Stayin Put

From Joram's 11/25 emails:

"I am staying here for another transfer, my companion is leaving and my new companions name is Elder Knight, i don't know anything about him."

"I am ok with staying here we should have at least 3 baptisms. One is the daughter of one of the members here, her name is Odet and she should get baptized this saturday, she had the interview and is good to go we will see. The other two are two guys that one of our members introduced us to, but they both had baptism dates set up in Honduras but had to leave before it happened. So they should be ready to go we will just teach them everything. We taught them at one of our members house a way spiritual first lesson and commited them both for the 6th of December so we will see how they progress."

"I just read the talk of Come What May, and Love It this morning and also Joy in the Journey. So thats my goals for the week."

"Thank you so much [for the care package. The] pomegranate exploded on my shirt. But the pomegranate was amazing so it was worth it."

Cookie the Alligator

From Joram's 11/17 email:

"Well first of all about the alligator, he isn't really considered a pet because he can eat us, and second yes i did catch an alligator and stick it in the bath tub for about a week. We found him in a ditch riding bikes and i called the english elders and said we needed a car. I then threw a blanket over him and like my hero steve irwin, i grabbed him and put him in the trunk. I wont even tell you how i got him out of there, because you will kill me. Anyway his name was Cookie and he was about 4 feet long."



"This week was pretty discouraging for some reason. I was feeling depressed all week. I guess it started on tuesday when we were riding bikes and i had 2 cigarrettes flicked at me, 2 middle fingers and one guy swerved into me crossing the bridge. I was just feeling bad all week and then on Friday we were riding bikes again and we had about a ten mile ride ahead of us and the wind was blowing against us like mad and i was just getting angrier and angrier at everything and everyone, i was like Heavenly Father i am trying to do good and obey all the rules and do missionary work and you are making this hard on me. So i kept going just being stubborn and trying to push the wind back, i ended up about a mile ahead of my companion by the time we got back and i was so angry. After we went inside our house i just laid down and was fuming and all of a sudden just this tranquility entered and everything just made sense i can't even explain it but nothing mattered anymore and i just felt this calm sense over me. I have no idea but I was just happy and everything was fine. Then on Sunday i had the opportunity to give Noe the Holy Ghost and i just felt so calm and peaceful. After that he told me he felt that a power or force decending on him when i said recieve the Holy Ghost so that was an amazing experience."

"I learned this week that when you have time on your hands discouragement sets in and the attacks like crazy."

Noah's Baptism

From Joram's 11/10 emails:

"Hey everybody
We had an awesome week here in patterson. Anyway the week was hard we did a lot of work and nothing happened. Pretty much all of our investigators and every other hispanic visa expires this month so they are all heading back to mexico for the holliday. So we are running out of things to do fast and there are many times where we just have to go park the car and think and try to find something to do. We have a few cool people left but you can only visit them everyother day and everyday we get more people telling us they are sick of us so that blows. But on Wednesday i had an exchange in Lafayette with ELDER BAKER!!! the one from AF it was quite awesome, he is so funny. So we did some english work, got chased by a wolf chow chow mix, yeah that dog almost ate me. And then at night we got a call from his companion and Elder Jensen saying that one of our investigators had decided to get baptized and so we did that yesterday. So that was way awesome. It was a way good experience to see that. His name is Noe (Noah) Garcia and was a friend of a member who just decided to go to church with him one day and three weeks later we baptized him. Miracle.



I don't know if i told you about Joseph the RM that pulled us over and helped us. Well we had been trying to talk to him and get him to church and to stop drinking but it hadn't been going anywhere, but he came to church yesterday and enjoyed it. I think he was worried of being chastized but this branch is so desperate for people that everyone was just glad to see someone at church. So that was way awesome."

answers to several emailed questions:

How big is your area? "we have for our area the entire parish of St Mary, it goes from up by Franklin down to about Bayou Louis. It is the biggest spanish area in the mission by far and we don't have a ton of miles so we are rationing them."

How is the weather? "it has been raining cats and dogs in the morning, so bad one morning we had to sandbag our apartment and then it is in the high 70s in the afternoon. I seriously forget what month it is, it feels like September here but hotter. Anyway things are going great and thanks a ton for the package and lens cleaner."

Shrimp & Petroleum Festival - Mmm Yummy

From Joram's 11/3 email:

"My week was pretty interesting and pretty good. We were on lockdown for halloween night and the mood in the apartment was pretty depressed, so i wrote a few letters and we just ate and did nothing, nobody came to our apartment so pretty quiet night and everybody was in bed by 10 because there was nothing to do. This week in Morgan City they had the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival which is pretty big here, so we went and did some contacting and tried to find some spanish people. Turns out not very many spanish people came but the other two elders in the branch that live with us found some cool people to teach. I ate a ton of good food there, i had aligator on a stick, which is pretty much like chicken just a bit slimier, i also had shark ka bobs, which weren't very good. Lets see i also ate a ton of deep fried shrimp. so yeah tons of food.



This week we went to a members house with the English elders who had a monkey. so i got to play with a monkey while they talked. It was so cool, it would just kind of sit on the couch next to me and would occasionally hold my hand or put its hand on my knee or something wierd like that."



Pictures from Patterson

Pictures from Metairie