Living proof that dinosaurs once roamed the earth

Family,

Well another week gone by. It was great to hear from you all again. I am glad that the funeral was nice, and hopefully the vacation is awesome. This week was good. Transfers have come and gone, I am still in the same spot, as I figured. E. Stevens has finished his mission, which is sort of weird to think that he is now done.

Not much of note happened this week, fairly standard. We have been going on splits a lot to try and get a lot more accomplished. This week in itself was quite effective. Almost everyday I have been going with Aris, this strange member that is still cool. Everyday he comes to the church and him and I walk to Kingstown and teach all day. Aris is always really helpful for a while and then he gets really lazy and just wants to quit. Yet everyday if we don't call him he calls us and asks if he can come. He does nothing all day unless he comes with the missionaries. and...ugh...wow, elder packard is talking way to much right now and I am having a really hard time focusing on what I am typing, hopefully this all makes sense. Elder Packard is cool and I enjoy serving with him. Anyways, Aris is funny. Down in Kingstown is where the Chalas family lives, Aris thinks the oldest daughter Karen is cute and is always trying to talk to her. Well everyday he gets frustrated and tells me he is never coming back and then through some strange miracle something always happens that drives him to come back. On Saturday he was frustrated and told me he wasn't going to ever come back but then Karen came outside and sat near him and so when we left and we were talking as we walked back to the church he was so excited that Karen had sat near him, even though she had said nothing to him, that he couldn't wait to come back the next day. Everyday something like that happens, something really ridiculous that makes Aris willing to come back the next day.

We have been teaching this lady named Jena, she is maybe in her 40's. She is really nice and planning on being baptized in August. She is very cool, but not the greatest reader, she is lacking an education, but she is at least willing to give her best try. Reuben, although not a member, still comes out with us and does all our translating, he is a very good translator. I wish he would get baptized, but he is very slow at it all.

On Wednesday we had a short little video conference. I guess they have some new training on Preach My Gospel that the First Presidency is sending out to the world. They are reemphasizing some important aspects that they don't feel that missionaries are focusing on enough. It was largely focused on teaching the importance of scripture study and prayer. To often the missionaries spend to much time getting through all the doctrine. Most investigators just forget all that anyways, all they can remember is the feeling of the spirit. Instead they want us to focus on getting investigators and recent converts to get in the habit of reading daily on there own. so nothing really new, just sort of a new focus. It was good training, I enjoyed it.

Yesterday night Aris and I were waiting at the church for Elder Packard and we had about 15 minutes and we were stuck outside because we don't have keys. Well I got curious (not always a good thing) about whether I could find a way into the church without keys. Turns out it was possible. I looked up on the balcony and realized that one of the bars that protects the windows was missing. so I climbed up the wall to the balcony and then was able to get the rest of the bars removed, with one gone everything else was lose. either way, in the end I got in the church. Well that was fun, and now I am making that window safer, the missing bar is one of the problems, but also it is missing some important bolts, so I am going to replace those this week and make that window safe.

Hmmm...what else, with all this talking I am having a hard time thinking of what else to say.... I am attaching a picture of volleyball on friday. It is good, I am getting good at volleyball after playing week after week. It is a good activity, people have a lot of fun, and it is great fellowship for all the investigators that come. well I am nearly out of time.

This week was great, I am looking forward to this next week. Hopefully the vacation is awesome. I just remembered that I had a cool spiritual thought to share, doh, not enough time, I will write it down to mention it next week. I love you all and look forward to hearing from you all next week!

Love
Elder Kent Talbert

Which I'm still going to destroy, by the way.

