Elder Hayden Dorrance's West Indies/ Trinidad, Port of Spain Mission: Finally moved out! Week 75

Ricky

Well this week was another one on poor missionary work, but finally we were able to get out of living with the other Elders and back into our area, on SATURDAY...

But Tuesday was relatively exciting! I taught an alright, semi un-good district meeting, I guess it was okay, but not especially, but I was able to realize that I am now the oldest in my district in time I've been on my mission, and like the 3rd oldest in the zone. It's freaky to think about, so I try not to... But we had kind of a bummer day mostly because we spent a good chunk of it looking for apartments in our area but we did have a pretty funny lesson with a woman named Vashti. We were able to talk to her about an article in the Liahona, just trying to help her understand more about our church and while we were doing that, two bats flew in the house and were just taunting us, mostly me, but it was freaking the crap out of me for a solid 3 minutes. But I kept reading the article just hoping that they would fly out and in mid flight a member, Nigel, swung the handle of an umbrella at one and killed it in one fell swoop. It was completely amazing! I couldn't believe how simple it was for him to simply swat that out of the air. It was amazing and completely worth the few minutes of fear. But for the rest of the lesson there was a bat carcass on the floor while we finished up. Pretty eventful. After that we headed over to a members house to share something with them, but they were busy cooking, so while we were just talking to her as she was running around the kitchen her nieces boyfriend pops in, and just drops a soccer jersey to Elder Peterson and I. No Idea who this guy is or where he came from, but got a free soccer jersey, so that was pretty sweet...

On Wednesday morning we were able to do some sweet service at a members house and an amazing lesson on temples with the Samaroo family! It was so cool and they are so excited they say, but they didn't really show that excitement come Sunday morning. It was still a way cool lesson that we had with them! Also later that night we were able to have the Zone Leaders come out to interview Ricky for baptism!

Thursday morning we were able to show Elder Bevins, one of the senior couples, to an apartment we wanted to rent and so we had to drive into Grande to do that and he loved it! It was sweet! And so to move in as soon as possible we drove straight to Valsayn to pick up the rent and the contract, and while we were there we were able to meet President Egbert! (New Mission President) He's the coolest! He's was easy to talk to and really excited to be here! We are just way stoked to have been able to meet him! He's coming out to Grande on Thursday to do interviews, so that should be really cool! But Driving to Valsayn threw off the rest of our night, so we were only able to go and visit Ricky and talk to him about a few more things before his baptism on Saturday!

Friday morning we had kind of an emergency service project that someone needed us to come and do so that they could get some dirt dropped off at their house later that day, so that is what messed up Friday for us. Burt that night we were able to have a HUGE turnout to game night with a bunch of kids that came to play some soccer with us! it was a ton of fun!

Saturday morning we made a few trips from Valencia where we were staying with some elders to our new apartment in Grande to drop some stuff off that we would need to spend the night there and then we were able to go to lunch with a member to start our fast all together! It was way sick and lots of fun! And the coolest part about Saturday had to be Ricky's baptism which didn't start until almost 8 at night because we couldn't get a member of the bishopric to come out to it which was a bummer, but the whole thing was super great and other than that went off without a hitch!

Sunday morning we walked over to walk with Ricky to church and called him at 8:40 to tell him to come outside and he told us he had to just jump in the shower real quick. Yes, we were late to Sacrament meeting, but made it on time for Ricky to get Confirmed! it was way cool!

Sunday was pretty poor attendance at sacrament meeting which was a bummer but we were able to have a sweet meeting with Elder Bevins about some of the situations happening in the ward and talked to us a little bit about how he thinks we can help! It was super inspiring!

But our week was pretty good! It's been real wet here, so we're staying nice and cool!

Thanks so much for all the letters!

Love you all tons!

One Love,

Elder Dorrance