Nothing, however, beats the creativity of "Black Yellow"

Helping church building inspector from Puerto Rico

With General Conference this past weekend, a lot of our efforts went towards getting the word out to everyone. We tried to make a visit to all of the members and everyone else we're teaching. We stayed up here on the North part of the island to set it up and showed everyone that lives up here, while our Branch President set it up for everyone on the South side of the island. In the end only the Haitians ended up coming to watch it where we had it set up which was pretty funny because a lot weren't even members, and we didn't even let all of them know about the conference. How they heard about it or found out the time to come? We have no idea. The word must have gotten out with all the Haitians or something. Nevertheless we showed it in French while we went off to a different room to watch it on our phone in English.

There was, however, a couple we're teaching on the other side of the island who had gone to every single session. They absolutely loved it. In our last lesson we had with them, they told us about how they had never found a more true church and shared with us a lot of their life story. They truly are trying the best they can to follow God. Right now they are showing their faith and doing everything they can to get the money needed to get married. It was cool to see how excited they were when they sent us voice messages with conference in the background to let us know they were watching it.

In addition to all that, we spent a decent amount of time going through the church's food storage that we received as hurricane relief. We were getting rid of all of the expired food, and trying to get all of the close to expired food either out to members or other organizations to get it out to people.

Dominica fun fact: It's very hard to eat something in public without people asking you for food. Like just the other day all I did was open the car door while I was eating a banana, and within 2 seconds (while I was still in the car) there was a boy asking me for a banana from the bunch I had. So I gave the boy a banana, and I swear not more than 3 seconds later two more guys came up asking for bananas. Needless to say... I ran out of bananas very fast that day. I have since learned the lesson of keeping my banana bunches concealed.

Nothing, however, beats the creativity of "Black Yellow." "Black Yellow" is the name (what he told us) of the guy that got us to buy his bead necklace. We were talking to another guy when Black Yellow came up and started asking us for a dollar. After a while of trying to explain to him that we didn't have any money to give him and that we were missionaries trying to help people grow in their faith in Christ, he pulls out his lunchbox. He starts showing us his toothbrush, and then proceeds to try to sell us some Canadian money. Realizing he wasn't going to get anywhere, he pauses and says "You know what. I'm going to sell you guys my bead necklace" He takes his necklace off and just hands it to us. Responding to us saying we didn't want to buy it with "Yes you do. It's special bamboo beads from the island." We tried to explain that we really didn't have any money with us and we didn't want to buy it, but he's just like "Do you know Pinky? (The first counselor in our Branch. Almost everyone knows Pinky in Portsmouth)" We said yes, and then he said "You guys are good Christian men. Just give $2 to Pinky and say it's for Black Yellow" Then he walked off. It's definitely the first time I've seen that sales technique, but I gotta give the guy props. We did not plan on buying a bead necklace that day.