Family,
Well it is great to hear from you all again. It is sad to hear that Grandma Kent has passed away, but probably for the best. This week was good. Yesterday at church we had a talk by this member named Fen. Fen is weird, he knows the gospel well, and he speaks English and Creole well, but his talk was nuts. I was having a hard time not laughing through the whole of it. All of us that could hear him, and understand what he was saying in English and Creole, and understood the gospel were having a hard time not laughing. First off he gave 2 different talks, he translated for himself, only he didn't translate. He would say something in English, and then say something else in Creole, so the english speakers got one talk and the creole speakers got the other talk, and those that understood both were just confused at it. Well his English talk was all about tithing and paying tithing. Then he moved on to talking about fish and that if we don't have any money to pay tithing we could pay with fish instead haha, I would love to see the look on Pres. Otin's face if someone handed him a fish for tithing. His Creole talk was also about Tithing, only instead of fish he was talking all about growing bananas and potatoes and how to produce the best crops via paying your tithing. Well that is great and all except that nothing grows on the island, it is a desert which is dependent upon tourists to provide money. Anyways, it gave us a good laugh.
Well on Thursday I felt that we needed to go to a new area where we had never been before, a spot called Kingstown. So Thursday morning we walked down to kingstown to find people to teach. It has been quite productive. The Chalas family lives down in that part and so we found them first and then proceeded to find other investigators. We have now been down there everyday. The Chalas family has 2 smaller children and this little boy that lives next door named Kenyel that is always running around with them. It has become my job to entertain them because it is near impossible to teach with them running around and interupting the lesson every 10 seconds. So I spent everyday with these kids keeping them entertained while Elder Packard taught these other guys, (including one with 6 fingers!). The little kids have been great! Kenyel wants to be baptized, so I found his mother and invited her to church and now she wants to be baptized also (Kenyel has been coming to church for maybe 3 months now with the Chalas family). So that has been great. The Chalas family all around is excellent (I think I have mentioned that before) I have enjoyed getting to know them a lot more this week, we have spent a lot of time around there yard teaching their neighbors and what not. Well we had family night with them on monday, I will attach a picture here of that.

Starting at the back Left you have Karen, she is 16 almost 17, and very quiet, near impossible to get her to say much. Next is Jessie, she is 14 and very talkative, she always has something new to tell me, she speaks english and spanish and creole very well and thought fens talk was hilarious. Next is Sis. Chalas, she works every sunday but was able to come yesterday!! Finally! first time she has been at church in 11 years! hopefully she can get work off more often. Next is Bro. chalas, he is exceedingly faithful, but also near blind and has a hard time providing for his family. In the front left we have Mikaela (not sure on the spelling) she is crazy and always climbing all over us. Then Miguel, he is 10 and very smart. He was just baptized in March (he was my first baptism on this island) and then finally is Kenyel, he is 9 and sort of wild, his mom works all day and so he is just left alone to do what he wants. Overall an awesome family, they are from the domincan repubic originally and have been members for a long time, a great strength to the branch. lots of fun stories with them from this week, but I won't bother to write them now.

So other than that this week has been fairly typical. It is raining a lot today. My mind pretty much just went blank on what I was typing and I have no clue what I am going to say next. On tuesday We had dinner with some members, it was good. They were the ones that really helped to start the branch and as such they know the complete history of the branch. It was really cool, they told us the entire story of how this branch came to be what it is today. I would write it down here, but it would be fairly boring without knowing many of the people involved. The Otins also fed us lunch on wednesday. We get dinner appointments from the members once every few months and it just happened to fall all on the same week. It was great though. I get tired of the same food everyday and it is always nice to eat something different.

Well ugh.... wow, I just can't seem to think today, I keep forgetting what I was going to say next. ugh... I thought I had a lot to say this week, but I guess not. Spent most of our time in Kingstown. We have a lot of good potential right now. Plenty of Investigators that are well on there way to baptism. The world cup is finally over!!! It was epic, but it was a huge distraction to everyone, it was near impossible to teach anyone during the games, no one would listen to us. Hopefully it makes this week very productive.

Well my time is nearly up, I have spent so much time just staring at the screen that I didn't get to write much today.... opps. sorry about that one. Transfers are this week. I don't think I am getting transfered, but I guess you never know! could always be a surprise. I sort of hope that I am not transfered. I like my companion enough and I love the members here, they are great people. I would like to spend one or two more transfers here if possible. Enjoy this week, hopefully the funeral is nice. Good luck with whatever it is your all doing. I love you all and look forward to next week!

Love
Elder B. Kent Talbert

Sharp rocks at the bottom?

