Mission Update June, 2008

The time is flying by as we start the road to our release in early October.  We still have so many things to do, but we are trying to get organized.  We want the next couple, the Collings of Canada, to be able to carry on without a lot of disruption.  Elder Malmrose has been working hard setting up systems to take care of the many logistics required by both the District and the Mission.  He has been able to get many of the bills from being paid by standing in long lines every month, to being paid on-line in a few minutes.  He is also organizing all the data entry on information into the church MLS program.  He works with many different branches and clerks and has to set them up and train them.  He also does the auditing for all the French branches for the whole area.  That requires his auditing and the sending of reports periodically.  He also does the mission finances for our missionaries and keeps the cash box and banking responsibilities.  He is the computer support person for the family history computers.  During all this, he has missionary responsibilities and district responsibilities.  He is often up in the middle of the night working on these things.  He needs to go home and go back to work, so that he can rest.

I continue to have responsibilities to iron his shirts and keep him fed.  When I am not doing that, I am taking care of any medical concerns of our many missionaries.  I also do apartment checks and encourage them to keep them clean.  I do the ordering from Church Distribution for our area, and process them as they come in.  I keep the records for each missionary and his legal status.  I study the French language on my own, as well as study the missionary lessons in French.

We go together when we help teach with the missionaries.  We teach both investigators and also help with new member lessons occasionally.  Also, when he travels to the many branches, sometimes I am asked to bear my testimony.  He often has to talk in the meetings. We also attend the branch and district activities.

In other words,  THIS IS NOT A VACATION!!!!

That being said, we are enjoying being here and working together in the Lord’s vineyard.  These are wonderful, faithful, beautiful people, and we have come to love them.

Here are some pictures of what has been going on during this month:

We had to say our farewells to Elder Bezzant.  I call him Elder Pleasant, because he is such a nice person.  We have a tradition of taking an Elder out to dinner before he goes home.  We give him a talk and the Malmrose Proclamation on a Happy Life.  We talk about how important it is to choose wisely before he gets married, and look for a good wife and mother of his potential children.  We then talk about raising well behaved children and give him examples from our life and the life of our own children.  We tell them that interrupting adults is rude and they don’t need to do it.  We demonstrate what Amber does with her children in having them come up and squeeze her arm and wait to talk until she talks to them.  We also tell them that children don’t need to whine and they should not reward the whining, but tell the child to “lower your voice”.  They really love to have the talk, and someday we will see all these children of the missionaries squeezing arms, and we will know where it came fromJ  Elder Taerea is a missionary from Tahiti.  We have quite a few from there because French is their native language.  They are nice young men too.  They love music and sing whenever possible.

Elders Taerea & Bezzant

Elder Bezzant farewell

Elder Bezzant Proclamation

Mr. Ramin, new Moule landlord

Elders Taerea & Bezzant

Transfers:

Just before the 6 week transfer day, we attended the District Meeting of our missionaries from Basse-Terre and Capesterre.  They do such a good job in teaching.  Here is a picture of Elder Anihia, Procter, Wright and Lines. 

Distrist Mtg

Transfer Day is always hectic, as we put some of the missionaries on planes to the other islands and greet the ones being transferred back to Guadeloupe. We said goodbye to Elders Anihia, Taerea, Procter and Lines.

Elders Tearea, Anihia, Procter & Lines

Elder Lines

Elder Anihia

We welcomed some brand new missionaries fresh out of the MTC.  Elders Julian, Kelley, Jones, Snow and Roberts.  It is always nice to get to know new Elders.

Elders Julian, Snow, Jones, Snow & Roberts

 When the new missionaries are settled, we hold a Zone Conference.  The Zone Leaders conduct the whole meeting and do such a good job teaching the other young men what is expected of them and how to go about being effective missionaries.  They often have object lessons.  Here are some examples of one of their lessons.

 

Baptism Francoise Cyrille:

Of course, one of the highlights of our work here, is to see someone come into the fold of Christ.  This sweet sister and her adult daughter (Emmanuelle) and grandsons have been coming to our Branch of Capesterre for quite a while.  The daughter and the grandsons joined the Church some months ago, but Sister Cyrille had some things she needed to do to be ready.  When the time finally came, she did join and was baptized in the ocean, a good representation of what she had been going through.  It was wonderful to share this time with her. These are some pictures of that special day in her life. We had done some of the initial teaching and later did new member lessons with her and her family.  She is bright and loves the Gospel.  It is made more special for the fact that she has recently learned that she has what is probably terminal cancer and may not live too long.  She has accepted it with courage and grace, and continues to attend Church whenever she can.  She says that she has now done all that she needs to do and is ready to return to God, if He calls her home.  We have come to love her and her family, and hope that there will be miracles in her life.  She wants to live long enough to see her daughter graduate as a nurse in a few months.

Francoise Cyrille

Sister Cyrille & family

With Br. Pres & Sister Mondongue

With Elder Procter

Descending into water

Circle of love

Testimony rendered

With Michel & Elder Garrett

With daughter Emmanuelle

Grandson Ryan

Sr. Cyrille & family

 As you can see, not only are the missionaries involved with this family, but the members of the Branch are also.  This is the way it should be.  Her oldest grandson Ryan, always throws his arms around me and gives me a big bug when he sees me.  Shortly after he was baptized, he gave a great talk in Church.  I told his mother how well he had done and she told me that they think he isn’t very smart at school because he has a learning disability.  I encouraged her, saying that he is very smart but just needs help in learning.  Hopefully, he will get it because he is such a nice young man.

