We've been having some really good lessons, and we've been finding some super cool people

Overlooking Roseau next to the Haitian flag

Well I don't have too much time to right today cause we've been hiking all morning. I headed up to the boiling lake for the last time up here. The week has been going great though.

At the boiling lake

We were able to have a couple really cool lessons. We started teaching someone who works near the church, and she's been reading in the Book of Mormon and loving it. We also started teaching someone a little farther who has been able to read all the stuff we've given her, and absolutely loves how much our message is centered on Christ. We were able to meet a super cool lady from the UK as well who seemed pretty interested. Overall we've been having some really good lessons, and we've been finding some super cool people.

Showing us how he makes his homemade bricks

With some super cool Cubans we met out here

Soccer night

Working out in Portsmouth

We're teaching a very well known family in the Kalinago territory

With Claudius and Annette at the graduation ceremony

Well we've still had a bunch of problems to deal with, but even with all of them this week was super sweet. Our power's been out at our house for this last little bit now cause we were having problems with the bank activating our card for utilities (it's all good though cause we've just been staying in the church). And we've had to get a few car repairs, but since our card isn't working we've had to use our money for food and wait for the extra funds to be transferred into our account, so we've had to brake into our hurricane storage a little bit. Luckily though we finally got our card activated so we should be good now.

Hurricane season has also officially started out here. Nothing big is probably going to come in before I head back to Puerto Rico, but we've heard it will start to rain a lot more. And they weren't kidding. It's been raining so hard these past couple of days. Fortunately, we got lended two umbrellas the other day cause otherwise we would have been soaked.

Driving through the jungle in the pouring rain

We got to make a trip to the Kalinago Territory as well this week. That was super cool. We're teaching a very well known family in the territory, and the the wife had started up a nursing program for the people in the Carib reserve. They invited us down for the graduation ceremony. On our way out and back from the territory there was a huge thunderstorm with flood warnings. It was pretty crazy and super cool cause it's about an hour drive through the middle of the jungle with sooo much rain. The graduation ceremony was an awesome experience though. The building we had it in didn't have any power so we had to use a generator with one light to keep it lit when it got dark. We also got to meet the Kalinago chief and some other cool people up there, and try some native Carib food.

Listening to the Kalinago chief speak in the territory for graduation ceremony

This morning we also got the chance to be invited to a hand off ceremony at the Dominica college. The church had donated 29 laptops and 10 projectors to the college, so we and our branch president got invited up for that. It was super cool to see how much of a help that is going to be to them.

Some of the laptops donated by the church

With some students and faculty of college at the hand-off ceremony

The work out here is going great! We haven't had quite as much time to go out and teach, but the chances we do get have been awesome.

After a battle up in Portsmouth

Our view driving around the island

Back together with comp in Puerto Rico right before I left to come to Dominica

English Class students

Well it's been a pretty crazy week with a ton of driving with all the airport trips. My old companion Elder Segura flew back out to Puerto Rico this last Saturday. My new companion, however, flew into the island last Thursday. We didn't know who it was going to be until he walked off the plane, and I was super surprised to see that it was Elder Jones. He was my companion back in Puerto Rico right before I left to come to Dominica. We're back together for my last couple of weeks out here, and it's going to be super sweet.

In these past couple of days though, Elder Jones has got quite the welcome to the island. We had a crazy guy crash our business class. He kept calling me Jerry and would not leave. He started trying to eat our food from the kitchen and to drink our water. During the class, he was going off about how he needed fifteen million dollars so he could take over the world. The day before that while we were exercising at the park a baby bull tried to charge us. Then after having getting yelled at by someone telling us Jesus was black even though we hadn't even said anything to him, we got yelled and threatened to "Leave this place! Get out!" by some Dominican after coming out from a lesson. We also headed out to go pull out our money for some food, the phone bill, and the house's power bill. The ATM malfunctioned and ended up eating my card without giving me any money. The bank was closed at the time, and we were told I'd be able to get it back in two days when the manager comes into work. When we went in to go retrieve the card later on, they told us they destroyed all the cards. So we had a huge hassle with that, and we have to wait a while before all those funds transfer over, and I can get a new card. So hopefully we won't need to much money any time soon.

