Family,
Well email time is really early today, just sort of how it worked out. So I haven't gotten an email from dad yet, but maybe that will show up as I type this. The week has been really crazy a lot of random things have happened. First off for the card reader/pictures mom, I can't really think of anything else I need right now. I have just about everything necessary. A new tie would be nice. I would say go for something colorful, not silk, moderately shiny, and looks good, but really any tie will do. Also, don't forget this one, will you get Alex's mtc address. I have his mission address, but he is in the mtc till October and I had something to send him, only I don't know what mailbox # he has, that would be marvelous! I am excited that CJ has left on his mission! He will love it! How long is he at the MTC? I assume a long time.
First event of the week, Sunday after church. Elder Tanner and I went to the mission home to get a bike for a missionary. The bikes are all in a giant pile underneath the back up water supply (a 900 gallon tank) so we are digging out the bike we need when all of a sudden the pile of bikes falls on the pvc pipe that connects to the water. The pipe breaks and all the back up water starts spewing all over the ground, so elder tanner and I are freaking out, so elder tanner holds the pipe together to slow the water and I go to find a way to stop it. The back up water pipe is built poorly, has no stop valves. In the end I took a bag and shoved it up the pipe, put a rock up the pipe to put pressure on the bag, put a large flat rock under that one to prevent it from falling out and then put the lower part of the pipe under the rock. In the end it all held itself together and the water had stopped. I wrapped it up with a lot of garbage bags to ensure it held itself together and left it. We went to dinner, soaked and then called someone to fix it. They fixed it on Monday and all was good. My contraption had held till Monday and the plumber man was able to put it all back together with minimal water loss.
Second interesting event of the week, Monday. On Monday we drove 2 hours to Mandeville to move furniture. We got to Mandeville and realized that we hadn't brought any of the keys to the house. The nearest place with keys was 2 hours away. So we climbed up the back wall to the balcony, the door was also locked, so we forced the windows opened, slid our hands inside and unlocked the door, opened it, and unfortunately their was a big iron grill acting as a secondary door, and it had giant padlocks. We looked in the house for extra keys through the windows, nothing. Elder Garcia, one of the assistants was with us and he went home on Friday, he some extra money so we went to the hardware store and bought a giant bolt cutter and new locks. Went back to the house, climbed the wall, opened the door, and destroyed the locks. We got inside and had a successful move, everything worked out and we locked everything back up and left. That was a lot of fun, we proved that the missionaries home was not safe if a burglar was carrying around bolt cutters and could climb walls and figure out how to open windows.
On Thursday we had transfers. So it was a crazy day for everyone except me. The assistants took all my companions to use as driving companions and I was left at the office to work, which I didn't mind, driving for 5 hours would have been really dull. While I was at the office we learned that a new area opening up needed a car and the only extra car we had the battery didn't work at all, even if you jumped it. So I went to work and took out the battery in the cheesman's car and put it into the other car. So the cheesmans couldn't go anywhere but now the missionaries had a working car! The next task was to get a battery, which was moderately easy except for that the old battery had holes in it that spewed liquids that probably weren't safe to touch, I don't know, I never touched them, it just made it a hassle to move the old battery. In the end it all worked out and everyone had batteries in their cars.
Tuesday Elder Vinas came and that was fun! Our water was out so we went to president graffs to shower and sister graff fed us breakfast, while we were eating breakfast he joined us, it was weird no one knew what to say. He was a really nice man and a good teacher. We had a huge conference with him and 50 missionaries (who afterwards all went to a little restaurant like panda express and overloaded the place) After the conference we had a meeting with him in the office. It was really enlightening and good. He has a cool accent and enjoys making jokes. Overall a really good experience.
Well I don't have to much time, some of my email time was lost talking to elder cheesman, but oh well, I got the biggest highlights in from the week. Elder Tanner left to Yallahs and now it is just elder rebeiro and I so that is fun. We are having a good time and our area is doing decent, we spent all day working in the office for the last week preparing for transfers and we have gotten a total of 2.5 hours of teaching time! It has been really unfortunate but we are hoping for some good teaching time today and tomorrow. I still haven't gotten an email from dad or Nathaniel, but I guess that will just mean double email next week from them! I got another thing of photos from you, thanks for that!
