Sticky Beans

Well I am home now, but I figure I should make one final post here before I call it finished.

This final week was nice. On Monday we got a phone call from Gisselle saying that she had decided to take one more week off from work, which means that we got to see her again everyday! Wahoo! Well we went and saw her in the evening and made sure she was all the way ready for her baptismal interview which was going to be the next day. Tuesday came around and she was interviewed! She passed and was good to go for Sunday! While we were at her home we received a phone call from a senior couple asking if we wanted to go out and have lunch. Well of course I was not going to say no to such an offer. It was nice, we had Burger King. Well shortly after that we had a good lunch with the Hodlin family here in May Pen. While out teaching we got caught in a huge rainstorm and ended up all muddy and nasty. Which was really great for Mama-P (our land lady) since we were going to her house to have dinner. Dinner was great! I feel sort of bad for having dragged so much mud into her home. In the evening we had a final farewell dessert at the Sterling's home and that was it. My time as a missionary was over.

Wednesday I went to Kingston. Elder and Sister Flake kindly took us to their home where we got to eat a great lunch and eventually made our way to the office. The Flakes are great! I will miss them. Got to the mission home in the evening and had a great dinner. It was a lot of fun to see Elder Allen again. I always enjoy talking to him. President Hendricks interviewed us all and then we had our final testimony meeting thingy. It was really nice. I had already attended many in the past, but it was nice to know that this one was mine. Elder and Sister Herbert came too! It was great to see them one last time before I flew out.

Thursday Morning Pres. Hendricks took me to the Airport and let me go. I will miss the Hendricks. They are an amazing couple. I am thankful that I got to serve under their leadership. Well flying was long. Got to the airport around 5:15 am and didn't get to Salt Lake till 8:30 pm. Got out in Salt Lake and went and met with my family! It was great! So good to see everyone again! It was very cold. While flying they announced that it was a warmer day, at -2 C!!! AH! I haven't had anything close to that for 2 years ha.

Drove home and got released. It is an odd feeling finally being done. The next few days were good. Lots of family and friends. On Sunday I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting. I think it went over very well. I liked the talk. Sis. Childs a native Jamaican who lives in my ward here in Orem also spoke, so that was sort of fun, a themed sacrament meeting. Todd Tanner, Ben Stevens, The McGraths, Joshua white, and the Cheesmans were all there from the mission. It was a lot of fun to see all of them again!

It is pretty amazing to me how anticlimactic coming home is. Things are just so normal. Life is the same as it has always been. It is nice to be home and be with family and friends. I will miss Jamaica. I loved my mission, it was an amazing experience. I am eternally thankful for the opportunity I had to serve the people there. I have learned a lot and will cherish the memories I have had for the rest of my life.

I will attach a few pictures here before I close this out.

This is of the final night at the mission home. It was great!

And this is of us at the church on Sunday here in Orem. From left to Right: Sis. Cheesman, Sis. Child, Josh White, Ben Stevens, Bro. Cheesman, Matt McGrath, Me, Todd Tanner

Well Thanks for following my mission experience. It has been great being able to share it with everyone. Hopefully it was somewhat amusing. I love my mission, it was great. I am glad I served.

Love

Bradford Kent Talbert

The Final Frontier

Family,

Well I am highly unmotivated to email today seeing as how I will see you all in just a few days, but on the off chance that an asteroid slams into the airplane and everybody dies I guess I should tell you how my week went. The week was excellent, a lot of fun and very effective. Thanks for all the Birthday wishes.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday must have all been fairly typical days, I can't think of a single thing that happened on any of those days worth mentioning. On Friday though we had a lot of fun. In the morning Pres. and Sis. Hendricks called and wished me happy birthday, and then Gisselle and Kim called and sang happy birthday to me! Well that was fun, I especially appreciated the call from the Hendricks. Elder Lee and I celebrated our 2 year mark by busting out some carbonated juice and spraying it everywhere...then we cleaned up the mess all over our house. Well went and taught Gisselle, it was good; she is doing good, progressing towards baptism. She also made me a birthday cake so that was delicious! Finally at the church in the evening I was organizing some different things and all of a sudden out of nowhere Elder Kraus threw a huge bucket of water on me and then Elder Lee threw a few pounds of flour all over me, so I was a big sticky doughy mess....it was good laughs though. So that was my birthday, it was nice.

Saturday Elder Lee and I burned a bunch of stuff that was no good at this point, so that was amusing. Sunday church was nice, got to teach a nice lesson in gospel principles. Elder Allen called later in the day and wished me a belated happy birthday, he is awesome, I am so glad that I got to serve with him.

Gisselle is doing very good! She gets interviewed for baptism this Tuesday and then baptized on this upcoming Sunday. She is a great investigator, I am glad that Elder Ostrin got to teach someone like her so early-on in his mission. It was great that she took another week off of work so that we could see her again everyday and help ensure she is ready for baptism. It has been great teaching her, I am excited for her to be baptized! Rashane is also doing excellent, he should be baptized next week Sunday, he is also considering going on a mission, so that would be awesome! It has been a good week of teaching with two prepared investigators that we can see every day.

With Gisselle we have been struggling with her all week with baptism, she wants to be baptized but at the same time she has somethings she wants to change first (like getting a new job). Well most of her reasons were pretty lame and weren't really going to stop her from getting baptized. Yesterday in our lesson with her we were teaching her about something or other (not related to baptism) and then she cut me off mid-sentence and said she has made up her mind to be baptized next Sunday! That was amazing! She has been taught everything and is ready, she just needed to make up her mind. Another member's testimony in church really touched her and it made her decide to get baptized! So that is great! She is going to make a good member and a good addition to the branch here.

Elder Ostrin is doing good, his next companion will be Elder Packard (if you don't recall I served with him in T&C). So that should be good, they will get along really well. They have an awesome area at this time too. We have so many great investigators right now.

Well I can't really think of what else to say....the week has been pretty typical. It is weird to think that I will be home in just a few short days, I can't believe how fast the last 2 years have gone by. I am going to miss Jamaica sooooooooo much! I love this place! I am excited to get home too, it should be good enough. On Wednesday Elder Allen and I have plans to go and eat lunch with the Flakes and anyone else they invite! I am very excited to see the Flakes again! They are so great! And hopefully I can see the Herberts one more time too! If anything I will at least find time to call them when I am in Kingston and say hi/bye! I am so grateful for senior couples! They are so helpful and awesome. It is too bad that I doubt I will have time to see Akeilah one last time before I go home, she is without a doubt the best convert I have had on my mission, she is so awesome!

I think that is about it for the week. Things are going great, I am excited for the next few days! especially Wednesday and Thursday! I look forward to seeing you later this week. Take care, I love you all!

-Elder B. Kent Talbert

Fried Rice on Tuesdays

Family,

Great to hear from everyone again (although I never did get an email from Dad). Anyways, this week was excellent. This email might be a bit short, I lost a lot of my emailing time to another project. Yesterday in church all the missionaries gave talks. It went over very well. I gave my talk and thought it was nice, but then after words oddly enough I had 8 different members throughout the day call me or walk up to me and ask me for a copy of a story that I shared in my talk. Well that is great and all except for that I didn't even have the original, I had just stood up there and spoken, so I am now using my email time to actually type up the story and print off copies for everyone that wanted it.

Hmm....interesting events of the week.... Gisselle is progressing great! Her baby was in the hospital all week from some stomach infection or something, but now the baby is out and she is happy. It has been great teaching her everyday, normally she is in Kingston on the week so we can only see her on weekends. It definitely helps prepare someone for baptism when you can see them everyday and work with them.

Odd story of the week: We were at Queenie's home talking to her about something or other, I don't recall, and her husband (Carlos) walks past and a conversation begins that goes somewhat like this:

Carlos: "Queenie, my head feels heavy"
Queenie: "Do you realise you have two hats on?"
Carlos: Takes his hand and finds two hats on his head "Oh" takes one off
Queenie: "Is that better?"
Carlos: "Yea"

So that was strange. The funny part about it was their was no smile through the whole thing, they were both 100% serious and just spoke in a dull monotone voice. It was good.

Hmmm...what else happened. We have this boy named Rashane we are teaching, I think I mentioned him last week. He is doing awesome! He is actually considering baptism! After nearly 2 years of missionaries visiting him, I think he will actually get baptized sometime in February. Our area is doing great. Elder Ostrin and I have had a lot of success and we have some awesome investigators. At least I can leave the area next week with full confidence that the area is still alive and full of potential.

