28 December 2015

Dear Family,

Crazy week! So much service. I haven't painted so much in my life. Trinidadians (well, West Indians in general) really change their houses for the Christmas season, putting up new curtains and painting inside and out. It's pretty crazy. Good thing I like painting, ent? :D Even though I was surprised and sad that I was leaving Couva, I am really loving it down in Point. It's much more bush here, and the city is a lot smaller than the others I have served in. There were about 15 people at church yesterday, which was a little weird, but it's cool, I love the people that I serve here. One of our recent converts, Keith, has been helping us teach his brother Kelvin. Kelvin wants to be baptized on Thursday for his New Years Resolution, so we've been working hard to teach him all the missionary lessons before then. So far, so good. He's a good guy. We've done a lot of service for Keith and his sister Mozzie. Keith lives at an old sawmill that shut down a while ago. There's a lot of bush around him, so we and the elders came over one day and helped him cut bush, pick sorrell, and pull cassava. (Sorrell is a flower that WI use to make a red drink they have around Christmas.It's really good.) Christmas day we just went around and visited people and ate a lot of good food. It's funny; in Barbados everyone gave us ham, but I didn't see any ham for Christmas here, just chicken and rice and sorrell. Christmas eve we watched 'Mr. Krueger's Christmas'. There's an extra on the DVD with old MoTab Christmas concerts, and there was one where they sang 'The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy' and they had steel pan! Steel pan is basically the national instrument of Trinidad; we even have a panyard right next door to us. You should look the song up, it was pretty good.

Skyping was weird. After the screen blanked out for me we couldn't get it to work for Sister Tongi, so she and the elders had to scramble to find another place to Skype. It all worked out okay in the end, though. So I am glad I was able to Skype all yuh!

That was basically our week: service, food and music. Trinidad has a local Christmas music called parang. It's very bouncy. We are looking forward to New Years'; it's funny because last year for New Years I was on a tradeoff with Sister Tongi in Barbados, so this will be our second New Years together. :D She's a great sister.

Love you guys and hope everything is well with you. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love, Sister Aida Tibbitts