Our task this morning was to begin building a church!

Here are a couple more pictures from last week at Maracas Falls. In the picture are the two assistants to the president, Elder Hamilton (Jonathan's trainer), and Elder Romney's trainer, Elder Romney (Jon's companion), and Jonathan.



Well, things have not gone at all the way that we have planned them to over the last couple of days. Curtis didn't make it to church for an unknown reason so we aren't teaching him anymore. Jermaine is still an investigator but we are hoping to get her baptized on the 20th. I'll send you pictures when it happens. I hate it when things don't go as planned. Her friend is doing alright. I have no idea who she is but Jermaine has been a champ and gave her a Plan of Salvation tract.

Things are pretty busy with President leaving. We've just been given a bunch of other projects that have caused us to stay in the office sometimes as late as 7 or 8 o'clock at night. Things are busy! It doesn't really make it too hard for us though because whatever people dump on us to do I am able to get done quickly. The new president comes in on the 1st so we will have 2 days without a mission president.

I don't know what the family is doing while the new mission president goes to the MTC (he has 5 kids). I would assume that the children would stay home. All new presidents go to the Provo MTC because that is where all of the general authorities and 12 go to speak. All I know is that despite a few personality issues that President Robison and I have had over the last year, I am going to miss him.

I have been thinking about David Heiner a lot this week. I have often wondered how his family is making it through without the knowledge and peace that we have. I have had the thought that David wouldn't have died if he was on a mission. When that thought arises, I wonder why I didn't try harder to get him to come back. I think that I could have done more.

Anyway, we had an interesting morning. We went over to the north east side of the island to a place called Matura where our zone leaders have set up a group meeting every Sunday. They get about 15 people to come every week and they had their first baptism there on Saturday. Our task this morning was to begin building a church for them to meet in. (They have just been meeting under a couple of coconut trees for the last month!) So we spent about 4 hours cutting down bamboo trees and hauling them over to where the temporary church is going to be assembled. I really felt like I was in the wild! It was cool!

If I haven't told you already, I have had "Doubles" a few times now. I couldn't help but asking Elder Romney that if I ordered 2 of them do I call it a "Quadruple". Oddly enough he didn't find that very funny. I had a good laugh at him last night though. We were talking about some of the strange talents that we have and I was telling him about hula-hooping while walking up to an investigators house. He knocked on the door and then proceeded to make fun of the way you have to move your body to keep the hoop up. He had no idea that the lady was standing at the door watching him! We all burst into laughter because he looked like a total idiot.

Well, that's the news. We have zone conference on Monday.

The scripture of the week is Helaman 3:28-30
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One event really stands out.

I forgot to tell you that we went to Las Cuevas Beach and to Maracas Bay on Monday morning last week with our zone. They were both way pretty! We played soccer with everyone on Las Cuevas beach. It was so much fun!


Things are going well here in Trinidad. I found out that Jermine's name is actually spelled Jermaine. She is supposed to get baptized on the 13th if all goes to plan. Her original date was set for the 6th but she didn't come to church on Sunday. She spent the day with her friend because her friend's boyfriend was shot on Saturday night. It was fatal... Anyway, she is doing great and is preparing for next week. Looking back over the last couple weeks at the progress she has made makes one event really stand out. She was unsure about the things that we were telling her so we decided to teach a lesson completely on prayer. At the end I challenged her to try and pray for 15 minutes straight. (The idea being that she would run out of normal things to pray about which would force her to really think about what she was praying.) To our great joy she told us that she had actually gone for 20 minutes even though she didn't think it was possible when she started. She told us about how she felt and that she had broken down and started crying and she knows that everything that we have been teaching her is true! How sweet is that?

Curtis on the other hand... He is still sober but we told him that if he didn't come to church we wouldn't come and see him until he does. Normally we are more understanding but he has been taught by the missionaries before and didn't come to church then either. Hopefully he will come this week so we can go see him again.

Office work isn't too bad actually. We pretty much get to do anything we want as long as we get our work done. So tomorrow is going to be a day to sit around in the office because we finished everything yesterday.

I heard about the Swine Flu at the MTC. So you know, when new missionaries gets dropped off at the MTC now, they are checked by the MTC nurses before they are allowed to go into the building. If they have any signs of the flu then they are sent back with their parents and told to come back in 12 WEEKS! We get to hear all about that kind of stuff in the office. Especially since my computer is right next to the lady that handles all of the travel arrangements for the mission.

Without frozen burritos I generally don't eat at the apartment. We only have breakfast foods there because that's the only time of day that we are home. We usually just eat at Subway or something for lunch. We don't eat lunch when people have a dinner appointment scheduled with us. Last night we had a bean soup that had some smoked ham in it. I loved it.

I hope you like these pictures. They are from this morning:

Jonathan and his companion, Elder Romney, at Maracas Falls



P.S. The scripture of the week is Matthew 7:24-28
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