Family,

Well things are going good. It was great to hear from you all again as usual. I am glad to know that my dog still has panic attacks every time fireworks go off. Thanks for Bishops email dad, that will make things a lot easier, I don't really trust the postal system here, I have sort of wondered if they really send half the mail they get. It is probably some plot to take over the island, at least it seems that that is something postal workers would attempt. Good luck with the Physics mom, I am quite jealous.

First I will relate a strange observance I have made over the last few weeks. In the Branch President's office there are always all these little black beatles everywhere. I don't know where they come from, there are on average 12-15 in his office. The odd part about these bugs is that normally 75% of them are dead. I have wondered what kills them so I sort of watch them here and there. I have found the source of their death, turns out they are some of the dumbest bugs around, natural selection has chosen them to go extinct. They just sort of roam the room mindlessly and always come to the wall, well they always make a decision to climb the wall. they begin the climb and after about 2 inches they fall and land on their backs. Well this wouldn't be a problem except for an evolutionary disadvantage where once on their backs they can never flip over again and so they just lay there struggling to get up and eventually die. all the dead beatles just lie there at the base of the walls, it is quite humorous now, I get a good laugh every time I walk into that office and find 5 new dead bugs. Not the brightest bugs, but then again perhaps it is some strange beatle feat where whichever beatle makes it to the top wins the kingdom and so they just eternally try and just die over and over and over.

We had a baptism this week, I will attach a picture here of that. Actually I will attach 3 pictures. I am quite unsure what is going on in one of those pictures, it looks as if I am falling over or something, haha. Anyways, the baptismee is named Micahel. He is an eternal investigator. He has been investigating the church for the last year and a bit and was always so unsure if he really wanted to be baptized. Finally this week on monday we got him all excited for baptism and from there it was easy, He was finally ready. He speaks english very well and is excited to do missionary work and help with translation. overall a very good baptism. I decided I would get a haircut today, although my hair does look pretty epic in those photos.

The World Cup has been progressing well. Germany Destroyed Argentina on Saturday. It was funny, all the Haitians either lover Brazil or Argentina, probably 70% like Brazil and 30% like Argentina. Well Brazil lost on Friday and so many of the Haitians were not to happy. But then on Saturday when Argentina lost 4-0 It was crazy, We walked into a yard the minute it ended and everyone was cheering and was super excited that Argentina had been defeated. The Next day at church our branch president (who is Argentinan) made a handful of jokes about the world cup, it made for a good time. The other funny side effect of this was that before this week people would ask me which team I wanted to win and I would say Germany and they would all look at me confused trying to figure out who Germany was and where Germany was. Well now everyone has become Germany fans and yesterday I had 3 different people who I had never met walk up to me and ask me if I am German (I am not...obviously) haha.

In more depressing news, the Ockeys came (not the depressing news) but the also brought news that E. Sizemore had gone home. Why, I do not know...I don't know any of the details, but that was pretty terrible, he was a great elder. E. McGrath is an assistant again. Well with the Ockeys coming it meant we got to go out to eat again at all the fancy restaurants. The weirdest part I find about it is that before my mission I did not like fish one bit, now when we go out to eat I choose fish over steak or chicken. I have found that fish can be quite good, especially when it is very freshly caught, most of the restaurants serve fish that was caught that day. I like Grouper a lot, especially the Nassau Grouper and Tuna is quite good to. Pres. Ockey convinced me to try tuna exceeding rare, so I did, turns out it was quite good, I was surprised, I think I would order it again.

The 4th of July was a more or less non-existant holiday here. The only sort of celebration we had was when we were about to leave the church and one of the members we were with wanted to sing some hymns and so I played the piano for a bit and we had a grand finishing of The Star Spangled Banner, other than that I would never have known it was a holiday. This country doesn't celebrate the 4th....obviously, instead they celebrate weird holidays, like the Queen's Birthday, and probably her dog's Birthday.

Hmmm....I am trying to think what else happened. The weather has been weird; no rain, but the sky has been this odd hazy color like there is a lot of bad gas in the air, only that isn't really possible since there are very little emissions here. Anyways, I am hoping it rains this week, I am tired of the heat and could do with a bit of a cool down. Don't worry about a hurricane to much mom, we are prepared, we have a food supply, I have plenty of Spaghetti-O's to last me.

