Exciting news about Akim!

Things are going well down here as far as the missionary work is concerned. The baptism last Monday didn't go through like we were hoping though. About an hour before the baptism the girl's mom called us and said that we couldn't do it. So we are going to keep trying and hope to get her baptized this weekend.

There were 2 children of record that were baptized last week which was really cool. We had to clean the font out so they wouldn't step on any sea urchins or anything like that. That was a blast! I didn't know what to do though when I had to hold my breath and put my head under the water. I hadn't been submerged in 15 months! I was actually a little nervous.

I can't wait to clean the font out again this week because... we have exciting news about Akim! His dad gave him permission so he is going to be baptized on Saturday and he has asked me to do it! I'm super excited about it. He came out teaching with us 4 times this week and he's not even a member yet! He's great. His dad wanted us to make sure that we told President Gamiette that he isn't interested in the church and that he doesn't want to talk to us. So we are just preparing Akim to get baptized. It's going to be awesome! There are just 5 days until Saturday, and that's baptism day!

We didn't do very well with our 20 new contacts this week. (I explained the change in how we count contacts last week - basically it is getting the phone number of 20 new people we meet each day). People here just refuse to give us their phone numbers and say that they will call us when they are ready. I really don't know what we can do to get their information. I think that if we could work a little further from the church we would meet new people. This area has had missionaries for a long time and it seems like everyone knows who we are. The only cool guy that we came across this past week is named Patrick. He just moved here from Nigeria a week ago. He is so cool. He'll probably be baptized in the next couple of weeks.

I love Elder Montgomery. He is funny and we get along really well. Today we had an activity at an old fort. I had a bit of an accident with a rotted out piece of wood and almost fell through it! It was a little scary. This is Elder Montgomery's version of what happened:



The last part is close to what actually happened. Here are some pictures.


I almost fell through the floor of this building at the fort.

The hole from the bottom.

Fun jumping around.

The scripture of the week is D&C 14.

This is an e-mail we received today from the senior couple on Grenada:

We are enjoying having your son here in Grenada. This is a hard island for missionary work but he is putting his best effort in and results are coming about. Grenada has had a reputation as a non baptizing area but that is changing because of the elders we have. Both he and Elder Montgomery are hard working elders that cause us no grief at all. They are excited about the work here and have a baptism scheduled for this coming weekend. We are happy about the fact that we have two good elders with us that require no babysitting by the senior couple. You can be proud of the efforts of your missionary son.

Elder Rasmussen

We are having a baptism today!

Things are going great here in Grenada. We are having a baptism today!
We are baptizing a little girl we call Avanaya. (I can't remember what her real name is because nobody calls her by it). Her baptism this evening will be pretty special because there will also be 2 children of record being baptized. It will be pretty fun to be at a triple baptism. The baptism will start just before sunset which will make it really sweet because the baptism font is on the southwestern side of the island. It gives us a perfect view of the sun on it's way down!

We had to "clean out the font" this morning to get it ready. There are no sharp rocks any more! It was fun... I mean it was absolutely awful and I never want to have to go underwater again!


I will send you some pictures from Avanaya's baptism next Monday.

We have a cool family that we are teaching right now. The mom's name is Bernadette and we are also teaching her 13 year old son, Kidon, and her 16 year old daughter, Nakita. They seem to be coming along pretty well even though they don't read much. Kidon is reading the most and we left him the story of Ammon the other night. He really enjoyed that!

We are also teaching a guy named Tony that can be baptized next week. He just has a little bit of a smoking problem that we are trying to help him deal with. I think he'll be okay though. He just needs to come to church. (None of these people came this week).

I do have a sad story to tell you. The kid that I told you about last week, Akim, his dad won't give him permission to be baptized until he turns 18 (at that point he doesn't need permission any more) and that isn't for another 3 1/2 years! I hope you will pray for his dad's heart to soften.

President Gamiette came out with a new rule about contacting people. We are supposed to talk to at least 20 people everyday to find new people to teach. (That's not new.) He has changed it so that now we have to get an address or a phone number from every person in order to count them towards our 20 for the day. So, for only the second time in my whole mission I got a 0 for a week in contacting (0 being the number of days that I got the full 20 in a single day). The highest companionship in all of the islands only got 3, and 2 of those days were from before the new rules came into effect! Things are not easy out here...

A Grenada Sunset.

Look how close our church is to the ocean!
The building is being expanded because our branch has out grown it.

Well, I'm getting used to our small section of the island. Grenada is a lot bigger than St. Maarten and I haven't seen hardly any of it, just the southwestern corner. I have seen the Medical School from a distance but I haven't been there yet. There are a lot of white people around compared to last week because classes start again today.

The scripture of the week is Mosiah 4:26-27.