With his e-mail today Jonathan sent a copy of the letter that President Gamiette sent out to all of the missionaries with regard to the problems in Guyana:
Dear Elders, Sisters, and Couples,
The situation in Guyana as you can imagine will affect the work every where in the mission, but contrary to what some might think it will be a great blessing if the things we have discussed with the Government are put in place as they should.
-- we should have now a clear complement of 28 foreign missionaries in Guyana.
-- we should have local young men and women serving full time missions in their own countries to compensate that lost.
-- the areas outside of Guyana will have more missionaries and so a 3rd zone have been created in Trinidad. for next transfer.
-- we can expect to establish the church more fully every where with this extra number of missionaries coming from Guyana.
As to what can be said to your parents make sure to reassure them of your safety, and that you are back in the work focusing on baptizing and retaining. For those that were detained make sure that your stories do not let to think that you are or were in danger.
Please continue to pray for that situation to resolve entirely so that the plan of having local missionaries in Guyana could be put in place and the Quota of 28 granted.
Love you thank you for your prayers.
Prs. Gamiette
This picture shows the church and our apartment in relation to the beach.
Video of this mornings walk along the beach.
This is Anandale Falls. We went there last week.
Things are going great here in Grenada and Akim is doing great. We have a couple of other cool investigators that I think I mentioned last week. One of which is Marvin. I told you about how fast he received his answer right? It only took him a day! He, his daughter Leanna, and his girlfriend Camasha all came to church yesterday and they really enjoyed it. They were about an hour and a half late but that's okay because we have sacrament meeting at the end of the block here.
Our other cool investigator, Patrick, is also doing awesome! He is getting baptized this week so that will help Grenada keep it's title of the highest baptizing island in the mission!!!!!
Elder Montgomery and I spent about 2 hours cleaning our apartment this morning because we are going to have a couple of extra missionaries join us next week. It will be really cramped with 4 missionaries in our little place but it will be fun. They are coming because of what has been going on down south in Guyana. We have learned a little about accepting the will of the Lord here in the mission this past week. We have to send 40 of 70 missionaries out of Guyana and we can't have any more than that in there at one time. That's really sad because that's where most of the baptisms in our mission come from! Anyway that's why we are getting more missionaries here.
So you know, it was 40 missionaries that were detained. They were never technically arrested. The reason they were detained is because there is an excommunicated lady that just got into power in their government. The first thing she did was request a list of all of the missionaries names, phone numbers and addresses in the country. Then she revoked all of the visas that Guyana had just given to us about 6 weeks earlier and had everyone rounded up. We've been trying to get Guyanese visas for 20 years and when we finally succeed someone has to screw it up!
I assume that I'll be staying in Grenada. Our senior couple has requested that the mission president keep Elder Montgomery and I together for at least another transfer and we both said that would be fine with us. We'll know by next week what is happening though.
The scripture of the week is D&C 12.
Well, we're flying to St. Lucia on Thursday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited! As if you can't tell. I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures. That's the news from down here.