It seems like something else happened this week that I just can't quite seem to remember. anyways, time is running short. Things are going great here, my eye has mysteriously turned very red again haha. The members here are wonderful, immigration has given them to much trouble this week. I am doing well. Keep up the missionary work Laura! Enjoy your week, be safe. I love you all and look forward to next weeks emails!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert

You're supposed to be Dead!

Family,

Well another good week. Sounds as if things are going well back home, and looks as if the reunion was a lot of fun, Thanks for all the pictures dad. Well I am not really sure where to begin, it was a relatively dull week and I don't really know what I have to say about the week, but we will see how far I get. 

Between the World Cup and Immigration this week it has been a pain in the neck to find people to teach. Seems like every time that we wanted to teach someone they were either busy watching TV and very uninterested in listening to us or they were running from immigration. nevertheless we have still managed to have a decent week and we have some good investigators. Church attendance was really skimpy yesterday, only 41 people made it, but our guess is that it is the same things that prevented us from teaching that prevented people from coming to church. 

Yesterday my companion was talking to someone about something random and I was just waiting for him to be finished and I saw a member on a bench nearby so I wandered over to him to see how he was doing. Well he introduced me to his friend and so I was just talking to his friend at random and somehow or another he started talking about how he wanted to go back to school and somehow or another the word math was mentioned and he asked if I was good and I said I was capable and so then he wanted to see if I really knew how to do math so he ran inside his house and brought out a notebook and wrote down different math problems and then handed them to me, turns out is was fairly basic algebra so it took little thinking to finish. Well after I was done he had to do the problems to see if I had done them right. So then he started to do them and he made a mistake somewhere and another Haitian pointed it out to him and somehow I ended up with about 7 Haitians all staring at this notebook trying to solve algebra problems and chemistry problems. I thought it was sort of funny and ironic. Somehow I ended up out on the middle of some tiny island in the caribbean with a group of illegal Haitians all surrounding me discussing math and chemistry. Well eventually they determined that I was intelligent for I had got all the problems correct in a quarter of the time it took them and so then they wanted to see how much I knew about the bible so they started asking me random questions and I was tactfully able to convert the random questions into a good lesson on the restoration of the gospel and will be seeing them again tomorrow. Overall a good evening.

Thursday night we were outside waiting for something or other, I don't remember what, but Elder Herbert was looking at the ground and started to notice all these caterpillar type thingys moving across the ground. They were really nifty, their were close to 100 of these bugs just making a trek to a nearby tree and climbing up the tree. it was really bizarre. I don't know where they came from or where they went but the next day they were just all gone, vanished into nothingness.

Last monday the Chalas family came to the church and we had Family Home Evening. It was good. They voted on what they wanted to do and they chose to watch Legacy. Well they had never heard of much Church History. They knew about Joseph Smith and that the church today was big and all but they had never really learned any History, so before we watched the movie I gave a little history lesson and then we watched the movie. It was fun. That movie is really cheesy and has some pretty dumb lines spoken but nonetheless it is still good enough. I think they liked it and I know they at least learned something, they now know a lot more about church history.

wow, what a week, I really don't know what else to say about events of the week. It has been hot, things are going well, we don't have the biggest teaching pool right now, but we have some good investigators and our teaching pool is growing. This next week should be good. July is nearly here, it just keeps getting hotter, everybody here says that september is the hottest month here so that will be nice, although I look forward to the rainy days more than the sunny days. The sunny days are just no fun to be outside all day. Well that is the Weather for you. 

When Pres. Hendricks was here he made a mention of how John the Revelator was a very great missionary. Well the more I thought about it this week the more I realized how many very important things John has witnessed in his life. He obviously saw most of Christ's ministry, He was also present at the Mount of Transfiguration, and He was in the Garden of Gethsemene, and He was at the Cross and he witnessed the Resurrection and he was chosen to write to book of Revelation for all to read and his testimony is read by millions of people around the world of many faiths, He was witness to the Restoration of the Gospel, etc. What a life. Anyways, I am not really sure where I am going with any of this so I will just jump to the next paragraph.

Life is going well. My Eyes are completely healed now and I am happily wearing contacts again. Our bikes are out of commission so we just taxi everywhere, that is a killer on the budget. Well that is the week. Things are good, it was great to hear from you all again and I look forward to hearing from you all next week! Good luck this week, stay safe. I love you all!

