Sept. 16th email

Bonjou tout moun!!

Awesome week! Here's a summary.

Tuesday- Elder Kendall went home for health reasons. it was sad, but he was a great example, and has a huge testimony. Elder Skidmore is now compamions with Elder kendall's old companion, Elder Coulson.  our branch president told us his conversion story that night in our district meeting. It was amazing. he;s a cool guy, and his wife is going to make us all borritos after iour missions. hahha.

Wed- hosted again. Good stuff. Found out that everyone in the MTC wishes they had as cool of a district as we do. Some of the portugese like to come talk with us in our classroom, and the French wish they were as united as we are.

Thurs- We had in-Field orientation form 8am to 5:30 pm. We learned about a lot of the technical things about being a missionary. It was all the stuff i thought we would be learning the whole time we were here. haha. I also ran into Annie Iverson.(Friend from Snow) She was with her sister helping with a TRC. She's going to be a great missionary in a few months. :)

Friday- Had a lesson with an MTC teacher that usually teaches French, but she came and taught us a chapter from preach my gospel about our calling as missionaries. It was amazing. The teachers here are all sooo amazing,. I am very grateful for my teachers here. Fre Magre, Fre Hall, Fre (ti or small) Nelson, and Fre (gwo or tall
) Nelson. They are amazing, and great examples.

Saturday- Finished teaching our 'inverstingator' and 'baptized' him. Like I said previously, role plays feel so real, and they are based on real people. It was a great experience. It was our last class day with a lot of our district becsause they are all leaving tomorrow, or they left today, execept for those going to Ft. Lauderdale. So on Saturday, our teachers showed us pictures abnd told us stories about their missions. We also learned how to Haitian dance. Every year at Carnival in Haiti, they invent a new dance, and some of them stick, others don;t. We learned two of the more popular ones. They're really silly, but fun. Love haitian culture. We learned about all the members we need to have feed us in Ft. Lauderdale becasue 3/4 rteachers went to FTL.

Sunday- I was asked to be District Leader for this week because the rest of our district leaves before 5 of us. It's a really amazing assignment, excpet for the extra meetings, but it's worth it. :) We had a testimony meeting on our temple walk. We sat in the shade under some trees. I felt tlike the testimony i bore was one of the most piowerful testimonies I have ever born. Everyone in our distrrict bore amazing testimonies and I love them all so much. Today stunk watching 7 opf them leave, and 3 more tomorrow. We had our departure devotional and our Sunday devitional. The Sunday one was given by the man who p[roduced the 17 Miralces movie and his new one Ephriam's Rescue. He showed us some clips from it, and I can;t wait to see it in 2 years.after that, We watched a movie from a talk Elder Bednar gave at the MTC years ago about answering with doctrine, not applications. That was really good, and gave me a lot of direction for what I should be doing in personal study. We need to look for 'why' to do things, not 'how.' The how is easy.  Then we had a bit of a celebartion in our residance for everyone leaving. We all sang and prayed together, and then I gave a spiritual thought. Sunday was amazing.

Monday (today)- We all got up at 3am to send away the 7 who left. It was really hard. I care for the Elders so much. We are very close friends now, and that's amazing.

i find it's getting inceasingly difficult to write iin english. haha.

Well, everybody, I love you all. I love being on a mission. This is the best things that has ever happened to me.

-Elder Felkins

p.s. I leave the MTC next tuesday. If you send a Dearelder to the MTC after I leave they won't forward it to me. just fyi. :) i appreciate everyones letters!