Adventures in St. Vincent: Celebrating birthdays and our Half-way Point

 

Our past two weeks of mission life have been fantastic.  First, I crashed the secretary computer, but luckily Brother Rupa from Facilities Management in Trinidad felt sorry for us and hand-delivered another hard drive to us last week.  He's such a great guy!  Getting it set up on the church system is another thing, but today Brother Ledesma worked his magic and we are now up and running with printer capabilities!  YEAH!  Been back and forth to doctor visits with some missionaries, seen miracles, prayed for miracles, fasted for miracles, and rolled up our sleeves and just kept working!  Phew! 

Barbados airport

To celebrate Doug's birthday, we had planned to be on St. Vincent but we delayed it a few days and ended up flying over to St. Vincent last Friday.  What an adventure!  St. Vincent is part of the Grenadines and is an area in our mission, but we've never visited.  Greg & Jeni were the best hosts and have the most beautiful apartment right on Indian Bay overlooking several of the Grenadines.  St. Vincent is volcanic and so that means lots of mountains and hills and very narrow, winding roads = a car sick Robyn for the most part.  I know....light-weight!  I can appreciate Barbados for its flatness!  Some highlights of the trip:



  • getting to see the missionaries we haven't seen in a bit
  • visiting the Pirates of the Caribbean film site


51


  • church in a new area



  • More missionary time
  • Bequai:  ferry ride (very rocky= sea sick Robyn), but beautiful island vibe


  • District Council: celebrated 3 birthdays
  • Family time with Greg & Jeni

On Friday, I was sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office with a quad of missionaries.  A patient and his wife were checking out with the receptionist and turned and looked at our nametags.  As he glanced at the young missionaries, he just said it is so refreshing to see young people out teaching and following Jesus Christ.  He told them he wasted his youth and found Jesus in his late 30s and said it was just such a waste.  We talked about his church and his love for the Savior and one of the Elders bore a short, simple testimony of his love for the Savior and his gospel.  It was a sweet exchange.

We really enjoy our little branch here.  All the little ladies missed us while we were gone and worried we had left without saying good-bye.  They are so delightful and stalwart!  I'm having a lot of fun teaching the Gospel Literacy classes with Sister Wiggins and some of the Addiction Recovery classes.  She is an amazing sister who really understands how much the self-reliance programs of the church can be used to support our members and friends.  

We also have been fasting and praying with the mission for their friends and if all goes well, we should have at least 6 baptisms on Saturday throughout the mission.  The work in the Caribbean is slow.  It really hasn't grown here in 30 years.  They did just add Venezuela to the Caribbean area in March, but not sure how that will affect the growth.  Christianity is wide-spread, but so is poverty and with that brings challenges that we don't widely see in the states.  

That's life in Barbados!  Shout out to my sister and brother-in-law who are celebrating birthdays this week!  We love you!  We hope you all are doing well.  Thank you for your prayers and you are in ours.  We hit our 9 month mark, which is half-way for seniors but....seems odd.  Time is so different when on a mission.



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