Sunday, August 31, 2025

Sunday, August 31, 2025

• Drama in Vieux Fort
• Lambert had a stroke
• My talk in church was guided by the spirit

 Today at we were supposed to have three speakers but Lambert was one of the speakers and I wasn't confident that he would come to church. And he did not. So I kind of mentally put together a talk in my mind that I wanted to share with them.

We have a little drama going on mission right now on St Lucia with members down in View Fort. On Saturday President Burnham, actually it was last Saturday he went down to handle a situation they were having down there with the branch president President Nicholas. Apparently he has been teaching some false doctrine and the missionaries were concerned So President Burnham and President Sutherland went down and they ended up releasing President Nicholas and reorganizing the branch presidency. Apparently this didn't set too well with President Nicholas Not so much that he was released but how he felt they handled it inappropriately. He was explaining it to me in church this today. Anyway it got a lot of members riled up and I think he was part of the riling. We had four members from View Fort who came up and want their records moved to our branch as soon as possible and they do not plan on returning to their branch down there. We were glad to have the extra people and they would be a great addition to our branch but I think they need to go back because they need that strength down there that he brings. It really had an effect on their sacrament attendance this week. Normally they have had around 55 to 60 people to church and this week they only had 30. I guess the missionaries are working hard to try and get the people out but President Nicholas had a lot of influence on the members there and when he said he wasn't coming I guess they said they weren't coming either. President Nicholas Told me he went around and encouraged all the members to not be mad and to come to church, but that is not what the missionary said, they said that was just the opposite. I hope that is not true. Anyway they demanded me to move their records to the Castries branch. I told them I would have to look into it and see if I can do that because I vaguely remember that to go to a ward that is not in where you live you have to have First Presidency approval. President Nicholas told me that we did not need to have first pregnancy approval but I have read about it and I'm pretty sure I do.

Sister Biina spoke today on faith. She Is still learning English doing really well and gave a very heartfelt talk and told about how she joined the church Mostly because she wanted to go to a church owned school on her island and she couldn't go unless she was a member. She said that she quit going to church for about a year and then something happened that made her think about coming back and she ended up going on a mission.

I wanna say something about church today. Besides our two speakers we were still some time left and I was kind of planning on speaking today anyway as it would probably be my last opportunity. I had been mentally preparing a talk and it's not the talk that I really want to speak about but some thoughts I had about getting ready for it and how it came out. I had been praying and thinking about some ideas and part of it was about the importance of sacrament meeting and the sacrament and the other was accepting callings and following leaders. With the drama that I mentioned above it turned out to be a somewhat timely talk to the people who are there and involved. But as I was organizing the talk in my head and actually in sacrament meeting I was kind of thinking I wasn't going to speak because I thought the two speakers would take enough time but they. But one thing I did this morning was I didn't have breakfast and fasted about my talk going into it at church. Now it wasn't a full 24 hour fast but a fast from dinner the night before. I read an article about someone that gave a talk and they fasted the morning before and I don't remember the details but for some reason it kind of stuck in my head as as an acceptable fast. So what I really want to pass on is what happened in my talk. I know there's a scripture out there that talks about that the Lord will put into your mind in the very hour or minutes of the things that you should say and I've never felt like I've had that happen in my life too much but I'm sure it has many times But for some reason when I was giving this talk the words that I should say just seem to flow and there was no hesitation or question about what I was going to say next and I bore a powerful testimony of the things that I spoke. I don't know what the members gained from it but it was testimony to me that if we do make the effort to prepare spiritually that the Lord will put into our minds and hearts the things that we're supposed to say whether they're received or not. It was one of those faith once in a while events really make you stop and think and want to grow closer to my Heavenly Father in Jesus Christ.

After church I got a message from Lambert saying that he wouldn't be at church because he had to check himself into the hospital. It turns out that he had a stroke this morning and his son Larry had to drive him to the hospital. I have been getting reports from family members about his status all day and they say it's pretty serious. I will go and try and visit him tomorrow.

Rihanna the very popular singer from Barbados home she grew up in