Week 66

Hey Everyone!

this week was pretty good. we had some unexpected things come up but still got a lot of work done. 

Monday 11-17-14

wo is it really already the 17th???? where did the time go haha. well today was pretty dang great. we got to see ritzan off. the aps came and picked him up so we went and said our "final" goodbyes haha. he will be serving here in jamaica so we will all be sing him again haha. other than that we had a pretty uneventful day today. mostly just hearing a few people about what members gossip and why someone is less active in the church now. so stupid. i hate dealing with stuff like that haha.

Tuesday 11-18-14

well i did a tradeoff with elder fowkes today so i do not know how my area really did as far as good lessons haha. but we did get to see quite a few people and even relaxed just a bit on the beach when we had just a little extra time. their area is in great shape. sometimes i wish that i could be in there haha.

Wednesday 11-19-14

well district meeting was kinda dumb today. i taught about bicycle safety. kinda just a last minute idea that i had. we all need to improve on it tho. my bike is a POC so i need to do something with it haha. we had a really good day afterwards tho. we were able to have a lesson with Joyce and Jessica. they understood the lessons really well. with joyce we read 3 nephi 11 cause she hadnt quite done that yet. with jessica we went over the plan of salvation. they were interesting in their own ways to say the least as well haha. jessica is just a 16 year old girl in jamaica that dresses a little.... bad. and joyce just talks a lot. mostly off topic. but we got it back on pretty alright. then we did some mission prep stuff with Daquon so he can come teaching with us one day and then a small thought with Sheikas mom. 

Thursday 11-20-14

well i chopped my leg off with a machet today. i am now biking around with just one foot. haha jk. but i did cut myself with a machet today. that was a weird feeling. its all healed up now tho. service  was our entire morning. it took forever cause elder halls bike randomly broke down so some guy came over and fixed it for free. i already know whats going to happen. its going to break. you get what you pay for down here for sure. we had a lesson with sister alvarenga and her daughter sonya today. they are super cool. very solid family as well. sonya is a bit less active but it looks like she is gonna get back to being active. we just have to get her converted to the gospel haha. but thats really all we did today. kinda a tough day haha.

Friday 11-21-14

The only lesson we had today was with joyce and her family. we read a bit with them and then talked about scripture study and prayer a bit. they even said that they would be at church on sunday! woo! friday night activity was the same as always. nobody really came. it was just us missionaries and sheika and 2 random members. we did a bon fire at the beach. we may not be having it anymore haha. we'll see what happens but if no one is showing up then there is no point in even having it. it will be interesting to see what happens tho with the members. they may have to do their own thing.

Saturday 11-22-14

we did service again to start off the day. it was just moving a butt ton of dirt. nothing to special haha. we were gonna try to help another member out with something but she said that we were "late" and wouldnt accept our help. i about told her off for it. we never said what time we would come and she never told us that she had to be somewhere. i just walked away from it to avoid a big conflict. elder hall then had his bicycle mash up again. knew it haha. so we will be walking for the next 2 days. we only got to see avril today. she is a tough one to break. getting to know her is super hard cause she almost pushes you away cause she doesnt know you. she was a little more open today but not by more than a fraction. the things i do on a mission haha

Sunday 11-23-14

well joyce and her family were able to come to church today! it was awesome! they said that they really enjoyed it! hopefully they can keep coming to church and they will accept a day. we didnt really get a lot of lessons in since we were walking. we saw okara, but i dont think that is really going to go anywhere. she doesnt really seem interested. then we towed all the way to sister meadows house. that means that i peadled my bike and elder hall sat in front of me steering. its pretty common in jamaica haha. we normally dont do it cause it looks like a "fish" bike. or gay haha. but it was more effective than walking to say the least. so thats really it. church was super good tho. i had to give a talk on baptism for 15 minutes, and it ended up being a 30 minute discourse haha. i need to work on my rambling skills haha.

so thats our week. we got the bike fixed so this week we wont be walking. dont know if i could do that again haha. but the mission is so great! i am so glad that i am able to be here! from the gospel to the friends i have made in Porty, Spain Town, Santa Cruz, and Yallahs, its all been so amazing. the people are the best part. i am so blessed by knowing them and having them be a part of my life. people always say that a missionary is a great blessing in their life, but more times than not, that person or that family is a bigger blessing in the missionary's life.

Love,

Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought

Matthew 10:34

ive been trying to read the standard works before i leave my mission so be sure to follow up with me every so often so that i can do it :)

Week 65

Hey everyone!

this week was pretty dang good. i had a small heartbreak, but it was picked up super fast. nothing bad haha. just the normal of being a missionary.