So on Friday we were riding home from the church with the other 2 missionaries and Elder Kraus and I got in a bike race and ended up way ahead of the other missionaries, about 15 minutes ahead of them. So we decided in that 15 minutes we would go visit a less-active member and see how they were doing. Well while talking to them we got the idea to leave our bikes at their home and walk to our home and tell our companions that our bikes were stolen. So we did. It worked pretty well. Elder Ostrin fell for it and we didn't bother to tell him that they really were not stolen until the next day. Elder Lee didn't believe us but he was willing to play along. It was fun enough.

Seems like I have nothing to say, I am staring blankly at the monitor wondering what to type. Yesterday we saw a duck eat a rat; that was sort of gross. We were sitting on a veranda teaching and all of a sudden a duck walks past with a rat in its mouth and then it started to eat it. It was fairly distracting in the lesson, everyone wanted to see what was going to happen.

Well life is going good. Not really sure what else I have to say these days. Hopefully this next week is good, should be. What Sunday am I speaking again? the 13th? hmm...maybe I should think about writing that this week or something. Well I hope things are going well back home. Have a great week.

Love
Elder B. Kent Talbert

(No Subject)

Family,

Well good to hear from everyone again. This week was certainly different. As you all know Elder Walker was shot and killed last Monday. I won't bother to write up the whole story but I'll at least give you a quick idea of what happened. Last Monday we had a multi-zone preparation day in Spanish Town where we played football. After we were done we all got in the mission bus. we drove to the Spanish Town bus park, we got out and grabbed a next bus to May Pen. The mission bus then worked its way out of Spanish Town where it was caught in a gun fight and Elder Walker was hit and killed. We get back to May Pen and emailed and finish up our preparation day. We had just walked in our door back home when the phone rang and it was a member asking if it was true that Elder Walker had been killed. We told them no, we had just seen him about an hour and a half before and he was just fine. Well about 5 minutes later we got another call from someone else asking the same thing. Well this was odd, so we called the Assistants, and it turns out that it was true! Elder Walker really had died. Well that was crazy news that was horribly unexpected. Elder Walker was a good missionary, about to finish too. He was in the same group as me so we have served our whole missions together. It was pretty shocking.

Today, a week later we had a memorial service for him. The family wanted to do the funeral and since they are not members of the church it meant it was going to be some chaotic pentecostal funeral. Pres. Hendricks had originally intended for the mission to go, but when the family took over the funeral plans we switched and held a memorial service instead. It was really good! Elder Coleman of the 70 was there, and we filled the chapel and most the overflow. The missionaries did one nice special musical number. Overall it was excellent and I think everyone in attendance felt of the spirit there.

So that has been the talk of the week, everywhere we go people ask us about it. If you want a bit more detail on the whole event here is a blog from a senior couple who was there for most of it and wrote up a report thing on it. http://tnsfamily.blogspot.com/ pretty good account. The news paper had a good account too, but I didn't get a hold of a copy of it.

Well other than that nothing exciting has happened that I can recall. My mind has sort of blanked here and I can't think of what else to write. ughh......seems like something happened that is worth typing.....hmmm.... oh so funny thing. Elder Ostrin is still learning to teach well and so often in lessons he doesn't say much and I end up teaching most the lesson, which is fine with me, I like teaching. My favorite part is that if I teach an investigator about The Book of Mormon I can expect that the next investigator we go to and teach about The Book of Mormon I will hear the same thing I taught to the last investigator about The Book of Mormon, only it will be from the mouth of my companion. He often repeats what I said in a lesson in our next lesson. It makes me laugh, not the most effective, but he learning. Every investigator is different and needs to hear different things, but oh well, he is learning. It is fun to hear what I said again though. He is getting there.

We have some nice investigators these days. Jezel is doing awesome. I am not sure how to spell her name, I actually think it is Gisselle. But oh well. She is reading steadily and will make a great member. We have a next boy named Rashane. He is 18 and has an older sister who is a member, that is how we found him. He is doing good; reading a ton and considering baptism. He is a good potential future missionary, if he gets baptized I see him serving a mission in a year or two. Just yesterday we were talking about him serving a mission haha, he wasn't really against the idea at all.

The branch here has not had a piano player for a long time; and it is apparent. They have sung the hymns with no piano for so long that they have sort of made up their own tempos and notes. It is hard to play with them for they don't hold the notes for the right lengths, they either hold it for to long or way to short. It is hard to keep up with them, seems like I am always ahead or behind, and if I try to get them to do it right they don't follow me, they just keep singing whether they are with the piano or not. haha, it is good though.

I am wasting a lot of my email time just staring at the screen, I just keep spacing on what happened this week. Seems like everything just revolved around E. Walker and his death, it is all we have talked about this week and now I can't think of anything else.... hmm....so I was challenged to read D&C 76 everyday this week. So I did. It was really excellent, I really like vs 40-42, very good simple definition of what the gospel is, what the message we go out everyday to share. That Christ has atoned for our sins and there is hope that we might enter into the Kingdom of God.

We ate lunch right before we came over here to email. The food was overly hot and I burned the top of my mouth, sort of annoying.

Well I really can't think of anything else to say. The week was good, I am glad that the E. Walker thing is now closed. He was a good Elder and the mission will miss him. This upcoming week should be good. So I hope things are going well back home. Hope you all have a great week.

Love
Elder B. Kent Talbert

QWERTY Keyboards Disrupting the Space-Time Continuum Again

Family,

Well somehow I have very little time today, it has been a crazy day thanks to some Zone P-Day that took up way to much of our time and left us with no time to do anything else today, but oh well, so it goes. Sounds like things are going well back home. This week was good, lots of random little things happened, but it was great! On a quick side note you should try to update my blog more rapidly! I have got a few emails lately saying I am slow at updating it haha.

So Zone Conference was this week! That was certainly the highlight! Bussed into Kingston and had our conference at the Constant Spring Chapel. It was great being back in Kingston! I love that city!! Well the conference was excellent, they talked a lot about obedience and a lot about getting investigators to church, it was superb. The best part of it though was that when it was finished we had to wait for Pres. Hendricks, he was supposed to drive us back to May Pen, so we had to wait for an hour and a half and during that time I got to talk to Sis. Flake for a while and get updates on everything going on in Kingston. Sounds like things are going well, Akeilah is still doing awesome!!!!! Well then I got to talk to E. Allen for around 45 minutes, that was great to catch up with him. When I first started serving with him I had my doubts on how much I was really going to like serving with him, but since then he has become one of my all time favorite companions! We had a lot of fun just talking and reminiscing on all the fun we had in Kingston. I am very thankful that I got to serve with Elder Allen, I learned a lot while serving with him.

On Friday my companion and I were waiting on an investigator to show up that we were supposed to teach and there was 2 other guys their also just playing dominoes. So I asked if we could join. It was excellent! I crushed everyone! I won 6/7 rounds, it was a lot of fun. I have found that it is now one of my favorite games these days. So that was good. Our investigator never showed up so in the end it seemed like we just waisted our time...but than again it was not intentional, we thought they were coming, they told us they were coming.

Sunday we had some Caribbean conference thingy broadcast from Salt Lake. It was good. Elder Oaks gave an excellent talk. The intermediate hymn was a struggle. They announced #3 and everyone just assumed that they would display the words on the screen. Well they did...in Spanish. That sort of threw everyone off and by the time everyone found the right page and started singing they didn't think to catch up so we were way behind the music. Pretty much sounded terrible, I gave up and just figured I couldn't really make it any worse so I spent the last 2 verses trying to sing in Spanish.

For some strange reason I have become horribly addicted to rice as of late. I find myself cooking rice for every meal these days. Lunch and dinner have become just seasoned rice, or rice and peas, or rice and beans, or rice and something. It is just so cheap and yet at the same time so delicious.

So back in December, before Christmas, Elder Allen and I and Elder Caplin and Pres. Hendricks went out to eat as a final lunch with E. Caplin as his mission finished. Well while we were eating this lady walked up to us and said hi and said she knew the missionaries and that her mom was a member. Now here in May Pen I have met her again, her mother is a member who we visit often enough. Well we have been teaching her, name is Jezel, she is very interested! She should be baptized here hopefully before I leave, it would be nice to have one final baptism before the mission finishes for me. She is great, a good listener and willing to learn! She is a good reader and understands the gospel really well. She will be one of my better converts from my mission, although I don't think it is physically possible to ever find someone who will ever top Akeilah lol.

