Another great week in Trinidad

Hey Family,

 

How is everything going?! Everything is going great here in trinidad! I am really starting to love everything that I am doing and I am having an awesome time. This week was pretty interesting and it definitely had its ups and downs. Right now, Elder Kaelin is the district leader, so he has to go on trade offs quite often and also has to do baptismal Interviews whenever one is needed in our zone. So that means that I have to step up whenever he goes on trade offs and lead here in sando.. It is a really good experience though. I can already tell that it is helping me so much. So on tuesday, we went on trade offs with the zone leaders because they needed a baptismal interview for one of there investigators. I was here in Sando with Elder Carter and it was a rough day. I had a pretty decent day planned out for us and we were supposed to see most of our main investigators. Well they key work in that sentance is that we were supposed to.. sometimes things just dont go as they are planned. It turned out, that every single appointment that I had made fell through, and so did the back ups. By the end of the day, we had stopped by, or called every house that I could think of, and noone would meet with us. It was horrible, but to make things easier, we treated ourselves to ice cream right before we went in for the night. On wednesday, after Elder Kaelin came back, we went out to a city named Orapouche. We have been really focused on finding this week because our teaching pool is not where it needs to be. We called in to a couple of houses and just like that, we had 4 new investigators. It was pretty awesome, but frustrating at the same time because the day before, I called in every house I could and noone would let us in. Thursday, I went on trade offs again. This time it was with the elders in Point Fortin. So on thursday morning we woke up and travelled down there. It was about an hour ride there and when we got there they werent ready. It took them a little while but eventually, me and elder George got back in a taxi and travelled back to sando. Elder George and I had a really good day, even though alot of our appointments fell through. On friday morning, I had to travel back to point fortin to pick up elder Kaelin. Eventually we made it back to San Fernando and we taught Mark. He is doing really well. Last week, he recieved the aaronic priesthood, and this week he was able to pass the sacrament. I am really proud of him because it has been a pretty hard road for him to get to where he is. On Friday night, we went out to the Moorali's. They are a family of recent converts that are really strong. We watched the Emma Smith movie with them. That movie was so good! She was an amazing woman and I just cant believe how strong her and Joseph had to be. I love learning as much as I can about them. Then on saturday, we got a call from the zone leaders saying that Elder Kaelin had to sing at Zone Conference, which was yesterday. He had to sing with Elder Watchman, who is in an area right next to ours called Couva. We asked them if we could go over to couvas appartment sunday night and sleep over so they could practice and they said we would. After church on sunday, we taught a couple of the members that didnt come to church and then we caught travel to go sleep over. It was so fun, and elder watchmans companion is Elder Vi, and he is one of the funniest kids I have ever met. We stayed up pretty late and for dinner I made 5 boxes of Mac n Cheese for 3 of us... I will send a picture. On monday we had zone conference at President Gamiettes house. It was amazing! I learned so much and right now as a mission, we are working on baptizing weekly in every area. It is a huge goal, but we all know it is possible. Right now I am so excited to go out and teach anyone that I can. I love this work so much and it is such a privelage to be able to do this for 2 years. Right now I am really beginning to love my mission, and as bad as it may sound, I am beginning to forget about home. It feels like I have been a missionary for my whole life! Well I hope everything is going good at home, and what is this I hear about a swimming pool? It sounds like everyone is doing really well and I am sorry I cant write you all back this week. I pray for all of you every night. The church is true and I think alot of times we take advantage of it. It is such a blessing in our lives and it is our job to share it with whoever we can. Keep on keeping me updated because I love hearing from all of you!

 

Love,

Elder Gines

 

 

I watched a puppy die this week.

Hey family,
How is everything going? Well everything is going well here in Trinidad. This week was pretty uneventful again, except for one thing, but we will get to that later. Over the past couple of weeks, we have had a really hard time with finding new investigators. We have been spending a minimum of an hour a day doing finding. One of the things that make it really tough, is that almost everybody here will let you in and listen to you, but not all of them will accept the message, so sometimes we end up wasting time with someone that is going nowhere. It is a little bit frustrating. On tuesday, we went to a town in our area called oropouche. It is where Shakilla lives, along with a couple of other members. We were doing some finding, and we went and called into a little house. An old lady came out and told us that we could come in. We went and taught her, but I am pretty sure that she is crazy. Whenever we would mention the name Jesus, or even anything about him, she would start crying. She has a son that lives with her and he has 2 kids. The kids are really cool, and they go to catholic school, so they know quite a bit about the gospel, the only problem is, they have been brainwashed. The old ladies name is sister mahaise and she cooks us food whenever we go over there. They are really nice, but to be honest, they aren't going anywhere. We are going to see them tonight, but that will probably be the last time we go over there. We also met a guy named richard that lives right behind her. We went and we taught him the restoration and it went really well. We stopped by the next day and started to teach him about the book of mormon. It was really frustrating, but really funny at the same time because he just kept on cutting us off and asking random questions. The best question he asked though was definitely this. Do you think that Americans are brainwashing the rest of the world? Hahaha then he went off on how evil america is and he kept on asking us why we dont do anything about it. It was quite interesting.

