St. Lucia – January 2024
An opportunity has arisen which is worthy of serious consideration and support.
Read Time: 3 minutes
We no sooner arrived at the Mission Apartment than we were met by our landlady’s helpers, telling us she had just died. Doris Bailey was 97 and had been failing for some weeks. This news was not surprising since she’d been ill for a while.
Our main activities consisted of the Sunday meetings and events at the apartment during the week with the various members and contacts. Bro. Martin exhorted each Sunday with Bre. Benji, Gabriel and Julian helping with readings and prayers. We used the Northern Christadelphian Choir recording as the basis for our singing. Everyone sings along with the choir, especially when we have favorites such as “Great is thy Faithfulness” and “To God be the Glory.”
After lunch together, we would have an afternoon program, usually a topic from the readings, and, one time, a visual presentation by Bro. Andy Walton on the current Middle East War. Some Sundays, a long-term contact, Stan Drapin, would sit at the back.
A very interested contact, Nasha Louis, comes every Tuesday after dropping her children off at school. She is keen to learn the first principles and has nearly completed a course of lessons (on thisisyourbible.com) with Bro. Mike. So he came on Zoom, and we joined the discussion as well. Following the session with Nasha, at about 11:30, other ecclesia members arrived for a Bible Class.
Bro. Mike had already started a series on the Epistle to the Philippians. Nasha stayed for this as well. After this, we would have lunch together, and whoever could stay would do the Bible readings with us. Julian Jackson (baptized a year ago) would come in for Bible readings and discussion on other days. Julian is a good student of the Bible and enjoyed doing the readings with us and discussing them, sometimes at length!
Julie attends on Sundays and requires help because she is deaf. It is necessary to sit by her and write notes of all the speaking. She reads her Bible and likes to sing the hymns (as best she can) with gusto! Sis. Dawn Hutchison has a key to the apartment. When there isn’t a visiting brother, she opens the apartment on Sundays and organizes the Zoom connection with the Kitchener, Ontario ecclesia. On Tuesdays, Sis. Dawn and other members come to the apartment for the Zoom class with Bro Mike.
On the last Wednesday of our visit, we attended the funeral of our former landlady Doris at the Methodist Church in Castries. It was a long service with the niece Ruth and her brother giving eulogies and then the minister giving a long sermon and five hymns.
He didn’t talk about heaven much, although the others referred to it. He tied in the three Bible readings delivered by members of the family quite nicely. They were the death of Moses, Matthew 25, the parable of the Ten Virgins, and two verses from Revelation, “Blessed are they that die in the Lord.”
Since the funeral, Bro. Mike has been in touch with Ruth, the new landlady, and an interesting proposition has arisen. She doesn’t intend to sell the property and has asked if the Christadelphians would like to rent the apartment and the house. It should be clarified that they are separate buildings on the same piece of land but linked with a short, covered walkway.
By renting the three-bedroom house (with a secure space for a vehicle), there is the potential for a missionary family to come for an extended stay to promote the gospel, start and run a Sunday School, and have one-on-one classes with contacts. This is an exciting prospect!
Long-term missionaries in such places make a significant difference in spreading the gospel and baptizing people. The entire facility can conveniently house two couples at one time. This opportunity is worthy of serious consideration and support.
Martin and Lois Webster,
Kitchener-Waterloo Ecclesia, ON