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| Obligatory MTC photo |
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| There? |
Dear Family and Friends,
We began our mission at the MTC about a month ago. We have been initially assigned to Trinidad - the largest island in the Caribbean chain just off the coast of Venezuela. The population is a mix of East Indians, Caribbean, and African Blacks. Other than missionaries, we haven't seen any Caucasians since we arrived.
YES, we have..................................
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| Bananas! |
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| And Coconuts! |
In Trinidad it rains almost every day, but the showers are usually brief. As you can imagine everything is very lush and green!
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| Sister Lindorf, do you think it will rain today? |
The rain is actually a welcome relief to the heat and humidity. It's hard to feel like it's Christmas time when it feels more like summer!
And the flowers are lovely...
The island of Trinidad is shaped like a boot, and we are living in Couva, which is where the boot laces would be. (Notice in the map picture above, how close our island is to Venezuela.) The beach is just a few miles away. It is not really a swimming beach, because our local coastline has many oil refineries (the island's major industry). But we hear that there are beautiful beaches on the other coasts of Trinidad (more about that later, I'm sure...).
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| No tourists on this beach! |
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| It looks more like Galveston Bay than what you might have expected. |
I caught a picture of one of our local birds, a snowy egret... don't miss his bright yellow feet.
They have a local dish they call Roti... but much different than the Roti we enjoyed in Thailand which was a dessert. Both are of Indian origin. It is sooooo good! There is quite an art to making it, so a sister from our ward offered to teach us how. Bear with me... These pictures are worth a thousand words!
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| The beginnings of Roti.... |
Sister Mohammed goes to work!
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| Mixing the dough |
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| Kneading the dough |
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| It's really an art form. Hard to capture in pictures. |
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| Cooking |
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| Bon Appetite! |
It's interesting that the entire meal is eaten with no utensils. You hold the Roti dough in your hands and scoop everything up with that. Missing from this picture is the traditional garbanzo beans and stewed mangos and of course - Pepper Sauce! Yum.....
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| And for dessert! |
I'm not sure exactly what was in this but it was good!
We've been working primarily with less-active LDS to invite them back to Church, but we actually are teaching one Methodist family who lives very close to us. They came to services with us last week and will be attending our Christmas party on Saturday. We're also teaching two families Temple preparation classes.
Couva is a Ward, not a Branch but it feels like a Branch! We had about 45 out to church last week. This is about the same size as the Branch we attended in Thailand. We had a child of record baptism the week after we arrived.
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| Anniah's Baptism |
Everyone we have met here has been so warm and friendly. I'm not sure if the weather has anything to do with it, but we haven't been so well received since we left Thailand. Next time we'll share some of the challenges of trying to navigate our way around.
We are excited to be here and enjoy each and every day!
Elder Paul & Sister Kristene Lindorf