Monday 11-10-14

Well i started a trade off with elder adams today in kingston. he is the one from ephriam utah. he is one of the kingston ZLs so he was the one to gt me to come into kingston. we didnt really do anything today haha. we had to run errands so we got caught in Kingston Traffic. its hard having 600,000 people or so crammed into a 20mile by 25mile or so space haha. so many cars. but i did get to have a nice hot shower for the first time in forever! but i have to admit, im starting to love the cold showers a bit more haha. so today was just super relaxing. always good to have those days haha.

Tuesday 11-11-14

i was still with elder adams for a bit of today. we went and did some service in the morning for a member in the constant springs ward. didnt really do too much tho haha. then we had to drive back to yallahs to trade back. it was a good tradeoff tho. sure was a lot different than a year ago when we did a tradeoff with each other in port antonio. teaching skills have gotten a lot better. then not much happened when i got back to yallahs. so kinda a slow start to the week but it should get better.

Wednesday 11-12-14

another district meeting taught. today i did asking inspired questions in finding. i thought that it went pretty well. a bit long but oh well. ill work on that one haha. one day i wont have to teach again haha. i love sitting there more. i feel like i learn so much more. we had an interesting lesson with joyce today tho. we were just about to finish up the restoration with her when her neighbor came and started cussing her and her family out. im not fully sure what she was saying cause the "pissed of patios" is something that i cant understand haha. but the spirit was not there at that point so we had to end it. but joyce proceeded to tell us some things that we really did not need to know, but they made us laugh so hard! i thought that elder hall was gonna start rolling on the ground. the things that people in jamaica say just make me laugh sometimes haha. the end of the day was bad tho. we had our potential investigator ditch us so she could have a little bit of food. well, she may have lost her chance. i dont wanna waste time on people who do that. 

Thursday 11-13-14

we had quite a day today. our morning was quite busy. daquon is struggling a lot right now. he said that he wants to put whats happening right now on pause. we had to explain to him a bit that its not how that works. i was so mad inside. but he has his head on straight now so nothing too big to worry about for him. we also saw a members cousin. the lesson was pretty good. we found out that her baby father is like 47 years old and she is barely 16. some people just creep me out. we even had a lesson with Joyce and her family today. im really impressed with them. they all seem to want to know if the church is true. they even said that they have been praying to know since we got there. so prepared! we even got one more of her children to sit in on the lesson so we may have a lot of baptisms coming up soon! we just need to extend the day haha. things in yallahs are really starting to pick up. i try to stay busy as much as i can so that i can focus on the work. its when i sit around that i start to get depressed. amazing what happens when your donig the work of the lord haha :)

Friday 11-14-14

i think that today was the first time that an investigator really ticked me off in a long time. the only lesson we had was with sis bassett and saskalee. we were going through the plan of salvation and at the end we extended a baptism commitment. well, sis bassett got a little contentious. the spirit was so strong before that. we tried to recover from it a bit for saskalee but it wasnt quite there. she did say that she would pray about a day for baptism tho. i think it will be better if we do separate lessons. i think that saskalee is more accepting than her mom, but i still really wanna work on the mom. thinks will be interesting haha. then we did karaoke for friday night activity. it made me miss santa cruz so much haha. i really went through my camera and cried a bit. good thing that no one saw that haha. oh and how can i almost forget. 15 month mark today haha. bittersweet i guess. 

Saturday 11-15-14

well today broke my heart. we went out to Shackeyra cause no one has had contact with her in the last few weeks. well, her family is forcing her to not meet with us now. too much contention i guess. but Sheika was able to talk to her a bit and she still has a lot of desire. i think the best thing to do is let sheika keep in contact with her to be sure that she does what she needs to and still has a good connection with the gospel. i think i will lend her some money if she ever wants to go out there and visit her. we'll see what happens tho. then we went to ritzan when we came back and he told us that he is thinking of putting his mission on hold so that he can get a job and all that stuff. we talked to him a bit and just bore testimony that a mission was the best thing to do. later that night we called him and he told us that he would serve a mission. big relief there haha. his concerns were legit, but he just let them get to his head too much. he'll be a great missionary haha.

Sunday 11-16-14

Ritzan gave his farewell talk today. it was like mine. not to prepared haha. but it was better than mine by a long shot. he was sincere and didnt crack a ton of jokes haha. people in the branch are way proud of him tho. everyone was hugging him and congratulating him after sacrament so that should help him to stay out. it will be interesting to see what happens to him in the next 2 weeks haha. not much really happened other than that today. i just cant wait till next week :)

So thats the week. it seemed slow but we got a lot of stuff done. i really cant say how much that i love my mission. its by far the best thing that i have ever done. ive made so many changes and i have met my best friends out here! :D serving a mission was something to repay God, but now i owe him even more. i will never be out of debt to him!

