Week 45

yo bossies wappen to yuh?!

this week has been pretty good. we had some pretty funny bike drama this week. just so you all know, i love bikes a lot more than walking, but i still really hate bikes haha. they are just really annoying when you have to fix them every single day about.

Monday 6-30-14

so we had a few more errands today that we had to run. nothing too bad. its just really hot haha. but the bad part is that we didnt even get to teach a lot today. everything mostly just blew out. we did get the bikes fixed tho thats the good thing. i really didnt enjoy walking too much and i never will lol. but then the bikes broke down again. thats why we had no appointments. elder phippen had some bad gears on the bike he has now and i got a flat tire halfway home so i had to patch the stupid thing up. man was that stressing. and the stuff we had later in the week was even worse....

Tuesday 7-1-14

Hello July!!! man its hard to believe that in 2 weeks from now, i will have been out for 11 months!!! where did the time go?! today was a pretty good day. it was super hot in the morning, as always, and cool in the afternoon, which is being more common now. its like 95 at 10am when we go out and i swear that it gets down to like 80 by 3pm. its sad how that is cool for me tho haha. 80 used to be so hot, now its like there is freaking AC in a room all the time haha. but we went and saw amoy and sister warren today. we talked to them a bit about Joseph Smith, just trying to get them all familier with the restoration. that way they can share in with their friends and amoy can be prepared for when she goes on her mission. her papers were turned in as i got here so hopefully she will have her call here soon. after we were there we went up to the Russell home and had a small lesson with them. they are pretty interested in the plan of salvation now so when we go over there we will be talking about that. we mostly just talked about scripture study today. they also want us to come over 2 more times a week and help them study from the book of mormon one day, and from the bible a different day. thats gonna be a lot of work but i think that its gonna be super fun. we also went and saw a kid named Todd. he is a pretty cool kid. when i first saw him i thought that he was a bag of jokes but after the lesson we had with him, which was on the Holy Ghost, he seems like a really sincere kid. he is just a typical 16 yer old teenage boy haha. he is sincere but just wants to be a punk and look tough. he enjoyed the lesson really well. the future with that should be pretty fun.

Wednesday 7-2-14

today was the first district meeting that ive had in santa cruz. but it wasnt in santa haha, it was in a place called junction. its like an hour taxi ride from santa. its also a bit of a small town but its pretty nice. the church there has AC and the town is super cool cause its in the mountains haha. its everything that santa cruz wishes that it was to say. it was a pretty good district meeting. just a lot of unnecessary talking. next week should be better tho. most of the appointments that we had today too blew out as well. we only saw one guy. his name is Nigel. he lives clear in the heck out there. its like a 40 minute bike ride to his house. the only reason we still teach him is cause he is very humble and we really think that him and his family can make it to church. we told him our purpose, which is to help people make covenants, and then explained about those as well.  it took basically the rest of the evening. in jamaica, if its past 7pm, its super hard to go see people cause they think that that is super late. we have to be doing something then tho. we dont take dinner till 8 so finding stuff to do then when something else blows out is never a fun thing haha. but i also got another flat tire today. that was not fun. the holes were also too far apart to patch it and we didnt have enough patches to even get the whole thing.

Thursday 7-3-14

first thing first. i went and got a new tube for my bike tire. this thing is getting really annoying haha. we are at the bike shop almost every single day it seems like. good thing that i did learn how to patch bike tires. that sure does save me a lot of money in the long run. i just wish that i coulda done it right now. that woulda helped a lot. but the back tire sucks and thats the one that was flat. there goes like $500 right there. oh well tho. we went up to amoys house. she and her mom ended up feeding us as well. that was really good since the start to our day started out SO GOOD haha. we didnt have any lessons until the afternoon tho. we went back out to Newriver (where Nigel lives) but now quite as far as before. we saw our investigator named Staysha. she is doing pretty well. she is having some questions when she reads so we mostly just answered her questions about the Book of Mormon. all she really has got to do now is come to church. i really think that once she comes to church, she will come for the rest of her life.

Friday 7-4-14

crazy crazy day for us today. we ended up not starting our super planning until like noon cause elder phippen had to do follow up calls with the sisters in junction and then we had elder and sister vance come and inspect our apartment. they didnt give us a very good grade to say the least. i think it was a bit harsh but whatever. i can still live in the thing haha. im not dead yet and thats what counts in the long run :) so we did super planning until 3 and had lunch so we didnt get out until 4pm. and we didnt really have any lessons today either. by the time we got out, we had to go buy snacks for friday night activity, and then go to the church for a planned lesson with Mickailia. that didnt even work out tho. we were going to watch the restoration video with her but a member needed to get on the computer to do something for their calling and ended up taking forever on it. by the time the member was done, it was way past time for the activity to start, which was gonna be karaoke. we then tried to get everything working on the computer, and the internet shut down for some reason. we had some back up plans for when the member was on the computer and some of the people also were outside playing a small game of football. thats soccer for all of you american people haha. but even tho it was a total disaster tonight, everyone still had fun and next week we are going to make it up to them by doing karaoke again. i think we have a way figured out so that the computer doesnt act dumb again. we're just not going to move it from the spot its in haha. and we had more bike problem today. elder phippen somehow snapped the handle bar on his bike. so now its just half of the handle bar. so guess where we get to go tomorrow. the bike shop..... again....

Saturday 7-5-14

well, elder phippen got his bike fixed today right in the morning. man was that necessary. later in the day we ended up biking out to this place called Lacovia. its like 5 miles away from santa. its so crazy far. its a beautiful ride out tho. you could probably get there in like 20 minutes or 40 if you really tried hard. the ride back is like 30 minutes, and half of it you can do in like 10. but we saw a member out there. Brother Morrison. he is a super cool guy. he told us all about his conversion story. its something like youwould never believe. i guess he just decided to read a good book one day and the first one that his hand touched one day was the book of mormon. he didnt like that at all haha. but he read it and started to just read and read. he ended up taking 6 weeks to be baptized and has been faithful since. he was the branch president of the hopeton branch a while back. then we had to bike back and have a lesson with Mickailia. it was a good lesson. we taught her the importance of receiving and answer through prayer and not on people. she understood real well and is gonna be praying about the book of moron a lot now. she is so sincere about it all and really does want to join the church. we gave her august 2nd as a baptism day and she said yes to it! im super excited for that! i wanna stay here for that so bad!

Sunday 7-6-14

church was so interesting today. it was fast and testimony meeting of course. thats never a good thing in a small branch. in the time allotted for testimonies. we had like 4 people bear "testimonies". more like talkamony haha. only 2 people were really like a testimony. the other 2 were not. one just said a lot of trials that she was going through at the time. the branch president had to cut her off or i think that she woulda gone for the whole time haha. the other one was like going to a pentacostal church. it was just "in the name of Jesus" every 3 seconds. the branch president had to cut her off too. and thank heavens there haha. the lessons we had today were pretty good. we saw a recent convert and talked about the talk that elder holland gave last conference. we also saw a guy named Devon. he is pretty sincere but also crazy. he asks so many weird and random questions that even when they are honest, they are just stuff that people should know by common sense. he is way smart tho dont get me wrong. teaching him should be very interesting haha.

well thats the week. its a lot better than last week ill say that haha. but santa cruz is starting to grow on me. its amazing how fast that an area can just be in your heart. the next however long im here is gonna be so much fun!

Love,
Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought
1 Peter 4:12-14