Week Four - Mission Underway!

Wow!  And again Wow! This has been a very fast moving and full week. We can hardly believe that we are out here and doing the work that the Savior wishes for us to do.  We have already gone to our first Zone Council and a Zone Conference.  Needless to say, we were a good bit lost as this is very new to us both.  We have great Zone Leaders; they answered every one of our questions and concerns as to what we are supposed to do at such meetings.  We met with the Mission President for the first time face to face.  President and Sister Stevens are super!!  They are very personal and reassuring.  We enjoyed the lessons and instructions we received. This was our first week and weekend in the field.  in the middle of the third week of our mission.  

The ward had a farewell lunch for the Senior Couple going home.  There was a great turnout for them.  They left for Utah (driving) last Monday.  They helped the Haitian Saints here a lot.  They are truly loved by the Haitian saints here! We had a little bit of time to go over what they had been doing to help the members and friends of the church.  We have big shoes to fill.  We feel certain that we are called here to help move the work forward with the talents that the Lord has accorded us.  

We got an opportunity to go to the Raleigh NC Temple this week.  We were again recharged and felt the hand of the Lord in this work and on our progress.  It was a blessing to be able to find the time to serve and worship together in His House.

We undertook a big event for us this week too.  We were desirous to get to know the full time Elders and the Service Missionaries in the ward.  There are a total of 13 of us in a single ward.  We opted this time to make a quick and simple meal.  We enjoyed our time with them and hope they get to know us as well.  They are all super missionaries.  Following the meal, we had a Group Family Evening.  We had a fair turn out, but the meeting did not go exactly as planned.  The elders did some training in Testimonies.  They all shared their Testimonies and then turned to us… We are just learning Haitian.  Sister Adkins did an amazing job!  She spoke from the heart and did it totally in Haitian.  The members and elders were a bit shocked by her eloquence.  They truly were surprised at her ability to speak.  I am not as I have been watching her grow in her language skills.  Wishing I could be like her.   Elder Adkins did not try to speak Haitian; I did mine in French.    

Sister Adkins and I have French tutors.  She is learning French and Haitian at the same time.  She is doing great!  I have a French tutor to help me reacclimate to using French words and phrases that I have not used in years.  I can still talk and teach in French, but I will now have to help our members and friends with different items in the public sector such as job applications, water & power issues, doctors’ visits, and many other normal life events.  I therefore asked for a refresher.  We both had our first sessions this week, but I had to take mine on the road as we went out to assist the Zone Leaders with their friends.  That was a wonderful experience!  We were able to read in Haitian and share our testimonies at every stop.  Sister Adkins reads the Haitian beautifully… me not so much … right now.  I do enjoy listening to her speak, testify, and read in Haitian.  I am working hard on it and know it will come in time.

We have taken on the assignment of baptisms.  This means that we set up before the baptism, fill the font, prepare the programs, and clean up afterwards.  This week we had our first opportunity to follow through on our commitment.  We also have taken on the task of preparing a weekly Sunday Bulletin for the Haitian Group for Each Sunday.  We will have one for when we meet separately as a Haitian Group and when we meet together with the full ward so that they will have the announcements in their language.  We produced 100 for this week as we have had about 90 members and friends who speak Haitian and French weekly at church.

To finish out our week, we spent Sunday at church with our Haitian brothers and sisters.  Following church, we went and got a quick bite before heading out to spend the remainder of the day working with a different set of elders.  We have our first native Haitian in the mission here with us.  He is so great!  He speaks Haitian, French, and English.  He is great with and for these wonderful friends and members.  He is an inspiration to them and to us.  We again got the opportunity to share by teaching, testifying, and reading with friends. We also attended our Group Council (which is done via phone) and our weekly Mission Devotional with the Mission President (which is done on Zoom).  We are using technology everywhere we go and in what we do constantly. 

We are still working on our French and Haitian Creole.  So far we have been able to keep up and maintain our temple workers status too.  We are privileged to be able to uplift, encourage, strengthen, teach, and most importantly love the members, friends, and community.  

This is truly a beautiful, energizing blessing to serve our Savior. With hearts full of love and a shoulder to the wheel and a hand to the plow, we are working hard in these latter days.  We both see the Lord’s hand in preparing us individually and as a couple for just these days, weeks, months, and years together.  One is prepared to serve a mission every day of your life.  All of your past experiences, all your past learning, all your memories, these were all preparation for the best work you have yet to do.  

We hope to post updates regularly so that you may join us in a small way.  Please pray for us, for the other missionaries in our area, and throughout the world.  Please pray for our brothers and sisters, those who are members and those who are not.  Our desire is to serve everyone placed in our path.  Our purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ.  Our time is now.  Our place is here.  Our guiding principle is love.  

Until next time, Peace be with you!

