Week 70

Hey everyone whats up? MERRY CHRISTMAS ON THURSDAY!!!!!!!

so this week we finally had a baptism! so freaking sick!!!! 

Monday 12-15-14

pday was super fun today. we went out to morant bay to play basketball. its been so long since i have last done that. or at least it feels like forever haha. it started raining on us right at the end too so that made it even more fun. then after emails we went and did arm ball at the church. that sport is dang fun! im gonna have to be sure to take that sport home and play it with everyone haha! teaching today we saw sister stanley and george. sis stanley is way cool. she is one of the nicest people i have ever met. she just needs to be coming to church more often. we committed her to coming more so that she has the possibility of working in the temple one day. idk if that is going to happen or not but at least she can be ready if the chance comes. we also had the zone leaders stay over night so that they can give alwayne his baptism interview tomorrow. so that was the pday really haha.

Tuesday 12-16-14

well today i was with elder england for a tradeoff. he did the interview for alwayne and alwayne passed big time. so everything is now set in stone for his baptism on saturday. we also had a thought with sheika. to not a lot of teaching really done today. we had to coaster into kingston to end the tradeoff too so elder hall and i had to run some errands in down town. when we got back we just did some mission prep. so not a super eventful day. 

Wednesday 12-17-14

well it was district meeting again today. it was pretty alright. i am kinda getting dead on teaching them now haha. i kinda hope that someone else comes to yallahs to take my spot as DL haha. nothing really big happened today tho. we're a bit worried about joyce tho. she is not reading like at all. its been over a week since we last saw her and she didnt read one thing. we might have to drop her soon if she doesnt pick up the reading. then our family home evening ended up going into some doctrine mentioned in the King Follett Sermon. so that was probably the most interesting thing all day haha. i think that with christmas eve being next week, we'll have a lot more fun tho haha

Thursday 12-18-14

well we had another day of long biking. we did about 7 miles by 1pm today. we went up to easington for a lesson, and then dropped right down into Albion. it was a good lesson thank heavens haha. we will see what happens with the next time that we go there. then there are some members that are really starting to piss me off. one is just making a bunch of excuses of why they arent at church and the other one is just all talk. they dont do anything. the family for them is not in a good spot right now. then we went and had a lesson with sonya on the plan of salvation. we went pretty in depth with it so we only got to the atonement. but it was a really good lesson. i thought that sonya was feeling something during it. i felt the spirit so hopefully everyone else was too. the next lesson should be way good.

Friday 12-19-14

today was pretty good. out leson with alwyane was good. he had to leave so he kinda rushed the lesson. then we had a lesson with some other guys. they are still potentials so we will see what happens. but friday night activity was fun. we did arm ball, and then some dominoes. we got daquon to talk with elder newcomb too at last. hopefully that will help him out. im just super stoked for alwynes baptism tomorrow right now tho!

Saturday 12-20-14

not a lot of teaching today but we got what matters most! A BAPTISM!!! alwayne was baptized in the ocean in the morning. it was so sick. elder newcomb did the baptism and they were being knocked around by all the waves haha. it was pretty funny to see. if they had said the words at the right time, the wave may have baptized him its self haha. but everything went super well. then we had the branch christmas party. we were there for about 6 hours to help out with anything that needed to be done, as well as party with the branch. people were having a good time tho. it was a big success. i think around 70 or 80 people came so we had a great turn out. super fun day really haha

Sunday 12-21-14

well we confirmed alwayne in sacrament meeting today. i was the one who confirmed him. it was a bit scary haha. i have never done that before. but everything went well. i didnt mess up on the words somehow. now the only thing left for me is to personally baptize someone. but im fine if that doesnt happen haha. other people should do it :)  church was pretty good tho. we are starting to go down in numbers, so thats not good. hopefully we can get more people to come tho. we also went to a meeting for george today. we may be doing a lot of service for him. the government kinda screwed him over so he is losing his house in a week. things are starting to get really interesting in yallahs i guess haha.

so thats the week. i enjoyed it a lot. having a baptism is always the best thing ever. its been a long time comin for alwayne as well. now we just need to get him out on a mission in a year haha. its so crazy to think i have been out here for 16 months already. it feels like just yesterday that i was home playing nba 2k haha. its gonna be a sad day in august. but at the same time, i cant wait to go home so i can come back to jamaica and see everyone!!!! Jamrock for life baby!!! haha :D

Love,

Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought

The Christmas Story

Week 69

well wa gwan everyone?

this week was pretty eventful. i got the news of grandpa dying on Tuesday. that was a pretty big shock. but thankfully the gospel tells us there is more to look forward to. im doing pretty alright with it all. but anyways.... here is the week....

