Week 45 In St. Thomas

We had a nice time at Pickle Ball on Monday morning.  Darren Christensen, from Vernal, Utah, joined us.  He was at church Sunday and the Elders invited him to play with us. Neither he nor Elder Fineanganofo had ever played before, but they both did great!
 After the game, he was talking about taking the Elders to lunch and then he asked us too!  We told the Elders to just to call us:  Elder and Sister Mooch!  Anyway, we enjoyed a nice lunch with them after we were all cleaned up.  
What wonderful people.  They told us that where ever they go, they always seek out the missionaries and take them to lunch or dinner.  I love that and when when we get  back from our mission, we are going to do that too!  That is definitely one of the nicest parts of being here:  meeting so many members from all over the country.  


Thanks Christensons for the yummy lunch!

After lunch, we went to do our grocery shopping and ran into Christina.  She is in our branch, and just started working at Cost U Less, a store that has recently opened up after being closed since the hurricanes in 2017.  Christina is one of the most humble, happy, hard-working  and Christ-like people that you would ever meet.  We love her so.

Don't you love how she carries the roll of paper towels in her pocket?  

I randomly ran across this somewhere on line the other day and I found myself thinking about it all day long. What a wonderful way to treat each other.  I know that it isn't really feasible in our society, but on a smaller scale, I think it is a wonderful idea.  Like in a family:  what if we did this when one of our children "messed up".  Sometimes people just need to be encouraged and believe in themselves and believe that others also believe in them.  I honestly just love this custom.   

This week when we went to visit our friends as Eldra Schulterbrandt Facility, we did a little craft with them, played bingo and then sang songs and showed them a church video. They love playing bingo, mostly because we give them all candy at the end of each game.......

This is the little craft that we did.

On Thursday we left at 7am to go to the Red Cross building.  We went to one of the local high school's to be "helpers" in presenting the disaster relief presentations.  We were there until 1:30pm.  It was fun to be in the high school.  The students were very respectful and paid attention.  I love that they wear uniforms here.  Each school has their own so you can tell where they go to school from the uniform that they wear.

In this high school, they wear pink polo shirts and the girls wear plaid skirts and the boys wear maroon pants!

Look at what we saw again on our morning walk???  A tiny pony......only in St. Thomas!



 On our way to town on Friday, we came across a random parade.  They do love parades here!  I still don't know what it was for?
 On Friday morning, we volunteer at the Salvation Army.  This Friday we worked for about 3 hours putting togther food bags to give to the needy for Thanksgiving.
 Our hearts were so happy to see this picture of 6 of our grandkids and their darling mommys.   La, Max and Jackie were on their way to a softball tourney in LA and met up with Denae, Ty, Tad, Trent and Tayleigh!  
This picture.......


Usually about 3 or 4 (or more) times a week, we accompany our Elders on teaching appointments.  This is one of our favorite things to do.  I can't tell you how humbling it is to watch them teach.  It is like a synchronizing swimming routine, as they seamlessly go back and forth talking and pointing out scriptures to our friends to make a point.  Ocassionally they will ask us to talk about a certain concept from our perspective.  We just love being there with them, and count it as a great blessing.  These two Elders:  Elder Sigcha and Elder Fineanganofo have just been together two weeks, but you would never know it, the way they teach together so well.  We are thankful for the blessing of having them here on the island with us. It brings us a lot of joy as we work together to do this work.  

Saturday night, some friends invited us to go to a Holiday Concert where the music department from UVI were performing.  What a nice surprise to see two of our former friends from My Brother's Workshop in the choir!  It was great to see Amille and Janelle again and find out that they are thriving at UVI.  We loved hearing all the music; especially the choir pieces where they sang about Jesus. We all commented that those songs wouldn't be allowed in some places in the United States (which is so very sad, because after all isn't that why we have Christmas?).  It was a really nice evening.  




And the best news this week???  THE WEATHER HAS CHANGED!  Instead of it being 80% humidity, we have had 2 days with 50% humidity......cannot tell you what a relief it has been!  We even had our windows open at night.  Hallelujah!  *Note:  it was a teaser, the humidity came back today.........

Another week in the books.  As always thanks for your support and prayers.  Stay strong and steadfast.
Love,
The Garrisons





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