Brother Gamiette competes in Tobago

We picked up Brother Gamiette (He will be our new mission president July 1) at the airport on Thursday afternoon at 3:45 pm. He came to compete in the Toyota Rainbow Cup International Triathlon & 5 K run held on Saturday. His bike didn't arrive with him. He was distraught.

He has been training for a long time to compete in a triathlon but they always seem to be held on Sunday and he hadn't yet achieved his desired goal. He decided to give it one more try, since once he becomes a mission president he would have to postpone the goal for 3 years and then get in shape again. Low and behold, there was a triathlon scheduled on Tobago on a Saturday. His next problem was getting the finances for the plane ticket from Guadalupe to Tobago. During a recent trip, Liat goofed up his ticket and it took him 24 hours to get to his destination, so the airline compensated him with a ticket anywhere he wanted to go. Of course, his problem was solved. He had airfare to compete. He claimed his goal was "just to finish", but we could tell from several things that happened, he was pretty serious about it.

We took him to the course so he could drive it an see the hills, etc. While we were at Stone Haven for him to register and see about a bike if he didn't get his in time, I received a phone call from the airport. They had his bike. I said can we come get it? The answer was not until 11 on Friday even after my pleading. He called the lady back and said, "we are coming to get the bike, we will be there in 10 minutes". He told us that you can't ask, you just have to tell them. It sure worked. We did get the bike, which he assembled Friday morning. We took him over so he could swim, bike and run the course. He then slept away the afernoon while we did our seminary activity.

Elder and Sister Green, who were here for the seminary activity, took him to his Friday night meeting for the competition. The Green's picked him up at 6:30 am on Saturday to begin the preparation for the 9 am start time. We were unable to go because we had a baptism on the other side of the island at 9:00 am. We didn't seem him again until they came for dinner at 6:30 Sat night after the awards ceremony. He placed 2nd in his age catagory. He was very pleased with his performance.





To cap off the weekend, we had a great sacrament meeting with the Green's and Brother Gamiette as the featured speakers. They all gave excellent talks. The branch members were thrilled to meet Brother Gamiette.