Monday 12-8-14

today was so stressful. we went into kingston to shop at price smart. its like a costco for down here. i dont know why i always get excited to go to places like that and megamart. they are still way expensive cause you have to buy it all in bulk. plus i think the food will last about the same amount of time. of course, i still have it so im doing pretty good with it all haha. we had a good night teaching when we got back tho. we had to hurry up to joyces house and have a games night there. it was very relaxing for her. a lot of stress seemed to come off of her shoulders with it. then we went down to george and leonard for a short spiritual thought. i always love going there. they are extremely humble people. i love seeing their love for the gospel and the commitment to always live it. so a stressful start, to a relaxing finish i guess haha.

Tuesday 12-9-14

we got quite a bit of work done today. we were able to watch the restoration dvd with sister loague. that was really good. she said that we always come with something that she is thinking of. sometimes knowing peoples concerns helps a bit haha. then we had a realy good lesson with Shashay today, the girl we had a different lesson with on sunday. she ended up reading all of the plan of salvation pamphlet, marked it up, answered the questions in the back, and put a little part of it on Facebook!!! man it was awesome to see! we had a really good lesson with her too. there was a small interruption that drove the spirit away but she still understood it super well. prepared people are the best!

Wednesday 12-10-14

well.... today was pretty crappy. we started out going to alwayne and having him teach us a lesson on alma 56. he did a super good job. he is gonna be a fantastic missionary when he is baptized. so that was really good. and we even had a really good talk/lesson with sister grant. man is she a saint. i am convinced that she will be going to the celestial kingdom. she is just so nice to everyone, and sacrifices so much to go to church and help people. she is always at church no matter what. but the day fell apart from there. i found out about grandpa during this time. that was a complete shock. but as i said before. im doing pretty well with it. it looks like he died in a good way. just went out peaceful. the rest of the day we didnt really see a lot of people. we had a good family home evening with sister alvarenga about revelation. thats really about it tho.

Thursday 12-11-14

we had zone conference in kingston with elder martinez of the 70 today. it was super good. it was more of a discussion about a talk we were supposed to read. but i forgot to read it haha. guess i better get to reading it here soon haha. then we got all of our christmas gifts. i opened mine pretty fast (sorry mom haha ;) ) i was pretty stressed out today for some reason. not really sure why. hopefully by tomorrow it can just settled down so i can have a good day.

Friday 12-12-14

well we only saw daquon and alwayne today. we went up and read a little bit of alma 34 with daquon. he wanted to go in and play some video games so we only got to read like half of the chapter with him. not really too much you can do there. then we went over and alwayne teach us again. this time we had him go from alma 32. once again tho, he did a fantastic job. he teaches things very simply, asks inspired questions, and relates it to the person he is teaching very well. he makes me feel like a bad missionary haha. we gave him prayer as a topic that he needs to teach us on now. hopefully we can take him teaching with us real soon. for friday night activity we ended up having a rap battle. of course i stayed out of it haha. i cant rap worth a crap ;) but it was prety fun haha :)

Saturday 12-13-14

we saw a lot of people today. probably around like 7. but only like 4 of them really were numbers. oh well. they were still effective lessons so i cant complain about that at all :) the big lessons that we had were with daquon and sonya. with daquon we went up and read with him. we just finished the last part of alma 34 with him. he seemed to learn from it. hopefully he will apply it tho. he needs to talk to elder newcomb about some stuff really bad right now. the good thing is that he is one of the only people that i see that really let the scriptures speak to him. he really learns a lot from them and can really feel the spirit talking to him when something comes up. its way cool to see. then our lesson with sonya was interesting we read from alma 47 to start out. then we got onto her going to some parties, to having good friends. everything is good with her really. we somehow got onto the topic of our life stories too. not much for me to really say haha. i was a sheltered child :) i was a bit worried that it was too off topic but she didnt hesitate to say the closing prayer so i guess it was all worth while haha. building relationships with people is one of my favorite things down here. i never want to bring random people to the gospel. just my friends and family. mostly family tho haha. i dont have friends down here. just family :)  right now i just really want alwayne to come to church tomorrow. if he comes then he can be baptized.....

Sunday 12-14-14

ALWAYNE CAME TO CHURCH!!!!!!!! WE ARE GOING TO BE HAVING A BAPTISM THIS SATURDAY!!!!!  im so stoked for that! its been way too long since i have seen a baptism. he is so ready for baptism and i cant wait for it to happen! elder hall and i had to go up and rebuke daquon tho. he didnt come to church cause "he didnt feel like it". we gave him a good chastisement but also did it very lovingly. if he doesnt come to church next week then i am going to hit him over the head with a rock. well maybe not that bad, but im gonna want to hurt him bad haha. we had to do a lot of tracting today tho. a lot of things blew out so we just tried to hand out some pamphlets and cards.

so thats the week. one thing i love down here is meeting prepared people. whether it be a young adult in porty, a family in spanish town, a teenager girl in santa cruz, or a young male in yallahs, its the best thing ever! they always end up being such great friends and family to me! i just cant wait to come to jamaica again to visit everyone without time restrictions haha!!!!

