Weekends of Historic Events

Last weekend marked an historic event here in Praia. The Praia Cape Verde Stake turned one year old and held a Stake Conference!! None of the church buildings here are big enough to house all the wards (congregations) in the Stake at once, so it was held in the civic center. There were about 1700 people in attendance from all over the Island of Santiago.

On the evening of the conference, they decided to hold a specially meeting for the young single adults. The theme was marriage and they asked Elder Mathews and I to speak - in Portuguese. My talk was 5 minutes long but they understood it! (Some of the young women, including Sandra, were smiling at me and giving me the thumbs up as I was speaking. That was an historic event for me.) I have to admit that I practiced the talk at least a hundred times making sure I had the pronunciation down. Whew. To my surprise Sandra brought her mom and grandma to the meeting.

And this weekend marked another historic event. The second Stake in Cape Verde was formed in Mindelo on the Island of Säo Vicente.That is the second island from the left at the top. The stake will include the 5 big northern islands - those three little ones next to Säo Vicente don't count because they are not inhabited.

 That is two Stakes in two years! We are hoping Fogo will be made the third Stake before we leave in April of next year! Fogo is the second Island from the left at the bottom. The small island to the right of it is Brava which would be included in the Fogo Stake. Praia is the third Island from the left and we live at the southern tip of it.