Week 38

Wappen?

this week was pretty eventful to say the least.

Monday 5-12-14

So today we fixed our bikes for most of the day. bike safety has been a big thing in the mission since elder martin was hit a while back so i finally decided to get my bike..... ok half my bike...... fixed. i just got some new brakes on my bike. my old ones basically did not work. my tire is still retarded but im gonna leave that until it just rips completely haha. its lasted me the last 9 months so im gonna see how long that it really can last me haha. this should be fun. but i also had a dentist appointment today. i had a cavity in my tooth (i bet you guys can figure out why....... lots of bubla haha) so i had to get that fixed before it got way worse. it was pretty good tho. i was in and out of the dentist within 30 minutes. the lady was on the job for like 40 years so i didnt feel too scared. the big stick in the office had me worried tho haha ;) JK. there was no stick. but i kinda wish she did have one in there haha :D after that we went over to the McCalla house. we kinda overstayed our visit tho. oh well. they ended up feeding us and they want to feed us next week too. kinda surprises me but im good with it :) being fed by members helps me to save some money during the week haha. after that we started a tradeoff. elder layton is the district leader so he came into our area with me since i am the only person who knows it right now.

Tuesday 5-13-14

today we were super productive. maybe a little too productive tho. i think we ended up seeing all but like 2 of our investigators today. the morning was a little rough tho. we had a full morning but we went and saw a lot of old people. thats not a bad thing. but its harder for them to come to church as well. it was sister edwards, dacosta, and brother passley. they are all a ton of fun to be around but its kinda hard when they are basically our morning appointments. after lunch tho we saw a lot of investigators. first we saw Theana. she still isnt doing anything but we are really trying to build her faith so that she will do something. elder layton and i just bore our testimonys about the church and the Book of Mormon. im not really sure what more we can do than that. i think the next time we see her we will be teaching her the restoration. we didnt have too much time today. we kinda stalled her so that she would just sit with us haha. next we went and saw Gary and Nicole. we read a little bit in the book of mormon with them, just some chapters that we assigned them that they had not read yet. we then committed them to pray about the restoration. gary said that he believed it. but he still needs to pray to be honest. hopefully he will start to act on the things that we are teaching him. i really dont want to drop this family. after that we went and saw Soshana. she is super prepared! she really wants to turn her life "back" to God. we kinda just went over the Joseph Smith story and how church works. she is really interested in it. we just need her to come to church.... we'll get there tho.

Wednesday 5-14-14

Believe it or not, we didnt have district meeting today. we are actually having zone conference on thrusday instead. today was just our 2nd full day of proselyting in a row. thats never fun really. but it was ok. the first thing we did was stop and talk with JD for a bit. not really any doctrine was taught. we just wanted to stop by and see how he was. it looked like he had been down the past little bit so i just wanted to stop by and let him know that we are there for him. we did a lot of back and forth stuff for our cleaning lady as well so our morning was pretty packed with all of that stuff. after lunch we saw a new investigator. her name is Tiffany. she used to study with the Jehovah Witness but didnt really agree with their doctrine. she is looking for the truth and is really interested in what we have to teach. we just went over our purpose as missionaries and told her our expectation and got her expectations of us. it was a pretty good lesson. im looking forward to teaching her haha. then we went over and had a really good lesson with Chrsitinea. i think it was one of the best lessons that we have had with her yet. it will be very fun to continue helping her progress toward going to the temple.

Thursday 5-15-14

today was Zone conference over in Kingston. it was crazy to get over there. our bus was pulled over, like all buses, and was stopped for like 45 minutes. we didnt walk into the chapel in Kingston until like right before the meeting started. it was kinda a weird meeting for me too. Elder Dalley, my trainer, goes home this transfer so it was one of the last times that i will get to see him. but zone conference was super good. there was so much stuff said. one topic that stood out to me is the topic of patience. it something that i am going to be working on through the rest of my mission. the main topic of the whole thing tho was making a good first impression and then keeping that impression when we teach people. it was a very interesting concept. i thought back to something that an english teacher told me, "first impressions take 30 seconds to make, and 3 weeks/months to change". really goes to show you how important it is to make a good first impression. we are really going to be focused on that now. afterwards we went to a place that i have not been in like 10 months. WENDYS!!!!!! it was so good to be having that food again. i wish that i was in Kingston more so that i could go to places like that! the only thing we have here is KFC, Tastees, Juicis, and Pizza Hut/Dominos. but anyways. we didnt even get to teach for the whole day at all. we got back at like 7pm and had to go over to the Branch Mission Leader for a meeting. only then did we find out that the meeting was cancelled and the other missionaries didnt tell us. we ended up having to walk home. that kinda ticked me off to say the least. but really, that was our entire day.

Friday 5-16-14

today was kinda just a normal friday for us. we had the cottage meeting, had a great meeting with the campbells and all that stuff. the main thing that was different today was we had a lesson with Tiffany again. we wanted to go over the restoration but all of her questions led us to going into the Book of Mormon. she is super interested in it. we gave her the introduction page and the testimonys to read. then she is gonna start flipping through it and see what it is all about haha. i think you all know what that means here soon :)

Saturday 5-17-14

today we started out with service. christinea wanted to hang out with us so we took her around too. well, we couldnt find any service to do so we just chopped her yard. it was starting to get pretty long and with the 3 of us, it didnt take too long. only like 2 hours to get most of it done. one day we will go back and get the rest of it haha. after that we went and saw the McCalla family again. well actually it was just Sherefah but still. she opened up to us a lot. she told us some things that she felt pretty guilty for. its nothing bad. it just sounded a lot like me of when i was at home. its interesting how people out here realize what they are doing a lot sooner than me. i didnt realize till i was out here and they get to see it when they are 13 or so. lucky them i guess. but it rained for the rest of the day so we ended up spending the rest of the day in the house. no campbells tonight. darn it!

Sunday 5-18-14

i better tell you guys who is coming down to dedicate the stake here soon. so on June 7th and 8th we will have.......drumroll please............ ELDER HOLLAND FROM THE QUORUM OF THE 12 APOSTLES!!!!!!! he will be down her to dedicate the stake then and everyone is super stoked out of their minds!!! im dont think that he will have any meeting for the missionaries but we will get to see him live. the sad part, only missionaries in the stake boundaries get to see it and only the missionaries in spanish town, old harbour, linstead, and portmore get to be there live for it. everyone in Kingston has got to go to the kingston chapel to watch it from a live feed. hopefully i am not emergency transferred before then! i might just call and say no if i am tho haha. i want to be here so bad! but today was pretty good. we finally got to see Kayann. all it took was us going over there to see Britteny before Kayanns visiting teachers came over haha. hopefully she will be active with people like that coming to see her. we kinda just sat and listened to what they had to say. we also had a really good lesson with the campbells, as always haha. we watched the John Tanner story with them and talked about consecration. we also had a really good lesson with brother cardoza. he hasnt been to church a whole lot and president britton, the branch president here, wants us to really get him active. him and brother passley will be more of a focus for us now.

so thats my week. it was pretty eventful when i go back and look haha. i didnt think there was so much stuff but i guess that there was. im just super excited for the stake to come here! all the missionaries are super excited for it. its gonna be quite change for us. now we will have to start to listen to 2 people, the mission president, and the stake president haha

Love,
Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought
2 Nephi 31:19-21