Elder David y Hna. Pam Johnson

Sunday, August 9, 2009

We’ve been given a new car. It the blue Toyota Corolla driven by the Larsen’s before they went home. It will be much easier to park in our tiny parking space at the apartment. But we still will be using the pickup when we go out to the “campo” or I have to haul missionaries and luggage. Another great feature is the door locks are not self arming. I won’t be so appt to lock the keys inside again. Plus it’s an Automatic, with the crazy Dominican drivers everywhere; not having to change gears may make the difference between a hit and a near miss.

This Sunday we attended services at the Piantini Ward in downtown Santo Domingo. The ward boundries include the Temple so all of the temple missionaries that live on site attend this ward. It was unusual to see so many pale skinned people in attendance. Usually the only light skinned people at a Dominican service are the missionaries from the US.

In attendance at today’s meetings were the entire Area Presidency and their wives. We got to meet Elder Wilford Anderson and his wife. He is the 2nd councilor in the Area Presidency and former Stake President of the Maricopa Stake in Mesa. I got to say hello for you Stuart! Stuart Quist was on the Stake High Council when Elder Anderson was Stake President.

Of course Sacrament meeting was entirely in Spanish but Sunday school was divided into two classes. Since so many of the temple workers only speak English there is a second gospel doctrine class in English. However English wasn’t the only language at this class. In attendance were a couple dozen people that had traveled great distances and at great expense to spend a week getting their endowments and then doing sessions for the dead. Most of them spoke French. They were from Trinidad, Barbados, Haiti, the West Indies and a couple other places in the Caribbean that I can’t remember now. It was great. As we all took our turn reading from the D&C, at least half of the class read their part in French. That’s one of the miracle of the gospel, it doesn’t matter what language is being spoken, everyone of us could feel the spirit as scriptures were read and testimonies born. It was great.