day that slavery was abolished here. So, we're going to make that another holiday. The only thing is that since Monday is ferié bank holiday and  is also ferié, basically no one went to work  either. In fact, the only reason I'm emailing now is because we decided to just go to the church and get it done, rather than waiting until Incidentally, happy 22 Mai! You're all white, so you still have to go to work.

But anyhow...what a week-and-a-few-days. I don't know if I told you all this last time, but this past week was scheduled to be crazy.Tuesday, Elder and Sister Bennion came into Martinique, to look for a new apartment for new missionaries here. Wednesday President and Sister Mehr arrived with the assistants, and had a fireside that night with the members and some amis. We did my interview right before that, to save us having to do it at zone conference later that week. I've got to say, I love being around that man, because I feel like I just get straight revelation every single time that he talks. One of my favorite parts was at the fireside, when he told the members that he knew why they had been born.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "Each one of you who had accepted covenants with the Lord were foreordained before the foundation of the world to prepare the earth for the second coming of Jesus Christ. Do you believe that?"

This past week, he talked to the missionaries a lot about how to change the culture of missionary work here, and the blessings that will give us. I heard him say several times that as missionaries, we are called to teach. We have got to stop the current way of doing things, where we find someone to teach, set up an appointment, and then ask members to come teach with us. "You are the teachers, they are the finders". Rather than "Would you come teach this person I found?" ideal missionary work would consist of us saying "When can we come and teach that person that you found?". Wednesday night was his chance to kick the butts of the members-at one point he gave them the invitation that night to pray to God and ask what He would have them do for Him. He said, though, that he already knew the answer.

ALSO QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "Go ahead and ask God what he wants you to do. I know already what the answer will be, because there is no way that He won't tell you to share the gospel. There is absolutely no chance that he won't ask you to save your brothers and sisters, His sons and daughters".

That is what we do! That is what each of you have the chance and sacred trust to do! That is what we were foreordained to, and how we are going to prepare the world for the coming of Christ. I've thought often about the fact that as a relatively simple person, I really have absolutely nothing that I can give to God. Even giving Him my heart and my will doesn't make me anything more than what King Benjamin called an "unprofitable servant". But I realized something this past week-I have the ability to serve God by saving his children and bringing them back to Him. And when you think about it, what greater service could anyone ever give?

Then, Thursday we left for Guadeloupe to have our zone conference. I had a famous Guadeloupeen Bokit for the first time (It's a creole thing, missionaries talk alot about it, but as far as I can tell it's a glorified sandwich), and probably the worst night of sleep I've had so far on my mission. I hope the mosquitoes aren't that bad everywhere in Guadeloupe. Friday morning we left bright and early for zone conference. Lots of great stuff, but I'll just give you the highlights. 

-Asking for help is a tricky thing. No one likes feeling needy or dependant, but in fact you get to give others the chance to serve, and therefore merit blessings from above. Don't be afraid to ask them to do hard things either; service is never meant to be convenient. Sacrifice is what brings forth blessings.

-Speaking of the Captain Moroni, we read that if every man were like him, the very powers of hell would be shaken forever. So a good reflection question would be this-if every man (and woman) were like you, would the powers of hell shake? Or would Satan have an easier job? Our goal shouldn't necessarily be to be like Moroni, but rather we should try to be someone who others should want to be like. Be thou an example of the believers.

-now for a quick number session. President told us that in the last six months, as a mission, we contacted 50,000 people. In the same period of time, we baptized 32 people from unassisted contacting efforts. That's a lot of work, which is great. There are (hopefully) 32 more people who are that much closer to salvation, which is awsome. But there's a better way to do the work.

-The Lord is hastening his work. When I arrived in Martinique, there were 4 elders here. Right now, we have 6. In the next two transfers, we are going to receive a senior couple and a pair of sisters. For the first time ever, there will be 10 full time missionaries in Martinique (and only one branch, I might add). It's time for us to catch up to what God expects for us.

