Tales of Trinidad: 2019-08-04

August 5th, tomorrow, marks the "hump day" for our mission. Everything from here on out is going down the hill of time here in Tobago. 9 months! Really, unbelievable. That's a whole "baby" worth of time. Some of it has been slow and dragging but most of it has zipped by.

Our time of 4 months in Guyana was amazing, challenging and unforgettable. We will always love our brothers and sisters living there and hope we will see them again someday.

The five months here in Tobago have been wonderful as well and mostly spent driving hours and hours around the island finding all but a few members and putting them on a map. We have gotten to know some of the members pretty well and have helped where we can in the branch. We have been able to teach three beautiful daughters of God and they have chosen to be baptized.

Now, what can we do to build the kingdom?

Since we don't actively go door-door proselyting like our awesome young missionaries, we have prayed for people to be placed in our path. We read an article about a missionary couple who organized a weekly discussion meeting at the church and invited the members to bring friends and it resulted in many teaching opportunities which led to many baptisms.

So we have felt inspired to start a weekly discussion introducing the Church to the Tobago community. This discussion will be held Thursday evenings at our Church building in Scarborough.

This past week we have posted 26 full page flyers introducing this weekly discussion around Tobago at ATM's, bus stops, two malls, etc. Today, we handed out the 1/4 sheets to the members to give out to friends and family. We will also be giving them out in public places to families and anyone willing to listen.

The idea is to show a brief church video. Those "and now you know" videos you may have seen on Facebook at these sessions and then discuss the Truths surrounding that topic with those in attendance. Please pray for us and this new endeavor with getting the Gospel message out to those whom the Lord has been preparing to receive it. Every time I taped a flyer on a bus stop or ATM I asked Heavenly Father to help someone who wanted to know the Truth to see it.

Hoping we have a few "someones" this coming Thursday!

Tuesday and Friday we taught "new member" lessons to Irma and Angie and then Saturday we had an appointment with Jessie, our 14 yr old friend, to chat with him. We arrived about 10 minutes early and no one was there so we decided to do some exploring and then return. We found a beautiful hotel called "Top O' Tobago". It was amazing to look around and see this amazing island from the top.

We went back to Jessie's and found them home and had a great visit.

Also in our travels, we saw a sign for a Bird Sanctuary. We decided to explore that and found that it was completely abandoned. We also found a very large hotel complex with two swimming pools on a beautiful cove beach totally abandoned as well. Tobago just does not get enough tourist to maintain these wonderful attractions.

Both Angie, Rocky and Irma were in Church today and a new face we hadn't seen before. Stevon Price was there. He is one we have not been able to locate and here he was! He let me hug him after I told him we had been trying to find him and we were so happy he was here! We got to chat a bit but we'll talk more with him this week. I asked him why he came today and he told me his grandfather told him he should be going to church so he decided he would come. He was baptized in 2009 and has been ordained a priest.

Really, I am just SO excited for this week....especially Thursday!