Love,
Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought

D&C 10:5

Week 64

wagwan everyone!

this week for elder hall and i really exploded! we got a lot more work done than we did in other weeks! i guess here is the story......

Monday 11-3-14

well this week we did basketball in morant bay. it was right on the beach too! it was so freaking sick! i still sucked it up tho haha. i just get off all the time. good thing im not ever going to be an NBA player. but elder hall and i went and saw a potential missionary trying to help him with teaching skills. idk about it haha. this guy is....... interesting with his style. he leaves next week wednesday (nov 19) and im a little worried. but then we went down to georges house and were able to get a potential investigator from it. he brought a friend over and said that he wanted to share the gospel with him. so we taught him about the book of mormon as well as some points in the restoration. he seems pretty interested so hopefully we can get some appointments from it. and maybe one day a conversion haha. 

Tuesday 11-4-14

to start off today we went out to bull bay to teach shanice. we went over the plan of salvation. it was another disaster. we brought the potential missionary out with us, and he went off again. idk what to think. one day something will happen i guess. its just gonna be on his mission i think. then we went up and had a lesson with an investigators daughter. she didnt want the lesson at first but then she decided to let us in. out of pity i assume haha. but she got really interested when we were teaching her. we were able to let her kinda teach herself more or less and she seems like a really promising investigator. we just need some time to see her. she is busy in Kingston a lot so we will just need to squeeze into her schedule a bit. but those lessons, along with one or two more, kept us busy the whole day. we didnt really have any part of the day where we had to wonder where to go. if something had blown out, we had a great back up to go to.

Wednesday 11-5-14

well i taught my first district meeting today. talk about scary. and then to make it even more nerve racking, president brown showed up too. well that didnt help haha. but president talks a lot when he come to district meetings so it ended up being super good. he is a very spiritual guy haha. then we had a small interview. not really much to report on with that haha. just a check up on how i was doing. i think you guys can see how well it is haha. when we went out to teach we were able to contact a referral we got from sister loague. she is so cool! her name is joyce. she is just like a stereotypical grandma haha. she seems pretty prepared. we just need her to come to church with her family. we were also able to see Daquon. that kid has got a lot to go through but he is making some great strides so far. it should be fun seeing him apply the atonement even more in the next little while. we were also able to have a small lesson with a potential investigator. we started off just talking to her but were able to move the conversation into a lessons about our purpose.

Thursday 11-6-14

today was a bit of a tougher day. we had a lot of things that just kinda blew out on us. we had a really good day planned, but things just went a little bit down hill. we did get to see a new less active. she moved over from spanish town a little while ago but we just found her. she was in the other branch from where i was serving so i dont really know her that well. we just kinda introduced ourselves for today. next time we hope to get started back into teaching her the missionary lessons. we also were able to have another lesson with joyce. we went over the plan of salvation cause her sister/friend died like right after we left yesterday. she like it and thought that it made a ton of sense. so things are really looking up. i also had to teach a mission prep class tonight so that was a bit weird. i always feel bad when i teach these things haha. it just reminds me that i was a fisher price (wanna be) tool back home when it came to all this. i feel so bad haha. 

Friday 11-7-14

well, today was pretty lame. we had a pretty good day planned out again, and everything just blew out. i felt pretty bad too cause we brought Sheika with us and she gets pretty down when things blow out. she should be turning in her mission papers soon so she will get that on her own here soon haha. friday night activity was pretty lame again. hopefully next week it will be better. we have karaoke planned. should be better than having some teenage girls scream in my ear ;) 

Saturday 11-8-14

it was a hard day again today. the week started out good and then died out. but i look forward to having better days haha. we were able to see sister loagues granddaughter today and the lesson was pretty good. we did a restoration lesson. she seemed to understand it and even committed to being baptized. we will see what happens tho. she has been taught in the past and was dropped before for not doing anything. we were also able to see our potential investigator Lorane today too. we went over the plan of salvation. she was a bit hesitant on some parts of it but i think that she really liked it. we are gonna call her and follow up on her reading the pamphlet again soon. i really look forward to teaching her. im way jealous of her family haha. its just such a happy family. something i have not seen in a very long time.

Sunday 11-9-14

another hard day. the only lesson we were able to get in today was a lesson with our recent convert stevin. he is very knowledgeable in the gospel so i always feel stupid trying to teach him haha. but we talked a little about patriarchal blessings and he wants to get one. it should be interesting to see that happen haha. we had like 31 people come to church today too so thats way good. i just want it to increase haha. this branch needs to be a part of the stake here soon. but it needs to be a ward first, or at least meet the qualifications to do so haha. soon come tho, soon come.

so thats the week. it started out good, and kinda died down a bit. but this next week should be really good. elder hall and i are able to keep busy and thats never a bad thing. now we just need some results haha.