Enjoy school starting this week! I must admit that I am moderately jealous, I would love to be in school taking a math class haha, but I am still enjoying myself and loving my mission. Things are going well, I am in good health and I am now in the 5th transfer! Wow, time is flying buy, I am so busy with office work/teaching that I barely notice the passing of time, the weeks are just disappearing.
Well That is it for this week, enjoy life back home and I hope everything goes well. I will keep you all in my prayers.
-Love you all,
Elder B. Kent Talbert
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Firing Proton Torpedoes
Family,
Sounds like the last week has been fairly entertaining. To bad about your phone mother, haha. In the office we have a handful of extra phones for missionaries who get theirs stolen, run over, shredded, wet, etc. A card reader mother would be amazing! More or less no computer has any form of card reading equipment, only usb, so I just borrow other missionaries card readers and it all works out. But it would be nice to have my own, just make sure to open it, test it, and then just send me the card reader/cord. Don't keep it packaged or anything, just put it in a zip lock baggie so that it looks used. I don't need any fancy instruction booklet or any other random things that it would come with. On a side note I also learned that if on packages/envelopes you tape religious pictures (even if they are just small and printed off a computer) it is less likely that things will go missing in the mail.
I got the pictures you sent in the mail! They are great! Haha I enjoyed them. Well this week has been fairly repetitive. Not huge amounts have happened. Yesterday night we went and helped the Cheesmans move. They got a new place that is really close to our house! It is a nice place and we had a good time helping out. So I officially hit my 6 month mark this week and so We went out to eat at Pizza hut, it cost way more then I wanted to spend but it was worth it! It was also just fortunate that we had to go on a little road trip to deliver some things to different missionaries. One of the places we stopped was Spanish Town and we planned it with the elders there so that we got to eat lunch at pizza hut with Elder brown and Elder Sizemore. It was a lot of fun! Today we are having another big spending day (Ugh!) one of the Assistants who we live with has hit his 2 year mark (he extended his mission so he isn't leaving anytime soon) and so after email we plan on going to a nice restaurant and having a big lunch! It will be a lot of fun, even if it is a bit pricy (at least for a missionary)
I went on a trade off on Wednesday with the Zone Leaders. It was nice to have a lot of teaching time again. The house where the zone leaders live has 2 other missionaries, one of them goes home next week, but he is a lot like me so we had a good time talking in our free time. Next week is transfers. I don't think I will be leaving the office, I could, but I doubt it. But I will have to lose one of my 2 companions. Our mission is going even so everyone will have just one companion. It is going to be fun to see all the new missionaries come in on Tuesday. Being in the office I get to see the new group as they come to fill out a bunch of random paper work and what not.
Our area is still doing well. Their was a national holiday this week (independence day) and so a lot of people were out of town and we spent a lot of time just trying to find the investigators that we do have. But we did have some good lessons. Met a less active family who were baptized in Germany, lived their for a long time, moved to Nigeria, lived their for a long time, moved to Jamaica, lived here for a long time. They were fully active in Germany and Nigeria, but then they randomly went less active after being in Jamaica for a while. They just said they didn't like the church as much in Jamaica, so they decided to stop coming. I see where they are coming at, occasionally the church does seem a bit dysfunctional here, especially in the small branches, but none the less I just laugh at the oddities, it was a fairly dumb reason for not coming to church. They told us that tomorrow they will be at church!
I learned that our branch president is a return missionary! I never knew that! It was a long time ago. I thought our branch had 0 RM. Turns out it has 2, both the branch president and his wife served missions in Jamaica like 10 years ago.
This email seems fairly garbled, I don't think my words are flowing to easy, oh well. I am running out of things to say, the week has just been office work, preparing for President Vinas who arrives later today. Yesterday we went shopping for the first time at Mega Mart! It was a nice place. Sort of a mix between costco and walmart. Walmart in that everything is sold individually and they have everything, costco in that the building on the inside looks like costco and it is set up in the same way as costco. All I bought was a garbage can for our house, and Chocolate muffins! Haha they the big chocolate muffins like the ones at costco. The only difference is that they have a lot less chocolate chips in them.
I still have a decent amount of time left, (20 minutes) but I really don't know what else to type. It amazes me how fast the summer went by. Summer vacation back home is nearly over. It doesn't feel like it should be that close to being over! We didn't have water this morning so we went to the mission home and took showers/studied/washed laundry. The nice thing about doing laundry at the mission home is that they have a dryer and so your clothes come out soft! When you dry everything on a clothes line it just isn't the same.
