Family,
Well it was great to hear from you yesterday! I had a great time! The phone call was wonderful! Sorry for the short end, I had to go and do all the typical Sunday night things! Well happy mothers day again mom! Don't remember if I said that yesterday night or not! The yard is looking good Dad. Looks like you have been working really hard. I am excited to see it in a few years and what it looks like then and I am excited that it is getting done now and not while I am around!
Well first for the typical random things. Sending a package to me is free for me. I double checked and it doesn't cost me anything to receive it. I don't know if you want to send me a new memory card or not. I don't know what to do with that. I have 2 memory cards already and they can still hold plenty. I don't know if eventually I will want a new one or if I will just want to put everything on to a CD and clear a card. Undecided. A lot of the missionaries just keep getting more and more cards because it removes a lot of the complications. But I don't know yet! At the moment I still got memory space and all is well there. I don't know where my rubiks cube book is Joseph, packed away somewhere, you can try and use the internet, their are a lot of good instructions there. search on google for "Rubiks 4x4 how to solve" For the people that read my blog they won't get a ton today, I told most everything during my phone call!
Today is Preparation day, as usual, but today is the most frustrating preparation day of them all. I have a problem with my front bike tire that needs to be fixed before tomorrow, I need to do laundry, I need to shop for food, my companion needs to get some pictures printed, We need to return the phone that we borrowed from the mitchells, and not a single bit of that will be done! The Zone leaders refuse to let us not attend their dumb zone preparation day which will cost my companion and I a total of $30 US to attend and 4-5 hours of driving time. We will get nothing done today, just spend a lot of money for a potentially really dumb activity that will only last like 2 hours max. The zone leaders have more or less ruined the Negril elders preparation day, we are the only ones in the zone that have to taxi for a long time and spend a ton of money doing so. But oh well, we will get food sometime, the bike is going to be the biggest problem. It needs to be in super good working condition for a bike ride we have to make tomorrow morning to a neighboring town to teach someone that lives there. Don't know what we are going to do with that problem. We will probably just end up being late to our appointment tomorrow, I don't really see how we can get their on time.
Well this past week went good. We taught a lot of lessons. Averaged about 9 lessons a day. We haven't had the best success in our investigators but we are trying hard. Yesterday at church we had one investigator which was awesome! We haven't had one for a while. Her name is Melissa. Her and her sister both came. They are daughters of one of our active members. We have been teaching Melissa for about a week and it is going really well. Her and her sister are really smart and are doing good. They won't accept a baptismal date yet, we don't know why, that is our goal for this week. We need to figure out what is going on with them. But overall they are doing well I am excited to see how they progress.
On Saturday we went to teach a young man named Demoy. He is pretty cool. He was busy playing football (soccer) with his friends. So E. Stevens and I joined in. I was never very good at soccer, and even worse in a white shirt and tie, but It was entertaining. It rained during the whole game so water was everywhere and mud was everywhere but oh well. We will eventually get it out of our shirts.
This week coming up is Zone Meeting, so that will be great! Once a week we get together with our district for district meeting and twice a transfer we get together with the whole zone and president Gingery. It will be really good. It is always a lot of fun. It just means that I will get no sleep. In order to get there on time my companion and I have to get up really early get ready, and taxi to the meeting. But it will be good, and we will get mail which is great! Anytime someone from the mission comes from Kingston they bring mail with them which is always really exciting! That is one of the reasons why mail can take so long. It takes about 2 weeks to get to Kingston and from their it just waits in the mission office until someone comes out to our side of the island, which can be random. So it is always exciting when you know that someone is coming from Kingston.
So question for you dad, or mom if either of you know the answer. In Old Testament times the priesthood was confined to the tribe of Levi if I am correct (I could be mistaken on that fact) if that is the case then how did the Nephites and the Lamanites get the priesthood? They must have had it in one way or another but I don't know where. Obviously after Christ visited them they had it but before then, Did Lehi just happen to have it? Was he given it from a translated being (Moses or others)? I haven't found an answer yet, might not be an answer. Doesn't matter all that much as long as you know the book of mormon is true, just a curiosity that I noticed while doing a quick little study on the priesthood.
People in Jamaica love the book of Psalms, proverbs and revelation. Those are the three books anyone reads. But they do know the stories of the New Testament. Frequently we will begin telling people about Joseph Smith and learn that they think we are talking of Joseph, husband of Mary mother of Christ. They always find it amazing to learn that we knew his last name because they always thought it didn't mention his last name in the bible. It is always fun trying to explain that there is more than one person named Joseph who was of importance.
Another random story, we met a man who we tried to talk to but he just went into the dumb thing of that he doesn't want to believe the Book of Mormon could be possible. Then to make it even dumber he went on to explain how he only uses the old Testament because is an "old school guy" I think he was just very confused. I don't know if he realizes that the New Testament has all the information about Christ that he knew. A lot of people are confused with the New and Old testaments here. We have run into a lot of people who think that they are both complete bibles just different translations. They don't realize that the bible is 2 separate parts not one.
Well a bit of random Sabbath information. We always get told by people that there is no way that the Sabbath could change, that god wouldn't do that. But recently while reading I thought of the story of Abraham. Cain killed Abel and was punished, so obviously the commandment to not kill has been around since the start of man. Abraham was commanded by god to sacrifice his Son, but that would be contradictory to the commandment already given. And there are plenty of places in the Old Testament where the Propehts have destroyed the wicked (Elijah killing the 450 priests of baal, Nephi and Laban). But that would contradict the law. So either Elijah, Moses, Abraham, Nephi have sinned or nearly sinned by killing or god allowed the wicked to die so that his work could move on. So if god allowed this to happen which was opposite the given commandment why couldn't he move the Sabbath to sunday?
Well I am running short on time, hopefully their was something of interest in the email. I hope all goes well at home! Thanks for the emails and especially the phone conversation yesterday, it was the best part of my mission! Haha well dad you can send me any parables you got, I like pondering on them. Maybe next week I will go into my bike part parable that I have been working on these past few weeks. School year is nearly done for you all and I hope that it goes great! Don't let the stress get to you to much! I am glad that Alex has gotten his mission call! When does he leave?
I love you all, keep up the good work!
Elder Kent Talbert
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