January Updates

Things are pretty slow and there’s nothing fun to do in Chaguanas.

Quinn miss’s the islands. He is not sure yet if he will be able to return to the islands. He received a red stamp in his passport when he arrived in Trinidad, which, he says, signifies that he can not return to Trinidad for 5 years once he leaves. We are not certain that is what it means, so we will have to see.

They working with a lot of cool people, but they aren’t committing to a specific day to be baptized. They want to, but they don’t know when. They did have 8 investigators in sacrament meeting a few weeks ago, which is cool. But the new requirements are making it very hard to get people to commit to baptism. They do have one man, who’s wife and children are members, is coming to church and may commit to baptism soon.

Quinn finally saw the ocean for the first time on since moving to Trinidad.

Quinn is really enjoying having Elder McKeachnie as his companion. They work hard and have a lot of fun together. Transfers are soon, and Quinn is hoping they do not get split up.

Below is Quinn’s favorite story (so far) from the mission:
“Grenada is about my favorite experience. With Patrick waiting for half an hour to talk to us and ask what church we represent, then telling us he wants to get baptized and being pretty much the most golden person EVER, with how the church was really struggling in the beginning with about 40 people in church when I got there and 80 people when I left. The church grew both literally with the building expanding and figuratively with the membership growing and people coming more regularly. One med student, speaking before he left for home the last time, talked about the changes he’d seen in the branch. He was speaking from a wooden pulpit that didn’t wobble when you leaned on it, through speakers so everyone could hear him, to a chapel filled nearly to capacity. It was figurative of all the changes he’d seen since he came. The church had a much more solid foundation in Grenada. Now they’re even moving out to a new town and are hopefully going to be starting a new branch in Grenada before too long! I’m so excited to hear all of it! Patrick was especially awesome because there are 4 wards in the city where he lives, a temple in his country and yet he had to come to Grenada to me and Elder Larson to learn about the gospel. He has seen the book of Mormon in Yoruba, his native language, but never realized it until we showed it to him. He’s actually back in Nigeria now where so many more blessings of the gospel are available to him. I’m sad that I won’t be able to see him unless I go to Nigeria, but I’m happy to see that he’ll be in an area where he has so many more opportunities for growth.”

Zone conference was January 11th. We will see in his next letter how it went.