Elder & Sister Adkins

Week 3 - Off to an Audacious Start

 

Haitian Language Scriptures

Wow!  I can hardly believe that we are already in the middle of the third week of our mission.  What a whirlwind this has been!  We received our call letter on the evening of May 16th, a full seven days after our completed application was received at Church Headquarters.  From there, we had less than two weeks to complete a number of pre-mission preparation activities before we began our online classes at the Missionary Training Center on June 2nd.  We had four consecutive days of online learning with the MTC instructors and were in the field on June 7th.  Our missionary onboarding process was so quickly accelerated that we were serving for two full weeks before our name tags arrived.  To date, we have (not necessarily in this order) visited the North Carolina Raleigh Mission office and met Elder and Sister Jackson, participated in a trip to the Raleigh North Carolina temple with Elder and Sister Potter and seven members of the Haitian group, seen three baptisms and confirmations, a missionary zone council meeting, a missionary zone conference, and begun to learn our mission language(s).  

Wait…I suppose I should have started by having us introduce ourselves and our mission.  My name is Sister Melissa Adkins and my eternal companion for this and all missions is Elder Norman Adkins Jr.  We are fulltime Member and Leader Support missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  We labor in the North Carolina Raleigh Mission and are assigned to the Mt. Olive Ward with a special emphasis on our work with the Haitian Group in this area.  We are currently serving a 23-month (sorry folks, they won’t let us sign up for longer) mission while we live at home and continue our full-time employment.  

Before name tags

We are newlyweds, married and sealed in the Raleigh North Carolina temple on November 1st of last year.  Nothing has happened slowly for us, and it appears that full-speed ahead is the cruise control speed for our life together.  Elder Adkins and I met each other while serving as temple ordinance workers.  I began working at the temple every Friday night in October of 2023, and Elder Adkins began his work the following September.  For context, we were both widowed with his wife passing three months after my husband.  While we knew one another as temple workers, we didn’t start connecting outside the temple until July last year.  We clicked immediately and found that we had much in common, including but not limited to our love for the Savior and our commitment to serving Him.  We followed the Lord’s promptings and were married just a few months later.  

We had just passed our four-month anniversary when our Stake president asked to speak with us.  We couldn’t have been more surprised to hear him tell us that he was on a fact-finding mission from the presidency of the Area Seventy.  When President Pace asked us what we would do if the Lord asked us to serve a calling far from home, we barely glanced at one another before answering in unison that we do what the Lord asks, where He asks, and when.  Elder Adkins was asked if he still maintained the fluency in French that he acquired when he served his first full-time mission in the France Paris mission from 1979 - 1981.  That was my first real awareness of the need for French-speaking members to support the growing groups of Haitian members in units outside our Stake boundaries.  We were told that we would likely be contacted by someone from the Area Seventy after President Pace reported back.  

At our first Zone Conference with fellow missionaries

Fast forward approximately three weeks if you will.  We were sitting in a movie theater in Wilmington, at the end of a film, when Elder Adkins’ phone and watch began to vibrate.  While phones ringing in theaters is not usually news, this was “special” because Norman had powered down both his phone and his smart watch before the film began.  My husband showed his phone to me, and I suggested that he answer it as the credits were rolling and the Caller ID indicated that it was the mission president.  To make a long story short, President and Sister Stevens from the North Carolina Raleigh Mission were calling to ask us if we would apply to be full-time missionaries in order to serve the Haitian members in the Mt. Olive area as the current missionaries were scheduled to return home in June.  

Lunch with the missionaries

We did, and here we are.  I am learning French and Haitian Creole.  Elder Adkins’ French is strong, and he is learning Creole as well.  We are serving alongside several companionships of the most amazing young missionaries we have ever met, and we are humbled to be chosen to take part in the work of gathering Israel.  As temple workers and patrons, we have spent recent years helping gather on the other side of the veil.  Here, we gather on this side.  We are privileged to be able to uplift, encourage, strengthen, teach, and most importantly love the members, friends, and community.  

What a beautiful, energizing blessing it is to serve our Savior, shoulder to the wheel, hand to the plow, in these latter days.  Both Elder Adkins and I can see the Lord’s hand in preparing us individually and as a couple for just this time.  One does not prepare for a mission during the weeks between receiving a call and starting MTC training, nor does one prepare for a mission during his or her time at the MTC.  One prepares to serve a mission every day of his or her life.  All our past experiences, all our past learning, all our memories, these were all preparation for the best work we have yet to do.  

Finally have our missionary name tags

My hope is that we will be able to post updates regularly so that you may join us in a small way.  Please pray for us, for the other missionaries in our area and throughout the world.  Please pray for our brothers and sisters, those who are members and those who are not.  Our desire is to serve everyone placed in our path.  Our purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ.  Our time is now.  Our place is here.  And our guiding principle is love.  

Until next time, Peace be with you!

Sister Melissa Adkins