3 year anniversary


3 years ago this month Elder Holland and Elder Gong visited Timor-Leste and dedicated the land for the preaching of the Gospel. The date was August 21st, 2015.
Elder Holland
This is a group that attended the dedication. Included are our humanitarian missionary predecessors
It's over 400 steps up to the dedication area. It's impressive they kept their suit coats on.
This is the statue of Christ that's at the top of the area where the land was dedicated. The statue is modeled after the one in Brazil. It was created by the Indonesians during the occupation and visited by the Pope.
Here is a view of the beach below the dedication area
Our new Mission president and his wife, Elder MacKay visited us this week. It was his first trip here to the island. We took him and his wife to visit the dedication site. There is still no word on when full-time process lighting missionaries will be sent here.
This is our Sunday school class. We had better better attendance than normal. All but one of our group was here. The young man in the middle is investigator.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The test

Image
Our students took a midterm exam. Attendance was much greater in each class for the exam then it was for the lessons. For some reason in this culture tests are held in very high esteem. One of our classes has 3 Catholic sisters. After the test they asked to have their picture taken with us. One of the reasons the class interests them is that they will be serving in America for a period of time. Today at church we had our biggest attendance ever. On the front row is Warlito who is a member of the church from the Philippines. On the row behind is Janu our English class assistant, his fiance Zelia and her sister Santi. He's difficult to see but sitting behind Warlito is one of Dominguez's children. On the next row is Dominguez and 3 of her children. On the last row is Eden, Genevieve and Billy, they are members of the church. In the very back by the keyboard is Tara who is a member of the church and planning to serve a mission soon. Those who are not members are show
Read more

Holidays

Image
This year we had a Christmas tree. It made our lives seem a little more normal. The two little gifts under the tree are empty. Cheryl just thought we needed some wrapped gifts to make it look better. There's also a small carved manger scene. That was made on a neighboring Island in timor-leste. Last year we didn't put up the tree and it felt terrible. We called our children and my parents on their Christmas Day which was the day after Christmas for us. This Christmas felt so much better. Last Christmas we were only out for 20 days and it felt so lonely and we felt like we would be away for ever. In our church group three of the four adult members are living alone here in Timor-Leste. We had them all over for Christmas dinner. Sitting next to Cheryl is Nikki. She works for the Philippine Embassy. Across from Nikki is Eden. She has three children that are currently living in the Philippines because one of them needs special therapy. She'll be alone until they return th
Read more

Sunday in the MTC with foreign missionaries

Image
Fast and testimony meeting Today we attended a remarkable fast and testimony meeting. It was with missionaries from foreign countries who will be assigned missions in the United States. They came to the mission home already knowing how to speak English . They are in the mission home for only 3 weeks. When they bore their testimonies they did it in English and they announced the countries they were from. The countries were Paraguay, Indonesia, Philippines, Venezuela, Fiji, Brazil, Montreal Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Japan and Haiti. They were remarkable. They all appeared to be very bright and very mature in there gospel understanding and application. A lot of them were assigned to serve throughout California. One of them will be speaking Creole in Florida. One of the missionaries from the Philippines will be serving in our home mission in Sacramento.
Read more