Roller Coaster Week

Well Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This week was a roller coaster ride. Let me tell you about it!

Elder Hartshorn and I sang "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" in our Sacrament meeting. We practiced all week so it went really good. Also President and Sister Mehr visited our Sacrament meeting. Sister Mehr kept complimenting our song which meant a lot cause she sang in the Mo tab. They blow my mind every time they speak. In the 3rd hour President gathered the whole branch and rallied the troops. He told them the whole situation of the West Indies Mission right now and explained how they could help. We have 60 missionaries coming in and not a place to put them. All visas are to their max. He asked for the faith and prayers of the branch to bring about a miracle. He says he is still waiting on Guyana to let him know if they will let more missionaries in. At most they will let 40 in. But he said "I want you all to watch what happens." "Watch the hand of the Lord in His work." "I don't know how he will do it." "But I know he will.." Everyone in the Branch was super excited and ready to do missionary work.

President also announced we will be starting a group in Penal. Which is where our apartment is. It's about 15 minutes from Siparia. And we will be holding Sacrament meeting possibly in our apartment and in Siparia. Yea it's crazy.

After church President took us to see a less active in our area. There had been a really big incident that offended her and stopped her going to church. I won't get into it but this women is very contentious. She started to tell President everything that's wrong with everyone. He politely stopped her and that caused an outrage! She screamed at him with tears in her eyes "Your nothing compared to President Gamiette!" (The last mission president) He just kept saying sorry and we eventually just had to leave because it was so bad.

In the car President did not say one thing bad about this lady. He is so humble. He just felt sorry he couldn't help. I really learned a lot from that experience. Tolerance! Man I love my President.

I love you guys too! Have an awesome week!


Love, Elder Hale

Divali

Well this week was pretty good! We found a couple more promising people to work with. The problem with people lately is committment. They don't want to do anything. It is like pulling teeth to try to get someone to come to church. And everyone uses the exuse that the Sabbath day is on Saturday so they don't really feel obligated to come to church on a Sunday. So the search with go on and we will seperate the wheat from the tares.

 

Divali was pretty fun. Lots and lots of food and fireworks. We took some food home with us and we ate it three days later. Big mistake.. I'm still recovering from it. Never eat leftover indian food!

 

Something kinda funny happened this week with a less active. She told us she is planning to come back to church next year so we taught her not to procrastinate the day of her repentence.  Elder Hartshorn brought up how we don't know when we will die. He said "What happens if you get in a car accident tommorrow?" She said "Oh please, I have plenty days left." So she pretty much shot down his point. But the interesting thing that happened is that this lady went on a trip on Saturday to maracas beach with some of her friends. On the way they were driving on a thin road and they dodged a oncoming and their car went off the road and rolled down a hill. Her friend died from the crash and she was pretty beat. So she is in shock right now.

 

On Sunday I gave my talk and everything went well. After church we had a fireside on Family Home Evening. It was really fun and we had a bunch of refreshments after.

 

There are lots of missionaries coming in the field in March and it looks like President Mehr might have worked his magic with the Minister of Culture in Guyana. They should be allowing us to send more missionaries there. It is pretty likely I could go there to train a new missionary. It will be like starting the mission over. Guyana is a whole new world.

 

Anyways I love you guys and hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Love, Elder Hale

Hindu Christmas

Hello friends! This week went pretty good. We had some good days where we had lots to do and other days we stuck to finding. We really only have one serious investigator named Mia. She is 16 and she has a great testimony. She has been taught everything. The problem is her Grandma (Who is a member) won't let her be baptized because she says she isn't ready. So we are running out of ideas with her quick.

At church this week the Branch President and 1st counselor didn't even show up. The second counselor came at 9:15! It was the Primary program too. It was really funny there were only 5 kids. There was one little kid that held a microphone in the middle of them when they sang. It was like the Jackson 5! Anyways so this Branch has a lot of fixing up to do. Especially the part where we don't get fed after church. Haha just kidding! So our focus this transfer is more member work then finding new investigators. Although there is plenty time for both.

I have been assigned to give a talk next week in sacrament on "Being Positive" I don't know if I have heard anyone give a talk on this but whatever! Well I am excited for Holli and her upcoming baby! And Happy Birthday to Dad! Tomorrow is the Divali (say it like Di-wall-ee) celebration so it's gonna be exciting here. It's like the Hindu Christmas! Love you guys have an awesome week!

Love, Elder Hale

Siparia

Hello everyone! I have limited time today but let me do my best to recap this week.

