Potential Energy + Movement = Kinetic Energy

     Okay. This week was great! We did a lot of missionary things and taught some missionary stuff. The week flew by like usual, and we didn't get to see some of our people that we're focusing on. No new developments on Sandy, Simone, or Gabbidon. We see Gabbidon today and will teach him the Holy Ghost and prayer out of the new testament (the bible cause he hates any scripture not in the 66 bible books.)
     The member work is starting to move, hence the title! We are getting some firesides set up after church and they are to pump the members up to reach out to those friends they have and bring them back into the old, with a focus on the members we already know. Less-actives and in-actives. We taught a great fireside yesterday at church and I felt like it did a good job to help the members realize just how much of a responsibility it is for them to do something. Next we will be getting directories out to all the members so they can have somewhere to start. Then we wait for calls and do whatever else we can to help each member separately. I can't deal with the fact that I may leave Ochi after I'm done training Elder Trinnaman in seven weeks.... D: NNOONOONOONONONO! I'll stay in Ochi for the whole two years please and thank you! :)
     The Zone Leaders stayed the night at our house this past week and we talked a ton about finding and how to and did role plays and such. It helped me a ton. I feel like Elder Trinnaman and I are getting more faith, and even though we are bad at finding right now, BECAUSE of our faith, people come up and find us instead. It's a good deal for now. Kind of like how eventually Joseph Smith didn't need a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon cause he became so familiar with the workings of the Spirit. I hope to be able to get familiar enough to just find with no problems.

 For the records I guess? #selfie!

 Jovani is silly at Friday Night Acitvity!

 My new tie from Hailey!!! Thank you!!!

 A few shots with Quiania before church! I'm adopting(stealing) her from the Francis's when I leave!!!

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))!

Another one bites the dust

     So last Monday we visited abandoned Ochi in a resort thing (looks like it went bankrupt or something). It was cool and the sisters went with us. It was a major creep level ten and we had some good scares too!

     Okay. I'm going to be positive about this week. This week was good. We didn't get very many lessons and a lot of investigators fell through, but in the end, as missionaries, we can't control what our investigators do, and as long as we do evertyhing we can to invite others to come unto Christ, we have done a good job. Like PMG says, no effort is wasted. Gotta keep moving forward or you don't go anywhere!

 A "harmless" banana spider. This one doesn't have a banana for scale, but is about four or five inches in diameter.

This is a sweetsop. It looks like a bunch of squidward-noses got together for a hulk costume party. It isn't as good as a soursop, which is bigger and a bit more flavorful and juicy. To eat it you break it open and eat the flesh around the seeds.

Rain keeps falling on my head!

     Have I got some pictures for you this week! So we found an investigator at the grocery store last week and it turns out he lives up up up in New Hope. We ended up going way too far up and spent an extra half hour hiking up past his house... We got some amazing views of the entire city of Ochi though!

We went left and it only got steeper and rougher for 30 minutes straight...

 Ochi from New Hope (elevation 8,000 feet above sea level)

Ochi from Limebottom (closer to my house, elevation 2,000 "fasl")

     Here is my first update on cool fruit! This is ginnup. It's a paintball-like outside, with a sweet, mucous-y inside that you suck on until the pit is all that's left.Super good and Elder Gardner and I found a tree and ransacked it for a few dozen!

 Off the tree

 Cracked open

Eaten :)

     Yeah this week we did more service cutting down trees with our machetes, and we were hanging from the trees to be able to swing at the parts we needed to get off. We stayed safe don't worry! It was raining the whole time and the cool wet feels so much better than the hot wet! Yeah its always wet here. I'll choose cold wet any day. A Jamaican yelled at my comp. and I for picking ginnup another time and we thought nothing of it cause it was because we were white. Whatev's. I know how it feels to be a minority now. :P

     Update on Sandy, our one investigator right now! We watched the Restoration video (2002 version hour long, watch it if you haven't!) to familiarize her with Joseph Smith. After the video she said this: "Now I know he is a true prophet. He did the miracles of Christ and he did do all those things. So about my baptism: when and where will it be and what else do I need to do to be ready for it?" WHAT?!?!!? She is so ready to be baptized and that will be the first of August.