Love,

Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought

2 Nephi 31:18

Week 68

hey everyone!

we have been in Kingston for some shopping today. thats why this is so late. so i dont have my journal with me so it may be a short email today. we did a lot of biking tho. we went to a place called Llandeway. look at the directions on google maps and you can see how far it is haha. too far for me

Monday 12-1-14

well we went and talked with sheika for a bit today. i dont really remember what happened. all i know is that it was pday and it was a bit relaxing. at least i hope that it was haha.

Tuesday 12-2-14

today i did a tradeoff with elder newcomb in his area. with transfers tomorrow, i had to get one more in so it was officially in the transfer haha. it was pretty fun. we were able to see quite a bit of people during the day. it seems everytime i go into their area its a good day haha. maybe that can happen for ours here soon. we had a good week, but we get pretty average days.

Wednesday 12-3-14

in district meeting i taught about D&C 20:37. we went really in depth with all of the qualifications. it seems like it was super good. hopefully it helped the other elders tho. today we were able to see joyce. we went over the family proclamation to the world a bit cause she isnt getting along with her family. idk whose fault it is, but its pretty stupid. it was an alright lesson. joyce read finally. and she was really into it. now we just need to get her reading everyday. we were also able to have a family home evening with sister alvarenga again. we showed the thing that we did on sunday. it went alright. sister alvarenga seems way excited to share the gospel with this christmas thing so i guess that i cant complain haha.

Thursday 12-4-14

well today was the day that we biked out to Llandeway. that was a far bike ride. we had some appointments blow out so elder hall and i decided that we would just go on a road until we felt like we had to stop. well, when we felt like it, it was time to go back for lunch. we didnt see a lot of people out there but the land sure was pretty. its worth a drive when i come back haha :) we were able to see daquon today. that was a good lesson. he is really back on track. he told us that he would be early to church this sunday. as long as we talk about what he knows is going to help him, the lessons are always super good. we also saw Alwayne today. we had a lesson on tithing. really he knows it all. he just needs to come to church 2 times in a row to be baptized. he wants to do it so hopefully he starts to act more on it. then we went and talked with george for a bit. he is going through a rough time so we just went down to help him out a bit. things in yallahs are going pretty good.

Friday 12-5-14

haha man was today interesting. we dropped sister bassett today. she is just too hard hearted. she wont act on anything we teach her so there is no point in going back there. we said some other things to her but thats for a different conversation haha. then our lesson with joyce was pretty bad. she didnt really want a lesson so we just read with shantoy. joyce eventually joined us and we left them with some homework. friday nigh activity was awful too. we had a big spirit of contention there with a lot of things. first sheika was mad and i had to talk to her about it. then i got pissed and basically didnt talk to any missionaries for the rest of the night. not the best day in the world.

Saturday 12-6-14

today we had a really good day for numbers. we went to alwayne and went over d&c 20:37 with him. he is all set. we had a small concern about that but we figured everything out in the lesson. then we went and had a lesson with daquon. we wanted us to read something from the book of mormon with him that he came across on friday night. so thats what we did. it was alma 32. he seemed to like the first part of it more. kinda rare, but i think i might too haha. its so cool. we kinda got kicked out of a lesson tho. we just kinda pushed someone outta their comfort zone and they kicked us out in a very nice way. i felt bad about it. i talked to the person at church about it and they said that nothing happened then. idk about that but ill take it i guess. we still have a good relationship with the person so im not too worried.

Sunday 12-7-14

we ended the transfer off really good. we had alwayne come to church, so that means that he only needs to be on time one more week and he can be baptized! super stoked with that! we also had a lesson with a new person. it was pretty good. we will see what happens on tuesday tho to see if we keep going back there. we also saw sonya today. the main thing i learned there is that i need to shut up haha. ever since i have gotten to yallahs i have been a freaking chatter box. i will probably be having elder hall talk a lot more. i need to allow other people to talk and also the spirit. when i speak, there is almost no time for someone to really listen to the spirit. sometimes its just me rambling on about nothing. this week i will be controlling that tho.

so we had a good week i would say :) we hit 20 lessons and the district had some good effective numbers as well. time on my mission is going by way fast all of the sudden. sometimes i wish it would be faster but most of the time i just wish it would slow down haha. the mission is just too much fun. i have found more members of my family down here. all my friends here are a part of my family. its almost like i just belong here in jamaica. haha we'll see tho. maybe ill just retire to here :)

Love,

Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought

1 Corinthians 15:54-57

Week 67

Hey everyone!

so transfer calls were this week. i will be in Yallahs still. hopefully for a little while longer haha. it would be so awesome!!!