Today we had a multi zone pday where we played american football. It was fun enough. I played for the first half but at half time I quit and became the photographer for the rest of the game. I think I would rather be the photographer than run around left and right in the hot sun chasing some ball everywhere it goes. It was good enough. The only thing I don't like about zone preparation days is that it takes so much time, especially if you have to travel an hour by bus to get there.

My companion is doing well enough. He is a good talker, he likes to talk in lessons, which is better than most new missionaries. He is energetic. He is also ultra stereotypical Provo, Utah mormon guy haha, he sort of drives me bonkers when he gets to talking to much about all sorts of foolishness. Nonetheless he is a good elder and will hopefully enjoy his mission.

Lately at meals it has become an unspoken competion between E. Lee and I on who can clean off their plate the best. It all came about because E. Ostirn always leaves so much randomness on his plate, rice everywhere and bits of vegetables and not well cleaned bones, so E. lee and I have been cleaning our plates to perfection. I have never really been a bone eater my whole life, but lately I find myself eating my chicken bones more and more just to have nothing left on my plate so that I don't lose to E. Lee haha, I don't think I will continue the habit after my mission, Anyways, I don't think they cook the bones long enough in the States to really be eatable.

Well that is about it for the week. Missionary work goes on, life is good. I am doing well. I can't believe that their are only 3 weeks left in my mission, almost unbelievable. I have been a missionary for so long that to think that I will be home in 3 weeks seems like it is false. I will certainly miss my mission here, I love this country and I love teaching the gospel. I hope everything goes great back home this week, enjoy work and school. I love you all!

Elder Bradford K. Talbert

Yodeling Turtles hewing on Rusty Nails

Family,

Well this week was good. First before I forget dad, are you still having trouble with the printing thing? I don't know how well it works but you might want to try Google Print, it is a service through Google Chrome that might enable you to do what you want there, sort of a way to half network things together. I haven't really messed around with it though, at the office we already had everything pretty much working when I was looking into networking our printers. Anyways, good to hear from everyone, sounds like things are going pretty good back home.

This week nothing to exciting happened, pretty generic. But I will try to at least make this somewhat interesting. We are still on foot, we finally got me a bike and I tuned it up and have it working great, but Elder Ostrin got a bike that keeps breaking on him and so he is constantly fixing it and it is causing a lot of trouble! haha on Saturday we had to walk for an hour and a half to get home, we had ridden way out to this next part of town and the way back is all down hill very easy very nice, but he hit a pothole destroyed his wheel and so we had to walk it.....that was a long walk, sort of a huge waste of time, but oh well. My shoes do not like all this walking, after 2 years of wearing the same pair they are ready to give up the ghost. Today we hope to finally get his bike in working condition, that will speed things up a lot, I am tired of all this walking, it wastes so much time and their is only so much to talk about.

We have some good investigators these days. Been working with this one lady named Gisselle, she is good enough, very interested, her mother is a member and is a huge help. She is probably our best investigator, other than that we have a few others that are reading and doing alright, just need them to do things like come to church! We have spent a lot of time searching for new investigators with little success, hopefully it improves this week, but it hasn't been too bad, we have still got plenty accomplished.

Every night after we plan, Elder Lee (a next missionary in our home, and a native Jamaican) and I play Dominoes until bed time. It has been fun enough, last night we got Elder Ostrin to play with us, I crushed them both! I never quite realized how entertaining that game was until the last few weeks. So that makes for a fun evening every day.

Wow....I am really just baffled at what to say, nothing happened this week that seems really worth mentioning. Studies have been good, I have been working my way through The Book of Mormon and The Doctrine and Covenants again, so that has been amusing. I read through 1st Nephi chapter 2 on Tuesday....or perhaps Monday, I don't recall. Anyways, I was reminded of a thought I had had previously when I read it in verse 14 and 15. Verse 15 is the classic "and my father dwelt in a tent" but in verse 14 we read about how Lehi sort of lectures his sons and he confounds them and he has great spiritual power. Well the interesting thing to note is that it doesn't really matter what position we are in in life as long as we are doing what the Lord commands. Lehi is living in a tent out in the middle of nowhere with more or less nothing, and yet he still has great spiritual power. His humble circumstances do not change his position with God.

As I type this email my feet are being eaten by mosquitoes, it is unfortunate, I knew I should have worn jeans today, but oh well, so it goes I guess. We have a tradition in our house here that on Monday we play Book of Mormon Golf, today was great, I dominated! Got nearly every chapter on my first guess, I felt bad for the other team...they lost miserably.

Hmmm...what else to ramble about....E. Ostrin seems to be doing well enough, he is terrified of traffic and is always jumping out the way of vehicles that would not have hit him had he just remained where he was, it makes me laugh. He also has one of the most forgetful memories I have ever seen, haha, it is fun though, it always makes me laugh when he calls someone the wrong name, or walks the wrong way, or any other number of things.

Happy Birthday Dad! I am sorry that I sort of failed at sending a card, I thought about it, and well..... I guess it never really happened....opps, none the less I hope it was great!

So we found another girl who is named Akeilah, she is pretty cool, although not as entertaining to talk to...partially because she is only 3 years old, we have been teaching her mother, but none the less Akeilah is pretty cool, always running in circles and causing mayhem in the lessons. Her mother is good enough, although I am unsure how interested she really is.

At church I got to teach gospel principles, It was on the millennium. Conveniently we had that lesson in Kingston like 4 weeks ago, so I essentially just duplicated that lesson because it was really good. It went over well, I think the class learned something...hopefully. It is a much quieter class than we had in Kingston, not a whole lot of talking, just me monologuing, no one really feels inclined to comment, but there were a few good discussions. It is always so much more difficult to teach when the class just sits their and listens, it is sort of a pain to have to monologue for 45 minutes.

Well I guess that was the week. I am doing well, nothing really all that new. Life is good, this week should be excellent, especially since we will have bikes! I hope this next week is great for everyone! Enjoy school, enjoy work! I love you all!

-Elder B. Kent Talbert

I am out of new Subject Headings these days.....

Family,

Well this week was good enough. It was fun talking to everyone on Christmas. So I haven't emailed for just over 2 weeks now. So I guess that should mean I have a lot to say!

Christmas day was awesome! After talking to everyone we went back over to the Sheafermeyers home and talked to Pres. Hendricks and some other senior couples for a bit, it was fun. Went home and E. Allen took a nap and I did something....I don't even remember what it was anymore that I did...oh well. At around 3 pm we went over to Akeilah's home and had a ton of fun! Played dominoes and forks (sort of like spoons...only with forks). It was great! I am a fairly terrible dominoes player, sort of just got destroyed over and over. Akeilah is crazy good at dominoes and just annihilated us over and over. Got dinner from her mother also, it was splendid! Great food! It was a lot of fun! Last year Christmas was good, but this one was certainly a whole lot better! I loved it! I certainly would not complain if every Christmas was like this!

Well Sunday church was good. Nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary, I enjoyed it a lot. Priesthood was as silly as normal, and gospel principles was great! Yesterday at church I was reminded of how much better of a teacher Akeilah is than most teachers, May Pen's gospel principles class could use some help...it was pretty pathetic. Anyways, back to a week ago. Elder and Sister Flake took us teaching with them. It was so much fun! Troy and Akeilah came with us and we all got smashed in the back of the Flakes truck. We went and visited a family in the branch and they performed a little Christmas program for us. It was cute! Over all it was a awesome day! I had a great time, it was a lot of fun to have one last epic journey with Akeilah and Troy.

Well Monday and Tuesday were good, last days in the office, so I finished up everything there and tried to get E. Allen and E. Stone ready for my departure. This is the first time since June 2009 that the office has not had E. Tanner or I in it, I sort of wonder how it will all work out, their were a lot of things that we were the only 2 that really knew how to do it effectively. On Tuesday night we had a farewell dinner at the Flakes home, it was great. Said good bye to Akeilah and Troy. I will miss both of them a ton!!! Troy has been of so much aid to me for the last year and Akeilah has become one of my best friends ever. I am excited to talk to them again though.

Wednesday was transfers. Got up early and went to the mission home to meet with the new missionaries. I was assigned and I am serving with one Elder Ostrin from California. He is cool enough, definitely a new missionary. He is pretty opinionated on how missionary work should be done, it makes me laugh, a lot of his opinions are definitely not from experience. He is very energetic about the work though, so that is good, he is a hard worker.

