Family,
Thanks for the emails yet again. This week has been fast and not much has happened since I last wrote 5 days ago, but I will see what I can get in here. Jamaica goes well, the temperature is still hot and the rain has been scarce.
Wow, I have written only 3 sentences and already I am drawing a mind blank as to what I should type. On Tuesday we had a Multi Zone Conference with half the mission, it was huge! The original plan was to take the Mission bus to the conference and transport all the missionaries in Kingston, Yallahs, Port Antonio, and Portmore to Spanish Town. But the bus wouldn't start and we all hoped into different vehicles instead. The Bus was later fixed by a helpful member. The conference was good. Pres. Graff spoke to us about being bold in our teaching and just reviewed a lot of things he has previously shared at zone conferences. We had pizza for a lunch and then returned to the office to get back to work.
The trunk of our car broke, I don't know how, but it just wouldn't shut. So we had a bike rack on it holding it shut and kept it like that for 2 days. Then Troy, a member who comes to the office everyday to help out, went to work on fixing our trunk. Turns out that somehow part of the latch had lowered itself or something had happened that had lowered the bumper, not really sure. But to fix it we took a ratchet strap, hooked it to the latch, tied it to a tree and then began to tighten the strap until it lifted the latch back into place and straightened everything out on the car. I really like using ratchet straps, they come in handy in many situations.
On Thursday we had an Elder flying out and so we got put in charge of taking him to the airport. His flight left at 6:40 am, we got up at 4:00 am to get everything and drive to the airport. It was a long day, but in the evening Sister Graff fed us dinner and we were happy. Then Elder Griffiths, who had been with sister graff, came with us for the rest of the night. Then Friday his companion was back in town and so we had to go and get him from the Graffs and got fed dinner again! It was good, we had Mexicanish food for both meals, it was nice to have something other than rice and chicken for a day.
We don't really have much in our investigator pool, we have only taught like 3 lessons this week, the office work has been keeping us busy. In our teaching we have been focusing a lot of just reading the book of mormon. Those who actually take the time to sit down and Read a chapter a day make enormous amounts of progress and feel the spirit a lot more than those who just make up excuses as to why they didn't read, or read half a verse a day.
Elder cheesman has a spreadsheet that I made that has all the landlords, the account numbers, info on when to pay the bills, addresses, to do lists, etc. It was quite simple and nothing fancy. But then Elder cheesman had some ideas he wanted to try and implement into the sheet. He always fills in the Cell of the Landlords name with a pink color, after he has paid the bill and types in the amount paid. At the bottom he has different sheets for different months so he can track how much is paid per month and so he can see differences. But he wanted a way where he could just click on the land lords name, have it fill in with color and then take him to the cell where the amount gets paid. I created a button that did that and put it at each of the bill payments, one for water and one for power. So now it worked nicely, he just had to click a button and it would color the cell, and take him to the correct cell for amount paid. (due to how the spreadsheet is organized it is not a straight line, the landlords info on water and power bills is farther down the spreadsheet from where the amount paid cells are located). Now at the end of every month he just makes a new sheet and copys the last months sheet in there. The only problem is that all the amounts paid are filled in, things are colored according to when paid, or if paid at all, and since it is a new month all that needs to be cleared. I created a macro and put a button on the sheet so now when it is a new month he just pushes the new month button. It takes everything from the last month, puts it into a new sheet, and then edits it to be for a new month with out all the last months info. It does it all with one mouse click and about 2 seconds. I was quite pleased with how it all worked out, I am interested to see what he asks for next in the spreadsheet. It always amazes elder cheesman (and myself) that I am just able to figure out these things on excel with no training, though there has been a lot of trial and error.
Now that I bored you all with that information I will try and think of what else has transpired in the last few days. President Graff wanted a new phone, he didn't like his last one and it was giving him trouble, so we went to go get him a new one. Unfortunately phone selections are a lot more limited in Jamaica and president graff has already tried numerous phones and he was down to 4 choices, 2 cheap ones, one that we were unsure about its structural capacity, and a very expensive phone. We went with the one we were unsure on. Turns out he loves it, he had a similar version back home and so already knew how to use it. Now we just have to hope that it doesn't break since we are running out of choices.
Email time is rapidly coming to a close, I am surprised how much I got written. To bad it was just about all that office work I do. Thursday night we were so tired that everyone in our house fell asleep by 9:30 and all the lights had been left on. I got up at midnight and turned off all the lights and went back to bed. Wednesday night our house was nearly empty, the assistants were out of town, so I took all their fans and had 5 fans blowing on me as I slept, it was nice.
We got a new senior couple this week and we are in line to get another 2-4 couples in the next 6 months. That will be great! Our numbers have dropped significantly and we have been running out of senior couples. Aside from all the other work they do they inspect missionary homes for cleanliness. Which is something that hasn't really been happening. We have been moving missionaries and their houses have been just disgusting and a pain to move out of. It will be good to have inspections start again.
Well now time is really starting to run short. I don't know what else to say anyways. I did learn that out of everyone I live with I send the longest emails. They normally send 1-2 short paragraphs to their families weekly, where I send 1-2 pages from Microsoft word. Speaking of Microsoft word, I have learned to use Microsoft office 2007 really well, I like the setup of it all. Initially it took me forever to find everything and I didn't like it, but now I prefer it to 2003. Anyways, that is about it for the week.
Life goes well, I am doing quite well, I got a new tooth brush, that is exciting. I hope that school goes great this week and that the whole painting of the car thing works out. I love you all and hope you have a great week.
Elder Talbert
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