(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