Transitions!

I have not posted for two weeks!  This post is very short and there are not many pictures.  We have been very busy with some major transitions!  Last week we were planning the YM and YW camps all week and this week, after meeting with President and Sister Mehr, we have been asked to work on a mission wide Caribbean culture celebration designed to commemorate the date 25 years ago when Elder Ballard dedicated the West Indies to the building up of the kingdom of God.  President released us from some of the burdens we have been carrying; cars, and organizing all the food for zone and other conferences, to focus on more important things.  We have worked hard and are really excited about the inspiration we have received for this initiative.  Now that it is done, we await the approval to start rolling it out through wards and branches in the mission. 

 Seriously, can you believe how skinny this road is??  It looked more like a bike trail than a road! We were searching for a location, with the Stake Young Women's President, to hold YW's camp this year.  Imagine driving down it and having cars pass you on the right with another car coming towards you.....so three cars abreast on this puddle of asphalt!

We were in Couva for Father's Day.  The Relief Society provided all Fathers with a surprise lunch.  We later heard from most of our kids calling on Skype to chat with their Dad.

 We passed this home and I had to go back and take a picture because it is so representative of one of the things I LOVE about this culture!  The people may be living in abject poverty, but their clothes are ALWAYS clean, pressed and neat.  It amazes me because I see what they have to wash their clothes in!

 We were able to go to Yerette, the number 1 tourist site in Trinidad, with the Brown's and the Mehr's to check it out for the upcoming senior conference. It is a couple's home turned into an art gallery for hummingbird photos, a porch filled with hummingbird feeders and an excellent presentation about these exotic and amazing birds. For example, the Hummingbird is the only bird that can fly straight up and dive straight down as well as fly backwards! There are thirteen varieties in Trinidad and people come from all over the world to view them here.  I bought some of his stunning photographs to be framed at home and hung at the cabin! 

 When we left for our mission, our Stake President set us apart and in those blessings told us that we would develop new talents on our mission.  We are so sad that the Brown's will be leaving us in a week.  With all the ways they have blessed this mission, they are leaving a big hole!  One of Sister Brown's many contributions has been a computer generated record of each of the young missionaries as they come into the field and go home with honor. It features favorite pictures of their mission, reflections, testimony and changes experienced while in the field. She has trained me to take over this responsibility and teaching this old dog new tricks has not been easy.  I have learned photo shop in the process and a bunch of other computer tricks.  Elder Monson has figured out how to imbed videos in our presentations.  Wow, our kids are going to be sooooo impressed!

 Elder and Sister Gubler have been handling the apartments in the mission since they arrived.  They have been inspecting them to make sure they are up to standard and moving new additional items needed in young missionary apartments.  In the midst of moving several items into missionary apartments, they received a call from a woman and she requested that they come and move them to a new apartment so the Gublers were arranging the time, place and details of her move and they were like, wait a minute, who are you, again?  .............She was not a member of the church!!  She thought she was calling a moving company!  It was the wrong number!

 We met Sister Singh in Guyana in the LaGrange branch. We had walked into the branch and the branch President asked us to be the speakers!  This has happened several times in our mission now and we are getting comfortable with trusting the Spirit to provide for us in the very moment the things He would want us to say.  After the meeting, Sister Singh came up to speak with us and shared her testimony.  She was Hindu, and her whole life she had prayed to all the thousands of Gods that they worship and she told us she had never felt anything in that process.  She was always obedient though, and never thought she was supposed to feel anything as she prayed.  When the missionaries knocked on her door and subsequently taught her about the plan of salvation and specifically about the pre-existence; being in the literal family of God the Father as a spirit child before this mortal life, she pondered in private  whether it could possibly be true that she was a literal child of God, that He had spiritually begotten her and that all perople on the earth are in the family of God.  She said that thought sunk deep into her heart and she wanted to find out if God was really her Father and if he was really there.  She said she knelt down to speak to her Father and as she began the prayer she felt an immediate presence right next to her. She didn't open her eyes, but the sense of someone right next to her was very powerful.  She was overwhelmed with emotion, with a sense of being loved and a feeling that she had a personal relationship with her Father in Heaven; that He could hear the words she was speaking and that He loved her.  She said from that day, she threw away all the God statues in her room and committed to be baptized. She has been a member of the church for twenty years, raised her family in the church and her husband was the previous branch president.  I had to record her testimony as I felt the Spirit confirm the truth in her words.  We are so blessed to be here!