Love,

Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought

1 Corinthians 2:9

Week 63

hey everyone! :D

so this week in yallahs was pretty good. 

Monday 10-27-14

today was one of those relaxing days. after we got back from morant bay we just kinda cleaned the house. so not really that much was done. i did finally get some mtn. dew so im back on that crap haha :) we didnt really get any teaching done today. our only lesson went a bit long with the talking so we just did intros and then had to go. but really i liked today a lot :D

Tuesday 10-28-14

today was so strange. i had to deal with someone having some emotional instability. thats never a fun thing. the only thing that we could really do was talk about the atonement of jesus christ. we were there for a bit of a predrop lesson but we decided that that probably would not be the best thing to do at this point. we gave a baptism day to pray about and they said that they would do it. so we will see how that goes. then after lunch we went and did some service for sister loague. we chopped a bunch of bush and then burned it. it was actually a ton of fun haha. then we went up and had a lesson with Sheikas aunt. im not sure if her prayer about joseph smith is a truly sincere one but maybe. something said tonight seemed to spark some interest so im excited to see where that leads us.

Wednesday 10-29-14

well it was zone meeting today so i had an extra week before i have to do district meeting haha. but we did have to go into kingston for it. but the meeting was super good. we had a great DLC before zone meeting that really helped get the stress of being a DL down a bit. then the meeting just had some fantastic topics that were discussed. we even got a chance to apply them when we got back to Yallahs. we had a lesson with one member in the branch that wants to serve a mission. we were asking him some pretty inspired questions and the lesson was absolutely awesome! the spirit was so strong. the member has got to go through a lot of things before he can go on a mission but i have so much faith that he will be on a mission one day! he is willing to do whatever it takes to get on one. its gonna be awesome to see what he goes through in the next 6 months. i also got my spark back for being out here so that feels super good as well.

Thursday 10-30-14

we had a super good day today. but it didnt really start until the evening. the majority of the day we saw some less active members. a lot of things blew out so things were a bit rough in the morning. but the evening made it worth the wait. we went out and did some finding in the scheme we live in and met a young lady and a male. they started to talk to us and brought up the church really fast. they dont know much about it but they asked us why we serve missions and what makes us different from everyone else. so we basically taught them the whole restoration while walking to their home! then the girl asked us what happens to marriage heaven and we freaked out there! we started talking about temple sealings a bit. they seem really interested and they are defiantly some kingdom builders. i so hope that its like the time that we found Janet in Port Antonio. Yallahs is starting to boom!

Friday 10-31-14

well to be honest, things were a bit lame today. super planning was long and snackless. all of our appointments fell through. and like no one came to friday night activty. ive had better days.....

Saturday 11-1-14

wow its november already. 9 months left. thats super scary. most of our day today was filled with us being in the international day of service. but i didnt do too much haha. i was running some errands for it like the whole time with elder newcomb. but we had a good turnout. like 30 people came, a lot more than we thought. we also went out and saw shanice. well, she may be moving to negril for a job. right now we need to teach her as many lessons as possible so that she can be more ready when she goes out to negril. we'll see what happens tho haha. from the sounds of it, they were plans, not set in stone things. we had a lesson with george and leonard as well. man are these 2 great. they are so passionate about the gospel. i think every time that i have gone there they have said, without fail, i will never leave the church. its not an option." man does that feel good to hear. so wish i was like that before haha.

Sunday 11-2-14

today was pretty good. we didnt have an investigator come to church. testimony meeting was kinda scary tho. we had 2 members come up and give weird ones. one was a crazy guy, you can expect what happened there. then a member got up and just told everyone off for offending her and said "im not trying to be mean and all". people were not happy with it. i think she was rebuked in the next 2 testimonies and then after sacrament she was being pointed at. i felt bad but also, she shouldnt have done that. then most of our lessons fell through during the day again. so not much teaching really done. we did get to read with Daquon tho. i cant wait to see that kid go on a mission. he is going through so much right now and he takes it like a champ. he is gonna be a super stud missionary!

so really thats the week. not too much happened but we did get a good Cornelius experience on thursday. hopefully things can work out super well with that. but the mission is getting closer to an end, which means that i am getting closer to a bawl fest! things out here are just too good to be true, but they are true. this is something that i will never trade for anything. i would "sell everything to have the pearl of great price" that i have found here. not again at least haha.

Love,

Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought

D&C 18:38