Elder B. Kent Talbert

Don't tell me. We're about to go over a huge waterfall

Family,

Well another week has passed by. It was good. Sounds as if the trek thingy was entertaining. happy fathers day dad. Umm....where to begin. I mentioned last week that I thought I had pink eye or some similar eye infection. I had stopped wearing my contacts and was just wearing my glasses until it looked healed. Well on Thursday my eyes were looking healed and normal so I decided I was going to wear contacts again. I was a bit curious if my contacts that I had been wearing were infected, I thought they were, but I decided to experiment just for fun. I put in my contacts, and everything was fine. 6 hours later, in the middle of Pres. Hendricks instruction my eyes started watering like mad and stayed that way for the rest of the day. I looked in the mirrors and it looked quite vampiric, in only a few hours my eyes had turned very very blood shot, it was pretty cool looking. Well by dinner my contacts were killing me so I just removed them and threw them away and spent the rest of the day blind. now I am back to wearing my glasses until my eyes heal again, but at least I now know that my hypothesis was correct about the infection on my contacts. So that was a fun little experiment this week.

Pres. Hendricks came and visited, along with the assistants (Tanner and Sizemore) and his wife. It was a great visit. He is different than Pres. Graff, except for the fact that he is also from Texas, and he is different than Pres. Gingery. Pres. Hendricks worked as an FBI agent and has some cool stories. He knows a ridiculous amount of stuff about the scriptures, his instruction was very enlightening, he also appears to like poetry, he quoted a lot of poems that he had memorized. He is a very relaxed man who seems like he will be an excellent mission president. It seems like every mission president I have had so far I have had for a reason, and I figure it will be the same with pres. Hendricks. Well they came on thrusday afternoon. We ate lunch and then had a little conference like thingy, and then they went off with the Herberts and we went with the assistants. Eventually we ended with dinner at the Tiki Hut restaurant. I had this really good chicken thingy. It was Shrimp covered in coconut curry followed by a layer of chicken around the shrimp, followed by a really good creamy sauce. It was delicious. E. Tanner thought it sounded good and after I looked at it I thought it sounded good and then E. Sizemore figured that it sounded good so all 3 of us got it, thankfully it was good and we didn't all have lousy dinners. Overall a very good visit. Pres. Hendricks discussed with us all about the duty of the tribe of Ephraim and missionary work. It was excellent.

I have been working on understanding creole a lot this week. I am getting good at it. I am still a failure at speaking it but I can read it and understand 90-95% and when others speak I understand anywhere from 50%-70% depending on how well the pronounce the words and how fast they get speaking. It is a fairly easy language, possibly one of the easiest to learn. hopefully I will be able to at least understand the people even if I can't communicate back to them. 

Yesterday night when we were getting ready to ride our bikes home my companions bike fell apart. The bearings in the rear wheel broke and so the wheel doesn't turn properly so we walked home. took us about an hour to get all the way home, not the greatest walk, but it was at least cool at night time. I am not really sure what we are going to do now though. With no spare bike parts, and no bike shop on the island, we are sort of in a sticky situation. perhaps duct tape can fix it.......

Volleyball friday night was fun, we get a huge turnout. well my eyes were ultra sensitive to light on friday after my experiment from thursday so I had a real hard time playing. after a short time I quit and went over to a park table where the Chalas family children were sitting. So I just hung out with the kids and did magic tricks for them and did boondogle. It was a lot of fun, the Chalas family is one of my favorite families that I have met on my mission. Volleyball is good. It brings out a lot of the members and a lot of nonmembers, we get anywhere from 30-40 people a week. 

Well there is this lady named Nancy that we have been teaching. She is Haitian. We met with her once when she just walked in on a lesson we were having with some guy. We gave her a pamphlet and told her we would return the next day. Well the next day came and I asked her how her reading was and she started telling us and she just kept going on and on and on in creole, my companion looked a bit lost, but thankfully I was catching most of it. I was amazed at how much she knew and I started to wonder if she had met missionaries previously. I asked and it turns out she had met many missionaries in Haiti and knew a lot about the church. I am now wondering if she is a member of the church already that just didn't know the church was here on the island. She knows an unusual amount about the church for being just an investigator, I need to bring a good translator with us next time and figure that out. It would be sort of funny to find out that we have been teaching a member all of last week. If she is not a member well hopefully she will be baptized.