     Today we are going to an abandoned hotel resort thing up in Shaw Park it's at the end of a really nice tourist house district and looked way creepy when we found it two days ago. So those pics will be up next week. I'm loving the work and I know this church is true. My testimony grows every day!

Grease lightning, GO grease lightning!

     This week was long. Sandy is doing well, getting ready for baptism and trying to make it to church on time. She is showing a real effort. We got new fans at the house and i finally have one that works well! I froze last night a few times cause the fan actually worked! Hallelujah! We got hit by lightning Saturday night and it was LOUD! Less than 100 yards away from our house. We were planning for the next day and it shook the house and scared the crap out of both of us. Yesterday (Sunday) it rained for two or three hours of church and was so loud I couldn't hear the lessons (tin roofing)!
     My companion and I made mango freezer jam and couldn't find pectin so we used lime jello instead! It turned out really good but looked like puke! We also did more service at the Life Tabernacle Pentecostal church in Great Pond and I took pictures this time!

Elder Gardner mixing mango jello jam

 Finished mango jello puky freezer jam

 These are pics of Sandy's backyard after we decimated it with our Machetes!

 The clear space is where there was bush just as thick as the stuff you see in the back

The finished project!

Oh Say, can you see?

     Yeaaaah!! The fourth of July was fun and we had a simple celebration. In between lessons, the sister missionaries and us got a scoop of ice cream and sang the national anthem very quietly. I got rocky road. One average scoop of ice cream is like 220 dollars! Worth it though! We had a good dinner that consisted of (for me) a burger and fries, baked beans, watermelon, and one can of root beer. It was better than last year up in Arizona even though we had some fireworks then. I don't know why I enjoyed this one more.

     I'm excited for the crock pot and can't wait to see what recipes I have at my command soon! thank you Thank You THANK YOU mom and dad!!!! :) I've built a small essentials pantry and it is sufficient for my needs lol. Nothing like at home. The food for transfers won't be a big deal, spices and dry stuff get carted and whatever perishables aren't eaten get left. They give you a few days to prep for that.

     The mosquitoes aren't bad, just annoying. Our windows on our house don't have screens and the landlord is in the states. The backup landlord might be dead cause we haven't seen him for months and the yard isn't being cared for anymore...so yeah...we are supposed to be getting screens... We just stay in the fans at home and the skeets aren't a problem. During the day mosquitoes aren't a problem really. I'm doing better and yeah I think it was food that got me but the rest of the missionaries are getting Zika virus from skeet bites. I hope I stay healthy I was just sick last week you know!

     Our power went out this last week on Tuesday. We got home to make lunch and the freezer was off. None of the lights worked either. We promptly called the sisters to pick up our perishables to bring to their fridge after cooking some food and having additional study and hoping that after two hours the power would go back on. So for two or three days we had no fridge food...it was not the worst part though! No power = no fans to cool you down and keep mosquitoes away! We were miserable!

     The last 3 Saturdays we have been helping President Francis's old Pentecostal church build on to their building. Mixing big piles of concrete with shovels and carting it around in buckets and placing mortar and cinder blocks all over, it's hard work. You aren't a man until you do this kind of work. :)

 President Francis in the shot! Elder Gardner on the left.

     The missionary work is slow right now. Our whole district is struggling to find people to teach and our branch is falling apart a bit. We're trying our hardest to get pioneer work done to get a good baseline. We don't have anything to work with really. I have faith that we can bring it up though. There are people out there who are waiting for this message and we just need to find them. I love being out here even though it can be tough at times. The stronger the wind, the stronger the tree, right? Our top investigator is Sandy and she is working toward August 1st for her baptism date. She has learned a lot and is reading the Book of Mormon on her own for her own answers to her own questions. She hasn't made it to church on time yet but soon come. She is great and seems ready for the gospel. Were going to start commandments and repentance soon and we're going over to her house tomorrow morning for some service and to learn how to make banana fritters! I've tried to make them once but don't know how to compare since I've not had the real thing.