Mama,
I can't believe how fast the time is flying.....I feel like I e-mailed you yesterday. I'm glad to hear that you had a good week. I had a decent one here in St. Vincent as well! Today, we went to Bequia. (Bequia is a small island off of St. Vincent. It's about a 1 hour ferry ride to get there...) We caught iguanas, climbed coconut trees, visited a sea-turtle sanctuary, collected seashells, ate barracuda, and bought some small souvenirs. I took some cool pictures, but unfortunately, I forgot my card reader......I'll have to send the pictures next week. You'll love them!
The Turtle Sanctuary was AWESOME! They had a TON of turtles there. They had one that was 17 years old and he was big! Then they also had some really teeny, tiny, little turtles that were only one week old that were still learning how to swim. It was a blast! All ten of us missionaries on St. Vincent went today. We just got back about 30 minutes ago.
Our fast Sunday was great yesterday! We had one of the biggest turnouts at sacrament meeting I've ever seen in St. Vincent. We had about 60 members there before sacrament was passed! Speaking of that....I have a cool story to tell you about sacrament meeting. We had a Lady show up at church with her daughter who hadn't come to church in 9 years. She finally decided that life wasn't very good without the gospel, and this was her 1st week back. I was asked by the Branch President to help a young priest to bless the sacrament. He needed some help and was nervous, so I agreed to bless it with him to help him out. He blessed the bread, and the congregation went really quiet...(Abnormally quiet, especially for this branch.) The bread was passed very reverently and the Spirit was felt pretty strongly. I then blessed the water. It was once again very quiet in the chapel. I looked up at the lady who hadn't been to church in 9 years, and noticed tears beginning to swell up in her eyes. I then had the thought come to me, "It probably feels really good to her to feel like she's 'home' again." I have no doubt that she will be coming back more often. As I thought about the situation later, I thought, "Once you have the gospel, and realize how good it is, you could never keep away from it forever. Those feelings can't be found anywhere else."
I don't know if that makes complete sense....Maybe I can explain it a little differently....for example; you remember how when we eat Mexican food dad usually says something like "On my mission it tasted better" etc. ....? That's similar to what I'm trying to explain. You can fill your life with things to try and feel the void of not having the gospel, but ultimately, your soul craves the gospel that you already know to be great. I hope that makes sense. Dad is probably going to laugh at this. :) We found out that this lady's daughter had not been baptised, so we're going to try and teach her and help her to be baptised before the end of this transfer. We're going to try and help her aim for the 27th of this month. Brother Daniel didn't come to church, so he can't be baptised on the 27th now. Maybe in a few more weeks he'll be ready.
That's about all for now. I'll try and send a lot of pictures next week, and I'll try and get some good ones for the Christmas Card. It feels like last Christmas was only a few weeks ago.....Time flies on your mission.
Well, we've got to go get groceries now! I love you tons!
Brad
