What Have We Been Up To? And...What do Senior Missionaries Do? January 2023

What do we do as Senior Missionaries? This is a common question, and one that many people (including us!) have wondered and asked. The answer is - many things! We have filled our days with quite a few things. We mostly try to think "What good can we do today?" Lots of times in our regular lives at home, we want to do good things - but many things seem to get in the way of it. Now that we are full-time missionaries, we can dedicate more time to helping those who need help. Some of the things which we've done include: 

Driving young missionaries all around - to appointments, to the grocery store, to church, etc.  They have bikes, but sometimes the distance is too far, and sometimes the rain prohibits them from biking. Also at times they were living too far away to make it to the church and to appointments, to the grocery store, etc. 

Baking cakes

Studying scriptures and conference talks 

Taking loads of photos and sharing them with others

Language(s) studies - both Spanish and Papiamentu

Attending Sunday church meetings 

Visiting and teaching new friends/members with the young missionaries

Working on getting the new car which was ordered for us before we arrived in Bonaire), along with obtaining insurance and licenses (we have it all now, but needed to car share for awhile!) 

Attending and participating in Tuesday morning Mission Devotionals and District Meetings

Working on locating a new chapel, lot, or some sort of real estate for a new church, since we have outgrown our little chapel!! We had 70+ people at church this past Sunday, and it is probably supposed to hold 35-40. This is awesome! But we are working hard on locating a new space because we don't have enough chairs or places for people to sit. We had to sit on tables and crates and even though we had people sitting in the little kitchen and outside on the porches, we still couldn't fit. Brian and I are putting to work our love of real estate! We have been all over the island. There is no central MLS here in Bonaire, so we check out all the online listings each week, as well as drive around to see if anything is new or privately listed. 

We have looked at new apartments for our young elders, and have worked with the managers of the old apartment, since there were numerous items to be addressed and repaired at their original apartment. Moved the elders back and forth between apartments. 

Holding Saturday night young adult meetings/game nights twice a month at our home

Visiting members and getting to know them (usually taking them baked goods). :) 

Teaching dance fitness classes (i.e. Zumba). I taught this twice so far, but think it may be history now because of the knees that went kaput. We shall see! We had 18 people to our 1st dance class, and we had about 13 to the 2nd. Everyone asks when we will do it again. It was really fun! But the teacher puts in lots more practice than the students...to get the routines right...and my 'good' knee decided to join the other knee with the torn meniscus. 

Baking brownies

Finding shops which have certain items we need - nothing can be located at one central store (no Target or Walmart type stores). Grocery stores don't carry medicine (or hardly any). Eggs were next to impossible to be found for at least one month - we would wait at a store along with other people when we thought egg delivery would happen and usually were unlucky. Right now there is a chocolate chip shortage! No chocolate chips can be found anywhere, but eggs have been fine. 

Putting together 72-hour kits, first aid kits, and bug-out bags for 3 sets of missionaries (in case of emergencies)

Searching for donkeys (my favorite!) 

We started teaching a Family History class once a week. 

Baking more cakes

Locating places like the gas company (when the propane gas for cooking/heating has gone out) and the water company (when somehow some young missionaries hadn't opened their mailbox in 4 months to find water bills so they had the water turned off because of unpaid bills) 

Looking for flamingos - This is home to the Pekelmeer Flamingo Sanctuary which is one of only four areas in the world where flamingos breed. The Caribbean flamingo is the most colorful of all species of flamingos and 10,000 of them call Bonaire home. We see them here and there, but I can't wait to go looking around for the babies, as we hear they will be hatching soon! You can't walk near them but you can see them from a distance. 

Baking cookies

Beach cleanup - we help clean the beach with a group called One Hour Cleanup Power each Saturday morning. It is amazing how much trash is washed up onto the shore. We go to the east coast, which is a lot windier and rougher seas - and the current evidently brings all sorts of garbage up onto the shore. The shore consists largely of large coral and big rocks - and cleanup is a wonderful and horrible thing! We hate to see all the trash, but we love to help out in a small way to clean up this beautiful world God has created. We usually have all 6 missionaries helping to do beach clean up. 

Attending baptisms - we were blessed to go to the baptisms of 3 different people so far, in 2 separate baptismal services. They were baptized right in the clear blue Caribbean Sea, which was breathtakingly beautiful. 

