Seekers of Truth

“For many years I used to meet with a group of [young] people,” John Naime remembered. “We would try to teach about things. I used to look, search around for different ideas, things that mattered or felt better than what I already had.” One of the members of the group was John’s good friend from high school and an American expatriate who encountered the Book of Mormon in the United States in 1975. He read it and knew it was true. He turned up at Church headquarters in Salt Lake City and asked the secretary at the front desk if he could be baptized.

John’s friend was a student in the United Kingdom, and whenever he returned to Barbados, he spoke with John and other friends about his new church. On one particular trip in April 1978, the friend was chatting with John and his wife, June. June said, “You know something, John, he has come to baptize you.”

“No,” said John, who had been raised Catholic. “I wouldn’t join any American religion.”

One day, as John listened to his friend explain the story of the Church to someone else, John suddenly felt a powerful feeling. “It was a great excitement building up inside me, and I wanted to grab a person and run,” he remembered. “The joy that I felt at that time only happened once before in my life.” His friend said he had never seen anyone so happy. “So that was my point of being converted,” John said.

At the time, June had only sporadically listened to John and his friend’s discussions about the Church. At the time, she was a Seventh-day Adventist. She recalled, “As newlyweds although I had a testimony of Jesus Christ and that God was real through a personal witness, I did not have a testimony of the restored Church at that time and relied on John’s testimony, as I thought in marriage we should be walking in the same direction.”

On April 16, 1978, June, John, and two of John’s siblings were baptized at a nearby beach.

Thereafter, said June, “my testimony came from studying, searching and praying as we had to teach others the gospel.” A year later, June and John traveled to Salt Lake City and happened to meet the same front desk secretary at Church headquarters. They met with the secretary to President Spencer W. Kimball, who arranged for them to receive their patriarchal blessings and connected them to the mission president in Florida, whose mission area included the Caribbean.

After a year, in 1979, the first missionaries arrived in Barbados. Yvonne Nelson recalled meeting missionaries. “I told them I was already associated with a church but I would listen to what they had to say,” said Yvonne, who had been raised Anglican. After meeting with the missionaries, she wanted to learn more. “I said to myself, ‘All these years I knew there was a God, but I didn’t know I was living with my Heavenly Father. I knew we were spiritual, we came to earth to receive a body,’” she recounted. She read parts of the Book of Mormon and studied the Bible. “And after that, I said to my friend, ‘I’m getting some good teaching from this Church. I think I’m going to leave my church and get baptized.’” She was baptized on February 3, 1980.

By 1985, three branches had been established in Barbados. Initially, the Saints encountered significant opposition from members of other churches on the island. Latter-day Saints worked hard to build relationships of trust with local ecclesiastical leaders. Especially through sharing their views on the Word of Wisdom, over time Latter-day Saints earned a positive civic reputation as people with strong stances against drug abuse.

From 1984 to 1994, Barbados was the headquarters of the West Indies Mission. From Barbados, the gospel spread to other nearby islands, including Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and St. Maarten.

June and John served in the Church for many years. They worked hard to build the Christ Church Branch, established in 1979. “I am so happy to have been born in this part of the Lord’s vineyard, which has brought me choice experiences,” June said. “We have grown in unimaginable ways because of the light of truth given through the generosity of His spirit.”