"There's Nothing Soft About Hard Times"

Wow! What a week. It has definitely had its hectic moments. But, in all of them we have been able to receive and see the blessings of the Lord. The work has really progressed here in Gosier. We now have 8 progressing investigators here and one with a baptismal date.
PLAYING WITH THE KIDS AT FHE

One(or I guess 4) is a very religious family, the Williams. They are devout evangelists and the two teenage boys are very involved in their church. We have become good friends with them and knowing their religious background have gone the Ammon route of service rather than just teaching the lessons straight. They run a large fruit stand and we have been helping them a lot with it. After we help them we usually are able to teach them a lesson. They are coming along I think, and the dad has promised he would be coming to church. One night after we had helped close up their food stand we were talking outside the family's little fruit shack. We were talking about many of the issues and bad experiences the father had had in his life, ass a teenager and especially in religion. He recounted a dream he had had (when i don't know) and he recounted that he was searching for the gospel, searching for the true church of Christ in his dream when he saw someone standing in the light who was actually Jesus Christ! He walked closer and saw a man sitting next to Christ(he later told us he believed it was a prophet) and this prophet told Brother Williams to go away, that he was not ready for the gospel. Elder Snow and I both felt to tell him that although we didn't understand what the dream meant entirely, we could testify that we were here talking to him extending the true gospel of Christ because he was ready. I felt impressed to share with him the story of Lehi, and his dream and relate that to Brother Williams because he was the one that needed to beckon his family to partake of the fruit, and taste the love of God. It turns out he has been feeling a lot of responsibility and pressure because of his family. We have not seen them yet after this experience, but I hope he has come to see that he is ready, and that God wants him be apart of his church.

Alan and Claudy are both really searching for the true gospel and we have had good lessons with the both where the spirit was really teaching. They both have accepted the Book of Mormon and began reading. Claudy accepts it to be the word of God.

Finally, Madame Rose we met the other day when we were looking for the house of another investigator. We thought to ask this lady and share our message with her. She ended up being from Dominca and spoke english. We shared the message of the restoration with her and committed her to baptism in two weeks and she accepted.

Today has been crazy though.... We found out this week with everything that is going on with the strike(in fact one day during the week we weren't allowed out of the apartment because the mayor called for all of Guadeloupe to "manifest the greve", aka mobs. After the first day of it though we found out that nobody here really has the guts to go too crazy so we went out the next day...But president called us last night and is making major changes in Guadeloupe...he is taking six elders off the island and leaving eight...Elder Snow and I will be moving to Moule and be covering both Gosier and Moule. But we will be staying in Moule. All the Elders remaining on the island are fairly new...only 2 over 7 months. It will be like this until five new elders arrive in April. There is a lot of weight on our shoulders now, and it will be hard to do all this for the next couple transfers but it will be fine with prayer and good ole fashioned hard work. The worst part is that all these elders we won't be seeing again (Garotta, Williams and others. The two zone leaders are leaving, It's wild.

Elder Snow is hilarious. I'm glad to be with him as he is always makin' things funny and he never lets me get down when we have a bad contact or have a bad lesson. We continue to learn a lot from each other, and I'm very excited for the challenges and spiritual growth that lies ahead.

My testimony is strong. Today has been a tough day as our zone family has been changed a little bit....or a lot. I realize because of how difficult it is and how difficult change is in general, how much more I need to be relying on the Lord. I need to be able to feel his love more, feel his support, and I'm excited to kneel by my bed tonight, and withdraw to prayer.

Its always good to hear from the fam...I'm glad Tucker is taking three ladies to basketball games hahaha. I was never that cool. Tell everyone I love them. I'm sorry this can't be more of a "reply to your email" email. I like those better, but it's has taken too long to explain what's been going on.
I love you all like Tucker loves mambas/

Andy

PS Pray for this strike to stop, we have to walk three hours to get from this cyber cafe back to our apartment...UGH.

GAS LINES DURING THE STRIKE