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.

Good Morning,

What a marvelous conference!  We started with Saturday session, because this was the first conference in our building, we didn’t realize that we would not be able to see the screen because of the windows and doors letting in so much light. After the first session, while we held the Easter Egg Hunt, the priesthood went and got some brown paper they taped to the windows.  So much better.  We didn’t have very many little children, but we got the teenagers and even the older members involved in the games we played.  And then we had a light lunch.  The second session seem to go very quickly.  The Priesthood session was not so lucky.  The chapel does not have a generator so when the electricity went out for most of the island, they were literally in the dark.  They tried streaming the session on the computer, but with the buffering of every other word it was impossible to understand the messages.  So after about ½ hour everyone went home.

Sunday morning dawned and the electricity went out again.  When we don’t have electricity we don’t have water.  Which made showers and getting ready out of the question for many.  For some that was a reason to stay home and watch it on their computers or phones if that was an option for them.  The power came back on about 20 minutes before 12:00.  We had a potluck between sessions. We had 35 people come out.  So, that was better than the last conference.  We had 5 less actives that are really more active and even a non-member for Sunday.

It has been a holiday week here on St Thomas.  Transfer Day celebrations started on Tuesday.  School has been out and most of the people were off of work.  And then the Easter celebrations started.  It will continue today, with life starting again tomorrow.  It was like December here.  Broken appointments, no show for others.  The traffic was so light, we couldn’t believe where everyone went. Many go off island. We will remember for next year, and be more prepared.  Carnival starts next Sunday with 4 weeks of celebrations.  Don’t know how that will affect our work, with the additional of people, family, and friends coming for the festivities.

We are continuing to work with the group getting ready for temple recommends.  Branch president would like to see a temple excursion this fall.  One sister wants to go in August, we will work toward that goal.

We start our Conversational English class this week. We have passed out lots of invitations, we do not know how many that will involve, but hopefully we will have a big group to start.

We have a daughter and grandson that will be visiting next week.  She is a ward missionary and wants to go with us.  We will see how that all works.

When you are on island this week, let us know how we might serve you.

Carrying on….

Elder and Sister Berger

Another week in the life of a Senior Missionary Couple

Another week in the life of a Senior Missionary Couple. 

Our weather is just boring.  We are between 77-84 degrees.  A cloud will come over and rain, and then move on, but the temperature stays about the same.  So we are getting use to not having to worry about a jacket or even an umbrella.  We are enjoying eating outside on our little patio.  Our landlords cropped the trees, so now we can really see the whole side of the island.  We don’t seem to have any problems with mosquitoes.  We still wear insect repellant when we are down near the projects.  But here on the north side of the island the people take to heart not to have standing water and places that would bred mosquitoes. 

We were in Kmart the other day and across the store we hear, “Elder, Elder”.  A lady came running up and said that she had just arrived on our island and that she had been having the missionaries teach her on Tortola.  So we have been finish up teaching her.  She left her significant other on the other island. They are not married and the missionaries had told her that she would have to get married to be baptized. She went back to Tortola last weekend.  It will be interesting to see if she comes back.  One day we were teaching her and her Auntie and her cousin and 3 children came in and we just kept teaching.  The children really enjoyed it.

We are still teaching our 3 young men.  They are friends of the Markhams, they are a family here in the branch, with a son the same age as the boys.  The one has been to church the last 3 Sundays.  The other one came this last Sunday.  And the 3^rd one, didn’t clean his bedroom so mom made him stay home and do laundry!  They are a fun group.  This week we are teaching the Word of Wisdom and Chasity.  We will see how that goes.

Elder Berger is getting better and better all the time with his Spanish.  He taught a sister about prophets and even gave the closing prayer in Spanish.  The sweet sister had tears in her eyes.  It really means a lot that he works hard to speak their language.

Today is P-day, so we need to go grocery shopping, one of my favorite things to do and the least favorite thing for Elder Berger!

This a picture of the newly baptized member Lynn, with her daughter Laura and Laura's boyfriend - Kyan, and her son Matthew and grandson Jayden.

Working as a missionary

My grandson, James asked me, “What would your life be like if you didn’t have the gospel”.  I have pondered on that question a lot as I go forward and teach the gospel.  I feel like I would be a ship without a rudder.  Going in circles and not really knowing which direction to go.  Knowing something was missing, but unsure what it was.  Looking but not finding that thing that I felt was not there or missing in my life.

Missionary work is a little different than what I was expecting.  The gospel is such a part of our lives, and we want to share it so much, we know what a difference it would make in their lives.  But they have their agency and can choose to accept it or not.  Our responsibility is to make sure they have enough knowledge to make that decision. 

People are looking for the truth and because they are looking, many other people have told them things that they have taken as truths.  Many times we have to teach them what they thought as a truth is just the philosophies of men.  People don’t like change, so sometimes it is hard for them to put aside what they have been taught, maybe all of their lives, to something that may seem a little foreign to them.  I really see the concept of line upon line and precept upon precept. 

We have been very busy, I go to bed at night wonder where did the day go.  We have less actives that we are fellowshipping, we have people who are just looking at our church, and we have those that we are teaching the lessons to.  It is fun to visit with people and try to bring the spirit with you, so that they can feel and remember how the spirit feels.  We have got several people to come back to church.  Our concern is that they have not been given a calling and so now some of them are getting more sporadic in their church attendance.  I didn’t think we would be teaching the concept to shadow leadership.  I don’t think they have heard the phrase, “when the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies”.  They just assume they can’t do it.  And the people think that they can’t do it, so they don’t try, because maybe they tried and it wasn’t perfect, or it was a struggle, so everyone just let them give up.

We do have the concern for our Spanish speaking members.  They do try to speak English, it is the older sisters, but they struggle.  So how do you give a calling to work in the Primary to a sister who doesn’t speak English to children who do not speak Spanish?  Or to teach in Relief Society to sisters who do not speak Spanish?  She could shadow another teacher or work in Family History with another sister, so she could help the Spanish speaking, but again that is a concept that our little branch won’t embrace.

On a more positive note, it is fun to teach the gospel to those that you see the light come on in their eyes.  They remember!  We are teaching a sister who joined the church very recently and we are getting her ready for the temple.  We taught her how to use the scripture footnotes to find additional scriptures.  She did not know that when she goes to the temple she would get to wear sacred garments.  Everything we talk about, she grasps ahold and accepts it straight way.  She is trying to get her sons interested in the gospel and if we follow the spirit, I think it might happen?  That is so rewarding, nothing takes its place and you can’t explain it.

Last night we visited a lady with 3 children.  When we came the children came running and gave us hugs.  It made it seem like we were home, getting hugs from our grandchildren. 

So today is Tuesday and we go to visit a sister that struggles.  She lives in an apartment building, with no electricity.  She has to have someone bring her water in gallon jugs because she cannot get it herself, or she collects the rain that fails on her little porch.  I wish I had a magic wand and could make her life better, but it comes down to choices.  We have grown to love her, she is a sweet daughter of God. She is articulate and educated. 

Last night we taught a young man who just turned 12, about the Aaronic Priesthood.  He acted so positive.  We hope that his mother can get him to church so that he can receive the priesthood.  They have no car and to get to church they have to take a taxi or a safari.  She doesn’t work, so money is really tight.  Our mission rule is we cannot take them to church, but we can take them home.  So that is what we tell them.

I must close, it is a very busy day!!!