Week 60 - Dwight

 

Saindeline, Edgard, Aly, Elder Bates, Jean Edrice, Paul-Edmond, Alin, Elder Hanson

One of the really fun things we get to do is go with new members to the temple to do baptisms for the dead (See 1 Corinthians 15:29)  It's especially fun when you get to go with 6 new members!  This weekend was filled with a temple trip on Saturday to Raleigh and then rush back to Goldsboro for stake conference and then back again to Goldsboro on Sunday for stake conference.  The really fun, or interesting?. part was stopping at McDonalds between the temple and stake conference on Saturday and, in the interest of time, I ordered dinner for everyone, but the register didn't know how to handle 18 McDoubles, 8 small fries, 7 sodas, and 2 waters - so the manager had to come take the order!

I predict there will be a Haitian Branch of our Church before the end of the year in Mt. Olive.  That work continues to roll forth and it's amazing!  Three were ordained Elders today after stake conference and we're close to the minimum numbers of members to create a branch, so I just think it's coming soon.

Other than the eventful weekend, this week had a lot of highs and lows.  My buddy JR had his foot operated on and that was tough on him.  He's home and recuperating, but in a lot of pain.  We had dinner with family and the young missionaries twice this week, once at the Albertson bishop's (she's my 1st cousin's daughter), and again today at my niece's house where my sister Linda is visiting.  Linda is here because her brother-in-law Kenneth Heath's funeral was last Sunday.

Susan and the Sistas

Our friends the Wards also had a death in the family.  His father died and we attended the funeral this week in New Bern.  

Our Haitian friend numbers just keep increasing and we're involved with the young missionaries visiting and teaching and feeling blessed by the experiences.  With all the people interested in hearing and accepting the gospel message, we've needed to regroup a bit on how we're organized, but think we're headed in the right direction. Susan and I are teaching 5 beautiful young women and girls.  One is Monica and the other 4 are in the same family - Wolffencia and her 2 sisters and a cousin.  Their parents are not ready to learn about the restored gospel, but they're glad their daughters are interested.

Wolffencia, Alandjina, Marie, Leila

We got to hang out with our Ruritan Club members this week for an hour or so.  We're already planning the Albertson Stew Fest in November.  We attended last year and it's hard to believe that it's coming around again already.  Time is flying way too fast!

Albertson Ruritan Club Meeting

Visiting with my cousin, Lynetta Barnett Young, this week at her home, I couldn't help but think of all my family that has lived right here in the area where we were sitting and talking.  My father, and undoubtedly, his father and grandfather, were born within a few hundred feet of where we sat and were all buried a few hundred yards away.  My great grandfather and his son helped to start the Piney Grove Baptist Church near by.  My grandfather helped build a little church for the early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in that same community.  There is so much of my family history right here in this little community of Albertson - of course, including myself born and raised here.  After being away for so many years, it's hard to express how I feel being here right now.  The fact that we're serving as full-time missionaries, walking the same ground as my forefathers, returning home to teach, in my native language (Southern English) and a foreign language I learned 45-47 years ago in a far away land just blows me away. I know God lives.  He is our Father. He knows the details of our each of our lives.  We love you and thank you for your love and prayers.

Elder Dwight and Sister Susan Potter

Week 59

Happy 42nd Anniversary to us! :) On our anniversary we took a Haitian friend to Raleigh to take care of some residency/legal stuff. While we were in Raleigh, we went to see Jake and his family and Alyssa. We took Clara a way-over-due birthday present. We hadn't seen them in way too long and had a fun but short visit. While we were there Jake mentioned that his dad needed a haircut... so he got out his clippers and gave Dwight a haircut! I think we'll go to Jake's every time Dwight gets a little shaggy, so I don't have to ever play barber again!!!

Dwight's new haircut :)

We taught a 17-year-old girl and her two little sisters this week. We had a great lesson with them. We discovered that the 9-year-old girl can't read; so tomorrow when we go see them, we will teach them a gospel lesson. Then we will do some reading practice. I bought some of my favorite easy readers, and we're going to have some fun. All the girls came to church today and waved and smiled when they saw us. Little things like that make my heart swell!

We also taught Monica. She's our adorable 12-year-old friend. She set a baptismal date on Wednesday, but when we went to see her on Saturday, she told us her dad wants her to wait until she learns more. I'm good with that. I love spending time with her teaching her about Jesus Christ. We have also been teaching her and her step sister English.