May Pen branch is nice. We don't have a car, or a bike, so we walk everywhere. It is fairly less-effective, but hopefully I get a bike soon. On Friday for new years we weren't allowed to go out teaching after 6 so we just got to do nothing. I played dominoes with some members for a few hours and then just went home and went to bed. It was fun, I am starting to see the strategy in dominoes, although I still sort of fail at it haha. My goal is to at least get good enough to give Akeilah a run for her money and not get destroyed so easily.

Nothing too eventful at the end of the week, just out finding lots of new people to teach, we didn't really have an investigator pool when we got here so we have got to do lots of finding. It is good though. The work goes on well enough. Sunday was good, the branch has no piano player so once again I was left to play. The piano in this branch is pretty worn out, has a strange hum to it and the keys are hard to push, you have to push hard on the keys to get them to make a noise, makes for a lot of errors and really loud playing. It is good though, I am glad that I get to play still.

Pres. Hendricks came and joined us at church, he gave an excellent lesson in Priesthood/Reliefsociety on murder, and also on The Law of Chastity. It was interesting, I learned a lot from it and I think the rest of the branch did too. Seems like everyone liked it.

Now that I am in May Pen I am stuck using internet cafe computers again....wow, I despise these things. Seems like the keyboard always has problems, I am constantly having to go back and edit typos that came about from sticky and broken keys. The internet runs pretty slow on the one that I am using, sort of annoying. haha oh well, only 5 more preparation days and then I am free of internet cafes and their less-effectiveness.

Our house has 4 missionaries in it, Elder Lee, Kraus, and Ostrin (plus myself). Elder Lee and I go home the same time, so that is cool. E. Kraus is really into Physics so that is fun, we have had some good discussions. We also have a keyboard at our house so at nights I get time to practice the keyboard a bit, nothing like a piano with those flimsy plastic keys, but it is better than nothing.

Well overall things are going good. I definitely miss Kingston! Especially Akeilah, I hope she is doing well. Here are two pictures that I have. Unfortunately you probably won't get any more photos for the rest of my mission. I sort of donated my card reader to the office and now I have no way to use my memory card. The photos I am sending today are on a CD that I had made in the office. The first is at the church on Sunday the 26th, Troy and Akeilah, sort of a cheesy grin on my part.

The Second really needs to be cropped, but it is of us with the Flakes by some Chrstimas lights. good enough.

Well that is about it for the week. I hope this next week is great for everyone. Have a great new year! I love you all and look forward to next Monday!

Oh yea, one more thing, my scriptures arrived! So now I have scriptures again, they got here Wednesday, so that is great!

Love
Elder B. Kent Talbert

They won't be back for the Sequel

Family,

So that is to bad about the tabernacle, really sad. But funny story with that. We were eating dinner at a restaurant with President Hendricks and he gets a phone call. Well we could tell from the way he was talking that it was something not good. So he hangs up and tells us the news, he had been told that the Provo Temple had burned down! haha so we thought that was terrible news and were stunned. So for about 10 minutes we discussed that and then he got another phone call correcting the mistake from temple to tabernacle. So that was sort of a relief...I guess? But that really is to bad, those pictures look terrible!

This week was good, not much really happened that was all that eventful. Our investigator Sashi is good to go on her baptism! She passed her interview with Pres. this week! So that is awesome! Pres. Hendricks was really impressed with her! Especially when he asked her about Joseph Smith and Thomas S Monson and then immediately she started telling him about her testimony of all the prophets and then listed to him all the prophets from Joseph Smith haha we had never taught her all of that but she had done that on her own. She is good, we are excited!

So I ordered new scriptures and they arrived, so that was great, but I had wanted them embossed but they sort of forgot to do it, although the receipt said that they were embossed. Well I didn't think to much of it, it is such a minor thing to really bother making a fuss about. We emailed church distribution anyways just to see if they wanted us to do something, I figured I would just keep them and not worry about it. Well they emailed back this week and said that they are going to send me a second set embossed for free! So now I have two sets of scriptures.....I figure I am just going to give one of them away, I really have no need for two sets, and I am from Utah and have a lot better access to scriptures than most of the members here.

Oh as for Christmas phone calls! haha I nearly forgot about that! I am not really sure what our plans are.....haha this week every single couple has asked Elder Allen and I if we want to come to their house to call our families and eat food..... so we are thinking we will go to a few houses and eat food and eventually call, it depends on how many other missionaries are around. Although my goal (and I think I will be successful) is 11 am Jamaica time (or 9 am Utah time). But if I am not on at 11 check again at 12 (well 10....), I think 12 will be the latest. 11 should be the time for me though, I have 15 computer options, now it is just a matter of being at one that isn't being used. The problem lies in that Elder Allen and I haven't committed to anything with the senior couples so all the other missionaries have, and have times figured out and now we are left to just find a time when no one is busy, but oh well, it will all work out.

It has been a fairly ordinary week. We have been getting all ready for the Christmas party this upcoming Friday, so that should be great fun! I think the missionaries will enjoy it! Yesterday we had Constant Spring's branch party, it was a lot of fun! They had so much food! I was worried that way too many people were going to show up and they wouldn't have enough food, but they planned well. It was nice, although the music could have been turned down a few notches, it was overly loud. I like Christmas music and all but when I have to yell to the person next to me so I can talk to them it is to loud.

I would attach some pictures....but Sister Flake took all my pictures for me this week and I haven't collected them from her camera yet! hopefully I will do that sometime later this week and I will have plenty for next week. Especially since next week I won't really have much to email about since we will have just spoken so I will just send lots of photos.

Last Saturday the branch had a YM/YW activity at the church all day, it was a game day, they played different sports and games and what not. Well we didn't have anything else to do for preparation day so we figured we would go and see if it was any fun. Played chess for 4 hours with Elder Allen and some other guy. It was a lot of fun, then I just played dominoes with the YW leaders and some little 6 year old kid, unfortunately the 6 year old destroyed me. It was good fun though.

Well things are going great, I look forward to talking to you all later this week. I am about out of time here. I hope this next week is great! enjoy the holidays and the cold weather! I love you all!

Elder B. Kent Talbert

I thought of a subject this morning...now I have forgotten it.

Family,

Well I am glad that this week was good. I am also glad that Sis. Herbert sent you those pictures, I have about 300 photos of that and I am glad that I don't have to sort through them and choose which ones to send this week. For the Christmas party each zone is supposed to do a skit, well we were invited to join the Kingston Zone in their skit so we are. They are doing some dance of some sort, Elder Allen and I already plan to stand in the back and mostly follow the dance but at the same time do sort of our own thing.....on a similar note this week the office has been making a video that is awesome! We are hoping to finish it today or Monday...I will mail you a copy of it once it is finished.

Well this week was good. Last Saturday we went to the wedding to play the piano, their were no members there except for us and the less-active man haha. It was a silly wedding, very stereotypical of what you would see on TV, I had a hard time taking it to seriously, Elder Allen and I kept laughing at all the foolishness, I am more thankful than ever before for temple marriages. The whole thing was just silly, I really don't ever want that.

So our scorpion is doing well, he likes to eat lizards we found. So now we try to catch lizards and feed them to him. For Christmas calls we can use skype once again. I don't know what time yet, I will let you know next week, but it will probably be in the morning, like 8 am Utah time or something around there, we will make final arrangements and let you know. It would be nice to know what your skype name is to make searching for it easier. We will be using something like Jamaica.Kingston.Mission or something like that. So that should be fun.

On Wednesday we went to the Kingston Zone meeting and then had a huge waffle Christmas party afterwards! It was great! I ate so many waffles! The Flakes and the Herberts put the whole thing together, so that made for a fun Wednesday! When we went to the meeting Elder Allen and I loaded up our truck with the mail and then after the waffle party we had to leave and we accidently drove away with the mail....haha too bad for Kingston Zone.

Sashi is doing excellent. She came to church on Sunday and seemed to like it, and she is still preparing to be baptized next Saturday! We are excited for that! She is a champion reader and will be a good addition to the branch. Akeilah is also doing excellent! She had all her school exams this week but even in the midst of all of that she still found time to come out and go teaching with the missionaries, she is an all-star!

On Tuesday we went up to Red Hills and did construction with Troys brother Teven. It was fun enough, we were building the foundation for a restaurant he is working on building. We spent most the time digging and then pouring cement. It made for a good afternoon.