Also at zone conference, Elder Porterfield and I got to do a little 5-minute teaching segment that the assistants asked us to do a week ago, and the Martinique Elders were asked to do a musical number. We did (in the french hymnbook) #29, O viens, Toi Roi des Rois. Come O Thou King of Kings With a little bit of help, we were actually able to do a little bit of 4 part harmony. Sœur Mehr, who was in the MoTab before leaving on a mission, said she liked it. I was a little disappointed, but hey, whaddya going to do. That's the price you pay for being brought up a music snob.

Anyway, Saturday we came back to Martinique, and now we're back into the swing of things.

A quick sidenote; a while ago I talked about how rain was one of the little things I'm grateful for. Well I still am, but I think God might have heard me and decided to try to change my mind or something. It has been RAINY here recently. I've discovered that as a missionary, there's multiple stages of "wet" that you go through, depending on how bad it's raining.

1-"Great, a little something to cool us off"

2-"Huh, it's really coming down, isn't it?"

3-"Maybe we can just wait it out under cover?"

4-"Oh no! Don't let my tie get wet!"

5-"Rain rain, go away..."

6-"I'm just going to try to keep my feet dry"

7-"Aaand I can no longer give away this Book of Mormon."

8-"Huh, I didn't know my shoes could hold this much water."

9-"I wonder if my camera will ever work again..."

10-"Does this count as breaking mission rules?"

ps-Mom, don't freak out. Even if you sent me a poncho and boots, I would never wear them.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: Basically, read what I said earlier about member work. I would like to re-extend a modified version of the invitation from earlier. Please, before my birthday, invite at least one person to a soirée with the missionaries. They don't necessarily have to say yes; all I ask is that you give them the chance. I ask as well that you send me a little something about how it went, even if it's just to say that nothing came of it. I love you all! If you want to see miracles, you have to go where the miracles happen.

That's my time! I'll talk to you sooner than usual! Know that you are constantly in my prayers!

-Elder Santos

ps-President also mentioned at mission conference that we're allowed to use email to communicate with friends, so could somebody post mine on Facebook? Thanks a bunch!

May 7, 2013

T'as mal où? Google translate tells me this is "You have badly where?"

Hello all my favorite people,

So I hope you all had a fantastic week-I thank you for the time spent to send me little updates. Huh, one fun realization for the week-since I only get news updates every Monday, I tend to pray for the same problem for each of you all throughout the week. I was sitting there one night this week and thought to myself-"I wonder if this is already a moot point?"

But! I pray for you all the same!

Anywho. This week has been good fun, as usual. We have been blessed to be able to do more teaching than usual this week, which makes me a happy camper. One interesting change we've had recently is that for my first three months here, I spent a lot of time working in a sector called "Dillon"-probably just because of convenience, because it's one of the biggest cités in walking difference. If you look at a picture that I've sent home of the view from my balcony, the big buildings right next to the highway are all Dillon. Thing is, since missionaries have been in this apartment forever and have all been looking out the window at those huge buidlings, I'm sure that they've been crawling up and down Dillon for longer than I've been alive. Personally, I've knocked every door in the place. Well, with the turn of the transfer Elder Shepherd and I decided that we were all dillon'd out, and that we wanted to try working more in Fort-de-France itself. So we've been spending a lot more time downtown, and, as a fun little change of pace, we decided to get the unlimited bus pass for the month of may. Now I know that probably doesn't sound too notable to you, but I'm not joking when I say that that is one of the most exciting things that's happened to me. Up until now, we've been walking everywhere, and have been a little bit limited in our ability to se déplacer. move So hopefully this lets us break into new areas where hopefully people haven't already seen the missionaries for 30 years.