The biggest problem I have with being in the office is that everything just gets all garbled in my head, I have no clue what happened when and so I don't remember what I mentioned last week and what happened this week. We are kept so busy in the office that we have no time to really think and time goes by even faster! I have a feeling that however long I am in the office will feel like the shortest time on my mission.
During my studies I have been reading the book of mormon again. It is going well. I am doing it a much slower way this time. I had an extra book of mormon that I had bought (just one of the blue paper back ones) and I just started at the start and have been marking in different colors things like references/names of Christ, attributes of Christ, words of Christ, The doctrine, references to the Holy Ghost, etc. It has been going really well, takes a lot longer but it is interesting to see how much the book of mormon really contains. Many pages are quite marked up.
Well now I really am running out of time. I hope that their has been something entertaining in this email. If there is ever anything you would rather have me email about then the random things that I remember from my week just ask and I will see what I can come up with.
That really is about it for the week. Enjoy this coming week. I will try to take a good photo or 2 and send them at some point. I love you all and hope things continue to go well!
-Elder B. Kent Talbert
Sounds like the last week has been fairly entertaining. To bad about your phone mother, haha. In the office we have a handful of extra phones for missionaries who get theirs stolen, run over, shredded, wet, etc. A card reader mother would be amazing! More or less no computer has any form of card reading equipment, only usb, so I just borrow other missionaries card readers and it all works out. But it would be nice to have my own, just make sure to open it, test it, and then just send me the card reader/cord. Don't keep it packaged or anything, just put it in a zip lock baggie so that it looks used. I don't need any fancy instruction booklet or any other random things that it would come with. On a side note I also learned that if on packages/envelopes you tape religious pictures (even if they are just small and printed off a computer) it is less likely that things will go missing in the mail.
I got the pictures you sent in the mail! They are great! Haha I enjoyed them. Well this week has been fairly repetitive. Not huge amounts have happened. Yesterday night we went and helped the Cheesmans move. They got a new place that is really close to our house! It is a nice place and we had a good time helping out. So I officially hit my 6 month mark this week and so We went out to eat at Pizza hut, it cost way more then I wanted to spend but it was worth it! It was also just fortunate that we had to go on a little road trip to deliver some things to different missionaries. One of the places we stopped was Spanish Town and we planned it with the elders there so that we got to eat lunch at pizza hut with Elder brown and Elder Sizemore. It was a lot of fun! Today we are having another big spending day (Ugh!) one of the Assistants who we live with has hit his 2 year mark (he extended his mission so he isn't leaving anytime soon) and so after email we plan on going to a nice restaurant and having a big lunch! It will be a lot of fun, even if it is a bit pricy (at least for a missionary)
I went on a trade off on Wednesday with the Zone Leaders. It was nice to have a lot of teaching time again. The house where the zone leaders live has 2 other missionaries, one of them goes home next week, but he is a lot like me so we had a good time talking in our free time. Next week is transfers. I don't think I will be leaving the office, I could, but I doubt it. But I will have to lose one of my 2 companions. Our mission is going even so everyone will have just one companion. It is going to be fun to see all the new missionaries come in on Tuesday. Being in the office I get to see the new group as they come to fill out a bunch of random paper work and what not.
Our area is still doing well. Their was a national holiday this week (independence day) and so a lot of people were out of town and we spent a lot of time just trying to find the investigators that we do have. But we did have some good lessons. Met a less active family who were baptized in Germany, lived their for a long time, moved to Nigeria, lived their for a long time, moved to Jamaica, lived here for a long time. They were fully active in Germany and Nigeria, but then they randomly went less active after being in Jamaica for a while. They just said they didn't like the church as much in Jamaica, so they decided to stop coming. I see where they are coming at, occasionally the church does seem a bit dysfunctional here, especially in the small branches, but none the less I just laugh at the oddities, it was a fairly dumb reason for not coming to church. They told us that tomorrow they will be at church!
I learned that our branch president is a return missionary! I never knew that! It was a long time ago. I thought our branch had 0 RM. Turns out it has 2, both the branch president and his wife served missions in Jamaica like 10 years ago.