Also I got new scriptures this week!!! Wahoo!! It is nice to finally have something to study out of that is mine! Unfortunately they don't have my name on them. I ordered them embossed and the receipt from church distribution says they were embossed with my name...but then it is nowhere to be found on the scriptures...but oh well, so it goes. They are nice! I am happy with them!

hmmm... seems like just a lot of little random things happened, nothing really all that exciting. The 1st presidency Christmas Devotional was excellent! Also during the Devotional we had an Earthquake! Yay! That made it more exciting! Most people didn't notice it at all thanks to how minor it was, but we noticed it and then we looked it up online and sure enough Kingston had been hit by some little earthquake! Pres. Monson's talk was really good, I liked it a lot.

Yesterday we had to do a little mini transfer, so I took a picture as we drove across some narrow bridge. Sort of a boring picture....but oh well haha. Sorry for the low quality, it was taken on my phone.

Thanks for getting that scholarship done mom, I think that is it for school. Overall things are going great here. I am healthy and well. Christmas is nearly here again, temperature is still great! Although it does get a bit nippy in the mornings...we normally wake up to about 22C. Sorry for the dry email this week haha. Well I hope this week is great! Enjoy the holidays! I love you all and look forward to next week!

Love
Elder B. Kent Talbert

Anti Matter Defibulator?

Family,

Great to hear from you all again. I am glad that you got a hold of Todd. I can't really think of anything that I desperately need....ummm......nope, can't think of anything.... although if you are feeling really ambitious Crest Whitening strips would be great for my teeth. Thanks again for getting those contacts mom, I will need those. This week was good, nothing to exciting happened, nothing got stolen this week. :D

Steve the scorpion is doing well, we have now created a nice home for him and he sits in the mission office. We introduced him to Pres. Hendricks, and now most of the mission, he happily sits out in our front lobby now. Some offices have nice aquariums, we have scorpions! I am sort of curious to see how long we can keep him alive. so far so good. He is fairly large, about 2 1/2 inches long and 3/4 inch wide. One of the senior couples had their family visiting and their grandchildren loved Steve! They couldn't stop looking at him and asking me questions about him.

We have this nice investigator named Sashi, she is doing great! She should be baptized sometime before the month is over. She is a star reader and has great desires. So that has been fun to work with her. We have a few other investigators, none really worth mentioning yet. On Tuesday we went over to Sister Williams' house and painted it all up for her! It looks great...I think... We had a good time painting and the color choices were nice, green and orange!

Yesterday evening we were teaching a lesson and I got a phone call from some man I have never met, a Brother Wallace, some less-active member that doesn't ever come to church. Well he decided that he was getting married tomorrow and he had heard that I could play the piano so he called to see if I would be willing to come and play at his wedding haha, so today after we are done emailing and what not we are going to a wedding of someone we have never met, but maybe it will be a good opportunity to reactivate him. Hopefully he doesn't really have anything to intricate planned with the piano playing, I have no clue what songs he intends for me to play.

On Wednesday we had Zone Leader Council. It was excellent! The zone leaders we have these days are superb. Pres. Hendricks gave us a good long lesson on why the shepherds were the ones that the angels appeared to at the birth of Christ. It was really enlightening, a lot more indepth than I would have ever imagined, I always would have just assumed it had something to do with Christ being the good shepherd, but turns out I was wrong. Pres. Hendricks seems to know more about the gospel than any other person I have ever met, it is always so great to just sit down with him and ask him questions or to listen to him teach, it is always enlightening.

Well on Wednesday we went out to a place called Morant Bay with the Yallahs missionaries. It was nice, we had to go to the bank there and then we went to see a member that lived out there. So this member lives in the worst spot I have ever seen. To get to her house you have to walk through the Morant Bay dump...possibly the grossest place I have ever been, just piles and piles of filth, piles that are 20 feet tall! It was disgusting! I feel bad for this member having to walk through the dump every time she wants to go anywhere, and the area itself just smells bad, I couldn't live there, I would rather be homeless living in the city than behind that dump. It was a nice visit though, the member was really friendly, a very humble lady.

hmmm....what else happened this week. Things have been pretty standard. We have been working on transfers as of late, it is sort of odd to be planning out my final transfer, I can't believe how fast it is coming to an end, I am not even really sure that I want it to end. Things are going great here, Elder Allen and I are getting a lot accomplished, he is a pretty cool elder, I really like serving with him (although I am not a huge fan of his driving haha).

Well time is running short at this point. Sorry for no pictures today, I accidently left my camera at home. Anyways, things are going great! I am healthy and well! I am excited to get new scriptures! Hopefully they will be here in the next week or so, I really don't like studying out of random sets that I find here and there. Good luck this week in the cold, I am happy that we aren't having that sort of weather here, we are still at 31 C on average. I love you all and look forward to next week!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert

A quote isn't the only thing missing this week.

Family,

First mom, before I forget! Don't put my Christmas package in the mail just yet!!! I need you to add one thing and their is an easier way to ship it! But I will explain that more fully in a few seconds.

So this week was amazingly great (except for one terrible misfortune)! well on Saturday evening when p-day was about to finish I was outside just standing when all of a sudden a car pulled up. Well turns out in the car was former Elder McGrath and his parents! They had come to visit Jamaica and came to see his old home. Well that was amazingly fun! We talked a bunch and then went out teaching. For the next few days Matthew McGrath and his parents came out with us to go teaching! It was great! On Sunday we set a new record of 15 people in our bus to come teaching with us! It was crazy, it was as though we were bringing the entire branch to someone's home. Well It was so much fun to see Matt again and catch up, his parents are so great! Well on Tuesday I was talking to Troy and it turns out that Todd Tanner is coming back December 19 with his family, I mentioned this to Sister McGrath and she mentioned how excellent it would be if they just brought my Christmas package with them, so she said she will call you this week (they had to return to Utah first). It sounds a lot easier and I know the Tanners would gladly do it.

Well Elder Allen and I have found some great people to teach, one in particular is a lady named Sashi. She is a very good reader and loves to read everything we leave her, she is super interested and I could see her getting baptized soon enough. She lives in a part called Kintyre, which is the same part that Akeilah lives. We have been up there everyday this week working around Akeilah's home. So now for the most unfortunate thing that happened this week (and possibly on my mission!) So while up in Kintyre we were out walking the streets with Akeilah and we came to this one part where Akeilah told us to go left but we asked why not straight, well she told us it was dangerous and someone had been shot just the other night. Well we scoffed at that and decided that we were going to go that way claiming that we missionaries don't really run into any trouble and we will be fine. Well she argued it for a while and then gave in haha. So we go down this ghetto road and just do our normal thing and we see this man on the other side of the road who starts chatting us (yelling pointlessness at us). We just ignored him as we always do with people like him. Well he apparently got really angry that we were ignoring him and next thing we know he is marching up to us and standing right next to us. So we stop and see what he wants and he is just going off with a whole ton of garbage, then we try to just leave again but he starts to threaten us (99.9% of all threatenings are just foolishness that they use to try and scare the missionaries). So yet again we just ignore him and finally he decides to get really serious (which surprised us greatly since this never happens), and he magically pulled out some handgun that he had in his pocket or somewhere and wanted us to give him everything we had on us, conveniently we didn't have much, so not wanting to get shot we handed over the few things we had on us: Elder Allen's Phone, Elder Allen's Camera, a little bit of money that we had, and then my scriptures!!! AHHH!!!!!!! I don't think he realized it was a Bible in my case but now it is all gone! So that was terrible. we got away just fine but now I don't have my scriptures! I lost everything that I had in my scriptures too! I had placed a lot of little mementos from my mission in there and now they are all gone and all my markings that I had made and everything!!!! Terrible thing to have happen! So Akeilah was right, I felt bad for not having listened haha but I guess we should just be happy that we are alright.

Besides that we had Thanksgiving at Pres. Hendricks home, it was good. I enjoyed the food and we had fun relating our adventure to everyone. This morning while I was taking a shower I found a giant scorpion in our shower!! Yay! That was exciting! We put him in a pot and named him Steve!

Hmm....what else.....seems like a lot has happened but I just can't remember it all. The McGraths were the most exciting part! We had a great time with them! Our teaching is going excellent, seems that we have been having a bit of a dry spell for a short time but now we are nearly over it! We have some excellent investigators that are great to work with.

Well I will attach a few pictures again (it has been way to long!) there are three, one of the bus crew,

one of Steve the scorpion,

and one of Akeilah and I the night we got attacked! Elder Allen and I decided that we were going to start taking a lot more photos, so hopefully that means I will actually attach more! haha

We have been going out with a lot of other missionaries this week and seeing how the mission itself is doing, we have a lot of really young missionaries that are still learning. It is sort of funny to see the teaching skills of a new missionary compared to that of an experienced missionary.