Anyways, that's been our life recently. We've been trying to sort all those messes out. We have been able to find some cool people recently as well. We have been very busy with all the trips and other work we've been having to do recently as well though.

They wanted to sing us a goodbye song before Elder Segura left to go back to Puerto Rico

With Alvina and her baby

We had a super sweet week! We started it off with a branch activity we had up on the North side of the island. We all got together and had a fun game of jeopardy. It added a whole new level of difficulty when half the kids that showed up didn't speak any English. We hadn't planned on any Haitians coming either, so we prepared everything in English. We had to make some crude translations for everyone to be able to play, but it ended up still being super fun and everyone had a great time.

Jeopardy in Portsmouth

Then we headed down to the South side to do some work out there and found a couple really cool people. We ran into this one guy who was super interested in our message on our way out to do some shopping for the Branch's food supply.

After church in Portsmouth

We've also started teaching this one kid that we met a while ago playing some basketball with them. We just happened to run into him later on by his house, and he called us out and told us he was one of the kids we played some ball with earlier. It was pretty cool cause he said he actually looked up to us while we were playing cause we weren't talking any trash to anyone else like everyone else that was playing was doing. We were just trying to help everyone have fun. We gave him a Book of Mormon, and he said he had already seen it before but that he'd read it before the next time we came.

We finished off the rest of our week by "working up a sweat" during our "battle" with the branch and some of their friends up on the North side of the island again (they call exercise working up a sweat and a soccer game a battle here). Pinky, the first councilor, has been wanting to have a battle for a long time, and we finally got around to one. It was cool cause once you start a game, a lot of the kids from the town want to join in and play.

Setting up for the battle

With the Ger family

We were also invited one last time to have a meal with the Ger family. The father of the family, Delicon, has been living here in Dominica for about five years trying to save up enough money to bring the rest of his family our here from Haiti. They were finally able to make it out here shortly after I arrived to the island. Everyone besides Delicon hadn't ever met missionaries before until us, and we have just started to teach them a few weeks ago. They were pretty sad to hear that my companion would be leaving next week and that I'd be leaving about a month after that. They wanted to sing us a goodbye song before Elder Segura left to go back to Puerto Rico.

Delicon's daughters

Why haven't you guys taught me that sooner?

Playing sticks with Duran

It wasn't quite as eventful of a week as we've been having recently. We started to digitalize most of the records and maps out the area for all the future missionaries that serve here. So we've been entering all that in as we've been doing our work around the island.

Getting our satellite phone set up for hurricane season

We did have some cool experiences though. Danny, one of the guys we've been teaching is heading out to Trinidad in a couple weeks to go get an eye surgery. He's been going blind, but there's only one eye doctor on this island apparently so he has to head out there to have the operation. We had a super good lesson with him the other day. He said his girlfriend is going to go talk with her parents when she goes down to her home village to finalize it, but they want to get married when he comes back from Trinidad at the end of next month. So hopefully everything goes well with that, cause he wants to get baptized then as well.

With Elder Segura

He got so pumped up about "breaking the chain" as he calls it. He said his parents raised him in a terrible situation without God and that their parents raised them like that as well and so on. He got super excited and started yelling about how he wasn't going to let that happen to their baby daughter.

He wasn't always in the best place, but has completely changed his life. We found him my first week out here. We were hiking up a mountain to go work in the area and we met him on the way up. When we went over to go talk with him, he said he passed by us in a bus at the bottom of the mountain and said he'd take it as a sign of God if we went to go talk to him. We've taught him about all of the lessons now, and is the most faithful guy ever. Every time we teach him a new thing, he always says "Why haven't you guys taught me that sooner? I didn't know I was supposed to be doing that." He may not know everything or have had the perfect life, but he understands the gospel so much better than so many people. The commandments aren't just rules or restrictions we have to follow. They're a guide or instructions given to us to be free from so many other problems and have a happy life. He has such a testimony of that and is so excited to be able to follow it.