This email seems fairly garbled, I don't think my words are flowing to easy, oh well. I am running out of things to say, the week has just been office work, preparing for President Vinas who arrives later today. Yesterday we went shopping for the first time at Mega Mart! It was a nice place. Sort of a mix between costco and walmart. Walmart in that everything is sold individually and they have everything, costco in that the building on the inside looks like costco and it is set up in the same way as costco. All I bought was a garbage can for our house, and Chocolate muffins! Haha they the big chocolate muffins like the ones at costco. The only difference is that they have a lot less chocolate chips in them.
I still have a decent amount of time left, (20 minutes) but I really don't know what else to type. It amazes me how fast the summer went by. Summer vacation back home is nearly over. It doesn't feel like it should be that close to being over! We didn't have water this morning so we went to the mission home and took showers/studied/washed laundry. The nice thing about doing laundry at the mission home is that they have a dryer and so your clothes come out soft! When you dry everything on a clothes line it just isn't the same.
The biggest problem I have with being in the office is that everything just gets all garbled in my head, I have no clue what happened when and so I don't remember what I mentioned last week and what happened this week. We are kept so busy in the office that we have no time to really think and time goes by even faster! I have a feeling that however long I am in the office will feel like the shortest time on my mission.
During my studies I have been reading the book of mormon again. It is going well. I am doing it a much slower way this time. I had an extra book of mormon that I had bought (just one of the blue paper back ones) and I just started at the start and have been marking in different colors things like references/names of Christ, attributes of Christ, words of Christ, The doctrine, references to the Holy Ghost, etc. It has been going really well, takes a lot longer but it is interesting to see how much the book of mormon really contains. Many pages are quite marked up.
Well now I really am running out of time. I hope that their has been something entertaining in this email. If there is ever anything you would rather have me email about then the random things that I remember from my week just ask and I will see what I can come up with.
That really is about it for the week. Enjoy this coming week. I will try to take a good photo or 2 and send them at some point. I love you all and hope things continue to go well!
-Elder B. Kent Talbert
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Operation Destruction
Family,
It is, yet again, good to hear from you all! This week has been quite entertaining! Thanks for all the pictures! I look forward to hard copies eventually! And thanks for the update on everyone back home mom, I appreciate that. It sounds like the physics convention thingy was great! I will have to attend someday in the future. I liked the pictures. Hopefully, if I have time, I will attach a picture today, I am borrowing an elders card reader so I can use my memory card here.
First off I guess I will go through the highlights of the week. We had 7 investigators at church! Which was amazing! Normally I am happy if we get 2! So that made the day great! And secondly we got to go to Boiler co. on Wednesday!! What is boiler co you may ask? Well it is a place we found that destroys paper. We had 91.8 Kg of old financial records that needed to be destroyed and it was going to take 100 yrs to destroy them with a paper shredder. So we looked into mass destruction and found Boiler co. it is owned by 2 American Chinese guys who are way cool, had a good chat with them. We showed up on Wednesday, put on masks and dumped 10 boxes of records into a giant shredder and our records were obliterated! It was awesome! The machine will destroy anything you give it, wood, paper, metal, cds. Everything gets mulched down to something a bit smaller than a penny, even if it starts out bigger than a stove. It was quite entertaining, it is a good thing I don't own a large industrial shredder, I would own very little for I would try just about everything I own to see if it can shred it.
Today is a national holiday and it took a while to find a place to email, hence why this is so slow. Our water has been out for the last few days, but president and sister graff were kind enough to let us come to their home and shower/use water. It is unfortunate to have no water, but oh well.
My companions have changed a bit, elder hill left to Spanish town and an elder Rebeiro came. He is a nice guy, and is a good teacher! I will miss elder hill, he was a great elder, but I am excited to work with someone new.
So in like 9 days a general authority, President Vinas, is coming to the island to take a tour of the mission with president graff, as part of that he (president vinas) wants to have a meeting with the office staff, (cheesmans, office elders) to see how things are going and where they can be improved. It will be really cool to have a meeting with only 6 people, one of them being a member of the seventy!
Teaching has been going great! I learned that Natalie, from Negril is getting baptized tomorrow! So that was amazing news! I am happy that one of the last investigators I taught there is entering into the waters of baptism! We currently have a girl named Abby that we are teaching, she is doing really well! 17 yrs old, almost 18, and loves the plan of salvation. She is quite intelligent and really wants to learn as much as she can.
