A sweet investigator named Daphne.

For information on the island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten go to the October 15, 2008 posting.

I took my 27th flight as a missionary to get to Sint Martin on Wednesday! I am close to holding the record for most fights in the mission (not counting the Assistants to the President). It took 4 different flights and a delay in Barbados to get here. It was a long day of travelling.

Elder Ackerman and I did meet our goal and finish reading the Book of Mormon together during 1 transfer (6 weeks). We got done on Tuesday. Our whole zone was suppose to do it but we were the only companionship that made it! I guess the zone leaders cancelled the reading goal but forgot to tell us. And look how we did with baptisms during the transfer! We led the zone with 3!

Things are going great here in Saint Martin. I am really learning French this time. It is coming along slowly but surely. I don't know how long they are going to keep me French speaking but at this point I am planning on speaking it the rest of my mission. Elder Snow has been doing some teaching in French but I haven't been able to say much yet. It is a little bit frustrating to have to sit in a lesson and not be able to say very much. I know enough that I can follow the conversation and know more-or-less what they are talking about. I have an okay sized vocabulary but I have found that it is really hard to speak if you don't know any verbs! The ones I do know all have like 50 different forms because of different tenses and things like that. It's pretty messed up.

Elder Snow is great. He is from Fresno, California. He played volleyball in high school and loves music and other sports. I wouldn't mind being his companion for a while. He is also really patient with me and is a good teacher. We read from the Book of Mormon everyday together and we spend an extra hour studying French each morning before we go out. I was really nervous on Friday when he had me read some verses when we were in a lesson! It went okay though.

Are you ready for a funny story about language goofs? We were reading from 1 Nephi and it says (when Zoram tries to run away) that Nephi is exceedingly young but large in stature, when I read it I said that he was exceedingly yellow!!! Apparently there is only 1 letter difference between the 2 words and it's a vowel.

The branch is pretty small. We met with most of the investigators that came to church last week but some of them were really weird! They scare me! We had a sweet investigator come on Sunday named Daphne (spelled the same way as the Scooby-Doo character). Anyway, she should be getting baptized soon. She is only worried that she isn't ready yet. We'll be going over tomorrow and we've got a few things planned to help her realize that she is ready.

The toe is starting to do a lot better. The cream seems to be taking care of it but the nail looks terrible. I can't believe that it hasn't fallen out yet! I'm sure that it will soon.

Also, the elders on the Dutch side will be going to St.Lucia for zone conference but Elder Snow and I will be going to Guadeloupe on the 16th for ours. I guess it's going to be in French. I think it might be a rough conference for me!

Sorry, but I don't know what my address is yet. You can just send letters to the Dutch side address until I let you know the new one.

The scripture of the week is D&C 133:8-11. I can't remember what it says but it must be good if I chose it for my list of scriptures of the week!