Monday 11-24-14

Today started out really relaxing. i was able to take a nice long nap for my pday. pday is the only day that i will ever take naps cause if i do it any other time, i have no motivation to go out and teach and i just feel like crap. gotta take advantage of the times i get right haha. we didnt get any lessons in today cause we ran into a situation with the tithing. everything was eventually figured out so its all good. but kinda just a boring day in that aspect.

Tuesday 11-25-14

oddly enough our morning was a lot better than the rest of our day. it was still pretty hard tho. we had a lesson with jessica on prayer, and it did nothing. the spirit was not there i i dont think that she payed any attention the whole time. her prayer at the end sounded like she didnt learn a single thing. we'll have to go over that again at some point. our lesson with daquon was quite good tho. we did another role play with him, this time on prophets. he is super good at teaching haha. at least better than i was before my mission haha. once he is a missionary he will be a stud. he is very motivated from YSA so hopefully he can stay on this path that he got on.

Wednesday 11-26-14

zone meeting was pretty good. i didnt write down a whole lot of stuff but it was still pretty interesting. one thing taught was D&C 20:37. as a district leader i have to have that in my head when i do baptism interviews, when they come that is haha, so it was really good to be able to go into depth with it. we only got in one lesson and it was a small family home evening with Sister Alvarenga and some people who live around her like Daquon and Alwayne. we had a pretty good thing planned but then her neighbor started to move in so everyone started to help out with that. we only got in a short thought but it should be really good to be able to get in the habit of going there every week. im super stoked haha.

Thursday 11-27-14

we had a pretty alright day. elder hall and i were pretty excited to share a chirstmas thing that we learned about in zone meeting. its onchristmas.mormon.org if you want to check it out. its also the front thing on thelds.org page and will be the only thing on youtube on december 7th haha. its super big. we were able to share it with sister robinson and sheika today. our lesson with joyce was pretty interesting. we told her that she needs to be sure to read from the Book of mormon. we also taught her the proper way to pray. that was the interesting part haha. she seemed a little... struggling... with it but i think that the spirit was telling her that it was true. she is progressing super well. i really hope that she will soon accept a baptism day. i really want it to be in the next few lessons. pray hard haha.

Friday 11-28-14

today was a bit strange. we had 2 lessons, but neither one was one that we planned for. we had a sit and teach lesson with a guy named Omar. we taught him the plan of salvation cause he seems super attached to his son. he said that he feels like it could be true. im pretty stoked with that haha. its a start to him feeling the spirit so we can really work with that. we also had a short thought with Daquon. friday night activity was pretty good too. im just a bit tired of members who come complain that nothing is happening when they dont do much to change it. complaining is one thing that just annoys me. stop being a part of the problem and be part of the solution.

Saturday 11-29-14

we only had one lesson today cause it rained the whole time but it was a super great lesson! one of the best times i have ever felt on my mission. we went up to Sonya, a less active member, and talked to her a bit about the book of mormon. she hasnt read it in years so we just started to review it. after a while it got into how long it had been and she said that it had been a very long time since she had read. then we asked her how she felt when she was reading it all those years ago. she told us that she didnt remember that much. but then the spirit talked to her. she then remembered that when she was reading she felt very safe and she knew who Sonya was. she then said that she doesnt know who Sonya is now and she doesnt remember how to be. she started crying and left the room for a minute. man was the spirit so strong!! we committed her to reading everyday to find out who she is again. giving people a reason to change is the best thing to do. if they dont have a reason to change, they wont do it. but Sonya has something that she wants to change and something she wants to find out. she is gonna make some big steps and i am super excited to see those steps made. later we texted her to remind her to read and she already had! things are really looking up for her. the next few weeks are gonna be so great for her!

Sunday 11-30-14

church was pretty good today. not much really happened tho. we didnt really even get a lot done today. but we were able to help out a member who is in some serious trouble. he is gonna get kicked out of his house if he doesnt pay like $500 US by the 29th of december. he is struggling pretty bad with stress and depression. i so wish that i could help him. he really is just hanging on by his testimony of the gospel right now. he is such a great member. with elder newcomb being able to sign checks tomorrow, i think we are gonna try to see what the church can do to help him. he is one member of the church who deserves it completely. he is faithful, converted to the gospel, and never asks for help from the church. hopefully things can get figured out for him. we may have a lot of service planned for january but our fingers are crossed that we dont, in the best way of course haha.

so ya thats the week. there was a huge up, and a huge downer right on the last 2 days. hopefully everything will work out well for them both. but the gospel is defiantly true! nothing is ever going to change that! i hope that each one of you can be converted to the gospel! it is the fulness of Christs teachings and the one thing we can always turn too in our rough times.

Love,
Elder Kurt Meacham

Scripture Thought

The Three Pillars of Eternity by Bruce R. McConkie

(its a byu speech. i read it and thought it was fantastic!)