Now for the good news for the week. We are still working with Nikita. She was supposed to be baptized a couple of weeks ago, but she didn't feel like she had a strong enough testimony. We have been asking her to continue in prayer and asking if this church was true and if she needed to be baptized. We stopped by her house on Wednesday to check up on her and asked her if she had recieved an answer. She said yes. Then we asked her when she would be ready to be baptized, and she said soon. We are really trying to get her to commit to being baptized on this sunday, but if it is not this sunday, it will be on June 3 for sure. I am really excited because she will be a really strong member of the church. Remember to keep her in your prayers. We are also working with Lenroy, he is a 40 year old guy with a family. Our goal as a mission is to find families to teach and to baptize so hopefully things will work out with him.

Now for the saddest story of my life. So in San Fernando, there is a hill, called San Fernando Hill ( I know, they were very creative right??), but on this hill there are some houses, and we have always wanted to go tracting to them. We decided to on thursday and when we got up there, we discovered this little area, with some of the most run down houses I have ever seen. If we end up going back up there I will take a picture because it was really cool. But there were a couple of puppies up there and when we walked in there, they started following us around everywhere we went. We decided that we wanted to go look off the edge of the cliff so we could get a really awesome view of San Fernando. We walked to the edge and it was such a pretty view. I looked over to my right and I saw a puppy, trying to reach for some garbage that was stuck in the trees, on the side of the cliff. I really didn't think anything of it so I went on with my life. The next thing I knew, I heard a rustle of tree branches, and a dog yelping. I looked over, and I could see the dog, about 5 feet down the cliff, stuck in some trees. Now this isn't just a little cliff, its probably a 200-300 foot drop off, straight down. Then the dog stopped yelping, and I could no longer see it. It must have fallen to its death... I felt so bad because the dog pretty much followed us out to the cliff! It was horrible, and the puppy was so dang cute! I cant lie, I was depressed for the rest of the day, and I keep on seeing the picture of a puppy falling in my head. Well not really but that adds some effect to the story.

Well that was pretty much all that happened this week. I am loving it here, and Elder Kaelin and I get along pretty well most of the time. I cannot believe that you guys already ran Ragnar and that is awesome how well you all did. I am proud of all of you. Well sorry this letter is so jumpy and random.

I know that this church is true and that I am in the right place. If it weren't, I know I could not be doing this. I love you all and keep on doing what we know is right.

Much love,
Elder Gines

One transfer down!!

Hey Everyone!
I hope all is going well at home! This week was really interesting.. Lately we have been having a difficult time in our finding efforts. I think part of the problem is that we have been tracting in a little bit wealthier neighborhoods. At first when we started tracting nicer homes, we were seeing alot of success so naturally, we wanted to keep on finding wealthy people. It turns out, they arent as cool as we thought they were. We are still managing to find a good number of new investigators though, and the investigators that we have found, are really solid. One really cool thing that happened was we decided that we were going to tract the biggest houses that we could see, and they were clear up on a hill and everything. Both Elder Kaelin and I felt really good about it so we started our trek up there. When we got there, the houses were HUGE! Literally some of the biggest houses I have ever seen. We rung the bells on a couple of them, but as we expected, noone came out. Then we saw a guy working in there yard and went and talked to him. It turns out that he has met with missionaries before and he showed alot of interest in the church. We haven't been able to meet with him yet though. Then on Wednesday, we were tracting, and we got a phone call. It was some other missionaries from another area and they told us that they just got there transfer calls. We weren't expecting them until friday morning or so, but since they got there's, we really wanted ours. Well we waited all day Wednesday, All day Thursday, All day Friday, and half the day Saturday! All I have to say, is that it is so hard to stay focused on the work when you have something else on your mind! To make the matters even worse, a couple of the other missionaries new what our call was, and they kept on messing with us telling us we were going all over. They had Elder Kaelin convinced that he was going to St. Lucia. I was pretty sure most of the time that I was going to stay in San Fernando, until friday, when they told us that our area was going to be blanked and that I was going to a really sweet place. Hahah well on Saturday, we had just finished lunch, and we were just sitting down for a minute when the phone rang. It was the AP's. They talked to Elder Kaelin for a while and then gave him our transfer calls. Well... we are both staying in San Fernando. Elder Kaelin is the new District Leader. It will be a really good transfer, but i'm not gonna lie, both of us were a little bit disappointed. We have alot of people who should turn out to be really solid though and I know that we will have alot of success. Mom, That picture that I sent last week was a game called pong (AKA Beer pong), you are in teams of two and you alternate throwing ping pong balls and trying to get them in the cups. When you make it, the other team has to drink the water. It made me so sick, but on the bright side, I was completely hydrated. On Sunday, we confirmed mark and shakilla in sacrament meeting. Both of them are doing really well, but I am not going to lie to you guys, mark is the most annoying 14 year old boy I have ever met! He drives me crazy! It definitely teaches me patience though. Well nothing really to special happened this week, We are still working with Nikita. She is a 17 year old girl, and she was supposed to be baptized this week but she didnt feel like she is ready yet. We are also working with a man named Lenroy and his family, Richard and his family, and a Family named the Savatris. We have alot of work lined up for this week. I love you all, and I want you to know that I have a testimony of this work. It is such a blessing for me to be out here serving the lord, and I am really enjoying it. Good luck to everyone running the Ragnar this week, I will keep you in my prayers. Let me know how it goes.
Love you tons!!
Elder Gines

