Week 4 Jamaica

What is up America?! Jamaica is really hot, i sweat all the time, it rains freaking hard and then drys off, dryers do not exist here, and i love every single moment of it! The land is super pretty and i cant believe that ive already been out on my mission for an entire month!

Day 34 Monday

i was caught in my first rain storm. i guess its gonna rain a lot the next little bit cause there is a topical Storm off the island somewhere. kinda weird cause the last one that hit was Tropical Storm Sandy. i guess it tore the town to shreds but from what ive heard this is no where near what Sandy was. its hard to teach any one when it rains cause most jamaicans are scared of rain or something. i did finally get some more music haha. disney music i guess isnt the best to have right now so i got more lds music at the church here. so far its pretty good. shopping this week was really pricey. i spent like $3000 on the stuff. for those of you who dont remember, thats like $30 US. the only good thing about that is i know that its going to last me for the rest of the week

Day 35 Tuesday

It was super wet today! it started to rain during one of our lessons. we were outside so i was getting hit pretty good. we woulda gone inside but there were 2 problems. there wasnt a man 18 or older, and it was so hot that the rain felt really good! The investigator we baptised has got a big desire to serve a mission so we are starting to teach her all of the new member lessons as well as having a mission prep type lesson. our 9 year old investigator i feel super bad for. he still really wants to be baptised but his dad said no to it so we are not allowed to baptise him. we are gonna try to talk to him about it but its hard cause every time that we go there he is drunk. another one of our investigators has decided to push back her day cause she doesnt wanna kick out the guy thats there. he is paying some of the bills so its really hard for her. she still really wants to be baptised tho so thats good. 

Day 36 Wednesday

Jamaican weather is a lot like Utah weather. it makes no sense! its so hot and that tropical storm is still somewhere around here. district meeting was a complete disaster today. we still had a good lesson but we tried to skype it cause it costs a lot to go from Ocho Rios to Port Antonio for the Elders that are out there. it took us like an hour to get everything figured out. by the time it was all good we just had a short lesson. after that was really slow tho. we rode out to San San to teach an investigator only to find out that he wasnt there. the good news with that, we finally contacted Norene! Norene is a lady that we met in the Miami Airport on our way over here. we all wanted to come to Porty so that we could teach her. i was called here of course but it took a bit to contact her because of all the scheduling conflicts we had.

Day 37 Thursdasy

like i said. i hate jamaican weather. i swear its like 100 degrees here! i have very few, if any, appointments that i dont show up to dripping in sweat! it was a productive day tho. we are struggling to find people but we made goals to change that. we had a lot more lessons today than we have the last few. some of the less actives, in fact its like most of them, dont come to church cause they got offended in some way. its so stupid! we need to find a way to get them to come back. lots of praying the next few days haha

Day 38 Friday

Today was super awesome! we found a family that has been less active for like 4 or 5 years. he still has a lot of faith but the trick is to get him to church. after that was the sickest thing ever! we still had to find a river for one of our investigators and we had heard that there was one kinda near there. so we went on a little adventure haha. we ended up following two kids on accident. we crossed a river and started going up a hill, which the house up there was where the kids lived i guess. we decided to turn back cause we werent getting anywhere and it probably looked really creepy that we were almost followiing them. two white guys in white shirts and ties following two black kids looks too much like the CIA i guess haha. we started going back when the mom of the two kids started calling to us "WAIT WAIT WAIT!" we got talking to her and it turns out that she had been wanting to talk to us for quite some time. a long time ago she was talking to a Rasta (non christian religion in jamaica. i think its where the HIGH stereotype come from) and she mentioned that the Mormon church was the only other church she liked. Janet, the lady who came out to us, wondered what that was. the Rasta gave her a Book of Mormon of all things! she just put it on the shelf and it had been sitting there for ages. Janet was baptised into the Seventh-Day church about 3 months ago and she said that something was off about it. she remembered that she had the BOM. she started reading it! apparently she has gotten to Moroni 8 a bunch of times but starts over when she gets there for some reason. she has not gone to the 7th day church since. they have been coming by telling her that she needs to come and she just tells them "no. i wanna see the mormons." she told us that she has been seeing us the last few weeks but has not had the courage to stop us. when her kids came to her when me and elder dalley showed up and said "MOM, THE MORMONS ARE HERE!" she jumped up and ran to us. She is super prepared! we are really wanting to teach them and so we set up 2 appointments with them! she also said that the only reason why she hadnt been coming to our church is cause she didnt know where it was or what time that it started. D&C 123:12 IS SO TRUE!!!!!!!!!

Day 39 Saturday

Finding has gone super well now. we've mostly just expanded cause more prepared people are living farther away from Port Anonio. some how, something about 2 of our investigators makes my bike and elder dalleys bike break down a bunch! both of our bikes broke down before we went there! mine broke down so bad that elder dalley got clear to there house before he realized that i wasnt there. the 10 year old that we teach tho has got a great mechanical mind and i broke down right by his house so i went there and had him help me. YES A 10 YEAR OLD HAD TO FIX MY BIKE AND I AM NOT ASHAMED HAHA! one main focus we are starting to have is less active members. the branch here isnt running the way it should so we are trying to get more Melkedzidek Preisthood holders to come. it is a main point to us to go see a Less Active each day. 

Day 40 Sunday

i dont know why but today just really sucked. i think that it was by far the worst day that i have had as a missionary. for some reason after church i just could not feel the Spirit at all. i felt really bad cause we still had to go out and teach. it got better as the day went on. i think that it was back when we went and saw Janet at the end of the day. but thank heavens for P-Day. it feels nice to have a little break and email home. i asked for a blessing so i will see what happens with that the next few days.

Thats all for this week so i will "see" everyone next week

Love,

Elder Kurt Meacham