Besides that-I've been meaning to talk about the weather for a while now-so a while back, we were in Carem (ask a catholic), when it is apparently traditionally hotter than usual in Martinique. Then, in mid-april, things started to change a little bit. You know how back home we talk about "April showers"? Well, turns out in Martinique, they don't mess around. Seriously some of the hardest rain I have ever seen-and that when we happened to be walking around. The worst I've gotten so far has been the water up to mid-thigh, so I'm told that's relatively not so bad. But man, there was not an inch of my body that was not thoroughly drenched. I've been wearing my contacts a lot more as well, because when it starts raining hard, I can't see squat through my glasses. But then that got old apparently, because this past week it has been like 35 every day. I have know idea what that is in 'merican temperature, but I can tell you that it's stinking hot. But hey, life goes on. I can tell you one thing though, I'm going to be such a wimp coming home and starting school in a provo winter.

Soo...yesterday google locked down my account while I was writing. But hey, you guys get what I had already written.

Also real quick-I will be calling...someone...I don't know who yet...at 6pm sunday evening. I will try starting a google+ chat with someone-probably JJ? I'm thinking I'm going to google from the david santos google+ account. So...look for that!

Picture!

Kisses,

-Elder Santos

April 29, 2013

His name is longer than mine...and it's not even close

Happy Monday everyone!
 
 So we decided to try out a different cyberbase (the place where we do
 our mail) this week, and it turns out that that was an awful decision.
 I highly suggest going with what works in the future. In consequence,
 I'm having trouble getting all the email addresses that google usually
 puts in for me-could one of you two forward this on to Megan, Mele,
 and Pono?
 
 But enough of that. This week has been very fun logistically, as we
 now officially have four missionaries in our apartment. Who, you ask?
 
 MAIN CHARACTERS:
 ELDER ANDROS: is de retour in back in Martinique, after an 11 month stay in
 Guianne. Incidentally, he is also the father of Elder Porterfield, who
 was with him six weeks ago. The first time I saw him, I was about 80%
 sure that he was Draco Malfoy. I'll see if I can get a picture in the
 future to show you, but you'll get it right away.
 ELDER MIYASAKI: is our Hawaiian baby. Since he has arrived, there may
 or may not have been some very hurtful comments going around about him
 being a "real hawaiian". I stand firm in my position that I am just as
 Hawaiian as him, but so far that opinion seems to be the road less
 traveled. Fun fact-he's from Hilo! Mom, go for it-I expect to have his
 entire family tree by next week. Also, the subject line is about him.
 
 So Elder Andros came in Wednesday afternoon, and spent the day with
 the other elders. Elder Miyasaki was scheduled to come in Thursday
 morning, but apparently he lost his passport for a little while. He
 was eventually able to find it, but not before missing his flight.
 Apparently the next one they could find for him was Saturday morning.
 That meant that we spent Thursday and Friday in a tripanionship, which
 also allowed me to have a mission first-for each of those days,
 whenever we had a member with us, I went on an exchange with the
 member, while the other two would go somewhere else and do their
 thing. It was really bizzare, being the only missionary in the room
 for long stretches of time. But then, Saturday Miyasaki came in and
 for the past two days, for the first time ever, we have had three
 companionships of missionaries in operation in Martinique. Super fun
 stuff.
 
 As far as the work goes, it's been an interesting week, with us having
 lots of trouble working with our previous amis, but also being blessed
 with lots of new investigators. Good and bad news, but we're still
 plodding along. The other fun part has been working through the
 adjustment period of having new roommates. It's actually reminded me a
 lot of the first little bit at school, every semester that I was
 living with someone new. You get used to how they do everything, try
 to iron out the quirks, and generally learn a lot about how to deal
 with people.
 
 SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: So this week we set transfer goals as a district-it
 wasn't necessarily us choosing the goals though, as much as it was the
 goals being presented to us. So I thought some of them were a little
 bit unrealistic, and as we were walking around tuesday, I thought to
 myself "I just can't see it happening". Then, lightning struck my
 brain (I think Pono already used that, but shoot, that's really the
 best way I can explain it). Immediately the thought came "That's
 right, you don't see it. That's why it's called FAITH". How many times
 in the scriptures are we told that faith is that which we do not see?
 The one that came to my mind at the time was 2 Corinthians 5:7, which
 tells us that we walk by faith, not by sight. The grand moral of the
 story, though, is that if we only ever shoot for what we can see, then
 we will never ever reach what God has in store for us. Walk by faith,
 and be confident (right above the verse previously cited).
 
 Well, that's my week. I love you all, and pray for you constantly. Oh,
 and also, I'll see you in two weeks!!
 
-Elder Santos

April 22, 2013

Bonjour à toutes et à tous, Hello to you all

Let's jump right in! I'm hoping to attach two pictures to this email, so fingers crossed!

I wanted to start out by wishing a biiig happy birthday wish to my best friend in the whole world! I love you Sister Santos! Sorry I forgot to say that last week! Also a big congratulations on your new assignment-I'm positive that you are going to do great. I pray for you every day.

Other than that, the big news from this week is that we got transfer calls! And the four of us that are on Martinique aren't moving at all! So not too much to talk about there. But, the exciting news (we've known this was going to happen for a while now) is that we are going to get two new missionaries here this week. One of them is coming from French Guiana, and the other one is coming from Provo. In fact, all I know about him is that his name is Miyasaki, and that he's actually from Hawaii. But hey, we should have some new charachters coming up next week! Just to give you the run-down, they are supposed to be covering the southern end of Martinique, but in fact for the moment they will be staying in our apartment in Fort-de-France, and they will not have a car. So...I don't know how we are thinking this is going to work, but I'm sure we'll burn that bridge when we get there. The biggest change that we'll have to deal with for now is just having four in the apartment. Like I may have mentioned before, it's really not all that big, but it's housed four in the past, so it'll work out somehow.

I really don't have a whole lot of news for this week. Come to think of it, that can't be a good sign. But...I'll work on making sure I have something great to share for next time! Just some quick experiences though. We went contacting in the rich area of Fort-de-France the other day (it's actually called Bellevue-go figure), and I discovered that even after just three months, I've gotten into a weird state of mind where white people stress me out. No joke, we were walking down a street and there were more white people than black people, and for some reason in the back of my mind I was thinking "I feel like I shouldn't be here...". So...going back to Washington and Provo will be quite an adventure. Oh, but probably my favorite moment of the week happened just this morning-we went to a little recreation area by the ocean to play basketball with some amis, and afterwards as I was just hanging around on a park bench, a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses came up to contact me. Hahaha I think the best part was when they were asking where I was from and all. 

"You're here on vacation?"

"Well, not exactly."

"Oh, so you're here for some sort of formation (that's the word in french, I'm pretty sure in English we would say training)?"

"...yeah, you could say that."

Anyway, eventually they found out who we were and left. But hey, crazy stuff happens when you're not in a shirt and tie.

The other fun thing that happend this week was that our Zone Leaders came to Martinique for two days, because neither of them has ever been here, and they wanted to know the island and us a bit better. So for Wednesday and Thursday we were a trio, and it was a great learning experience. One thing I learned is that you really do have to talk to everyone. Gordon B. Hinckley was once asked how he got so many couples at the height of their professional careers to give up everything and go serve as mission presidents. His answer? "We ask them". And while, granted, the results aren't always the same when trying to teach people, one important principle is that people cannot accept an invitation that you do not offer them.

Well, keep on praying for me! I couldn't make it by without you guys. And keep yourselves safe; I hear life has gotten a little crazy recently for the U.S.ofA. Know that I pray for you all!

Bizus,

-Elder Santos

Ps-photo is from the top of a building in Bellevue. You can see a lot of Fort-de-France from there (note the stinking huge cruise ship). Also, the sun was in my face, so you'll have to excuse the grimace.

Nothing but a photo...

But I talked about it last week, so I'll just send it along anyway. There's my Martinique Beach.