Baptismal Dates

This Sunday was alright. We didn't have very many people committed to coming to church, and then it poured... people tend not to go places when you can swim through the air. haha. But we had a lot of our less actives there so that is very good! Elder Schroeder gave a talk and he noticed something that I felt subconsciously but couldn't pick out. It is a lot harder to talk when you are at eye level with the people. It's nice and easy when your standing above everyone. haha. Weird that it makes a difference but it really does.

As far as "S" and Baptism! Yes the ocean I am super excited for! (They do all their baptisms in the ocean because they don't have a font.) "S" has the 14th of December set as her date. She hasn't come to church yet because she is sick. I think she has dengue fever. But hopefully she can come next week so we don't have to push her date back. As far as baptismal dates though we have 4 People for the 14th and one for the 7th. Not sure how many will actually work out but were going to try to get everyone on their set days! :)

And yes Granny is very cool. It's her birthday today also!

I actually punched a banana tree over this week ! So yeah it was fun! 

Christmas here is a pretty big holiday, but they don't believe in or really ever talk about Santa. They just get gifts for each other. Oh and our apartment we decided we are going to have a tree in! But yeah they love their Christmas music here also! It's nice! 

So my favorite thing about Sunday.. well in the new investigator class we talked about prayer. At one point we talked about how we got answers to prayers. So sister Gayelle asked all the missionaries to share a story about how they have had an answer to prayer! So they were all really good. For mine I shared about how after I got my mission call, that night I prayed to know that it was the right decision for me, and after I prayed I decided it was good. I wanted to be a good missionary and I thought I should be more knowledgeable in the scriptures. So I turned to the scriptures where I had been reading and the first chapter I read (I don't remember where it is) said something along the lines of "you are called to serve these people " so I told that story about how my prayer was answered by the prompting I had to read the scriptures and how the scriptures answered my prayer! So yeah it was a good Sunday!

Anyways I love you! Enjoy the cold! I'll be here is St Lucia getting sun burnt! 

Love ya 

Elder Pierson!

Need more chairs :)

St Lucia is pretty amazing! Today is an incredibly hot day! We played basketball this morning! So we got super sweaty. I'm gonna be a basketball star when I get home we have been playing every morning at 6:30 (3:30 at home) There is a court right beside our apartment!  

I just realized I never told you about my mission granny. She got sick and was in the hospital but she is doing great! She is a lady who was baptized on a stretcher. She cannot walk because she has a blood clot in her leg that did something to it. But she is awesome and she loves her missionaries! She says we are her favourites, anyways I can't believe I never told you about her. Every time we go over she feeds us.She is super nice unless you get her vexed, then she just might through a knife at you.. and yes that actually happened haha not at us though.

My talk went surprisingly well. I tried giving a talk with nothing but the points I wanted to talk about and it went well. There was 16 investigators at church that day, and my talk was on the restoration. So it was a good talk for the time. 2 of the investigators really wanted to talk to me after the sacrament meeting. We discussed the restoration more, it was awesome! It was supposed to be a 10 minute talk but the other speakers left me about 20 minutes... but don't worry I talked for 25 haha!

As for baptisms they are all in the ocean! Kinda cool! We have no font, and yes we almost ran out of chairs last Sunday also! So I'm loving it! We will buy some soon!

So as for dads birthday I did actually remember it! The day before! One of our investigators (who has a baptismal date) has the same birthday as him! This lady make the best chicken ever! its 5 times better tasting than KFC and half as greasy! So amazing! And she knows that our church is the true church! Oh cool story about her, I don't know if I have said this already, but she was praying for God to send someone her way so that she could know the truth about the gospel, and we walked by her shop the next day 3-4 times, and on the fourth time she called out to us cause she thought we might be that answer to her prayer! :) So cool! anywhoo

This P-day is going to be a relax P-day. Just chill and stay cool! so its nice! I don't know when we are going to climb the Piton. I think we might go fishing first! Don't know when these things will happen!

Oh Another cool thing, we are teaching this lady named "D", she is older and is addicted to cigarettes, she wants to stop and wanted our help, or for us to pray for her, so she called us over and we starter talking to her, this was 4 weeks ago, we have taught her many times and just yesterday what we teach finally clicked, and she is starting to progress! But every time we went over she would have another child or friend over and now we have 6 investigators we teach at her house! So it's cool! :)

Oh and yes I got my transfer call on Saturday! I'm going to!!!!! stay here!!! with Elder Schroeder ! So that's awesome! I'm super excited! But it's crazy that one transfer has already gone by! My time here is flying by! So crazy.