Well in other news that crazy event of this week with the gunman actually never happened (well most of it). When Akeilah told us to go to the left we did discuss it with her and decided it would be safest to go to the left and so we did. But I really did lose my scriptures! On Thursday we woke up and found that a burglar had broke into our home and had taken 5 things, Elder Allen's camera, Elder Allen's phone, my scriptures (DAH!!!), A chest of money we had (value less than $2000, so not much), and then randomly my contact lenses...??? Not sure what they are going to do with those. But that is what I need you to enter into the Christmas package. Do you still have my prescription mom? I don't have any right eye contacts! Which is to bad, I am good on the left eye but back when I had problems with my right eye I went through a lot of contacts. I will find my prescription if I have it and email that on Monday, and if you could just make sure that the Tanners get those that would be great! If you haven't heard from the McGraths by mid week look on Facebook for Todd Tanner, he is going to BYU right now and could easily meet you someplace and get the contacts at least! If that doesn't work then I guess oh well....I will just survive with glasses till I get home, but It would be ideal to get new contacts.

Well I am short on time now, but things are going great! I am sad that I don't have my scriptrues anymore, I would have rather he taken my camera, it is much more easily replaced. My BYU scholarship application needs to be finished, but it needs a handful of information on finances, but I sort of don't have time right now, so I will just do that next week. If you could email me my priesthood line of authority dad that would be great! I had mine in my scriptures...but now that is gone! I have a new set of scriptures already on the way (conveniently missionaries get discounts) Well things are well, I am safe and healthy. Thanksgiving was great! I love you all and look forward to next week!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert

The $2000 was in Jamaican money so it really is very little. It only equals about $23 American dollars

I've been a missionary to long to remember quotes..........

Family,

Well sounds like things are going great back home. That is cool that a Jamaican moved into our ward back home. Where at in St. Cathrine is she from? This week has been busy, but it has been great! So the temperature has been dropping a little bit here, we are now getting near 75 on a cold day. The other day I was sitting at Wendy's eating a frosty, well they had the AC on and I was eating something already cold and I found myself shivering and being overall very cold. Well their was this man sitting near by that turned to me and asked if he could ask me a question, well I said yes of course. Well he asked me if I was from Utah (apparently he knows the Mormons), I told him I was and then he made some silly comment about how much colder it is in Utah and I was sitting their shivering at 75-80 degrees. haha it made me laugh that someone else noticed. I think I have started to get a little too use to the temperature here.

We had transfers this week, thankfully they were very easy transfers not too many changes around the mission. Well we got three new missionaries and sent home three missionaries so no change in the overall number of missionaries.Transfer morning we drove one of the new missionaries (Elder Snelson) out to Yallahs to his trainer Elder Huffaker. Well we drive in some huge rainstorm and eventually get there and we walk up and we see Elder Huffaker sitting in a wheelchair wearing some large pair of glasses, haha well he sort of talked in a silly accent and I got the idea of what he was trying to accomplish, so I just played along. We told Elder Snelson that we had forgot to mention that he has to push his companion everywhere and what not. It was pretty funny, poor Elder Snelson, well we left without ever telling him that his companion wasn't really wheelchair bound. I wonder when Elder Huffaker finally told him....perhaps he even let him push him around for a few hours haha.

Elder and Sister Cheesman went home this week also, it is sort of weird to be in the office without them, they were such a wonderful help around here. The Daniels are doing excellent they are great people, I just don't know them as well.

Well we had zone conferences off-island this week also. I am actually glad it is over now, it has been a huge stress. I have spent all of last week and the start of this week trying to get everything finalized with flight information and with immigration problems. It was hectic, I think some of those off-island missionaries are tired of hearing from me, seeing as how I was calling them every three hours to see if they had gotten the immigration papers that were needed (we got all the immigration papers 2 hours before we needed them....that was way too close haha). Anyways, it was great fun! We had an excellent conference and ate a lot of excellent food. It was also great to see all the missionaries that I really don't get to see thanks to their location. Pres. & Sis. Ockey made some amazing food for us while we stayed at their home. It was great! It is sort of fun to sit in every zone conference and listen to Pres. Hendricks, but I think now after hearing it so many times I could nearly give his part, it sort of changes every time but it always has the same elements and most of the same stories. At least it is embedded in my head now. I would attach some pictures but I sort of forgot my camera today....sorry I have been really lousy at that this past month or so.

Well between transfers and zone conferences that took most of the week, we just got back yesterday from zone conference. This week also Troy got an official job! Which is great! He works with a member, Miguel Hernandez, they work for a phone company and do something or other. It is great that he finally has a steady job that will pay him well enough. As part of transfers Elder Packard was transfered to the office, so that is fun. It is cool to have him around again.

On Sunday we had our primary program in the branch, it was excellent! The children did a great job! It was a lot of fun to play the piano with them.

hmm....what else happened, we finally found all the missing files on the computers! When we moved offices we magically lost a ton of files, we had this network drive that connected all the computers together and allowed us to save things anywhere, well unfortunately it was set up in such a way that it didn't like that we changed the IP addresses and once everything was rehooked up it was just missing. So we were out of luck on 20 GB of files. I have been searching for them for a few weeks now, it was very strange, I had searched all the computers in the network and couldn't find the files, my big question was when we saved a file, where was it being saved, somewhere there had to be a harddrive that everything was connected to. Well thankfully we found them this week in some bizarre hidden location. I extracted the files and recreated the network drive, hopefully in a way that it won't happen again, I tried to make it a lot more simple then it had been before.

Overall an excellent week. I liked being extra busy, unfortunately we got more or less no time to teach in our own area, but we did get to work with the missionaries and help them. Life is going great, it is scary to think how fast February is coming (this week I got my flight itinerary, sort of crazy to have seen so many flight itinerarys for missionaries going home and now one has my name on it). Well I hope this week is excellent for everyone, good luck with school and work. I love you all!

Elder B. Kent Talbert

Set to Stun

Family,

Well another week has gone by. This week has been sort of crazy, it seems like we had a lot of down time, but also we had a lot of time where we had more to do than we had time. I spent about 90% of the week trying to figure out all the flight arrangements for transfers and for zone conferences. It has been a head ache. Unfortunately about half of the airlines in the Caribbean don't have web pages that allow you to reserve flights and so you have to do it via a really round about method involving phone conversations, emails and faxes. Unfortunately our fax machine has been down and all these airlines like you to pay via fax so that has been fun trying to figure out. Pres. Hendricks had to go to Cuba this week and that flight was a lot of fun to book too, I would call the number, get redirected to Cuba, they would tell me I had to talk to reservations in Florida so they would redirect me and we would just go back and fourth and back and fourth, after about 4 hours of that I finally got it all worked out haha, it was fun enough.

Also for transfers (which are this upcoming week) we needed to get a police report for a missionary for immigration reasons. So Elder Allen went with his companion and I took the elder who needed the report to the police records place. Well thankfully the big war thing from summer made everyones record invalid and so all of Jamaica is trying to get new records and so the lines are ridiculous. We stood in line from 9am until 3:40pm. It was pretty miserable, no AC, no chairs, no food, just standing for hours waiting for our number to be called. Previous attempts at this record getting have been a lot easier, normally it takes an hour or so, I had never seen such a line, so that sort of shot the entire day.

Thursday night we come home and our power was out again (we got the last power issue fixed). So I called the power company to report the outage and they informed us that we had been disconnected because we hadn't payed our bill! Thankfully our landlord got on top of it and payed the bill so we had power again last night.

In other exciting news, I don't remember if I mentioned this last week, but if not I will mention it again. So Troy has been very diligent as of late in paying his tithing, and this week he saw some major benefits from it! A friend of his bought a new vehicle and gave him their old one for free, so now he has a truck that works wonderfully and it was all free! Then to add more to it he has been waiting for an insurance claim for the longest time now and it finally came through! He got around $450,000.00 Jamaican Dollars! Now he has money and a car! He is very happy! Thankfully he is trying to use the money wisely and not just waste it all. Akeilah also has been diligent in paying her tithing and last week she was called in for a job interview and she got the job on the spot and now works as an accountant secretary! What awesomeness! It has been great to see their faith increase as they see the blessings of keeping the commandments.

