June 24, 2013

Alright, so tonight is out last family night at the church. Turning it into friday night activities! But we still have some house projects to occupy our time on prep day! We are making a tang mario, mr mac, oatmeal- keystone of our religion, Jesus wall, its nuts!! Companionship unity! This week though was full of meetings, learned a lot! Tuesday and Wednesday we spent finding the rest of our area and visiting members who could help us out in those areas! Our area is just ridiculously big! 

So Wednesday we talked to Sis Williams’ (less active) grandkids and we picked up like 6 new investigators in that house! They are just like so prepared it’s awesome!  So more of our area is like a bunch of St. Jagos... like St Jago Meadows, South, North, Gardens, Gate and the normal one we went up St Jago Heights.. it was like mini America!  Like a 20 min bike ride straight up hill!!  The houses were so big like 3 cars in each driveway and GRASS!!! Beautiful yards that I didn’t think I would be seeing for a long time! Guess that’s where all the pastors and preachers live also Keystone which is just a crazy bike ride, so far from the house, but a member showed us a short cut across this HUGE river that cuts the bike ride down to like 5 minutes instead of 25 min ride!!  We had tons of temple lessons on Thursday getting people to get temple recommends and show that faith before THEIR temple is built here in Jamaica!  Something they are stressing... oatmeal containers work great for temple jars.. gosh wonder where we could get some of those!! 

Thursday had a few very Powerful lessons!! Claudia, a referral from a member, had a great restoration lesson with her and her family even though we were in a noisy work shop cuz that’s where her husband works!! The spirit was so strong we kinda forgot about the noise.. also had a return missionary come with us! I think everyone learned something and we know she felt it, that’s awesome!! Also had a sweet temple lesson with Rickey. He didn’t like our temple jar idea, too easy to get into! So he cut a slit in a propane tank for his temple savings jar!! He is such a boss, he is like so consecrated, does everything he needs to do!! That’s something I have been focusing on this week! Laying everything on the altar of sacrifice and give every ounce of energy to the lord and the results have been awesome! I just crash at the end of the day, but once I put that badge on I sure better act like a disciple of Jesus Christ ! What an opportunity to serve and change my life around! And to my benefit for that goal! Friday we had a full zone conference on being consecrated missionaries laying it all down and holding no part of the offering back! It was such a powerful zone conference, it was President Hendricks last one so he laid everything down on the line and held nothing back.  In his testimony a few things stuck so far out to me:  a mission is not to change our behavior it should change our nature so when you get home you can’t go back! You don’t go back and grow facial hair and long hair, wearing funky color shirts to church, you are a Priesthood man and you better act like it. Having your personal studies everyday and still being obedient giving your all! That all made me think of my Dad! Not a greater example I can think of bout living a consecrated life! I love him! Anyways, the conference ended with testimony bearing and even though I didn’t know Pres Hendricks super well, neither Elder Stubbs, Elder Hitchcock, or Elder Gray, their testimonies were so powerful we were all in tears by the end and the last hymn was super quiet like no one could sing! Such an Awesome day!  We went and got food after... 22 people in the mission car! No more Mexican jokes, that’s just how we roll in Jamaica! Everyone is everyone’s seat belt!!! Haa, it was good times though!! Saturday we worked hard going all over our area, tons of spiritual lessons though!! Sis. Roy’s grandkids in particular. We talked about the restoration and her daughter Tracey, the mother of the grandkids, loved what she heard and is so excited to read the Book of Mormon. After we told her about the temple and it also helped Sis Roy!! It was sweet!! That mission conference on Sunday was crazy though right?!?! FB and blogs and stuff? Craziness, just exciting times to be a missionary when all this going on. Fun to watch the work seriously progress!! Well that’s kinda my week in a wrap! I’m starving, have a great week, liccamor!!