Yesterday we had a baptism, it went over very well. We just did it right after church. I will attach a photo here of it. 

I am also attaching a photo of just the man being baptized, Alistide. 

Also a picture of pres hendricks and sister Hendricks. Every single picture of Pres. Hendricks he is on his phone, I don't think it is intentional, his phone just seemed to be always ringing.

Well that was the week. I am short on time so I need to finish this thing up here. Things are going very good here. I am healthy and well, my eyes are looking a lot better since thursday. Life on the Islands is good, it is getting hotter and hotter. thanks for all the emails, sounds as if things are good back home. Good luck with the garden mom, hope that works out haha. I love you all and look forward to next week!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert

Let the Wookie Win

Family,

Well yet again, another week has flown by. Thanks for all the emails, it was great to hear from you all again. Things have gone well this week. still hurricane less, but maybe that is a good thing. Last  Monday we had a massive rainstorm. Well we had to go pay our rent and so we drove out to the place and unfortunately the roads were very flooded . I did not want to get out of the car. finally we just decided who cares and began to trudge through the flooded streets. the water was about 25-30 inches deep and came up nearly to my belt line. when we finally got inside the place to pay our rent the employees were surprised they had customers, they didn't think anyone would come with that rain. It made for a very wet day, but it was entertaining.

I am glad you enjoyed the diving sheep, I don't think I have anything that amusing this week to tell. The soccer World Cup started this week, that has turned out to be very detrimental to the teaching. seems like every haitian uses it as an excuse to do nothing. We walk into a yard and there is no one in sight, entire neighborhoods are gathered around TV's watching the games. Yesterday at church I was worried that no one was going to come. thankfully for us we had over 20 tourists show up and so that kept the attendance up. It was sort of like superbowl sunday, somehow 60% of the members caught the same disease that somehow effects the ball of their foot. Thankfully the disease is cured after a few hours of sitting around. The world cup lasts a month or something like that, so it will be interesting to see what happens this next month, hopefully everyone gets bored of it or something.

Well Saturday night we met some tourists (some of the ones that came to church) and they took us out to eat ice cream. It was really good! I like Ice Cream, and I like tourists, and I like Tourists giving me ice cream. So all around a good deal, three things I like all at once. They were very nice people. The father of the family went to Provo High School a long time ago, so that was nifty. 

Josh got married? wow, that is a surprise and a half, did not expect that one. It will be interesting to see what comes from that. Perhaps it will be good and he will rise to the challenge of added responsibility and will learn a lot. I have seen that a lot on my mission. for example in the branch here when we had 14 of our members deported all of a sudden we were lacking in a lot of our leadership. Well a handful of the members who had been only slightly active and hadn't been so useful all of a sudden really rose to the challenge and accepted all the extra responsibility and I think they are a lot better people because of it. Occasionally people learn best when they are just thrown into a situation where their is a lot expected of them. Hopefully Everything works out for Josh and Whitney.

We have some good investigators that will hopefully be baptized this next week. teaching has been interesting. Elder Packard still hasn't quite got the hang of using a translator to teach and uses vocabulary or sentence structures that they don't understand. It is funny to see the translators ask him over and over what he is trying to say. He will get it down eventually, just needs some practice. We have been teaching this really nice man named Atistded. He can't read, so that makes it tricky, but he is a very kind person and he wants to do good. It is always hard to teach people who can't read, they can' really do anything outside of our lessons. mostly we just have him pray and maybe assign a member to help him read. The Haitians are very humble and don't get offended when you do things like assign someone to help them read, they think it is great.

Hmm...what else happened this week. It seems now that so many of the things that happen each week have already happened so many previous times that they almost aren't even worth mentioning. This week pres. Hendricks is coming to visit with us. I will finally get to meet him! I am still yet to hear from him or anything, it is as if he doesn't exist yet haha. But that should be good, Elder Tanner and Elder Sizemore are coming with him and that will make it very excellent. 