Last Monday we headed down to Scott's head, the most southern part of the island. It's almost it's own island with a little pathway across between the water. We found some cool shells out there. Then today we headed over to Cabrits national park which is in the north side and also used to be it's own island. We almost weren't able to make it in cause we had to pay a pretty big entry free, but the park ranger let us in for free after talking with him for about 15  minutes. We got to visit Fort Shirley out there.

On Scott's Head

At the tip of Cabrits National Park

Panorama view from fort Shirley

Inside Fort Shirley

Viewpoint overlooking the town of Roseau

Dominica fun fact: After all of my time here, I have only seen about two strollers actually be used for babies. Every other Dominican seems to find them as a great way to wheel around their boxes or crates of beer.

More pics from our hike with the Smarts

Cool crab

Island Life

Flooded trail

Unfolding fern

We tried to warn them that it was a VERY hard hike.

With the Smarts on the way up

Well these past two weeks have been super busy. We were so tired one night when we got back, when we had gotten home I laid down on the tile floor with no pillow or anything, and the next thing I knew it was morning.

Smart's plane coming in

When the mission President and his wife came down last weekend though, we had a ton of fun. All in all, we had two Family Home Evenings with the two sides of the island, a very long hike, and HOURS of driving with them.

Walking through the valley of desolation

Our first activity with the branch was pretty cool. It was mostly kids that ended up coming so we played a bunch of games with everyone, had lots of cookies, and a whole lot of fun. The next one we had was mostly adults so we didn't play as many games, but they shared a really cool message.

Youth Book of Mormon class

Playing fun games with the kids

Duran shooting into the cups

More games with the kids

Pinky and his three boys

Then on Monday, the Smarts had wanted to go hiking with us cause they hadn't been in forever. They mentioned they've been wanting to go on the boiling lake hike really  bad. We tried to warn them that it was a VERY hard hike. The last time we went it took 4 and a half hours and we were practically jogging a lot of the path. The hurricane wiped out a lot of the trail as well. The hike is so cool though, they wanted to go anyways. So the next day we headed out early to do it. Lucky for them, they happened to come on an extremely rainy day. It absolutely poured the night before and pretty much all of the day. It was so wet, the trail changed from a trail to a stream. There was so much more water we saw a huge waterfall at the start of the hike that wasn't even there the last time we went. We were being hit with massive raindrops and lots of wind. Only time I've ever been freezing in the Caribbean. 6 and a half hours later though, we finally made it back completely soaked.

Flooded trail in the rainforest

Climbing up the trail which had pretty much become a waterfall

Climbing down a mountain

Along the Ridgeline

We had to say goodbye to one of the recent converts down here named Richardson as well. He's Haitian and moving back to Chili to be with the rest of his family. It was cool cause his last Sunday here he brought some of his friends to church so there ended up being like 4 Haitians we had never even talked with there. It's so crazy to see the faith that some of these guys have even when they don't understand like 95 percent of it.

Clear view of the Boiling Lake

At the top of a mountain

The mission president and his wife came down to Dominica island

Brian's Mission President - President & Sister Smart 

Well this week's going to be short cause we don't have any time to write. The mission president and his wife came down the other day so we've been taking them around. We just got finished up going on a 6 and a half hour hike with them in the pouring rain and then headed over to eat some lunch on the ocean front. Now we are going to go set up an FHE for the Branch. I'll give the full update next week when I have some time.

Flashback - when Brian first arrived in PR

Flashback - going back to PR for 2nd time after hurricane Maria

Picture from Sister Smart - excitement for PR temple (just broke ground)