Great Lessons with Carlos & Roger

This week went by in a flash, just like it does pretty much every week. Something that President Egbert once told me is that when you want it to go by fast it goes slow, but when you don't want it to go by fast, it goes by fast.

This week we had Zone Conference, with President and Sister Baird, who were only in Trinidad for about 2 days, because of a very sick elder in Suriname that they needed to go see. After what happened he recovered enough to take a commercial flight home to a hospital in the States, so he is doing well now. At Zone Conference, we talked about working with the leaders of the ward and stake, especially with the ward council. Recent converts are SO important to the church, and all of us have the responsibility to help and strengthen these individuals as they take their new journey in the Church, which is unfamiliar to them, for quite a while actually. Kind of like what Elder Soares talked about in Conference last year with the two rivers that flow together to make the Amazon River. My interview with President was really really good. It's strange to think that there will only be two more for me before the end of the mission.

I already told some of you this, but we had a great lesson with Carlos on Saturday. Finally, we answered all his questions about prophets and apostasy, and we shared the Restoration with him. He had been raised learning that nobody has seen God, so when we shared the First Vision with him he was just blown away. He was just captivated. When we shared more about the Book of Mormon and how it can help him know, he said: "How can I know if this is true?" Now he realizes the magnitude of the Book of Mormon he is determined to read and study it to know for himself. It was a spiritual experience.

We made some really good progress with Roger as well. There are some real roadblocks being thrown at him, and this week we went by to talk about the Atonement. We shared Tad R. Calisters' talk, another conference story, and the story of Enos, among others. We had talked a bit about repentance and the Atonement in Zone Conference and some ways that we can teach it better, which helped us out. I particularly felt the Spirit strongly as we testified to him of the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ to him. We could see his countenance change from what it normally is that day.

The rest of the week was a little bit tough though. We had to spend a lot of time doing non-proselyting missionary work and had to clear out an entire apartment and stuff it all into OUR apartment. Since there used to be about 70 missionaries in Trinidad, and there is only 8 now, there is A LOT of extra stuff that we have to store in the spare room in our apartment, and now we can barely walk into and around our apartment, so this week we are going to have to organize all that stuff.

Today we had a district activity and went to the Zoo in Port of Spain. There were some really cool monkeys that reached through the fence and grabbed our ties. Some of the elders fed the giraffes. Next week we will be having the Zone volleyball activity.

Happy Mothers Day everyone!!!
Elder Porritt

The Zoo!

 Elder Porritt Keeping up on the Piano