Best Sunday on the mission so far!!!

Okay we have just a little post this week, not a ton happened that sticks out or that I would highlight, lots of generic missionary work. But what was noteworthy:
     Ellis: We've been teaching Ellis for almost three months, and there was a big space in the middle where we couldn't meet with him. He has been searching long and hard for the truth and the right way to worship God. He hasn't been baptized because he wants to make sure it's right. Sound familiar? He has an awesome understanding and as we teach he just puts the puzzle pieces together and the spirit confirms it and that's the game. Every lesson this has happened!!! Yesterday he made it to church (45 minutes late, thanks Jamaican time). We were in Sacrament meeting and all of a sudden I see President Francis shoot up out of his seat as someone is giving their testimony and bolt down the aisle passing the whole congregation and flying out the door and down the hall. A minute later he comes back and Ellis sits next to me. Turns out that he looked in and saw the meeting going on and started to leave, but President Francis saw him. THANK HEAVENS HE SAW HIM!!! We had two amazingly spiritual discussions in the classes and he felt the fellowship and love the priesthood bredren (brethren) have for him already. I'm so grateful for this. The spirit is working hard for him to know this is really, actually true. He is on or the 17th of October for baptism, but the Word of Wisdom may push it back. My goal is no later than the 31st, Halloween, which they don't really celebrate in Jamaica. Ellis is our Golden and only true "investigator".
     Elder Trinnaman and I are getting pretty close and I can say he is truly my son. I'm so proud o his progress and this morning  we had the best comp. study. We did a role play where I was new and he did all the teaching and he nailed it so hard!!! He knows what he is doing, good thing too. Maybe he can teach me how to be such a good teacher.
     This has been the hardest almost-six months of my life and it has been the best too. (It still stinks without you Hails!) I have grown so much and not just around the waist! :) Yeah I need to start doing some core workout...and whoever is reading this can someone send me a fake beard or goatee or some kind of realistic facial hair thing please? You'll see why in a few weeks. :)
    I know this Gospel is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true scripture and the word of God. I know that without this Gospel, there is no point to life. I know that the covenants we make at baptism and in the temple are real. God keeps them if we do our part. When we take those covenants upon ourselves, we accept a higher standard of living and we can be blessed so much more when we push ourselves to be perfect. I know Thomas S. Monson is a true and Living prophet, the mouthpiece of God on the earth today. I knew this before I met him in person when he came to the Boise temple re dedication celebration, and than my testimony was and is solidified forever. I know he prays for me every day. I love him. InTheNameOfJesusChristAmen. :)

WOAH! We're halfway there...

     This Wednesday marks the halfway point of Elder Trinnaman's training in Ochi. I can't believe how fast it has gone by! Not a ton has happened in the last week that was noteworthy. Whelp, here is the scoop :
     District meeting was super cool! President Brown was there and we learned more about having the faith to achieve the goals the mission has set. President Brown gave us counsel from the scriptures with differing groups of people who sat on the shore and got comfortable. They didn't have the faith it was going to take to cross the many waters to get to the promised land. They stopped progressing and started digressing because they didn't think God could bring them to the promised land. He pierced our hearts as we realized we need to truly trust in God to do this missionary work.
     We saw a woman named Carol and PKB (President Kevin Brown) tagged along. We taught her "how to begin teaching" -establishing our purpose- and taught about the Book of Mormon. At the beginning of the lesson she didn't want to read it cause it wasn't the Bible, but at the end she was willing to read it to know if it's true.
     We've had a hard time meeting with our investigators. No appointments are sticking and everyone is always busy. We will not give up! As we work as hard as we can as missionaries, the Lord will give the results.
     We watched a dog get hit by a truck (he is okay) during a lesson!!! It was unreal and scary and hilarious at the same time! I know, I'm sick and twisted forgive me...We just looked out into the road and SMACK! Te dog is the neighborhood menace so the family we were meeting with was cheering and celebrating until they found the dog was okay. Haha it was great!
     General Conference is so soon! I have the Hinckling it will be on mostly missionary work with lots of warning of the disgusting world around us and separating from it. Those two main topics. We shall see when we see though!
     My understanding on how to help peoples understanding has been grown thanks to PKB yesterday at church. We spent the whole hour of Gospel principles on one paragraph in the book about the parent's responsibility to be God's partners in His Plan of Salvation.(Gospel principles book, chapter 36 I think) It opened my eyes to the depth you have to go into something to make it simple but very applicable. I'm already getting dad training!!!

Fruits of Our Labors

     This week was kind of crazy. Okay To start off, we met with Gabbidon and Teshane. They wouldn't let us teach or share. Whenever we tried to testify they would break it down saying it couldn't be true since it wasn't in the bible. It was the first time I remember that they contended really hard and I continued to be filled with the spirit and not get angry or contentious. I felt so alive after the lesson even though we basically watched them spiritually die ater that lesson. It strengthened my testimony so strongly about the true nature of this church. I know without a doubt that this church is the Lord's kingdom on the earth. I have no doubt. It's interesting how someone who tries to tear your beliefs down ends up building them even more.
     We will continue to meet with them because the spirit is present in their lessons and that means they are feeling it. Evenutally they will yield to His enticings and be some of the strongest members in Ochi. We know they will do great once they accept the truth. Our ocus is to let them think they are getting us to doubt when we come to ask questions and learn according to their knowledge. Then we question more and more thier doctrine until it runs them into contradictions and they convict themselves. They prove themselves wrong is the goal because we can't prove them wrong. We have the full puzzle and just have to hand them the pieces. Defenitely a "follow-the-spirit" focus (which should be every lesson!).
     Through the week we got some lessons and did more preparations for branch council which got pushed back another week because of a funeral or Sister Abigail Lluelyn. I got to know her and will miss her. She was an amazing woman... Our branch mission plan is to get home and visiting teaching run by the members and consistant by the end of the year. We met with the Jacksons, Brother Nelson, and Sister Henry about it and we will continue to meet members around our area to get it started up. Ochi branch is going to be moving up in the ranks soon come. I'm super excited!
      Sandy is nowhere to be found because of her new job. We haven't met with her basically since her baptism and that is not okay in my book... she is super busy and in order to follow God she may have to drop it. I hope we built her faith enough to alow her the confidence to do something so unsure in this world of money. We are going over to help her do chores to make it to church on Sunday. Thank the sister missionaries for convincing her to let us all come over! Women do have that touch that men don't.
     Today we are going back to the beach! I love the sand and its nice to just reax for an hour or two. We will see if pictures load this and next week. Thank you for all those who pray for me and for missionaries in General; IT MAKES A DIFERENCE. Keep praying please we need your faith and prayers to do this work. To my family and Ward family, and Friends, I love you all and miss every single one of you a ton. Please always remember our God and His Tender Mercies  that we are blessed to have. God is our everything and we owe Him our lives; everything we can give Him.

District p-day at the beach! Sorry for the tilt, the photographer was a bystander. :)
   

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.