A recent convert in our area, Bro. Dawson, has come teaching with us for about 4 hours a day for the last week! It is great to be able to help him get a better understanding of the gospel, and have him their to fellowship our investigators! He loves coming out with us and has been calling us during the day to tell us that we can come pick him up that night to teach with him.
I had to play the piano again on Sunday. It went well, the hardest part is that it is on a cheap keyboard with annoying keys that are a pain to play on and my fingers slip on the small keys and play to many at once. But I am getting better again. I am quite excited to keep playing and excited to eventually return home and play on a fully capable piano. I am quite thankful that mom made me keep at it in my youth and wish I hadn't gotten so lazy!
Found another nice thing about the office! Mail! I got a letter the fastest I have ever gotten it. Only 6 days from the day it was written to the day that I got it! That was quick! Normally I have been averaging about 11-15 days. Life goes well in the office, I have accomplished a lot, redid a ton of spread sheets and made them work a whole lot more efficiently. Excel has become a good friend of mine and now everyone has me making them their spread sheets haha, the only problem is when they ask me to do things that I have no clue how to do (which is a lot!) I saw elder sizemore again yesterday! That was a lot of fun! I really hope that I get another chance to be his companion out in the mission field. He is probably one of my favorite missionaries and a really good friend. He is doing well in Spanish town, accomplishing a lot!
Well I am running short on time and still want to get at least one picture. I brought my memory card with very few recent pictures on it. I just took a really good one yesterday, unfortunately it doesn't have me in it but it is a picture of my favorite non LDS church building (I don't agree with any of their teachings but they can build a decent looking building!) It is a New Testament Church of God, but I just call it the Star Trek church for obvious reasons! Enjoy! Haha hopefully it attaches correctly.
I am way excited for my friends to leave! I am glad their farewells went great! They will have wonderful missions! Well I am really running out of time so I love you all and hope that things are going great back home, enjoy Efy laura!
Love
Elder B. Kent Talbert
It is, yet again, good to hear from you all! This week has been quite entertaining! Thanks for all the pictures! I look forward to hard copies eventually! And thanks for the update on everyone back home mom, I appreciate that. It sounds like the physics convention thingy was great! I will have to attend someday in the future. I liked the pictures. Hopefully, if I have time, I will attach a picture today, I am borrowing an elders card reader so I can use my memory card here.
First off I guess I will go through the highlights of the week. We had 7 investigators at church! Which was amazing! Normally I am happy if we get 2! So that made the day great! And secondly we got to go to Boiler co. on Wednesday!! What is boiler co you may ask? Well it is a place we found that destroys paper. We had 91.8 Kg of old financial records that needed to be destroyed and it was going to take 100 yrs to destroy them with a paper shredder. So we looked into mass destruction and found Boiler co. it is owned by 2 American Chinese guys who are way cool, had a good chat with them. We showed up on Wednesday, put on masks and dumped 10 boxes of records into a giant shredder and our records were obliterated! It was awesome! The machine will destroy anything you give it, wood, paper, metal, cds. Everything gets mulched down to something a bit smaller than a penny, even if it starts out bigger than a stove. It was quite entertaining, it is a good thing I don't own a large industrial shredder, I would own very little for I would try just about everything I own to see if it can shred it.
Today is a national holiday and it took a while to find a place to email, hence why this is so slow. Our water has been out for the last few days, but president and sister graff were kind enough to let us come to their home and shower/use water. It is unfortunate to have no water, but oh well.
My companions have changed a bit, elder hill left to Spanish town and an elder Rebeiro came. He is a nice guy, and is a good teacher! I will miss elder hill, he was a great elder, but I am excited to work with someone new.
So in like 9 days a general authority, President Vinas, is coming to the island to take a tour of the mission with president graff, as part of that he (president vinas) wants to have a meeting with the office staff, (cheesmans, office elders) to see how things are going and where they can be improved. It will be really cool to have a meeting with only 6 people, one of them being a member of the seventy!
Teaching has been going great! I learned that Natalie, from Negril is getting baptized tomorrow! So that was amazing news! I am happy that one of the last investigators I taught there is entering into the waters of baptism! We currently have a girl named Abby that we are teaching, she is doing really well! 17 yrs old, almost 18, and loves the plan of salvation. She is quite intelligent and really wants to learn as much as she can.