D & S and Monica

Dwight took on another challenge... teaching Sandeline (Monica's stepsister) how to drive. I sat in the back seat. She did pretty well. I was only scared a couple of times. :)

We visited Jimmy and Penny Holmes this week. When our daughter Alyssa was a little, Penny would hold her during church. She'd give her gum. She constantly doted over her. When we moved to Utah, we gave Penny a framed picture of Alyssa. While we were at her house, Penny went and got that picture that is still on display. I showed Alyssa the picture I took of Penny (below) and she said, "I remember her. She gave me gum. I think it was Doublemint." It was! 

We love our young missionaries. We always talk about the Elders we work with, but we have some amazing sisters as well. We leave Otter Pops in our outside freezer for the Albertson sisters, so they can cool down whenever they want. They sometimes get Otter Pops and then sit at our picnic table in the shade. We're usually not home when they come by, but sometimes we catch them!

This is a picture from our district group chat. Sister Memea's face makes me laugh every time I look at it. The post said, "Your ward can't agree on what their ward boundaries are, so they give you a map."

I'm not sure if the red or the blue is
the official Albertson Ward boundary.

Speaking of Albertson... here is something I saw this week right outside our house. Ewwww. I had to look it up to see what it was. It's a red velvet ant (it's really a wasp) the females are wingless. The one in the picture was about an inch long. They are also called cow killers... not because they can kill a cow, but because the sting of one feels like it can kill a cow. The venom is not very dangerous. Wow! Aren't you glad, if you didn't already know, that you've learned something about a scary looking bug?

Also, I thought this was interesting to anyone that hasn't experienced NC backroads. Some of them are very skinny! We were following this hay hauler, and it was a little scary passing it.

With all the rain we've had, the Neuse River got pretty high. It's starting to come down some now. This picture was taken on Tuesday.

We had our last temple prep lesson with Judy. She'll be ready to go to the temple soon! We've visited the Lafortunes, the Pierre Louis', Alex, and so many others. Dwight helped put up closet bars and tried to put up some more blinds in one of our friend's houses. The wall were made out of block and he hit metal and a black widow came out of the wall. I'm sure the details of that are wrong, but when he was telling me about it, all I heard was black widow. Ewwww again!

A highlight this week was the baptism of James and Makendy. They are awesome young men!

Tonight we had our senior missionary devotional. My sister Karen invited her friends Elder Evan and Sister Cindy Schmutz. Elder Schmutz served a mission in North Carolina as a young missionary. He told a story from when he was a mission president in the Philippines about a family with several children and their conversion. He played a clip of the older daughters singing a primary song that I remember singing with my sisters. It was beautiful. I felt a love that I can't explain for this family I've never met. What I can try to explain is that as we serve others and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ through word and example our love grows for the people that we serve. And somehow our love grows for people we don't even know.

We love you all!

Sister and Elder Potter

Week 58 - Dwight

 It's official - our mission has been extended until June 30, 2025!

Our 18 month mission was supposed to end in January 2025, but that date is coming way too fast, so we requested an extension for 5 more months and we got it!  We'll now be here through the month of June and are really excited that we don't even need to think about going home yet.

We had our stake president, President Frankie Jones, at church today.  He interviewed three of our new Haitian members to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood in two weeks at our stake conference.  Exciting!

This week has been a week of teaching and a bunch of social work while Tropical Storm Debbie blew through dumping a lot of water and causing flooding in some areas.  We have a lot of Haitian brothers here without their wives and children, who are still in Haiti.  That country continues to be a mess.  The social work piece has been helping several of our members make applications to help get their families here to be with their husbands/fathers.  We've also tried to help several friends find a home to rent and I helped 3 with their job interviews at the Butterball turkey plant near Mt. Olive.

Mackendy, Frantz, Luz (Butterball recruiter), Dwight, Saindelene

As a side note, the company I worked for in NC and Utah for 32 years, Smithfield Foods, used to own 49% of Butterball.  You'd think that would give me an "in" with them in helping people get jobs - but it doesn't.  Luckily, I met Luz early on and she has been great helping me set up interviews and get people hired.  It's a little bit of work to help them get started, but they are becoming very self-sufficient once they have jobs.

With everything we have going on, we've tried to divide and conquer a bit with the Young missionaries, Elders Bates and Hansen.  They have been trying to learn Haitian Creole and up until this week it's been pretty slow and they have relied on me, and others on the phone, to help them a lot with their teaching.  Last Sunday we gave them a priesthood blessing and promised them they would have the gift of tongues and be able to hear what was being said and speak the words needed.  The blessings were very powerful.  This week as I've been with them in person or on a video call, it's been remarkable the improvement they are making, a little miracle!  They still have a ways to go, but they are progressing at an accelerated rate and soon will not need any help at all!  We're starting to teach more separately and that will be a great relief for the work and allow us to be in more homes teaching and testifying of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

In some of the home we teach a gospel lesson and then an English lesson.  This is working great.