Its already week 6!

Hey Family,

Whats going on? Everything is going great here in trinidad. It sounds like everything is going pretty well back at home too. This week was a little bit crazy to say the least. It definitely had its good and its bad as well. On tuesday I went on trade offs again, but this time I got to leave San Fernando, and I went to Point Fortin. I went with Elder Bybee and we get along really well. It was alot of fun but it is definitely different than my area. Elder Bybee is from idaho and we are already planning a boating trip for when we get back. We visited a couple of families there and it was alot of fun. It is really good to get out and serve with other missionaries to see different styles of teaching. On wednesday I was back in San Fernando. We went and visited mark, and a couple of our other investigators. We werent sure if Mark was going to be ready to be baptized on sunday or not because of some problems he has been having with school and at home. He wanted to make sure that he was ready, so we talked with him and invited him to pray about when he should be baptized. When we came back on Thursday, he had decided that he was ready to be baptized on sunday and he wanted me to baptize him. This week we were really focused on making sure that at least mark and shakilla were going to be ready for baptism. We met with Eva, on Tuesday, and both me and elder Kaelin had a really bad feeling about her getting baptized on sunday. She said that she had moved out and broke up with her boyfriend, but we really felt like she needed to wait a little bit longer. But I have a really cool story for you guys. On Wednesday night, went over to an investigators house. He found them on like my first week here and it is a family of 5 girls. Lately they have really been slacking and not keeping commitments so we went over to there house to see what was going on. Their dad is what we call a Perma-Drunk and literally is always drinking alcohol. When we got there he asked us if we could help him with a problem that he has been having. He said that he has a Demon that is following him everywhere he goes and at night, it keeps him awake. That kind of stuff is actually all over down here and at first it was a little bit scary, but now we find it way exciting. He asked us to say a prayer with him. Now I dont know how much you guys know about demons, but the majority of the time, if a representative of christ commands it to leave, it has to. So after we finished our lesson with the girls in the family, we went outside and started talking to him. We told him that we would say a prayer and command it to leave, and that if he had the faith, and was living the commandments, then it would not be able to come back. Elder Kaelin said the prayer because I really didnt know what to say. In his prayer he said if there be any demons here, we command you to leave. As soon as he said it, I could feel the change in the surroundings and it sent chills down my spine. Then he said it again, but this time he said, in the name of jesus christ I command you to depart. As soon as he said it, The spirit was so strong and it was definitely gone. I couldnt believe what had just happened. It was one of the coolest things that I have ever experienced. It comes to show that we can really do anything with our Faith! Hopefully that story doesnt scare anyone too badly. Well this week is the last week of the transfer. I really cannot decide what I want to happen. Elder Kaelin and I started to bash heads a little bit this week but we still get along most of the time. I feel like I am ready to have a new companion but at the same time, I will miss him. We get transfer calls on thursday or friday so we will see what happens. Mom, that is awesome that telethon went so well and there is no doubt in my mind that it is because you guys started with a prayer. Dad, That motorcycle is awesome and I am so glad to hear that you love it. What kind is it, and how big is the motor? It looks like it would be alot of fun to ride. Jason, Keep on doing what you know is  write and dont be afraid to spend a little bit of time with the family! Haha just kidding, I hope that mowing grandmas lawn is going really well. Just remember that its not the cutting of the grass that she enjoys the most. Its the talking to her afterwards! Paige, I am glad to hear that everything is going well. I think you will really enjoy weber, and guess what, mom and dad were right all along. Mel, Im sorry to hear about your house. Stay strong and what is supposed to happen will always happen. Tell the kids Hi and that uncle dan loves them and misses them. Angie, I hope everything is still going well. That is really cool that scott let you go to work with him the other day. I am glad you enjoyed it and you got to see how hard of a worker he is. Well I love you all and keep me updated on anything that happens. Here are a couple of pictures of the baptism. Keep strong and always do what you know is right.

Love,
Elder Gines