A recent convert in our area, Bro. Dawson, has come teaching with us for about 4 hours a day for the last week! It is great to be able to help him get a better understanding of the gospel, and have him their to fellowship our investigators! He loves coming out with us and has been calling us during the day to tell us that we can come pick him up that night to teach with him.
I had to play the piano again on Sunday. It went well, the hardest part is that it is on a cheap keyboard with annoying keys that are a pain to play on and my fingers slip on the small keys and play to many at once. But I am getting better again. I am quite excited to keep playing and excited to eventually return home and play on a fully capable piano. I am quite thankful that mom made me keep at it in my youth and wish I hadn't gotten so lazy!
Found another nice thing about the office! Mail! I got a letter the fastest I have ever gotten it. Only 6 days from the day it was written to the day that I got it! That was quick! Normally I have been averaging about 11-15 days. Life goes well in the office, I have accomplished a lot, redid a ton of spread sheets and made them work a whole lot more efficiently. Excel has become a good friend of mine and now everyone has me making them their spread sheets haha, the only problem is when they ask me to do things that I have no clue how to do (which is a lot!) I saw elder sizemore again yesterday! That was a lot of fun! I really hope that I get another chance to be his companion out in the mission field. He is probably one of my favorite missionaries and a really good friend. He is doing well in Spanish town, accomplishing a lot!
Well I am running short on time and still want to get at least one picture. I brought my memory card with very few recent pictures on it. I just took a really good one yesterday, unfortunately it doesn't have me in it but it is a picture of my favorite non LDS church building (I don't agree with any of their teachings but they can build a decent looking building!) It is a New Testament Church of God, but I just call it the Star Trek church for obvious reasons! Enjoy! Haha hopefully it attaches correctly.
I am way excited for my friends to leave! I am glad their farewells went great! They will have wonderful missions! Well I am really running out of time so I love you all and hope that things are going great back home, enjoy Efy laura!
Love
Elder B. Kent Talbert
Saturday, July 25, 2009
*imagine cool star trek line here* (mind blank...)
Family,
Well first off before I forget, I got a letter from Paula that I need to answer a question from. Yes, we do wear helmets when we ride our bikes! It makes things even hotter, the worst is that due to the shape of the inside of the helmet it makes weird impressions in your hair that makes your head look like it has a big bump right down the middle. So if you are going for Klingon look then it works just fine! Haha. Sounds like the family reunion was great! Thanks for the photos! My week was good, but probably not quite so entertaining.
The office goes well. This email might not have a ton of content, there is only so much that goes on in the office. On Tuesday we had our Zone meeting and had interviews with President Graff. That was good! He is a really cool guy. Last Saturday after I emailed Elder and Sister cheesman, the office couple invited us over for dinner, they fed us taco soup! It was really good! We also got a flat tire that night and found a big nail right in our front tire.
On Sunday I got to go to my new branch! It was really good! We have a building that looks nice and there is a decent size branch. Sunday School was really good, brother moses (the teacher) really knows his stuff and does an excellent job. I got to play the piano in sacrament meeting! That was something! Haha, I haven't touched a piano in 6 months and all of a sudden, with 0 practice I was expected to play all the hymns they had previously chosen. Didn't go to bad at all, I expected a lot worse!
After church we had dinner at a members house with our entire zone! There are 3 branches in Kingston and 12 missionaries (small zone) the members like to feed all the missionaries at once so every Sunday we go to a different house and a member prepares a ton of food for everyone! It was really good! We had stewed peas and rice and some beef (the first time I have been fed beef by a member). It was really good.
President Graff this week put me in charge of all of his flights. So now I have to check airlines and purchase tickets and make sure he gets where he needs to at the right time. In 2 weeks President Graff and President Vinas (area Seventy) are going on a tour of the mission so I will get a lot of practice with this whole flight thing. I also this week got presidents new laptop up and running, and fixed a giant spread sheet that the mission has for The Fuel Reports on the vehicles. I never used Microsoft excel to much, I had a bit of practice but now everyone expects me to fix all their problems on excel, I have learned a ton about how to use that program this week! It has been quite interesting.
Well I met an elder Huffaker (I think that is how you spell it if I remember correctly). He is moderately new to the mission (2-3 months). He told me that he had read parts of the blog back home before his mission. That made me chuckle, but he is a way cool elder. I enjoyed my little chat with him as we dropped off a bike.
