Juana's baptism

We had such a great weekend with our baptism for Juana on Saturday and then her confirmation on Sunday.  After she was baptized she just cover her eyes and wept, and then gave Elder Berger a hug and wept some more.  The spirit was so strong.  Christina who is also a Spanish speaking sister gave the talk on Baptism and did such a great job.  And President Day welcomed her in Spanish. It was a great baptism!

Sister Berger, Juana, Elder Berger

Sister Christina, Sister Berger, Juana, Elder Berger

Udate - Feb 2016

It is time again to write an update.  It is hard to believe that we only have 5 ½ months left.  January was an especially busy month.  Victoria and her three children were able to come and visit.  They left on a Monday and we left for San Juan on Wednesday morning for our semi-annual zone conference.  Our Mission President and his wife are such gracious hosts, it is always such a treat to spend time getting re-energized and ready to go back and be better missionaries!  We were back for one full week and we left to take our branch to the temple.  The Caribbean temple is located in Santo Domingo.  What a delightful experience, a temple that is in a non-English speaking country with 14 members, which only two could speak the language.  We had 2 sister who were taking out their own endowments, plus a couple who were going to be sealed, a brother was sealed to his deceased wife, and another sister to her parents.  Plus 160 baptisms, confirmations, initiatories, and sealings of couples and child to parents.  The temple was awesome to work with us and even scheduled the only English speaking sealer, who was also the President of the Temple, to do an extra sealing session, where he took the time to change those acting as proxies for every sealing.  So everyone would have a chance to participate.  He then left so he could catch his flight to Spain!  It was one of those experience that we would never have had if we had been home.  To watch the faces of those who hadn’t been to the temple for years, be able to enjoy the spirit that is in the temple, made us want to never take the temple (which is 10 minutes from home) for granted again.

At the airport

Restaurant where they only knew Spanish and we only knew English, President Day could speak some Spanish

The group minus the Branch President who is taking the picture

This is the MTC where we stay during our trip to the temple

Santo Domingo temple, I am standing in front of the MTC where we stayed.

We then came back and helped our Singe Adult Group have a Valentine Dance for the branch.  As the Branch President Day said, he was not too excited when we first talked about it, but it turned out to be a great activity. Pictures attached

Young Adults decorating

Almost done

Pictures in front of the kissing booth

Lots of refreshments

And we start

Everyone gets into the dance

the last dance of the night

December's post

December 29, 2015

Here we are at the end of 2015.  We last wrote we had just pasted our year anniversary (Sept) being on our mission. And now here it is the end of December.  We really are terrible journal keepers, so it stands to reason that we would be bad at keeping our blog up to date also.

Let me tell you about the Joachim family.  We had President Boucher (Mission President) here for our Branch Conference (ward conference).  Jean Joachim was a freelance minister and was looking for a place to preach.  We talked to him and invited him to our Gospel Principles class.  He is from Haiti and spoke some English, but speaks French creole.  He stayed for priesthood.  We set a time to visit him and his family.  His wife Mari, daughters, Kuchnide and Elizabeth.  What are the odds that just a couple of months prior, the Richards family move into the branch and brother Richards served his mission in France. To make a very long story short, we baptized them October 10^th.  It was a special week for Jean as he was sworn in as a citizen of the United States on October 9^th, baptized on the 10^th and received the gift of the Holy Ghost on 11^th and a week later received the Aaronic Priesthood. It has been such a wonderful experience to see them grow in the gospel.  He has prepared the sacrament, passed the sacrament, and now has blessed the sacrament twice in his English that is getting better.  Mari really struggles with English, but her desire is to become a better English speaker.  Right now she has to work on Sunday and that is very hard.  They also have two children that live in New Jersey and the elders are teaching them.  We are preparing them to go to the temple in a year.

 

 

We have had lots of disappointments and some successes as we look at the year.  We have grown and developed. From the things we have experienced we can’t believe that every senior couple in the church is not out there on a mission! Yes we have missed a wedding, priesthood ordinations, baptisms and even two grandchildren getting ready and leaving on missions. But as we look back over the last fifteen months, we are ever so grateful to be privileged to serve the Lord.  When we serve the Lord WE are the ones that receive the blessings and growth.