As we headed for Duvergé this morning and as we returned this afternoon we made more mail stops than usual. The AP’s in “El Campo” have been asked by Pres. Almonte to spend more time doing splits with all of the elders all across “El Campo”. It means they aren’t spending their nights in Vicente Noble where we usually meet up with them and give them most of the mail. Now Hna. Johnson and I will be delivering more of the mail ourselves. It’s great though, we love to meet the elders everywhere and brighten their day with mail.
As we arrived in Duvergé today we saw caravans of Red Cross emergency relief trucks heading through the streets of Duvergé on their way to Haiti to help in the recovery efforts after last Tuesday’s earthquake in the capital city, Port-au-Prince. We were also told by the residents of Duvergé that news reports told them to expect very large earth moving equipment to be passing through their town starting on Monday. Well, they are already here, on our way back home we passed many of them on the highway.
Elder Jimenez told us that all week there have been emergency relief trucks from all over the world driving through Duvergé. He said he saw trucks from Germany, Japan, China, the US and many more. The relief effort is certainly international. Haiti really needs the help and our prayers. They are the poorest nation in the whole western hemisphere!
In Duvergé we had Branch Council for the first time since I’ve been Branch President. I’ve been holding PEC with the Elders but not Branch Council because there were so few members in positions of leadership. But two weeks ago Pres. Almonte called two counselors in the branch presidency for me, as well as a Sunday school presidency. Everyone was in attendance that should have been. The whole meeting went very well. Everyone followed the agenda I printed and we did a lot of planning as well as reporting on our stewardships.
All of this is very new to all of the members in Duvergé. They’ve never seen this side of the church, what leaders do and how they lead. But they all are learning very fast and are enthusiastic about their jobs and their responsibilities. They are also watching me and learning how to conduct meetings. This is a very important skill to learn if this “Dependant Branch” is to be made into a real branch with local leadership. Soon I will turn over the duties of conducting the other leadership meeting to the member leaders too.
They are catching on to the skill of conducting very fast. Alexis and Hector have taken turns conducting Sunday school opening exercises and they’ve done very well. Today Tomas Maquete conducted the sacrament meeting for the second time and he did a good job too. He made a few mistakes, for example; after the sacrament hymn was over he stood up and announced the first two speakers before the sacrament was passed. But he is very eager and teachable and wasn’t a bit flustered when Elder Jimenez helped him correct the error. All of these brethren are doing a great job.
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