Teaching has been going well enough, nothing to eventful. Sis. Williams, a lady we have been teaching for a while finally came to church on Sunday! That was great! She is doing well enough, but she is unwilling to pray, and that is killing us, if she won't pray she won't ever progress very far. Hopefully we will resolve that concern soon. We have tried and we haven't really gotten anywhere with it, but I think she is starting to understand...hopefully.

Well things are going well. Transfers are coming real fast. Elder Packard, my companion in T&C is coming to be an office elder, so that will be cool enough to have him in the house again, I did enjoy serving with him and it will be fun to talk to him once more. After transfers we have our off-island zone conferences, that should be a lot of fun! I am looking forward to it! Well time is running short, things are going good. I look forward to next week. Oh, before I forget, the package arrived with the cubes! Thank you very much mom! Thanks for the candy Nathaniel haha! I love you all and hope this next week is great!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert

Perhaps a neuroscan is needed to determine this subject....

Family,

Well things are going good this week. Hurricane Tomas...or Tropical Storm Tomas....or Tropical Depression Tomas, or whatever that thing was did absolutely nothing. All of Kingston city was going crazy over this Tomas thing, everything was closed, schools were canceled, everyone went shopping for food supplies, etc. So Thursday rolls around (that was the day it was supposed to hit us) I had already decided that it would miss us, when my companion and I went shopping for food, just in case, he got all sorts of foods and I got microwave popcorn and cheesecake. Anyways, so Thursday rolls around and everything is closed at noon, the entire city of Kingston shuts down. Well we leave the office about 5 pm and decide to go get some dinner, well everywhere was closed, not a restaurant was open. It was really nice driving, everyone was at home so there was no traffic. Well eventually we found KFC, it was busy since it was the only place open, we got food and then it started to rain. We figured the storm had finally arrived! It rained really really really hard for about 10 minutes at most, then it stopped and that was then end of Tomas, we got maybe an inch of rain if we were lucky....probably a lot less....it was a goofy storm, plenty of local Jamaicans are frustrated with the weather people for making it out to be something huge and shutting down all businesses and schools. Troy and I have made it a habit now to ask people if their is anything we can do to help them recover from the storm, seems to make most people laugh.

In other exciting news the power at our house is out! Wahoo....unfortunately its not coming back on for a few days. The Office Elders had this weird flashlight thing that they bought from a street vendor. Well they wanted to charge it, so they plugged it in and it exploded. It also flipped the circuit breaker and power went out. The problem now is that our landlord died a few months back and we live in the same house as he did just in a different part, we can't get to his part and in his part is where the circuit breaker box is located. The house was recently sold and so it is confussing now to find the keys because we don't even know who owns the place, whoever it is they aren't living here yet. So we are out of power until we find someone who can get in. Hopefully it happens soon....that is Monday's project.

This week we had Zone Leader Council. It was really splendid. Talked a whole lot about obedience (seems to be the big thing with Pres. Hendricks these days) and ate a delicious dinner. It was good, we have some exceptional zone leaders right now. The next day we had another training session thingy. It went over well. Previously we have had it for three days and we have followed the lesson outlines that the church provided us with. This time we only had one day to do it and so we decided to spend the whole time focusing specifically on the role of the Holy Ghost, prayer, reading The Book of Mormon, and church attendance in conversion. It was excellent. I think Elder Allen and I did a good job with it. That took most of the day, lasted about 7 hours. Pres. Hendricks prepared lunch for us, It was good, everyone liked it a lot.

Things are at the office are looking organized, I think I finally almost have the computers working how they should. The only problem is we are missing a network drive and I can't find any of the files on any computer...which is really bad, but that is for Monday. Also spent a lot of time going through flight information. This next week on Wednesday we are going to Grand Cayman for Zone Conference, then on Friday president is going to Cuba, then the next week we are going to the Bahamas and the Turks, so that should be good. The new office is good enough, our office is a lot more annoying, all tile floors and a strange organization, but so it goes.

Teaching is going well enough. We have this old lady, Sis. Williams, she is doing good. Lessons are always really funny with her. Every single time we come she asks us the same question because she forgets that she has asked it before. Thankfully it only takes ten seconds to answer it anymore, we just tell her to remember the map and immediately she recalls the answer to the question. She is a good reader, but is pretty stubborn. None the less hopefully she makes it to church tomorrow. We have also been teaching Akeilah's family, the only inconvenient part about that is that they can only be seen on Sundays, so it is very slow going. They are good enough, they live way up in the hills in some crazy cement housing that looks really cool! It is like they just kept stacking houses on top of each other in these hills. We need more investigators so I think this next week we are going to make it a special effort to find new people who are prepared to receive us.

Things are going well though. This next week should be good. Monday I have a lot to do on my list, and Wednesday we get to fly out to Cayman so that should be good. Transfers are coming up fast, so we have been getting that all the way ready. I will not be transfered so nothing new there. It should be a good transfer though, I am looking forward to it, we have some good changes coming. Well I need to finish up here. Things are good, I am healthy and well. I hope that school and work goes excellent this next week for everyone, good luck with your play thingy Heather. I love you all!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert

Everybody Remember Where We Parked

Family,

Sorry about accidently not sending the email to the normal address last week. I always send three copies, one to my home email, one to the gmail account and one to the juno account, just-in-case, last week I just failed to click the gmail account. But if it ever happens again just check the juno account, it should be their also. Things are going good. We have had a little bit of rain, but not much, Tropical Storm Richard has been blowing more west than east and so as such, it just missed us, all we got were some showers.

Probably the most exciting thing of this week was that we officially got all our new trucks. It is great! I love ours, so many nice features and great suspension (which helps a ton with all the pot holes and unleveled roads). It has been a lot of fun to drive a brand new vehicle with almost nothing on the odometer. Mitsubishi did an excellent job with these vehicles.

Also in other exciting news I got in my first car wreck this week! (Although it was not in the new trucks, but in the good old bus thankfully). On Tuesday night we had just finished a great night visiting the Ohara family trying to get their son to be baptized and we were on our way home. In the bus we had myself as the driver, my companion, Akeilah, Troy, and the Flakes. Well we drive Troy home and dropped him off, he lives at the top of a really long hill. So we begin our journey home down the hill and come to some random really long line of traffic that is just stopped. So accordingly we stop as well and join the long line of vehicles. Well we are just happily talking and sitting there when all of a sudden we here this big BANG and we rock forward a bit. haha we had gotten rear ended, the man behind us had decided not to stop (well what he really said was that his brakes didn't work). So we got out and waited for the cops, those in our bus had a good laugh at the whole situation. The police were really nice about it, it was really obvious whose fault it was and so it was a pretty quick thing for the cops. Our bus suffered minor damage, we barely moved, we didn't hit the car in front of us and we just had a destroyed bumper and some dents on the rear door. The other car suffered a lot more damage. It was a strange wreck to look at, we had taken so little damage and he had taken so much. Well no one was injured and so we just drove home and then the next day filled out all the paper work stuff. It was fun enough, I will attach a picture of the epicness.

Hmmm...what else happened. So the seminary students are working on some song that they are going to sing in sacrament meeting, so that has been good. I am the piano player for them. They are pretty good, just need to sing louder, with such a small group (7 seminary students).

Troy and Akeilah are doing well, they have both still been coming out with us almost on a daily basis. On Sunday we are going to go on an adventure to teach some of Akeilah's relatives up in the hills, so that should be productive. Teaching has been good enough. We don't really have any star investigators right now, but we do have a lot of good potential. Our problem seems to be that we can never seem to see anyone on a regular basis. All our investigators live busy lives and we are busy ourselves and so it seems like we are always chasing our investigators around, haha Oh well, so it goes sometimes.

Zone conferences are this week so we have been working on that this week. Still haven't quite finalized what I am supposed to be teaching, but I am working on that, I need to finish that on Monday. Dr. Kilgore, the area doctor man is coming to visit us to and do a little presentation thingy at our zone conferences, so that should be interesting enough. I am excited for zone conferences, they should be great.

Things are pretty normal around here. This next week we are moving to a new office. I don't know if I like the idea much. I think the new office will be nicer but it is a lot less conveniently located. It is right in the heart of New Kingston, which means way to much traffic all the time. I am not looking forward to it. Thankfully we will be a zone conferences all week which means we conveniently get to miss out on all the fun moving! haha What a good week to move.

