Week 33

Whappn everyone!?

this week in jamaica was pretty good. Elder Norman and I hit 20 lessons! i havent had that my whole mission so i was pretty stoked. we even hit that on friday night. we didnt get too much done afterwards tho haha. it was a pretty relaxing week to tho. i feel like we really didnt do much but we still got a lot done. not really sure how that works but ill take it haha.

Monday 4-7-14

Today was a super relaxing P-Day. the people in the living scheme we are at have started to fix up some basketball hoops. once they are done we are going to start shooting in the mornings. right now they arent done and its too hot in the afternoons to go play. mostly what i do now is i watch 17 Miracles. its a good thing to do on a day where all i want to do is relax haha. once we went out teaching tho, we went over to Jay and talked to him about the Godhead. his beliefs are, of course, not what the church says it is. we started to "reason" with him about it. we ran out of time so we are going back tomorrow to continue on the subject. after that we went over to the Campbells house and finished up the topic of Womenhood. it was pretty funny to be honest. we just had them watch Elder Christoffersons talk from October 2013 Conference and then brother campbell made his family summarize what the talk said haha. after that we went over to Nakeithas house for dinner. and that was our day haha. pdays are always just super short with teaching. sometimes i wonder how effective they are. but oh well. gotta do what ya gotta do right

Tuesday 4-8-14

Today was just an interesting day. we saw a few members today. the main thing we did with them is follow up on conference. we asked if they had watched it or not and then just talked about their favorite talks, if they saw them, and ours whether or not they had seen it. Its amazing what conference can do for lessons for missionaries. the week before we teach about prophets, and the week after we just follow up on how everything was haha. later in the day elder norman and i were in a little bit of a hole. we had no one to go see and we still had like 90 minutes until our next appointment. plus, we were just super far from everyone. well we remembered one thing. we never scheduled in dinner for us. we were right by a cook shop we always go to so we just kinda thought, "well, now we're hungry" haha. we rode up there and ate. that cook shop just saved the day for us haha. then we went over to Jay again. this time the lesson did not go so well. the lesson got really contentious at the end. lets just say that i am never going to have "reason" for a lesson plan again. we need to always be sure to teach doctrine. we are going to give it a little while before we go back there. its not cause jay was mad, its cause we got super ticked....

Wednesday 4-9-14

i was very tired today haha. first we had district meeting at the church, which is like a 15 minute bike ride from our area. luckily we got a ride from the ZLs to it. ill get to why i said that in a bit. then we went back to our area and saw Brother Passley, the former Branch President from years ago. like clear back in the 80s. he is a little less active right now. we went down there and talked about Bishop Stevensons talk from conference. i always enjoy talking about that one. it really puts in you mind just how important this life really is. but he loved the lesson. we then had nothing else to do. all of our appointments blew out. so a couple of hours later. we called a former investigator from a while ago and saw her. but she was clear back up at the church! she lives in our area, but is mostly outside of it all the time. so we rode clear back up there, taught her a lesson that was mostly just seeing what she remembered and going over our purpose as missionaries, and then rode all the way back to our living scheme. in all, that lesson, with travel time, took us around 90 minutes to do. man was that hard haha. but then we had a good lesson with Christinea about knowledge. its interesting how knowledge is important in this life. and not just book smart stuff. just knowledge in everything. D&C 130:18-19 i think gives a really good explanation why.

Thursday 4-10-14

to give one word on how this day was: LONG! we did a lot of work tho. elder norman and i saw a lot of people over the course of our teaching hours. it didnt start off to well tho. we thought that we were going to be having some interviews with President Brown today. well we got in a taxi to go to the church, we really didnt want to bike haha, and then got a text from the APs. they said that something came up in the mission that pres had to go to so our interviews were going to have to be rescheduled. we had a big facepalm on that one haha. we told the driver to drop us off right where we were and then we just walked home. we werent too far but it still sucked having to walk home like that. then we had a lesson with an investigator later in the day. her name is Terryann. we are pretty excited to teach her cause its the first person that we have found in a long time. we taught her about the Godhead. she is still a little confused with it but we will get there one day with that haha. one other good thing with this week is that we are finding more people to teach. the bad thing is that most of them can only see us on certain days of the week so we cant really just go and check them all the time. but we are excited to have more people to teach and we wont complain about that haha. thats all for exciting things today sadly. man i may have pumped this week up too much haha ;)

Friday 4-11-14

i have realized one thing out here on a mission. i dont know what a weekend is anymore haha. or at least i dont know what one feels like. i always loved having a few days off to do things but now i dont even get that. i dont even get a full day haha. it just sounds kinda nice right now you know. but anyways today we hit the 20 lesson mark! of course it includes teaching recent converts and less actives but we still had 20 total lessons hit! out main lesson today was at a cottage meeting that a member holds every friday night. we usually dont get too many investigators there but today Raheem came and joined us. the thing that we talked about was, you guessed it, conference. sister wright is the one who planned the lesson tho so its ok haha. we talked about all of our favorite talks. its always way cool to see how something sticks out to someone so much more than it did to you. i guess thats why they never just go and throw down on the same subject. they all speak on different things haha. Raheem didnt quite understand a prophet so sister wright kinda explained that a bit (music to missionaries ears haha). he said that he was feeling way good inside with the whole thing so we are excited more to teach him haha. he is not the fastest learner so its taking a little longer with him but patience is key i guess. we also have started to play basketball in the mornings. i must say, it feels so good to play again haha. maybe this time i can get back my "Elder Baller" status haha

Saturday 4-12-14

Today was pretty good. we went back over to Terryann today and taught her about the Restoration. she was asking really good questions through the whole thing so that was super cool. we also asked her to be baptized when she finds that what we teach is true. she said she definitely wants to be baptized into the truth. we were pretty stoked with that comment haha. we tried to commit her to May 3rd. she said that she would think about it. cant really blame her with that haha. once she learns more i think it will be a better desire. we also found one more person that we can go teach. i guy named Anthony. he called us over and asked us the golden question, "why are there so many different churches and why are they all confusing?" we started answering his questions and gave him a Book of Mormon. he seems pretty interested to learn more. he said that he just wants to learn about God and Jesus Christ. he is "not a church person" tho so we will need to work on him coming to church at some point. for the lesson with the campbells tonight we just watched 17 miracles with them. it was a good time to just kinda take a break.

Sunday 4-13-14

so some really big news.... JAMAICA IS GOING TO HAVE ITS VERY FIRST STAKE!!!!!!!! the application for a stake got approved and the very first stake conference will be June 7th and 8th!!!! this has been expected for a long time, a little longer than i have been here, and now its actually happening!!!!!! everyone is super stoked!!! i cant wait for an apostle to come down here and dedicate it!! but other than that it was a typical sunday haha. it was fast sunday too for us. that was a little hard. fast sundays are always just a little bit longer than normal. they can get pretty hard to get through but i made it though it haha. appointments today were really hard. everyone just cancelled on us. the only appointment that we had today was with the Carter family. we went up there and just shared stuff from conference again. the carters are a way cool family. their children love us too haha. of course they are like 6, 5, and 3 but ill take it. they always try to play with us when we are over there. after that we just went in and had dinner cause we were starving.

so all in all this week was really good. the stake being approved was by far the best news of all time! im so excited that i get to be here first hand for the best church news to hit jamaica so far! the only thing that is ever going to beat the news of the stake is the news of when a temple comes here. right now its a little far from that but hopefully in the next 10 years it will be more than ready for a temple. i cant wait for STAKE CONFERENCE!!!! WHOOO!! haha

Love,
Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought
4 Nephi 1:11-18