Saindelene and her step sister Monica during an English lesson

While life has gotten a lot more busy recently, we couldn't be happier, with the exception of a lingering sickness Susan has been struggling with this week - but doing much better today.  We feel like we have renewed friendships with people we've known for decades, but have now restored those friendships and made many new friends as well.  I happen to believe that in our pre-earth life, we knew each other there, family and friends.  I also believe that the bonds of friendship we have here will be a special connection we have throughout the eternities as we reminisce on the challenges, good times and bad times we shared together here. Here, in this life, so important to our eternal existence, we share some of our best and most challenging times together.  As we learn to meet those life's struggles together, we develop a special bond of friendship that will last forever.  One of the great purposes of life is to, with God's help, become something more than the natural man by choosing to follow the Savior. We need His help, but we need each other too!  You, along with family members and friends that have passed, have blessed our lives so much and we will be eternally grateful!

Week 57

The best part of this week for me was seeing a few people we haven't seen for a while. We were able to visit with Gregory Harper (a friend that grew up in the Albertson Ward who we had been visiting regularly until we got really busy with the Haitian community.) We also got to see Steve and Sheila Ward and their granddaughter Claire. They had just gotten back from the beach with a boatload (literally--like 600 pounds) of shrimp and fish. They had us stay for a fresh seafood dinner! I love seeing Claire! We challenged her to memorize the Articles of Faith... she looked skeptical... I asked her what she wanted for a prize for learning them all... Outback Steakhouse... Done!!! She's no longer skeptical but excited. Then the highlight for me was reconnecting with Lorrie Ann (JD Robinson's daughter). She had a bunch of stuff going on with her family, so we hadn't seen her in months. It was soooo good to visit with her again and make plans for another visit soon. And of course we visited Judy. She's getting excited about going to the temple.

We also taught some lessons. One of the really fun ones was with Monika (a new member's 12-year-old step sister) We actually taught her twice this week. We teach a gospel lesson and an English lesson. During the latter there is always lots of laughing.

Sandeline, Susan, Monika

Speaking of English lessons. They are always fun whether at someone's house or at the church. Here's a picture from our English class after church today.

I love these people!

So this week the young missionaries stole my companion... A LOT! They taught 30 lessons! Here's a picture with one of our friends, Mackenzie, who is being baptized later this month.

Elder Bates, Mackenzie, 
Elder Hansen, Elder Potter

The other day we were driving to an appointment, and Dwight asked, "Do Crepe Mrytle grow in Hurricane?" There are lots of Crepe Mrytle trees/bushes here. Dwight loves them because they bloom for three or four months. His question spurred a very scientific experiment where I discovered that a person can drive through the backroads of Duplin and Wayne Counties North Carolina and see an average of 70 Crepe Mrytles every five minutes. And, yes, Crepe Mrytle grows in Hurricane, Utah.

Crepe Mrytle

Here are some other natural beauties of summer from North Carolina. These pictures were both taken from a moving vehicle and are still beautiful:

Sunflowers on the side of the highway

Little white flowers on cotton plants

Speaking of sunflowers. We have a friend that's been feeling down. Dwight was out with the young missionaries and called me on his way home and asked what he could take to our friend. I told him to take him something happy like a sunflower and a little treat. This is what he ended up taking to him:

Sunflowers, bananas, and yellow cupcakes...
I love that he went with a yellow theme.
Dwight had a great visit with our friend and
lifted his spirits. We'll go visit him next
week together.

We go teach the Lafortunes missionary discussions and English. They have a little girl, Luna. I asked her a couple of weeks ago to bring me a book and I'd read to her. (She speaks English.) The only book she had was the one we use to teach her family English. She had no story books. Being the lover of books that I am, I had to get her some children's books. Last time we went I read two stories to her... The Wonkey Donkey and Are You My Mother? She was riveted. It was so much fun! I wish I had taken a picture. She brought her books to church on Sunday in a little backpack.

Luna

Dwight is still perfecting his sour dough bread. I feel lucky to be his taste tester.

This one had the flakiest crust yet!

Matthew 4:4 "But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." I love the bread that Dwight makes. It is so good and fills me up. However, it doesn't come close to comparing to the words of Jesus Christ. When I feel the Spirit testify of truth, I am truly filled. I know God loves us and that His Son Jesus Christ has Atoned for our sins and sorrows. They know us and know what we need.

We love you all!

Sister and Elder Potter