June 8th, 2009

Family,
Well this week has been good. The deck looks really nice! I like it! And Laura it sounds like you had a pretty sweet week! So where to begin! There is a lady in our branch named Sis. Whyte. She was always really nice and seemed to know a lot, her comments in class were always really good, but I never really knew much about her. Last Sunday she invited us to come and eat dinner at her house on Thursday. It was really good! Lots of different fresh vegetables (something we don't really get in Jamaica) and some decent fish. She lived in this really big really nice house. It was weird, it made us feel like we were back in the states. I learned that she use to live in the states and even worked at the temple for many years. It amazed me. Few members have been to the temple, especially in Negril, so to learn that one use to work their was very surprising. Overall it was a good experience! We have been trying to get around to visiting all the members in the branch and building close relationships with them, it helps a ton with fellowshipping our investigators and also with free food!
On Wednesday we went to our district meeting as usual, but then it started to rain and my companion went and worked on some things for his exit video that needs to be made before his mission is finished. So we got stuck in Mo-Bay till nearly 4 and then didn't get back to Negril till after 6:30 so more or less our entire day was ruined, but oh well.
Our investigators are doing really well! Tim has a baptism date of June 20th, and Sis. Hylton has a date of the 27th. Sis Hylton is amazing! She loves our message and has been sharing it with her son+daughter+family. We have been teaching her family now and had 5 investigators at church on Sunday (that is a huge amount, most areas are happy to have 2)! It was really good! Sis. Hylton has provided us with some of the best investigators we have had! Her Daughter in law Marsha is really good. She has read a ton of the book of mormon, which we gave her on Saturday, in Relief Society she bore her testimony on it (her first Sunday at church) and told us that she almost got up and bore her testimony in Sacrament Meeting! Her Daughter Loves the church and is a genius. The whole family is really easy to teach because none of them really has a set church, all can read extremely well, and they are all very willing to listen and very interested! It has been a great week working with them! We have had a terrible time finding new investigators, we only have 6 investigators but all of them are progressing and will hopefully all be baptized by the end of the month or the start of July. I am hoping for the end of the month because there is a strong chance that on the 27th (transfers) I will be leaving Negril. This transfer is short due to the new mission president but we are still managing to see some really good progress!
Well my companion and I have spent the last 2 weeks searching for a can opener. Our entire hurricane food supply is canned food, but we have no can opener and we couldn't find one at any store! Well we finally found one, it was $20 US and was still just a typical hand crank one. We didn't buy it due to its cost, we didn't see a point when in Spanish Town they sell them for $5 US. So now we have ordered one from the mission office and have to wait for 2 weeks. Just hope that a hurricane doesn't hit before then!
I have been studying a bit about the Great Apostasy and after looking at other religions and their origins, and the various councils, reformers, doctrines, and it really doesn't make sense how people can be part of all these different churches. If they would just look at everything that has gone on they can easily assume that there is a problem with religion. If I had studied all this without knowing that Jospeh Smith was a prophet I would have come to the conclusion that either He was a prophet or that there is no true church on the face of the earth. The History of the Christian Religion is just crazy and everywhere, it is illogical where so many of these different religions came from.
This week not much has really happened, we have just taught the same people a lot and tried to find new people. I don't have to much else. I did give myself a haircut this week, that was interesting and fun! I did the sides shorter than the top and then blended it nicely. It turned out shorter than I wanted, mostly because the hair clippers only had a #3,#2,#1 so I didn't have much of a choice. I would just go get it cut somewhere else but my companion likes to do his on his own and has stuff to do it with and I watched him cut his hair and I decided that I was going to have to get one on Monday so I might as well just give myself one. It would be free and I wanted to see if I could give myself a hair cut or if I would just ruin my hair and look goofy for the next few weeks. Overall it turned out nice, my companion had to do my neck, didn't dare do that on my own. I need to remember to take pictures of that sometime today.
My bike hasn't run into any problems for nearly 2 weeks now! It has been really nice to not have to repair everything. It is finally in decent enough condition that it is fine. I could always make it better but oh well. I don't want to take the time or the money. I am running low on things to say. I have just sat here staring at the screen for the last few minutes trying to think of something! Yesterday at church we had a baby blessing! It was cool! We also had a good amount of melchezidek priesthood holders at church (something we are lacking on) we had 8! 4 members and 4 missionaries! (2 of the senior couples that are going home soon were taking a tour of the island and decided to come to church with us). Jamaica is sort of close to a stake. There are 3 districts in the island and the one in the triangle which covers Spanish town, Kingston, and portmore are close! They still need a bit more active priesthood and full tithe payers. Hopefully we will have a stake some time in the next 12-18 months. Jamaica is slow going, missionaries have been here for 30 years and there is only about 5000 members and only about 2000 active members. Well time is running out! It is great to hear from you all again and I hope that this next week goes really well for you all! I am doing well and don't really have anything to complain about.
I love you all!
Elder Kent Talbert