It Finally Rained Today!!!!

     After a long drought, it finally rained and it rained hard! Although it feels nice to have it be a bit cooler, it's ten times as humid and I'm literally soaking wet right now. All I'm doing is typing on a computer!
#Livin' in Jamaica
     But yeah! This week flew by so fast! It felt like two days and I hear it only gets faster. I'm 1/4 of the way done training my comp and I only have 9 weeks left in Ochi if I leave out after training. I have a gut feeling I'll leave afterwards and go to Kingston. We shall see! This week was fast though and we didn't have a ton of lessons, but a few things did happen that are noteworthy:

1. Gabbidone and Teshayne are some non-denominational Christians we met that only believe in the Bible and bashed us with Revelation 22:18 to prove us wrong. They have some interesting outlook on church, religion, and the Holy Ghost. Church, since it's not mentioned in any translation of the bible,  (save for synagogue and congregation) should not exist. All churches teach the bible incorrectly and it's only meant to be read. The Holy Ghost doesn't reveal to us truth or else there would be no reason for the Bible cause we would just be spoon-fed truth. So the HG doesn't communicate with us. Revelation had ended and so did the prophets with John. (some scripture with a nice JST. ) For our solution, see Matthew 7, John 14, John 16, and 1 Corinthians 15. Focus your study on the role of the Holy Ghost, how to pray, why we pray, and how to know truth.

2.Young Buck is a 70 year old man that stopped us on the street and asked us how many wives we had. We explained the polygamy thing, got that straightened out and talked a lot about his life and how Christ has shaped him. He's very active and I mistook him for a forty year old at most. He looked good, like he kept the Word of Wisdom or something... ?

3.Today we meet with a member of the ward to teach them how to be a good caring ward member. And how to not let Sandy drop to less- activity. We will be doing this a lot with ward members; taking them to teach Recent Converts or less-actives.
#Building a branch!

I'm loving the work and my testimony of my Jesus grows stronger every day. I am learning how to be a good father and how to build the kingdom of God on the earth as I sacrifice all I have to do so, and fulfill all my covenants. I know this church is true and I cannot deny it. If you have not read the Book of Mormon to know if it is true, DO IT. Nothing bad can possibly come of you for reading a book and this book will bless you more than you could imagine. Trust me I've seen it in my own life.

Cue the tumbleweed!

     Ocho Rios is going to be great soon. Yes we have a presidency, but in time we will have a branch. We are going to be working with President Francis and the auxiliaries to bring all of those lost sheep back into the fold. We will create lasting friendships between the members we have, then move to adding in less-active and inactive members to these groups until everyone is one big group. Our focus is to have a branch run the way it is supposed to. People will learn how to love each other and how to fellowship new converts. Home teaching and Visiting teaching are going to be solid and reliable. We need a branch to bring people to and there are already so many connections in the church that we can use for referrals to teach more members. I'm very excited for the work I see happening in Ochi soon and want to let you all be aware of the hard work that our Branch President is doing. He is truly devoting his time talents and energy to build our branch.

     Our generic missionary work has been dry this week. No finding new people, we have about ten in our pool right now, and a few of them are going to be a long-loving effort, not a teach-and-dunk type (I hope that doesn't sound bad, I mean it in the best way possible!!!). But we have a vision and are going to begin an exhaustive effort to build this branch. Lots and lots (tons) of less active work, home teaching, visiting teaching and begging members for referrals. We are working with the auxilaries right now to find five members each that they are going to work with to bring back and love into the fold of God once more.

Here's a super cool plastic looking jungle tree we found while finding in Content Garden.

And my companion, Elder Trinnaman! He is sooo cool! He loves Disney, anything Disney, you name it.

OH YEAH! Did you see my cheeks growing? I'm getting fat!!!eeEEEEeEeEeEEEeEP! I've gained thickness around my wait and thighs, thanks Ochi hills, and upper body muscles form all the service. Mixing cement and machete stuff builds you up! I now weigh 165 pounds as ooposed to my 145 pounds out of the MTC. Im tailoring my pants now, and getting some larger sizes. My shoes are good though. :) 

New Beginnings - My second companion!

     Last Wednesday was transfer meeting and Elder Gardner went to Spanish Town to be a zone leader. I have been called on to train one of the 15 new missionaries coming into the mission. His name is Elder Trinnaman and he is from Highland Utah. He comes from a family that adopts children and it sounds super cool. He is very prepared to be a missionary and that's good because I will need the help when he gets the hang of things around Ochi and in Jamaica. I'm grateful for the responsibility and trust God has given me, but I will be praying a lot to let God qualify me for this great work. Time for me to start growing a ton I guess?! Relying on Grace to get me through. But until next week, Mi-da-ya! (mee-day-eh) 

---I will get a picture of us up next week.---

     But for now, here's a picture up on Paradise of us before we went into the bush-tunnel-of-death. This road goes down at a 50% angle at least. And it is bumpy. And rocky. And we biked down it last week. :)

A Lot of Nothing and a Little of Something

Well, this week was full of empty finding, dropped appointments, and ignored phone calls, but Saturday made up for it! Here's the day:

     We woke up and went straight to the church for Sandy's baptism. We went to the beach and it was super cool to see someone make the covenant of baptism when I've learned so much more about it from being out here.

     Then we went up to our house, showered, had an hour or so of walking up Breadnut Hill and found a new road. We followed it up and up and up and down and way down and way up again and got to a place called Paradise. It was gorgeous from up there! We will be biking the mountain road again today for fun! We walked the first time.

After that we rendered more service on the building of the Life Tabernacle church!

Our ginnup haul of the week! Over three dozen each! 

 Used the Crock Pot to cook us some chili and Elder Gardner cooked Navajo fry bread. We ate wayyyy too much of this!

 Glamour shot

 And my record breaking (for now) mega peanut butter cream biscuit tower! This one has 22 layers.

    Transfer calls came! 

     I'm waiting on a call (training a newbie) and staying in Ochi and my companion is going to be zone leader in Spanish Town by Kingston. I'm way excited that I don't have to be district leader on top of it all!!! We get a new sister in Ochi from Africa I hear she is crazy. Haha! I should do okay training I hope. He'd better have a lot of long-suffering already under his belt.

     The rest of the work isn't going very fast, but we have a group of potential investigators to re-contact and set up appointments with. Hopefully we get some people to start progressing. They are out there but we just need to find them, they'll do the rest with our guidance. I know this church is true and the basics of church prayer and scripture study are vital to our testimonies staying strong and not becoming a sandy foundation.

Seperate Ways???

     Transfers are next Wednesday and everything is up in the air for Ochi. I could be training, the new ward clerk and the district leader all at once and be leading my area too... Elder Garnder might be leaving and its the sisters' last transfer so we have no idea how it could go. A bunch of zone leaders are dying and an Assistant to the President is dying(dying means going home by the way). I guess we will see.
    This week was slow. The only cool thing that I remember is that we helped an investigator's brother saw some boards with a makeshift table saw: a reciprocating saw nailed in place upside down under the table with the blade sticking through the wooden workbench. Yikes!
     Sorry this week was short I'll see what I can do next week if I remember more.

Here's a picture of the Francis family and Brother Jones (the black one(thats a joke here))!