Food Pantry volunteers. We worked just this past Saturday (Jan. 28th) at the Food Bank (Voedselbank Bonaire), and we worked twice there in December.  We really like helping out there. In December, we helped fill the bags and then gave them out to the patrons that had tickets to receive food. They use the great big shopping bags like they sell at TJMaxx and Marshalls in the USA...or at VanDenTweel or Warehouse here in Bonaire. They are pretty big and tough bags! They had quite a lot of food that they give to the people, including a Christmas ham and Dutch cookies, cheese, sausages, etc. This past Saturday the bags were already filled, so I helped to pull them from the warehouse as they were in numerical order - and attempted to lift the 50-lb bags over to a table - where then Elder R (along with some other volunteers) would take the bags to the peoples' cars (he actually walked one bag home to a woman's apartment for her). So our January volunteering here was actually quite a bit more rigorous than December's, but still felt rewarding helping people. I met a new young volunteer from the Netherlands who had been working in Bonaire over her 'gap year.' She had just worked for 3-4 months as an au pair (nanny) for a Dutch family, and she was in charge of a 4 year old and a little 1-year old. She told me her favorite beach to go to with the children (Te Amo Beach, as it has a good sandy beach for the kids to play on). I also like talking with "J," who it turns out, is from Vineland, New Jersey (USA) - which is only about a 30 minute drive away from where I grew up in NJ!  She also says "wood-er" for "water," and she has told me about the best pizza places on the island. 

Pakus di Pruga Saturday Market volunteers - We've been volunteering each Saturday for about 3-4 hours at the Animal Shelter's Saturday Flea Market. We help with the incoming donations by emptying out the donated bags/boxes, sorting them, and putting the clothing on hangers and hanging it up out front and in their little warehouse. They have all sorts of donations for sale - clothing, books, games, household items, furniture, scuba/snorkeling equipment, you name it! It's actually pretty fun, and we love chatting with the other volunteers. Most of them are Dutch speakers, but most know English. Lots of people mistake us for Dutch speakers until we mention that we speak English (plus a little bit of Spanish and a teensy bit of Papiamentu).  I will admit that I've bought a few items here too, which is kind of fun! 

Snorkeling/Looking for sea turtles - We've been snorkeling a few times, and we have been blown away with the fabulous fish and sea turtles! (ok, ok - we've just seen one sea turtle. But we can't wait to see more!!). Plus the water is clear and bright blue. In all of our travels thus far, this is absolutely the best snorkeling we've encountered - and this includes Cozumel, Honduras, Cancun, Hawaii...Costa Rica, Grand Cayman, and Red Sea. Those places were all pretty great, but here you just walk into the water from the shore and swim out a little bit and BOOM! The fish are everywhere. We are trying to make it a goal to get out and swim/snorkel at least once a week for exercise. So far we've made it twice total but we are ready to change that! 

Family Home Evenings - at the church with branch members and friends, learning about the Gospel and having fun games like Charades and Pictionary. And eating snacks, of course! 

Karaoke - oh boy, karaoke is big-time here! The branch and friends really get into it! We had it at Susanna's home, and so many people came. Lots of them were really great singers and it was fun. Elder R and I did not bless anyone with our singing - but we had sort of chosen some songs in case we were forced. Elder R wanted to sing Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe." I thought it would be fun to sing "Shallow" by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga or a few other songs - but we are limited in our vocal range (hahaha). We (meaning "I") sing best in the shower. Many of the folks brought treats and friends. We even had a random giant pig come and try to get in on the fun. That was hilarious. Elder Nyfeler tried to get it to come to him by feeding it an old carrot I keep in the car (mostly in case we see donkeys - but we gave it to him to try to lure the pig over to see him). I did get some pretty decent pics and video footage. 

Preparation Day (P-Day) fun and games with the Youngsters - We've had some fun times going out on P-days with the 4 younger missionaries. 

Some things we've done altogether include: 

Blo-karts or Land Sailing

1,000 Steps Beach 

Drives to Rincon - we drove around a bit and also stopped at a cafe for lunch.

Miniature golfing at Flamingo Golf Course

Gelato and food - While we've hung out with the missionaries, we've had döners, gelato, meat from the BBQ truck down the road, Mi Banana to celebrate Sister Merten's 1 year mark (awhile ago!), and Yhanni's Arepas to celebrate Sister Kenworthy's one-year mark. Plus we've had some meals and snacks here at our place for the missionaries and for our friends! We've had Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner here (ham dinner with mashed potatoes and the works on Christmas Eve; stromboli and Christmas charcuterie boards and snick-snacks on Christmas day). We've had taco nights with our 4 missionaries plus the 2 APs who were in town (as well as a taco night with the sisters). We've eaten lunch at a little place up near Rincon after we did our Blo Karting, which took a long time but was fun. We've had gelato and also döners (capsalon) with the missionaries, as well as some Texas BBQ meat with the elders from a food truck at the bottom of our neighborhood/street. As you can tell from the above, I'm baking up a storm in my little oven that doesn't fit a whole lot in it...but we are getting to be good friends. I will say I've been spoiled with big ovens back home; and I had been trying to stay away from too much baking (since so much baking leads to so much tasting on my part!!). But - I've decided that the way to many hearts is through food. When we have Zumba, young adult night, family history night, family home evening - I've been baking up a storm.