Well overall things are going well. I am healthy and everything is good. I think I got pink eye last week, or something, but it is pretty much gone now, except for when I put in my contacts, then it comes back. Mission life is great, things are good. Happy Fathers day dad. good luck this week everyone with what ever it is you all are doing, I haven't quite figured out who is going where but either way have fun. I look forward to next week. If anyone does find a sheep that can dive please let me know and send a photo. I love you all!

-Elder B. Kent Talbert

Oh My!

Well another week gone by. Things went well, it was a good week. So it is great to hear from you all as always. I got the ensign you sent this week so that was great! it was also good to read the TT and see all of laura's senior picture thingys. 

To start off, earlier I saw an add for diving, which is a very popular sport here. Well it would have been not worth mentioning except for that on the add it had a warning saying that pregnant women should not go diving, alright that is good and all but then underneath it it said that they had not tested this with pregnant women because of the danger with it but instead they had tested it on pregnant sheep and had found problems with the new born sheep after there mother had gone diving. Ok so my big question, that I haven't found the answer to, is how did they get the sheep to go diving? That would have been an interesting study to have been a part of, I can't imagine a sheep managing to figure out how to use those regulators that allow you to breathe under water. They must have done something to simulate the effects of diving...maybe...I don't know. either way, diving sheep could be an effective way to take over the world, just haven't figured out how yet.

My new companion is Elder Packard. He is from Colorado. He seems like he will be a good missionary. I think he is excited to be serving here in the Turks and Caicos islands. He reminds me a lot of Josh Talbert, very similar personality. yup...ugh.... not really sure what else to say about my companion. He is here, he seems good.

This weekend the Ockeys came and as usual took us out to dinner. Well lately I have become a big experimenter in the food department, I will eat just about anything these days...except pickles, still don't like pickles. Anyways, this time I had for and appetizer calamari, conch and shrimp with a good tempura batter. It was quite good. I was surprised, I was expecting something a bit more fish like. Pres. Ockey has also managed to get me to order raw tuna, which also turned out to be quite good. It was good to have the ockeys around, as normal. they take us out to eat for a few days in a row and so I get a good chance every time they come to experiment with various foods that I normally wouldn't spend my own money on.

Yesterday was branch conference. It went over well. They had a ton of business to go over. My favorite part was the standard sustaining of church officers. The man doing it, brother fen, kept saying things wrong. after he would ask for the sustaining he would then say "any exposed, please make it manifest by the raising of the left hand" I had a good chuckle every time he said exposed. 

We had 2 more baptisms this week, Fritz and Jean. They are these 2 referrals from a few members, excellent people. Fritz is a weird man, he is quiet but occasionally he will just start doing the craziest things. anyways they are doing great now and are excited to be members of the church.

On Saturdays we clean the church as a service project and a lot of members come and help. Well this week one of the members was cleaning the windows and we found that he had gotten confused and was using bug spray as his windex. haha it was funny, he then proceeded to put windex into a standard soap bottle that doesn't spray at all. It is funny to watch all the haitians, many of them are not used to many of the things that we do, they have grown up in such poverty that even things like the difference between bug spray and windex is unknown, they have never seen either. 

Okay, I am attaching a handful of pictures, the first two are just pictures with me and elder brough and me and elder packard.

 Then I have included two random pictures. One is of Pres. Otin, our branch president, he is from Argentina and is a funny man.

 the second is of Aprieve holding clyde-li. Aprieve is just this big guy who is a lot of fun to talk to and clyde-li is our branch clerks new baby who came to volleyball. Aprieve hurt his foot and so he sat out and just watch the baby, it made for a good laugh.

Hmmm...What else happened this week. Still raining a ton. Everyone seems to expect at least one hurricane this year. They said 2 years ago it rained like this endlessly and they got 2 hurricanes. That would be cool to get a hurricane, won't ever see one in utah. 

This week should be good, not much is going on, we are working on building up our investigator pool once more so that is good. ugh...well I am short on time, I just realized that! never seem to have enough time, oh well.

Enjoy summer vacation, things are going well here. I am doing great! enjoy your new laptop laura! Keep reading your scriptures every morning! I love you all and look forward to next weeks emails!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert