June 1, 2009

Family,
Well this week has been good. I am currently sitting in the Email shop and this strange old white guy who looks like a crazy professor keeps coming over to me and quoting random scriptures that he knows and telling me how good the book of mormon is, he is absolutely crazy but it is giving me a good laugh.
I got a new preach my gospel, which has been good. I like not having a water damaged one held together with bits of tape. I am still keeping both. The water damaged one gets taken to district meeting weekly so that if it rains I don't have to worry. My new one is for personal/companion study only so that it stays nice.
I had to give another talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. It went very well, I was quite pleased with my talk and managed to use a decent amount of time. By the time I get home I will have had enough practice to go on for hours haha. I also got to be the chorister for church, it isn't very hard, we have pretty lousy singers in our branch, but it makes for some good laughs when they start making up their own tune.
I don't think I have any random things for the day, I have had a fairly generic week and haven't really run into any problems or things I need so that's good I guess. Thanks for the Line of Authority dad. The Deck is looking good and it sounds like things go well at home. The Family history thing sounds like it will be really nice! Our branch is holding a fireside next week on Family History.
This week we have been working with 2 investigators a lot and then a handful of others. Yesterday at church we had both of our investigators there. A man named Tim and a women named Sis. Hylton. Tim is 27 years old, single, intelligent and a bit weird. He always says "It's not a problem" to about everything so we never really know what he is thinking. Things are looking really positive for him, he has a smoking problem but we are working on that one right now. He wants to be baptized and he really has no concerns. The biggest thing is going to be the smoking. We see him everyday and are really working hard with him, it goes well.
Sis. Hylton is a bit older, like 52. She is also very intelligent. Has really long dreads and lives out in the middle of nowhere. She is really good. Turns out that she is related to 50% of the branch so church went very well, she told us that she is coming next week and might even bring some of her daughters and sons! Her biggest concern is that she has been baptized previously and doesn't see the need to rebaptize. So most of our lessons have been around the priesthood but I think she is beginning to understand the big picture and the need to have baptism done by the priesthood.
We are excited for Negril! It is a very difficult area, their hasn't been any baptisms in nearly a year, it needs to see some progress soon! We are losing a lot of missionaries and not getting as many as are leaving so they are closing the less effective areas. Negril isn't on the list yet but if they keep losing missionaries then it will get on the list if something doesn't happen!
Things are going well here. E. Hillam and I are doing well together, we get along really well, even if he is an extreme University of Utah fan. He goes home in like 2.5 months but is still working really hard! We are seeing some good success together. This week we have found some really good people. We met a lady named Nikola, she had 4 children.. Nikolette, Nikroy, and 2 others that I forgot, but they all began with "Nik" it was really confusing and hard to keep straight who was who.
This week has been fairly normal. We haven't had anything out of the ordinary or of interest happen. I am not 100% sure where to go from here.
Bro. Mitchell makes me laugh. He always wears white! He drives a white truck, owns his own car shop and does really well in life, but even when he is working on cars he wears all white, I have never seen him put on anything else. His shoes are white, his watch in white, everything is white. His house used to be all white, inside and out until he got married. Then Sis. Mitchell had the missionaries come over and paint the outside of their home pink and the inside has a green and white pattern going on.
I have been studying a lot about the life of Jesus Christ and a good amount from Preach my Gospel. Personal study time is still my very favorite time of the day. I enjoy going out and teaching and all the other random things that have to be done daily but the one hour in the morning where I just sit down and study is the best. I always use my lunch time as extra study time, eat a quick lunch and then get back to studying. Formally the missionaries took quick naps during lunch, because we get 1 hour of lunch time but then president gingery said no more naps.
I still haven't gotten around to getting pictures printed but that is today's task! Sis. Mitchell wants some pictures I have of her sons birthday party that I took so I need to get those printed and while I am at it I will just get all my pictures that I want done.
I am running out of useful stuff to say, I feel like I am just rambling along. I am excited for lunch soon, I ate all my breakfast food and I didn't want ramen for breakfast so I just had water haha.
Well in the last 5 minutes microsoft word has started acting all crazy and delted my email I was writing. Thankfully I was able to recover it with a bit of effort, had me worried for a minute that I was going to have to send a really short moderately useless email! haha.
Well I am glad that things are going well back home. Jamaica is very good. I can't believe that it is already June, May is gone. This transfer will seem to fly by because it is short due to our new mission president coming. they are doing some crazy thing with transfers. I hope you all enjoy the start of your summer vacation! I am nearly out of time, tell everyone hi for me. I love you all!
-Elder Kent Talbert