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| Elder Schroeder and Elder Salima |
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| Looking down on the city |
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| Baptism at Blue Basin |
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Wheasdaseen nahbuy!!!! Yep, that's one of the slang words here it means whats happening boy. I am serving in the Port of Spain in area 2. If you look up pictures of the area its basically the main city and the hills surrounding it. It was super hard to understand the people here the first one or two days but now it comes pretty easy. You know the stereotype where everyone walks down the streets saying "good day brotha" yep that is definitely true. So every person you pass on the street you greet by saying, good morning, goodnight, etc., depending on the time of the day. Also, there are really weird slang words like "whamto nahbuy". The first lesson I taught was with a less active member and it was on the floor in her hut. The people here have a ton of weird names, words, food, and drinks. On Saturday, we had a baptism at a place called blue basin which is under a waterfall, and we went to their house after for lunch and we had giro neck (chicken neck), some rice dish and a drink called mauby which is super strong its made by boiling down tree bark. I had roti the first day here, I have also had what they call doubles, they are both super good. I have already had some crazy experiences here we taught a lady and she is a spiritual baptist, she has been an investigator for awhile so we went to just follow up on whether or not she had been praying to know whether or not the church was true. She said yes, she has been praying to the holy spirit. We went on to tell he that we pray to Heavenly Father and we explained why. She still didn't understand, we asked her how she prayed... She continued to say you don't wanna know how I pray, you don't wanna know!!! After we persuaded her to tell us she started rocking back and forth and yelled some gibberish this went on for about thirty seconds. The moment she began to speak you could feel the power of Satan just surround the place. It was extreme... this was my first day. I can definitely tell that the adversary has a huge foothold here. However, those people who are good people here, are extremely good. The members here are awesome, some of them even walk around with us all day to our various appointments. Let me tell you our area is huge!!! To make it even worse there is this area called Laventille, there is a war going on and we can't go there, and basically a third of our area is on the other side of Laventille so if we want to go to the other side we have to catch a maxi to the other side which is ridiculous. I have heard gunshots but don't be worried the area is really far away from where i am (I think) haha ;) It isn't as hot as I anticipated, I do actually have to run in order to break a sweat. The other new missionaries are dying though, they are getting eaten alive and sweating like crazy regardless of the weather. The bugs aren't nearly as bad as I thought they would be. I have yet to put on bug spray and have only gotten two or three bug bites. It really depends on the area though our apartment is supposedly one of the nicest if not the nicest in the entire mission. We have a/c and hot pressurized water, the water here is pretty nice. I forgot to mention my companion his name is elder Salima and he is from Samoa he has trained one missionary before me and he is awesome. English is his second language but he is super good I couldn't even tell when i first met him. After our first lesson he basically said to me (as my trainer) I don't even need to train you, you are already trained. That was definitely a comfort, coming out of the MTC feeling comfortable with the lesson helped me more than I know. It is so much fun to teach people and see the lights just illuminate when they hear the truth! The power of the Book of Mormon in conversion is amazing, more amazing than I could even imagine. We have 5 investigators right now, you will hear more about them next week.
My first experience after going through customs was that of piling 14+ missionaries into an 12 passenger van and ten driving insanely down a highway which is one of three in the entire mission. Spent the night at a nice bed and breakfast, the next day met my trainer Elder Salima and went over to my area. Port of Spain, all the elders like Port of Spain mostly cause it has all the amenities you could want, and the biggest ward in the mission. Supposedly, this is the most successful place and all the elders hear are jealous that i get to be "born" here. In other words, this is my first area. Basically, all week has been just regular missionary life, going out teaching the truth. The investigators we have right now are awesome. We have one that is our most solid, we basically have to get her to come to church and then she is ready. The only problem is that the church is under construction right now so we have to take a maxi all the way down to Arima which is about a 30 minute drive. This makes it super hard to get people to come to church. Another investigator has just recently received a confirmation that the Book of Mormon is true, but he is having problems committing to live the commandments, he smokes and I don't know what else, but he is really trying to figure it out. The third one, we just taught for the first time and she is basically already a Mormon and doesn't even know it, I hope she figures it out, haha. We are teaching an older man and he loves to visit with us, time is just a precious commodity for him and it is hard to get him to commit to read the Book of Mormon. He is definitely going to read it, just only on his own time. I savor the time that I have to share what I know, and look forward to the time that I still have. I just hope it doesn't go by too fast. Well I love you guys and I will talk to you later. Until next week. Also, it rains a lot here .... haha
Elder Schroeder