 Ordination Day:

We had a special thing happen to us.  We don’t call it a coincidence, because there are none.  We travel around to the different branches on Sundays and sometimes we attend part of the meetings in one branch and then go to another later.  On this Sunday, Elder Malmrose said we should attend our home branch and then leave after Sacrament meeting and go to the Abymes branch, because he had some computer work to do there.  We came in during some of their meetings and went to the Family History room where the computers are.  As we were working in that room, we heard talking in the hall and noticed that some of the Brethren were gathering in the room there.  It was the day that they were going to ordain some of the newer members to the Priesthood.  We opened our door wider and they saw us and invited us to come in for the ordinations.  Two brothers, who had just joined the Church, were ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood.  The other brother is Brother Cesarin, We were part of his and his wife’s teaching before their baptisms.  He was to be ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood as an Elder.  When he saw Elder Malmrose, he asked that he do the ordination.  He requested his “Line of Authority” so the next week Elder Malmrose printed out his “Line” and put it in a nice frame and gave it to him.  He was thrilled.  They are now tied together through that same line of authority back to Jesus Christ.

Ordination day

Brother & Sister Cesarin

Showing Line of Authority

Elder Kelley & Br. Felsina

That same day, our dear friends the Gamiette family, were to have their son Terry baptized.  He had waited a while after he turned 8 years old until he felt ready to make the commitment.  After the baptism, his dad and other Priesthood brethren, including Elder Malmrose, came up to confirm him a member of the Church.  A strange thing happened.  They put their hands on his head to start and Pres. Gamiette couldn’t talk.  It went on for quite a while, and the other brethren were starting to help him.  He has never been at a loss for words before, and it was a strange feeling.  At that moment, Elder Malmrose’s cell phone went off, and he took his hand off the boy’s head and turned it off.  After that, he put his hand back on the top of the other hands.  He said he felt a very strong sensation of warmth that he hadn’t felt before, seemingly emanating from the boy.  Immediately, Pres. Gamiette was able to give a beautiful, flowing blessing to his son.  An interesting experience.

Pres./Sr. Gamiette & children

Terry Gamiette

Pappa & Terry

Newest member

They made it

Family at the service

The next week we had a baptism in Basse-Terre of a young man, Jean-Pierre Samuel, who is joining after he has seen what a difference the Gospel has made in the life of his younger sisters, who joined a few months ago.  Hurrah for Israel.

Basse-Terre members

Elders Ison & Doumbia

Elders Wright, Doumbia & Br. Samuel

Basse-Terre baptism

We had another baptism.   Sister Bilba was taught by the young missionaries and Pres. Gamiette.  She asked him to do her baptism.  We are always happy to have the members involved with these ordinances.

Elders Roberts, Garotta & Sr. Bilba

Misc. Sights:

One thing they often do here, is have branch talent shows.  They love music and dancing.  Sister Berchel makes quilts with traditional themes.  Some of the sisters dressed up in the traditional dresses and headdresses, and then performed some of the Caribbean dances.  The missionaries also participated, and that was fun.  Sister Constant is the one in the Asian dress and the fancy hairdo.  Every time we see her, she has her hair in a different style.  She speaks very good English, because she was a missionary on Temple Square when she was a young woman.  Now she has four children of her own and her husband is the branch president in Lamentin. 

Sr. Berchel w/quilts

Elder Doumbia

Sr. Constant

Audience

Sr. Galbas

Traditional dancers

Sr. Victor & Galbas

Missionary partipation

Finale

Fancy hairdo

Here are a few “P” Day sights.  We share some of the young missionaries’ activities, but we passed on the rock climbing.  This momma cow didn’t like it very much when I started to get close to her baby.  I took the hint.

 Members:

We have a new branch of Gosier, and here they are outside the new building we recently rented for them.  It was a former theater, but is easily adapted to church use. 

The rest of the pictures are of missionaries and members.

Gosier branch

Missionary fun

Kasongo family

Missionary can do anything

Bastiens

Bonbons

 St. Martin Island:

There is a long story about the French speaking branch on St. Martin.  They have been looking for a building to rent on their side of the island, rather than traveling to the English branch in Philipsburg.  The missionaries found this old house in the center of town, and we started to contact the owners.  They agreed to rent it to the Church, if we would refurbish it.  We agreed and started on the work.  We held a work day for the members, and cleaned out a lot of trash and weeds.  Before we could meet in the building, some men came to our contractor, who was working on the house, and told him that he had to leave.  Apparently, it is in probate and belongs to 11 brothers and sisters of the deceased owner.  The sisters wanted us to rent it, but the brothers didn’t.  There are some legal issues, so we are working things out with our attorney.  At this point, we can’t use the building, so other arrangements will have to be made until the legalities are settled.  Life has its challenges, even in these islands. 

Sister Platt

Elders Temarono & Vogel

Mrs. Hodge, homeowner

Cut yo head clean off!

Mayeko family

The last few pictures are of some of the branch members and Sister Platt, one of our senior couple missionaries on that island. The little Mayeko girl has two new baby siblings who were born a few weeks before.  She always comes over to me and wants me to take her picture, and then she wants to see it immediately.  This is the digital generation.

Br. Mayeko & daughter

Marigot branch

One of the members, Bro. Pra Niranjan from the Philipsburg branch, invited us to dinner at his house.  This is a picture of his grandson, and the next is of Sister Platt and his wife.

Br. & Sis. Pra Niranjan

Grandson

Sisters Platt & Niranjan