Tew, Coleman T

Well, this week was quite the week. It was just good and all over the place. I would say this week felt like the hardest, yet weirdly most miraculous, week in the entire mission. It has been a while since I put any actual effort into an email, so today I'll tell you about the friends we are teaching so you can know the rundown. Tanesha (baptismal date for Dec 17th) - Tanesha is a young girl in college. She is super cool and really prepared for the gospel. She is very good at keeping the commitments we give her, and that's always nice when people take what you are saying seriously. About the time I got to Tortola, Elder Teuscher and I were in a neighborhood, at this apartment, talking to these two dudes. They were really cool, and this girl (Tanesha) walked by and said, "Hola." Me, being fresh out of Puerto Rico at the time, thought she was Dominican, so I started talking in Spanish. She looked at me with a blank face and walked into her house. Elder Teuscher, at the t...

Well, this week, the one thing I can remember right now is that on Monday, I bought super glue to glue my shoes back together. On Tuesday, they ripped again, so I had no working shoes. I just bought super glue again. I think that's how you know you are old: when your shoes start falling apart. This week, we decided to go finding in this random area, and we found a really cool lady. We gave her a Book of Mormon and the introduction to read. We went back the next day, and we just had one of those really good restoration lessons that are simple, sweet, and powerful. I love those lessons; they bring me so much joy. We were just sitting on her outside porch in the warm sun, on her picnic table, and sharing. And I liked it. It was nice and warm, the sun was baking on my skin, and the spirit was sweet. This was probably the best moment this week because it was just a picture-perfect scene. We got the 5 boxes of Mormons from the airport this week, finally, and that was the biggest struggle...

Yo, so Tuesday was so crazy. We had a Zoom call with the mission because Elder Soares was coming to Puerto Rico... R.I.P. me and the other 11 elders on the islands... But then, not only then, the Skinners kept us after the meeting, all 12 island elders (I mean, we are all on an island, but we are the ones on the Virgin Islands, St. Kitts, Antigua, and Dominica), the Lesser Antilles. We were kept after and given the most hype news of our lives. They told us we are all coming back for the temple open house from Dec 12th-16th, and we are going to go to the Christmas party as well. I was just super excited I'll get to go to the temple open house. I was also hyped I'll get to be there for the "Called to Serve" with the mission as well. We do this thing every transfer where, as a mission, we get together when the new missionaries arrive and we sing "Called to Serve." It's honestly probably my favorite thing we do. It's very spiritual for me. I love to be t...

This week, we had just parked our car after somehow ending up on the hill. We got out of the car, and the second we stepped out, it started dumping rain, and I mean, dumping rain. I had this feeling to keep going and go outside, so I did. It was like horribly bad rain, so we tried to run to the closest apartment. We were trying to run under the porch when this lady let us in. We started talking and thanking her for letting us under her porch, and she told us some stuff. We continued talking, and I just said, "Yeah, it's so hard to know right from wrong these days with the religions because the Bible has been translated way too much, and they took out books, and everyone interprets it a different way." It was literally the most simple sentence that I wasn't even thinking about, and she just stared me in my eyes and said, "Are you a spy? Were you listening to my phone last night?" Dead serious. "I said that exact thing to my son on the phone last night....

Hello, everyone! This is another week here in Tortola that has come and gone really fast. This week, we were walking and heading to a lesson in a place called Pockwood Pond, and let me tell you, that place literally feels like Fortnite in real life. We were just going to this lesson, which was super sick, and this kid who is like 15 was going to let us teach him. We have been over once before, and his dog barked but was chained up. To be honest, Elder Teuscher and I thought he was all bark and no bite, so we weren't too worried. We pulled up this time, and he just bolted at us. But his owner is running after him, so I thought his owner would catch him. To my surprise, in what I thought to be slow motion, he turns his head slowly and bites Elder Teuscher's meaty leg. Then his owner caught him, and he was dragged onto the porch and tied up. Then it started to rain really, really hard, and this kid didn't invite us onto his porch. He kind of just stood blocking the gate, and a...

Well, well, well, I don't know how we are here again. It's actually going way too fast, and the elder Teuscher goes home next week, so that's weird. We were talking about it, and it just seems like we wake up and then we are going to bed, and the time in between just flew by. Nobody knows what happened. Our week was pretty good. We found a lot of people and had some success with members at church this week. Unfortunately, all the people we invited to church and had confirmed didn't show up. Sometimes you can't beat people's agency. We had some good lessons with a less active family called the "pink house". Our recent converts - both that were baptized last weekend - came to church. We had some lessons with Algernon. Franklyn was busy working this week, and we weren't able to meet. Greg has been sick, so we haven't been able to meet with him. Had to drop some baptismal date friends because they weren't keeping any commitments. We are basical...

We woke up Elder Teuscher and me (Saturday was Franklyn and Algernon's baptismal day) and we checked the phone. We had a text from Franklyn at 3:30 am saying, "I'm awake," so Elder Teuscher and I thought, "Oh perfect, Franklyn is awake and he's ready for his baptism." But that's a little early to wake up. We drove to the beach (Brandywine Bay) and waited for both Algernon and Franklyn. Algernon showed up right on time, so we were all standing there waiting. Then we decided, "Okay, it's been a minute since we've been waiting here, let's call Franklyn and see if he is coming." No answer. We were so confused. So we called the member who was supposed to give him a ride, and he said, "I was sitting there waiting from 6 am to 7 am, and I didn't see him." So we were really confused at this point. Did he hitchhike? Is he on his way? So we called Franklyn again and asked him where he was. He told us he wasn't going to m...