Parlez Vous What?

Bonjour!

This week has been CRAZY!!! I don't even know where to start, so I'll start with tuesday morning, and maybe split this email up by day. Who knows, just be ready for lots of random details and not many well organized thoughts, haha. Oh, and I haven't really taken any pictures this week because I haven't thought about it at all. If you want to see pictures, my mom has tons of them, just ask her and she can show them to you. But anyway, now to the craziest week ever!

Tuesday I woke up at 4 am to get to my plane. That went to Barbados where I met up with Elder Ackley, my new zone leader. Then we flew to Martinique and just proselyted with the missionaries there for the day. I realized that my French is a lot worse than I thought. I can talk to people understandably, especially when I am talking about the Gospel, but I can't understand others hardly at all unless they talk really slow and repeat themselves multiple times. That day was fun though because I got to spend some time with a couple of the missionaries I was in the MTC with, and it was awesome to see them again! But other than that nothing much happened except for me following a missionary around all day trying to understand what people were saying, haha.

Wednesday I woke up at 4am again to catch my plane to St. Martin. It stopped at Guadalupe for a little bit, but we just stayed on the plane and then it went to St. Martin. Elder Fielden, one of the senior couple missionaries picked us up. Elder Caraes came with us too, who is an Elder who served  here before the hurricane, and he came to show us around for a few days before he goes back to Martinique. Anyway, the truck we were picked up in had a taped up back window and one of the doors was all taped up and totally destroyed too, and that was kind of how everything is here. Lots of damage all over the place. If I remember correctly we dropped off our stuff, and then went to meet up with sister Fielden and some members who were helping load building materials into trucks. They told us we could go home and get settled in and change, but we wanted to stay and help, so we just put on those good looking yellow mormon helping hands jersey things and went to work loading wood and metal roofing panels into trucks. After that was all over we went to dinner at a restaurant with the senior couple. It was weird to see so much damage and so many people who hardly have anything, but then there are also restaurants and other nice places around too. It was also weird because I was used to not having anything like that from living in St. Vincent, where the only restaurant was an hour away and was a KFC, haha. But it was nice, I had some enchiladas. Then we went back to Elder Ackley's appartment and showered and went to bed. 

Thursday we went to help with the Helping hands people until lunch time, and then went to get lunch and do some other stuff we had to do. There was lots of random stuff, but one of the things we did was go around my area and meet some of the people there. Actually, maybe we did that the day before, but that doesn't matter. There was lots of stuff to do, especially for the zone leader to do, but I don't remember all of it. Basically lots of driving and doing random stuff. We then picked up our new missionaries at the airport at 6:00, and that was fun. My companion is named Elder Tanner, and he is a great guy. I'm excited to work with him. The other elder is named Elder McNaughtan, and he is super funny, I really like him too. They had the keys to our apartment, so we went there for the first time. And of course, the running water didn't work. So we just decided to shower and stuff at the other apartment until we figure that out. I don't really remember what else we did that day, but that is pretty much all the important stuff I think.

Friday was my birthday! I told everyone that it was my birthday a little bit before lunch, and they were all like "really?!?" I said yeah, it was, and they were all happy for me and said happy birthday, and that was it, haha. But before that we got up early to help with the helping hands stuff again. Then we went back, showered, probably ate lunch somewhere, and then went to figure out our water. It turns out that all we had to do was turn a valve thing at the bottom of our apartment building to turn on the water. I said that that's all I wanted for my birthday, but when we went back there later the floor was all wet, and it turns out we have a leaking pipe. So we had to turn of the water again, and we have just been showering and stuff at the other apartment since then. The plumber is supposed to come today, but they were supposed to call me before then and they haven't yet, so I guess we'll see. We did some more random business stuff, and then went to find our car. No one really knew where it was, and we couldn't find it the day before, but we finally found it that night, but it was full of stuff and smelled awful inside, so we just left it were it was and decided to clean it up later. Actually, the days are all getting jumbled together in my brain, so I don't know if that was friday, but oh well.

Saturday we helped more, and me and Elder Tanner went proselyting for the first time by ourselves. Actually, we had a teenage member come with us to show us around because he knows the area and the investigators, so he introduced us to a lot of investigators, which was nice. Wait, we had to of had a car by then, so maybe we ended up getting the car on friday. Anyway, the night after we first found the car, the person who had it cleaned it up a little bit for us, so we took it. I actually haven't watched all the driving safety videos I'm supposed to, so I can't even drive yet, so Elder Tanner has been driving. I'll finish the videos today though and start driving tomorrow. I don't really remember what else we did that day.

Sunday was great, because we almost had a normal schedule. We woke up, planned for the first time, and then went to church. Church was great because we met a lot of people, and saw people we had already met before, so now I feel like I know a lot of the strong members in the branch. Church is only an hour here right now because of the circumstances with the hurricane and stuff, so it was a testimony meeting. It was in english, but a couple of the French members said theirs in French, and the Branch president translated it for us. After church we had to help move a ton of supplies from in the church out to trucks outside the church, and we were talking to lots of people after, so it ended up being almost three hours at church, even though only one hour was actual church stuff. Then we went out and Elder Caraes showed us around a little bit more, and then me and elder Tanner went on our own, found one of the investigators we hadn't been able to find yet, and even handed out a book of mormon to someone. Both of them  spoke english though, so don't be too impressed, haha. A lot of people here can speak at least a little english, which is super helpful. But I did call someone and set up an appointment all in French one night, which I was really proud of. The only problem is that he is a spanish speaker, and only speaks a little bit of French, and no English. And the member who normally teaches him with the missionaries can't make it. So that will be a fun lesson, haha. 

And now we are to today. There is someone drilling something in the back of this place, and it is super loud and hard to think when they are doing it. They started about half way through this email. It is weird that I'm supposed to be the companion who knows what to do, so I've been faking confidence a lot this week, haha. Wish me luck, and please pray that I can learn the language and have running water soon! Thanks so much for all of the love and support and prayers, it means a lot to me! The Church is true! If it wasn't I wouldn't be out here in all this craziness right now!

Love Elder Kerr