Dear family,
Hey! How are things. I unfortunatley didn't get the letter sent, but it is written, so maybe I'll send it this week to see if I can beat it home. It is probably the weirdest feeling in the world to be almost finished. I am going to try and make up for last weeks email in this one. Elder Jones is the same Elder Jones thats always been there. He told me to type that. Its the same Elder Jones I was companions with in Basse Terre and Lamentin during the strike. He's the District Leader. To answer your question about Lilia may take several days, because everything she does is a success story. This week we went to teach one of her friends from her old church, and she basically just wanted to bash, but it didn't phase Lilia at all. Her friend got really angry when she tried to explain why she knew her old baptism wasn't good. I almost lost my cool in that lesson when the friend said "Your Church isn't even persecuted. Your just all hunky dory in that Church." It was pretty funny. She called us later that evening and requested a Book of Mormon. We are going to cross that bridge this week. Saturday night we were at Lilia's house again, and the friend came over to talk, unfortunatley, we couldn't stay because we had a rendez vous, but we let her "borrow" a Book of Mormon to answer the questions in the back of the tract. She was civil and we left hoping it would remain that way. It didn't. We got a text message from Lilia about 20 minutes later explaining how her friend tried to force her to go back to the old church again. Sunday at church I asked her about it and she said, "Yeah, she started monologuing and I just kinda sat there When She left I went up in my room and started praying and While I was praying the kids found the Church History images a member gave us and posted them all over the house." That was funny. We went over to her house last night, and sure enough, paintings of pioneers, Joseph Smith, and Temples were all over the house. We looked at all of them, explained breifly the stories of each one, and we got to the front door and directly across from the front door was the picture of a temple baptimal font. She said, "this is our family goal." Yeah. I was excited. She also explained in more detail about the happenings the night before with her friend. Apparently she bore her testimony about how shes seen big changes in her kids behavior since they joined the church and her friend said "Be careful, that might be from the devil" She thought to herself, Did she just say my kids were posessed by the devil. She told us she kinda thought it was funny because people said exactly the same thing about Jesus Christ. We have also been teaching this Woman named Nazeema and her daughter Indeerah, and this week we set a baptismal date for the 25th with Indeerah, and she came to Church. Nazeema told us she couldn't be baptized because she lives in sin. We told her she would have to get married or kick him out to make the Lord happy, so, we'll see about that. Indeerah is really shy so she was kinda scared at church, so I asked Lilia if she would talk to her, because she is 19 and after her baptism will be in the Relief Society. Lilia not only talked to her, but they swapped phone numbers. She takes her call seriously! We taught Indeerah and her mom yesterday and they asked if it was obligatory that she got baptized on the 25th because her birthday is the 9th? of November, and they wanted to move it to the 8th. We told her that was fine, and that the reason we set it for the 25th was because I was leaving and wanted to be there for it. Nazeema said, "Oh ok, the 25th it is." That was sweet. Pray for them. To cut things short, It is going to be almost unbearably depressing to have to leave this area behind and start living a normal life again. I love it here. I am really excited however, to see the chair! Oh yeah! That is all the news for this week, and all the time I have left to write. I love you guys so much. The Church is true!
Love,
Elder Ison
