Since my last blog the snow has completely melted, thank goodness. Now we are in the rainy season, and I am looking forward to May flowers. Elder Glenn got his bike out and did a short ride with our good hockey friend, Bernie. He is looking forward to a nice long ride around the island as soon as the weather gets a little above 50 degrees. We also had some fun playing pickleball with our district missionaries on district P-day. Those elders taught us some interesting new versions of the game. I was just happy to keep the volley going.
I was really happy last month to finally have our Relief Society party. It turned out well with a good showing of sisters there. Our idea was to provide these cute little notebooks with positive titles on them for the sisters to write down any phrases or quotes that resonated with them. It was a big hit as the sisters loved the idea and readily participated as we listened to the General Relief Society broadcast. Some of my favorite quotes were; “God’s love is big”; “Cloudy days do not take away the existence of the sun”; “You can do hard with Jesus or you can do hard alone” and “Charity never fails us”. We also enjoyed a scrumptious luncheon.
General Conference was truly inspiring, and we were so glad to have several of our friends show up on both days for a light brunch before the sessions started at the noon hour for us. On Sunday we had a whole family come to the morning session. Charles has been attending our FHEs on Monday nights and is being taught by the elders. He wants to get baptized, but first he needs to get married to his fiancé. They have a six-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. The mom and daughter really enjoyed the session and all the friend shipping during the brunch. I was able to talk with them about RS, YW, and Primary afterwards. They plan to come again, and we are praying that they will get married soon. Speaking of FHE, the picture of our gang of guys were gathered to say goodbye to Elder Dickson who was being transferred. He has taught or taught with all of them. Our new missionaries in the next picture are Elder Gerritsen on the far left and Sister Palara on the far right. She is Philippine and also speaks Tagalog. We can’t wait to introduce her to our Philippine friends, the Silvias. We often go to their house for game nights with them. They slip into their Tagalog during the games to keep us guessing about their strategies. It’s pretty fun.
Finally, we got to celebrate with our good friend, Tendai. She has achieved Permanent Residency status in Canada. It only took her three years, two sets of lawyers, a lot of money, and a sympathetic judge. She really is quite a remarkable lady. We are inspired by her articulateness, her courage, and her faith. Her story is too long to share here, but she really has had an amazing journey. Now she plans to travel to see more of Canada, but first she will go back to Zimbabwe to see her mother’s grave one more time.
With the time we have left on our mission, we have lots of plans and activities. We have two sisters that we are preparing to go to the temple to receive their endowments and we want to get in one or two more temple baptism trips for our new members. There will be a couple more branch activities and a half dozen or so zone conference luncheons to prepare, not to mention a mission tour at the end of this month and the mission split in June. We are delighted to have on our trip home a slight detour south to Tennessee to see a new grandson who is due to arrive right about at the time of our departure home. Tender mercies and blessings!
Au revoir,
The Glenns
Gigi & Papi