Assigned to open a new area!

Things are going great here in Grenada. I had a little accident yesterday. Rather than type it out I made a video of what happened. It hurt a little bit! Don't worry though, I'm okay! And it will heal soon enough.



St. Lucia was great. I got to hang out with Elder Williams and Elder Cromwell and a couple of other Elders that I haven't seen in a while. Elder Anderson of the 70 was there and he is a pretty cool guy. It was funny to see the sister missionaries there. I already knew Sister Camejo, she was in Trinidad for my last zone conference there! Here are a couple of pics from St. Lucia:



Anyway, the only funny story from zone conference was that President came to me to tell me about transfers and he said that I had done excellent work in Grenada but he was going to send me to St. Maarten! Apparently someone had told him that I had served there before but they failed to tell him how long I was there. I let him know that I would go if he wanted me to... We went into a classroom and he and I discussed it and then he said an amazing prayer to find out what we were supposed to do. We took about 30 minutes to think about it and then we came back together and he told me that he had decided to keep me in Grenada to do something really special. The island will be getting 2 new missionaries this week and Elder Montgomery and his companion will be working in the St. Georges area. My companion and I will be assigned to open a new area on the north side of the city!!! You might recognize my new companion, it will be Elder Barker. The hairy monster of a companion that I had at the MTC. I have a feeling that this could be a crazy transfer. I have to find a new apartment this week and everything. It's going to be fun.

Patrick is doing great. He was baptized on Saturday and confirmed yesterday. He had a huge smile on his face! Here are a couple of pictures:


The rasta is a man named Hyacinth that is in our branch. He is pretty sweet and doesn't pull his dreads out very often so this was a special occasion!



Marvin is also doing relatively well. He loves having us over and he is going to be in my new area. We showed up on Saturday right when his girlfriend was walking out on him. He was pretty upset about that. I'm not sure whether or not we should be glad about it. He can get baptized now but he wanted to get married... I'll keep you updated.

This picture is from our trip to an old airport this morning:


Sorry, I guess I didn't tell you which buildings were which last week.


The scripture of the week is 2 Nephi 25:26.

The highest baptizing island in the mission!

There have been some visa issues in Jonathan's mission during the past week. Some of the missionaries in Guyana were detained by the police. Click here to view the article from KSL.com.

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.