So Siparia is a cool area. The missionary work however is struggling because of the lack of effort from past elders. These past couple days we have had a hard time finding anything to do besides finding! I got to ride bikes for the first time which was sweet! We rode up and down hills for three hours finding nothing but Hindus (which I love). After we were completely exhausted, I asked Elder Hartshorne where we could go and he really couldn't think of one thing. It was a little discouraging. But we had a heart to "Hart" and he really wants to work hard this transfer. He has gotten into some lazy habits so he wants me to wear him out. So we got a game plan now for this transfer and we are real excited.

We also had another amazing zone conference where President Anderson from the Seventy came and spoke to us. He was inspiring! President Mehr never seizes to amaze me either!

Cool news from President Mehr!

Elders and Sisters, I have just finished up the Mission President’s Conference in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Here Elder Zwick from the Seventy was with us along with the Area Presidency. We have received instructions from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles regarding the status of the West Indies Mission.

In the next several months, because of the influx of thousands of missionary applications, we will be receiving almost 52 more missionaries into our mission. This is great blessing. The Lord is hastening His work. D&C 88:73 “Behold, I will hasten my work in its time”.

There will be challenges. There will be questions on how this will all work out. The Lord will provide. This would possibly mean that we will have 4 missionaries per unit (branch or ward). This also means that we will need to strengthen the branch and ward councils. In some areas we will even have to help create these councils.

I have felt the spirit of this historical announcement. Now we begin to implement the Lord’s desires from this wonderful miracle in our lives. Be sure to write in your journals what you are seeing and experiencing out there as you participate in the greatest hastening of the work that we have seen since the Church was restored.

We will see many miracles as we work with greater faith and haste. Right now our compliment of missionaries is around 126 and we will be increased to 178. This does not include Senior Couples.

May the Lord bless us as we prepare diligently for the hastening of His work.

I love you all,

President Mehr

Transferred!

So we got our Transfer calls this week and I'm am hittin' the road heading to a place called Siparia! Someone translate that for me.. Anyways it is way down south far from Grande. I hear people really love the area. It is full of Hindus! But that is perfect because the 13th of November is one of the biggest Hindu holidays called Divali. I guess people just roam house to house eating sickening amounts of delicious Indian food! I'm real excited cause they say Siparia is the best for Divali.

Unfortunately Elder Whitlock and I must part but my new companion is Elder "Brock" Hartshorne. He was in my district on the first transfer serving in Arima. He is really cool I have no worries about serving with him.

I was a little bummed we didn't baptize this transfer but the area has progressed greatly! Elder W. will get them baptized.

It's been sad telling people I am leaving. Everyone knows it's coming but they were still shocked when I told them. Kerwyn and Brandon were both really sad. Brandon's Dad actually cried but it was cause he was really drunk..Haha.

Well til next time I love you guys!

Love, Elder Hale

The master teacher, sister Gopaul!

We had a Trini cook-off in our apartment! I made the pumpkin! The rest is stew chicken, curry chicken, curry mango, and dhalpourie (roti).

Cricket!

The Supaul family!

Brandon and Father Mitchell saying their goodbyes (: Yes he is crying hahaha

Teaching with President Mehr

So we are down to the last week of the transfer! Sadly no one came to church this week. But it was a miracle in disguise because the meeting was sooo slow. First the first counselor Brother Phillips got up and stuttered. "Welcome to the latter.....the Jesus...The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We all looked at each other in awe. He ended up giving a 25 minute talk later. When he came to the pulpit he read off his paper. "Our next speaker will be...(pause) "Me!""Malcolm Phillips."

So this week we became teachers at Sangre Grande Secondary School teaching what is basically seminary. One of the members Samantha Harrideo hooked it up. They have all sorts of religious classes that the kids can choose from. We taught 30 kids! And the classroom is unbelievably ghetto! So the first class was a little rough cause the kids are real immature but next time we are gonna get another classroom with only people that are serious. But it is definitely a good opportunity.

The highlight of the week was going out teaching with President Mehr. He came to Grande and we taught our investigators Troy and Debbie. With Debbie we wanted to teach the law of chastity because she is not married but lives with her boyfriend of 20 years Trevor. We have been trying to sit down with him but he is always on the go. They have 3 kids so we never felt comfortable to bring up the issue. We asked President what his opinion was and he told us we will just rely on the spirit. So we went to Debbie's and she was home alone. We began to talk and 5 minutes later Trevor walks in and President got him to sit down with us. It was the perfect scenario! President smoothly asked "How long have you been married?" That opened up the conversation. They began to tell us how they are not married and how they have lots of problems. We ended up having a really good lesson. President Mehr is the man! Trevor is really interested now and Debbie has opened up a lot. So that is the success of the week!

Have a nice week!

Love, Elder Hale

President Mehr!

We made the Harrideos french toast! This is Samantha!