Well life is good, I am doing excellent. Kingston is as great as ever. Oh, I just remembered, I have sort of a strange request for you mom. This week will you go and purchase two Rubik's cubes from the store (or wherever you can find them) and send them to me. You can just take money out of my account for this purchase/postage. Rubik's cubes are really hard to find in Jamaica (all the stores say they won't have anymore till at least Christmas) and this last week mine was shattered into pieces and the plastic broke and is now unfixable. The reason I want two is because I need to give one to Troy also, I have taught him how to solve it but he doesn't own one of his own. To save on package size if needed you can remove the cubes from whatever packaging they come with, I don't really need that. If you would do that this week mom I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you! Good luck this week with school and work. I hope it goes great! I will keep you all in my prayers. I love you all!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert

R'-D'-R-D

Family,

Well another week has gone by once again. Things are going well here in Jamaica. This week was nice. Last Saturday we had Zone Leader Council, hence why I emailed on Friday, it was very good. The zone leaders we have right now are great, definitely some of the very best missionaries we have in the mission right now. Pres. Hendricks gave a good lesson thingy on baptizing true converts; not just baptizing for high numbers, but baptizing people who will stick around and endure to the end. It was really good. Afterwards we had a waffle lunch prepared by some of the senior couples. It was good.

Other than that not a ton has happened...or at least nothing that seems to be standing out in my mind right now.... oh yeah, also last Saturday another senior couple was flying in and Pres. Hendricks was going to be out of town so it was out job to go pick them up. Well we were told the flight landed at 7:50 by multiple people (Sister Cheesman, Pres. Hendricks) so we thought that was just dandy and great, so we get ready to go at a time good enough to get us to the airport on time and we call the airport to see if the flight is running on schedule. Well they don't know of any 7:50 flight. Well I get on a computer and look up the flight and it turns out it was at 6:50 and not 7:50. So we were late and somewhere stranded at the airport in pouring rain was some senior couple haha. Well we got there and found them, they were still in good spirits even though they had to just sit at the airport and wait.

Akeilah has been coming out and teaching with us, which is a ton of fun. She does a good job with it too. She has also been teaching gospel principles at church on Sundays and is now chugging through the old testament. She is without a doubt the strongest convert from my mission. She is so young too, which is amazing, at 20 years old she knows where she wants to go in life and is making some very good decisions. I am always amazed at her and the progress she has made.

Well Troy and Akeilah both wanted to learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube so I have been working on that here and there, it is a very slow process since I don't really have all that much time to just teach someone how to solve a Rubik's Cube. Troy can solve half the cube and I think Akeilah can solve it all now, she said she can but I haven't actually seen it, sometime today she said she would show us that she could. Well we went on a Rubik's Cube hunt this week trying to find a place to buy them in Kingston. We went everywhere (not all together, we divided and conquered) Elder Allen and I finally succeeded at a toy store that I didn't even know existed. They even sold an official Rubik's brand cube and not some off brand that will fall apart. So that was sort of exciting.

Elder Allen has been learning to drive. This week he certainly has not improved. He can drive well enough, but his maneuvering is really terrible, and I am not really sure how to help him with it. None the less we haven't given up yet. The mission also got all new vehicles! We switched to Mitsubishi, the mission has mostly been driving Nissan and it is a failure, I really don't like Nissan, I will never purchase one, they have so many defects. Well anyways this week we got to go pick up the new vehicles. It was nice driving something that was brand new, and not only that but has no problems, no kilometers, nothing! It was great! Sort of frightening though to drive something that you really don't want to get scratched or anything at all. Troy loves Mitsubishi, it is his favorite car brand, and so he battled hard to get the mission to switch to Mitsubishi. Mostly we just trust his opinion since he is an auto mechanic and in the end we are now getting all Mitsubishi. We are also scraping all the cars and switching completely over to pick-up trucks, it is just so much easier to drive in Jamaica in a truck, too many potholes and other road hazards that cars don't handle well.

Well Pres. Hendricks gave a copy of The Book of Mormon to some lady and convinced her to read it. In a week she read the whole thing and now wants to know more. She is great! She is now getting all her family to listen to the missionaries. Pres. Hendricks turned her over to us to teach and work with. She is the mother of a member from Negril. So that is great. It always seems like Heavenly Father just blesses us with people to teach who are ready to hear the gospel. The missionaries just do stuff and God blesses them with people who are ready to accept, it seems like a large part of the baptisms we have, the person was already ready and the missionaries just were there, God just put us there at the right point in time.

Zone Conferences are coming up real fast, so we have been working on planning them. I am still unsure what I am supposed to be teaching. But we are working on that haha. So that is going well. We have also been working on trying to find ways that we can more effectively deliver the new training to the mission. So that is good enough.

Well life is going well, nothing to exciting going on. Teaching is excellent, we have some great people we are working with. yup, things are good. I hope that this next week is great, enjoy school. I love you all and look forward to next week.

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert

No Subject

Family,

Well thanks to Zone Leader Council being tomorrow it was decided that we should just move our preparation day to today, Friday. This week was certainly less epic than last week. The weather has calmed down so not much going on there. Although yesterday we did get hit by a magnitude 4.5 earthquake so that was sort of exciting...although it was almost unnoticeable.

Conference was excellent, I really liked President Packers talk on moral law, it was really good. We had a decent turnout, thanks to the invention of the internet in Jamaica they no longer need them fancy satellites to view conference and as such all the branches were capable of just watching conference at their own branch buildings instead of coming to the buildings with satellites. On Friday night all the new missionaries flew in and it was decided that they would just watch it at the mission home so in between every session we would drive to the mission home and check on them and eat a meal. Elder and Sister Herbert also flew in and have been transfered to Jamaica so that was fun to see them at the mission home too.

On Sunday Elder McGrath, and Troy and I decided that we would wear our suits to conference! this is the first time I have worn my suit on my mission, so that was sort of exciting. I will attach a picture of that event, I like that picture a lot! Troy is looking really good with his vest and all that good stuff. Akeilah was also able to make it to all the sessions of conference so that was great! She is doing excellent, quite possibly the strongest convert I have had on my mission or will have on my mission.

Transfers happened on Monday. It was a crazy day, every single companionship was changing and we had 11 missionaries going home and as such we just seemed to be everywhere all day long. we got up early and drover halfway across the island to move missionaries around and after 6 hours of driving we went to the office and organized things there, then went to see Akeilah one last time for E. McGrath and then we went to the mission home to have the final devotional with the missionaries that were going home. It was a really nice devotional, Pres. Hendricks gave some great council to them that was wonderful to hear. My favorite part about being an Assistant is getting to be around President so much, he always has such great wisdom to share. Well It was sad to see E. McGrath go, we had had a good time serving together. E. Allen my new companion is a native Jamaican, he is the second ever Jamaican Assistant. He is cool. He is a hard worker and an excellent teacher, it will be interesting to serve with him for the next little while.

The rest of the week has been pretty dull. E. Allen doesn't have a drivers license and so him and Troy have been driving around the parking lot while he learns to drive and then the rest of the time he sits around in the office and studies the driving books so that he can pass the test. The goal is to have him with a license in 2 weeks. He is doing pretty good at it too. I have decided though that I could never teach drivers ed, it is way too frustrating. Well since he spends all his time working on that I have just been doing a lot of random little things around the office, unfortunately I have mostly done every random thing that I can think of, so I am not sure what I am going to do this upcoming week while E. Allen studies, I need to think up a random project that will be beneficial to the mission somehow.

So we have an over abundance of senior couples now, we have something like 10 senior couples! Which is great! most of them are located here in Kingston to, seems like we bump into senior couples left and right now. Pres. is trying to strengthen Kingston a lot to hopefully make it ready for a stake sometime soon. It is close, it just needs more people doing what they are supposed to be doing, we have enough members, we just don't have enough members that are living their lives in such a way that a stake could be run, we need more leadership. It has been fun though to have all these senior couples around. tomorrow we have to run to the airport and get another one that is arriving, so that should be fun enough.

Akeilah has all these friends that live near her that we have been working on teaching, it is going well enough, they are all very smart and excellent listeners, the hard part is getting them to act on what they know. A lot of social fears that we are having to work around. But still some excellent people that are fun to work with. It is always nice to have investigators that read and remember what they have learned. Akeilah is a great member missionary, she has really embraced the gospel and seems to want to share it with everyone. I am proud of her and the changes she has made and how she lives her life now.

Well I am not sure what else really happened this week. Pretty standard week. Transfers went over well, the mission is doing decent enough, but we could be doing a lot better than we are. I think though that a lot of good will happen this transfer. I hope things are going great back home, sorry to have sort of surprised you with this email. I am doing great, things are going well here. Have a good week, enjoy school and work. I love you all!

Elder Kent Talbert