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.

Anniversay of mission

This week we past our one year anniversary here on St Thomas.  Hard to believe it has been a year.  We have had some marvelous experiences, both good and bad.  We have taught many people and have yet to have a baptism. We have helped 4 people get ready to go thru the temple for the first time.  One of them will not be able to go thru the temple for another 2 years as she cannot leave the island or she wouldn’t be able to get back on the island. After her son turns 18 he will be a US citizen and can help her get her citizenship.  We have watched sweet sisters and brothers get a calling or an assignment from our branch president that has changed their lives.  We have worked with brothers and sisters in the 12 step addiction recovery program the church offers, here again, it has changed lives.  We have seen what allowing God again in their lives, does change people and their lives for good.

But we have also seen a change in us.  Elder Berger has said many times he isn’t sure whether a mission is for the people they serve or for the missionary themselves. We have not only grown closer to the spirit, learning how to use that spirit, but also we have grown closer together.  We would not have even guessed that we would be the ones that would grow and develop.  It is indeed a blessing that we were not expecting, because we always felt like we were a great couple, but to be even better is such a blessing.

It is such a privilege to be able to bear testimony to the simple truths that we love, and to enjoy the sweet spirit whispering to the individual that we are bearing testimony to truth of what we are saying. We have always loved to be an instrument for the Holy Spirit.

Here are some pictures:

Stairs

Elder Berger teaching at a Self Reliance dinner

Our Branch 4th of July breakfast at the beach

University of the Virgin Islands

Downtown St Thomas

Carnival's food fair

Our branch building on the hill

Our Mission President and his wife with our Sister Kristina and her husband from our branch

Fort Christian V

 

Sugar Plantation ruins on ST John - St John is in our branch boundaries and we have members living there.

June - 2015

June is almost over and we start into July.  We are about 1/2 done with our mission.  That is hard to believe.  The first week we were here I didn't think I would make 2 years, it seemed so long.  But here it is half over.

 We have just got back from Puerto Rico.  We have a Zone Conference every 6 months in Puerto Rico and they have the senior missionaries in the five islands that are in our mission come.  It is so good to talk to others about the same issues and concerns that we have.  It was fun to laugh that at a ward activity, if there is food, the islanders will fill up 2-3 plates to take home on their first time thru the line.  I guess that is an island thing. We really had a spiritual high and came back with some great ideas to try.

                   We went on a walking tour, these are pictures from our tour of San Juan.

We had our open house at our newly renovated meetinghouse. The branch was awesome in their displays and their dedication

 

Open House

We just had our Branch Conference and our Mission President and his wife came, they not only talked in Sacrament meeting, they taught the Relief Society and Pres. Boucher taught in the Priesthood Quorum.  While he was here he did temple interviews.  We had 4 first timers get their temple recommends.  We are planning on a trip in October. That will be to the temple in Santo Domingo.  Hopefully we will have another 4 ready by then to go to the temple.  These are all single individuals.  One sister is married but her husband is not a member, and the others are single.  We are praying that either good single members of the church move in or we get some good investigators!  I think it may be the highlight of our mission.

We have also moved into another apartment.  The view isn’t as nice as the old apartment, but everything else is!  We even have a washer and dryer in our apartment. We are up higher and that means we get a really good breeze that helps keep us cool.  So far we have not had to turn on the a/c, we are waiting for September and October for that J.

See ya later!

 

May - another month 2015

May 4, 2015

Another week has flown by.  They are just starting to run together.  The people here on St Thomas have a holiday for any excuse they can find.  They closed school for a whole week to celebrate Transfer Day - the day the Dutch turned the islands over to the US.  They have just finished celebrating carnival.  A whole month of activities.  Although school was only out for a week. It has been interesting, only a few islanders were at church yesterday.  Must have been a hard carnival for them!

We went down to the Food Fair on Wednesday and you couldn't stir them with a stick - so many people.  The food was island food, lots of beans and rice.  They had BBQ pork, that was anything but what I think BBQ should be.  They do not use any tomatoes in their BBQ, so it is brown and the flavor - is well interesting.  It was expensive $30.00 -$20 was for a meal in a white carry out dish. (like what you get from a restaurant if you cant eat everything and you take it home).  No control over what is cooked, where it is prepared or who prepares it. It is eat at your own risk. :)

We took cookies to our investigator from last week that didn’t want to meet this week.  We had a first meeting with another investigator this week.  It is another one of those, “don’t know when I will be available, I’ll call you”. We will follow up this week and see if we can visit both of them anyway :)

We started our temple prep class Sunday.  We have a young man who is getting ready for a mission and about 6 other islanders that will be in the class.  The problem with our island brothers and sisters are, they have to work every other Sunday. Which makes it a  challenge to get everyone thru the class with all the lessons.

We were asked to help out last Thursday with the girls’ camp.  They only had one priesthood holder to be with them, so we spent the day with the youth.  That will make you feel old!!!  It was a good time.  They asked us to give a spiritual thought on service before we left and she told us later that it set the tone for the rest of the camp. Made us feel good and we also made contact with 4 couples that we gave pass-a- long cards to (they were visitors to the islands).  So we felt we were doing some missionary work. 

 The girls participated in a Make a Wish, as part of service for camp.  A young boy wanted to be a pirate.  So our girls were the pirates.  They were the extra's as they had the ship and main people already on the ship.  They then took him to Water Island on the pirate ship and we follow in a water taxi.

 

 We had a great time!

They sustained a new branch mission leader on Sunday.  We invited him to dinner and went over his responsibilities.  He is excited. And we are too!  One of the families in the branch will be leaving this Tuesday for the states and not coming back.  They will leave a big hole in the branch, especially in the music department as she is the only person in the branch that plays the piano.

We started back again with our walking 3 days a week. We have extended our walking distance from 4 miles to 5 mile today, this getting old is harder than we thought.  It takes so long to get back in shape and only a couple of weeks to get out of shape.

We sure enjoyed Emily and James coming to visit us.  They told us to take the time and do things with our children.  And we did.  We went to St John and visited lots of beaches.  I hope they enjoyed themselves.  We even took them with us for a couple of appointments.  And we got a couple of new contacts when we took them to Mountain Top the famous souvenir place on the island. So all is good.