Sunday, August 3, 2025

Sunday, August 3, 2025

• Great Testimony meeting
• Darren Barbe made a priest in the Aaronic priesthood by Mohamed Joseph
• Preschool Graduation

Today at church we had 19 people who were not members of our branch and 18 were not members of the Church.

In testimony meeting I started out because it was my month to conduct and I bore my testimony about spiritual experiences. I had previously had some ideas of things I wanted to say but just before I stood up this thought came to mind to talk about missionary experience I had when I was a 19 year old. At that time I had a companion that I didn't get along with real well and was struggling and probably a little homesick because I hadn't been out very long. We were teaching a man who was high up in the Irish military And he was pretty interested in our message. I didn't say in my testimony about his wife who I felt like I didn't want to turn my back to or she might take a club and take us out. You could feel the animosity coming from her that we were in her home. I am guessing that she may have had a lot to do with the man we were teaching that he never got baptized. Plus it would have been a great sacrifice for him to do so as he would have probably lost his position in the army, maybe lost his family, and could have lost his home. Not to mention all of his Friends. At that time in Ireland our church was not very accepted and the Catholic Church had a great hold on about everything.

The point I intended to make in my testimony was that great spiritual experience don't happen very often and that in most cases we go by faith and good feelings we have about the things that we do in the Church. On this occasion I had been really studying and praying for a stronger testimony and a desire to get along better with my companion. I'm sure it was affecting our teaching that we didn't get along too well. One night we went over to this above family that I was talking about to teach them a lesson And while we were teaching we felt like we were not making a lot of headway with the man and he had a lot of questions. At some point during our discussion I was getting a little frustrated And was probably praying about what we could do. I don't remember what made it happen but I felt a tremendous spirit come over me and If I remember right I stood up and begin to bear my testimony of the truthfulness of the Church and how I knew that it was true and I believe that he knew that it was true. The spirit was so strong in the room he had tears coming down his eyes as well as I did. I'm not a big man so to stand up this man and bear that testimony because he was a big man and have affect him as it did really surprised me. As I said the man never did get baptized but it was a very spiritual experience for me and turned my mission around. It also turned around our companionship and we became good friends after that. I don't know if that experience was for me or for the man that we were teaching But it was certainly a hinge point in my life of building my testimony. I told the members that here I was at 19 years old and this was the first time where I had felt the power of the Spirit to that magnitude. I'm sure that I have felt it before that but just not in a way that was so impressionable to me Literally change the direction of my mission from that point on. So we move forward with faith and trust in the Lord when things don't happen in our time frame and know that He loves us and is mindful of us.

One thing we did at church also today was to present Darren Barbe To receive the Aaronic priesthood and be a made a priest in that priesthood. I have another man in our branch that has just received the Aaronic priesthood and he is also a priest and I had him do the ordination because he had never had the chance to do so. He was a little unsure about doing it or how to do it actually but I told him I would help him along and so he did it. He has always been willing to try anything we have asked him to do.

After we finished entering the church donations into the system and taking the deposit bag to the bank Tina and I had been invited to go to a preschool graduation. I didn't know that they had preschool graduations to be honest with you but I guess here it is a bit of a big deal. It was at a high end resort with a lot of fancy decorations. It was held at a place call the Shangri La.

So here is how it went. It was supposed to start at 2:00 but one of the families was running late, way late. In fact they were an hour late but everybody just sat around and looked at their phones or visited a little bit and the kids just played. Time and having to be somewhere at a particular time doesn't seem to have a lot of bearing on these people. We finally got started a little after three. The program was very nice and I took a bunch of pictures and videos a few below, And overall it turned out to be over four and 1/2 hours long including the waiting and the cleanup after which we stayed and helped with. Lena told us we didn't have to but we didn't have anything else we need to do and we said that we would be happy to help. I think she was grateful because there was a lot to do. We got home around 6:30 or 7:00 by the time we were done with everything.

Tina and Miss Lena (not sure on the spelling) the owner of the day care center

The children we dressed up in their future employment clothes

In their graduation dress