Transfer #3!

23 February 2015

Transfer calls were on Saturday. We were in a taxi with music blaring, so it was hard to understand, but we managed (loudspeaker is a wonderful thing). The conversation went something like this:

Elder F.: Do you have a concealed weapons permit?

Me: Um . . . no?

Elder F.: You might want to get one, because you're going to be killing Sister Hendricks! Hahahaha!

Me: Ha. Ha. You're hilarious.

Translation: I will be staying in Curepe and "killing" Sister Hendricks (meaning she is going home at the end of this transfer). More good news is that I am no longer a trainee! I have finished the 12-week training program and am now officially a "normal" missionary. Our district leader asked, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you to be finished with training?" I told him "55." Training was a good learning experience, though. I'm glad they don't just throw us in without any wheels, but now those wheels are coming off :) Should be fun.

The Curepe ward has been trying to get firesides started every month, and the missionaries did the first one. We decided that if we were going to get a lot of baptisms and reactivations this year, we had better deepen the conversion of those already coming to church; so, we gave a fireside on the Book of Mormon. It was a lot of fun. President and Sister Mehr spoke to us and the Bishop told his conversion story. We wanted to make the Book of Mormon come to life, so each companionship chose a story and we acted it out. Sister Hendricks and I chose the tree of life; she had a rebus poem that we read out with visuals. Not very many people came, but it was a very good fireside: it was mentioned in church three or four times to my hearing. We had a few goals in putting on this fireside: we wanted to get the members reading the Book of Mormon, we wanted them to share it with their friends, and we wanted to get referrals from them. Ix-nay on the referrals, but we shall see about the others :)

Have a great week! Much love,

Sister Aida Tibbitts

Addendum to email: I thought I would share Bishop Ramdhanie's story that he told at this fireside, since it was pretty funny. About twenty years ago, his wife started investigating the church, and she invited him to come to Port of Spain for a stake conference. This was around the same time as the Jim Jones incident, where a man in Guyana basically brainwashed his congregation and then fed them poison, so Bishop Ramdhanie was a little skeptical about the whole thing, especially when they started passing the sacrament around. Afterwards, a couple missionaries started talking to him and asked if they could teach him along with his wife; he was absolutely surprised to hear himself say "Yes." He actually looked around to see if someone else had said it. After hearing what they had to say and reading the Book of Mormon, he decided that Mormons weren't as crazy as he had thought, and now he's the bishop in Curepe! -Aida

Wicked King Noah!

Samuel the Lamanite stands firm under opposition.