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.
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Elders Taerea & Bezzant
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Elder Bezzant farewell
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Elder Bezzant Proclamation
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Mr. Ramin, new Moule landlord
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Elders Taerea & Bezzant
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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.
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Distrist Mtg
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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.
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Elders Tearea, Anihia, Procter & Lines
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Elder Lines
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Elder Anihia
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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.
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Elders Julian, Snow, Jones, Snow & Roberts
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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.
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Francoise Cyrille
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Sister Cyrille & family
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With Br. Pres & Sister Mondongue
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With Elder Procter
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Descending into water
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Circle of love
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Testimony rendered
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With Michel & Elder Garrett
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With daughter Emmanuelle
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Grandson Ryan
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Sr. Cyrille & family
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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.
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Ordination day
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Brother & Sister Cesarin
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Showing Line of Authority
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Elder Kelley & Br. Felsina
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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.
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Pres./Sr. Gamiette & children
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Terry Gamiette
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Pappa & Terry
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Newest member
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They made it
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Family at the service
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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.
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Basse-Terre members
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Elders Ison & Doumbia
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Elders Wright, Doumbia & Br. Samuel
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Basse-Terre baptism
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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.
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Elders Roberts, Garotta & Sr. Bilba
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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.
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Sr. Berchel w/quilts
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Elder Doumbia
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Sr. Constant
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Audience
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Sr. Galbas
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Traditional dancers
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Sr. Victor & Galbas
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Missionary partipation
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Finale
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Fancy hairdo
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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.
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Gosier branch
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Missionary fun
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Kasongo family
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Missionary can do anything
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Bastiens
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Bonbons
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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.
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Sister Platt
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Elders Temarono & Vogel
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Mrs. Hodge, homeowner
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Cut yo head clean off!
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Mayeko family
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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.
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Br. Mayeko & daughter
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Marigot branch
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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.
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Br. & Sis. Pra Niranjan
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Grandson
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Sisters Platt & Niranjan
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