Elder Hayden Dorrance's West Indies/ Trinidad, Port of Spain Mission: First Week in Kingstown Saint Vincent

Airport in Guyana

It has been a crazy exhausting week to say the least.

On Monday night Elder Sherren, our Zone Leaders, and I headed up to Georgetown to spend the night.

Early Tuesday morning Elder Sherren and one of our ZL's headed back to Berbice for District meeting and me and the other one stayed in Georgetown because he had to go to the Suriname embassy for passport stuff. But really we just ran errands the whole day with the senior couple there. It wasn't too exciting but fun anyways! I stayed the night in the mission office with two elders who were going home the next day, so they stayed up late packing, and then we were all up at 3 A.M. to head to the airport.

We got to the airport at like 4 or 5 and I was flying out by myself, so I waited for a bit to fly to Trinidad first where I met a couple of brand new missionaries mostly going to Barbados and my new ZL flying to Vincent with me. Then from Trinidad we all got on a much smaller plane and flew to St. Vincent Which is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been in my entire life. I was able to meet my new companion, Elder Aukusitino.(A-OO-KOOSEE-TEE-NO) He's from Samoa and he's been out just three months so it is a cool experience to help him learn English and to have him show me around the area. It's green everywhere except the water which is so blue! It's so great! The people here are also so nice! The only downside is the hills. It is ridiculous that people actually climb these mountains everyday, I couldn't believe it, but then I realized that I am one of those people. We worked the whole day and I had never been so tired on my whole mission. Holy cow... But it was a good day!

Then on Thursday we had a lot of appointments fall through because everyone was in town to do shopping and things for the holiday on Friday, so we actually got a whole lot of contacting done, which was cool because that is definitely something I need to work on. But probably the highlight of the day, it was like 8:30 and we didn't have anywhere else to go so we decided we would go get a cookie from subway. Well it turns out that they have Mountain Dew there, and I hadn't had subway in like 6 months so I just had to grab a sandwhich too... haha It was so awesome...

On Friday we woke up and tried to see some people in the morning but they weren't home so we went home and got ready for an activity that the church had set up to go to a big field and play soccer and cricket for a few hours! So we set that up and played soccer until about 6 o'clock at night. It was a really fun day and we actually found a bunch of new people to teach because of it! But after playing soccer for that long I was pretty tired again. After the activity we headed out to try and see a few people but nobody could...

On Saturday we had our regular studies and started our fast in the morning. Once again for some reason we had almost all of our lessons fall through, so we actually did a lot of contacting again. But we were able to meet a referral at the church. Her name is Mavis and she and her daughter showed up, but funny story is that they were looking for some kits for school children that the church had made. We didn't have any, but she still let us share something about our church with her. It was a really good lesson about the restoration and I think she understood. But it was a really long day..

On Sunday I was really excited to be going to a new branch to see what it was like over here. They have a beautiful chapel and lots of people that show up every week. After that we broke our fast at a members house with some really good pork and rice. Then we went and taught a few of the people we met at the activity on Friday.

It's been a wonderful week here in St. Vincent and I'm excited for more to come! Thanks so much for your prayers and love. I love you all so much!

Alofa, Elder Dorrance

(Samoan for love)