Well I love you! Have an awesome week! 

Love Elder Pierson!

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Zip-lining and elephantiasis

Zip-lining was amazing! We got to go at the not tourist price. So a lot cheaper. That was nice haha. But it is fun I recommend it!

Anyways my week has been great! We have had a lot of great lessons and we met an awesome kid. He is 15 and he is so interested in Joseph Smith. He prayed and received an answer that he was a prophet called by God. He is reading the Book of Mormon and wants a second confirmation that its true. So hopefully when he prays about the Book of Mormon he will know. 

Oh and so for the education, turns out its amazing.. if you try. You take a test at the end of the year and if you do well you go to a good school, and if you do bad you go to a bad school! I like that system, even though i might have not gotten into the good school. haha 

But my week is going so well. The zone leader just had a baptism and we had two of our investigators there. And one I think now wants to be baptized so that is amazing! 

There are 6 missionaries in Castries. So six in our branch. And then there are four more down in Vieufort. 2 sisters and 2 elders. Oh and then there are 2 senior couples. The Gublers and the Gartz'. so there are a lot of missionaries here and the branch is growing! I like it.

Church was great! We had some amazing talks about putting God first in all we do, and we almost ran out of chairs, so we might have to buy more chairs soon! :) I'm sure that is a problem the church is happy to deal with!

Oh I saw a man with elephantiasis! Just so you know and can worry about me ! :) 

Anyways I love you and I hope you also have a good week!

As my friends the Rastas would say!

Respect!

Love ya, Elder Pierson  

Here are some videos to enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9qhmni8oi95woc/SDC10042.AVI (Zip-lining)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oax3r8lf7gje4it/SDC10680.AVI (Climbing a coconut tree)

The teaching picks up :)

So my letter is late-ish now because i just got home from zip lining! :) That was a pretty awesome way to spend the morning of p-Day! Zip lining is super fun, especially when you're going through trees and such! As far as teaching the kids the haka... it hasn't happened yet, that will be potentially 2 Saturdays from now. It's gotten pretty weird, but i hope they like it. It sounds like it should be fun! Oh and I think we will be climbing the piton next transfer! Woah it's crazy how close next transfer is!

So my area is actually really small, so we get to walk everywhere we go! but i like it. Bikes would be terrifying! There are steep hills everywhere we go so up would be no fun and down would be scary.. haha but yeah my shoes are great! I don't slip very often in them either so that is a bonus!

Church has been going well here for the last little while! We have lots of members or I guess it seems like lots because we almost fill the chapel! But then again the chapel is small.. haha hopefully we can make it grow enough they need to buy more chairs! :)

My favourite thing about Sunday was that all the testimonies were great! One sister, sister Jones, is moving back to Guyana so there was a big party after with lots of food! So that was pretty awesome! The Fast and Testimony meeting went 20 minutes longer than it should have! But it was still amazing! Oh and I also got assigned a talk. 10 minutes long on the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm excited to give the talk ! It should be pretty fun!

Oh yeah it is getting close to Christmas isn't it.. it's hard to imagine without any snow. I didn't even know it was Halloween till like 3/4 of the way through the day! weird... haha 

Well this week was a great week! We exceeded almost all our weekly goal by quite a bit, and we taught some really great people! We also taught some people while they were rolling their marijuana ... that was fun! But the good people are always really exciting to talk to! This one guy, "A", was in prison for a while and realized he needed to change his life. Now he is an amazing father to his family and is extremely dedicated to the Bible and studies it all the time. He is a little confused on some verses and they cause problems for him to accept a prophet, but we hope to meet with him again to discuss them. He has really good questions and always listens to the spirit so I hope once we help him with the prophet thing and he prays he will know its true. He would probably be a good stake president, and he has like 5 baptism age kids and his wife so that would be a lot of new members. I'm really excited to help him know! 

Oh another great guy, he was also in and out of prison. Weird how prison changes a man. anyways he has a lot of questions but he thinks Joseph Smith was called of God. he says "The name just sounds right and all those people were probably trying to kill him because he had the truth, and the devil didn't like that." So he is pretty awesome! And all his family is in Canada, so many St. Lucians are moving to Canada!

So I'm excited to see some progression but our only guy with a baptismal date keeps skipping out on church :/

But anyways! Have a Great week! I love you!

Elder Pierson