Hmm! I don't really want to make this just a log of events from my week, but that seems to be what is happening. Haha On Tuesday night elder tanner, hill and I went out teaching and while we were searching for a member a lady named Ann-marie just walked up to us asking us when church is. We told her and started to teach her. She is great! Way interested in the church! We are excited to keep teaching her! Recently we have gotten a ton of really good investigators! I am hoping to see all of them at church tomorrow! All the investigators that we have currently none of them have we actually found on our own! They have all been referrals or people that called us over to them and wanted to know who we were. It has been great! The lord has definitely been blessing us for the all the work we put into the office all day. Our few hours of proselyting have been most effective this last week!
I gave myself another hair cut this week. Turned out decent. I missed a spot that I found in the morning that needed to be fixed, and I think it is still slightly uneven, but oh well, at least it was free! Haha
Ugh..I am running out of things to say. Lately I have been studying a lot out of the book of mormon! It has been great! I have also been trying to use only the book of mormon in all of our teaching. President graff asked us to study only Preach my gospel and the book of mormon, but a lot of the missionaries have also been trying to only use the book of mormon for their teaching also. It has been going very well! You really can teach all the missionary lessons souly with that book. I love it!
Things go well here in Jamaica. I enjoy the position I am in. It would be nice to get more teaching done, but someone has to run the office, and I guess I am that person for the time being. You will have to tell me all about your conference dad! I will be excited to hear about it! Thanks again for the pictures, they were marvelous and I look forward to getting some hardcopies of them! I need to remember to take more pictures, I have been fairly lazy these last few weeks.
I hope that all goes well back home and that this upcoming week is great! Tell alex and shea congrats for me! I am excited that they finally get to head out on their missions! They will love them! I need to go, next week I will try and think of something more interesting, haha.
Love you all,
Elder B. Kent Talbert
Well first off before I forget, I got a letter from Paula that I need to answer a question from. Yes, we do wear helmets when we ride our bikes! It makes things even hotter, the worst is that due to the shape of the inside of the helmet it makes weird impressions in your hair that makes your head look like it has a big bump right down the middle. So if you are going for Klingon look then it works just fine! Haha. Sounds like the family reunion was great! Thanks for the photos! My week was good, but probably not quite so entertaining.
The office goes well. This email might not have a ton of content, there is only so much that goes on in the office. On Tuesday we had our Zone meeting and had interviews with President Graff. That was good! He is a really cool guy. Last Saturday after I emailed Elder and Sister cheesman, the office couple invited us over for dinner, they fed us taco soup! It was really good! We also got a flat tire that night and found a big nail right in our front tire.
On Sunday I got to go to my new branch! It was really good! We have a building that looks nice and there is a decent size branch. Sunday School was really good, brother moses (the teacher) really knows his stuff and does an excellent job. I got to play the piano in sacrament meeting! That was something! Haha, I haven't touched a piano in 6 months and all of a sudden, with 0 practice I was expected to play all the hymns they had previously chosen. Didn't go to bad at all, I expected a lot worse!
After church we had dinner at a members house with our entire zone! There are 3 branches in Kingston and 12 missionaries (small zone) the members like to feed all the missionaries at once so every Sunday we go to a different house and a member prepares a ton of food for everyone! It was really good! We had stewed peas and rice and some beef (the first time I have been fed beef by a member). It was really good.
President Graff this week put me in charge of all of his flights. So now I have to check airlines and purchase tickets and make sure he gets where he needs to at the right time. In 2 weeks President Graff and President Vinas (area Seventy) are going on a tour of the mission so I will get a lot of practice with this whole flight thing. I also this week got presidents new laptop up and running, and fixed a giant spread sheet that the mission has for The Fuel Reports on the vehicles. I never used Microsoft excel to much, I had a bit of practice but now everyone expects me to fix all their problems on excel, I have learned a ton about how to use that program this week! It has been quite interesting.
Well I met an elder Huffaker (I think that is how you spell it if I remember correctly). He is moderately new to the mission (2-3 months). He told me that he had read parts of the blog back home before his mission. That made me chuckle, but he is a way cool elder. I enjoyed my little chat with him as we dropped off a bike.
Hmm! I don't really want to make this just a log of events from my week, but that seems to be what is happening. Haha On Tuesday night elder tanner, hill and I went out teaching and while we were searching for a member a lady named Ann-marie just walked up to us asking us when church is. We told her and started to teach her. She is great! Way interested in the church! We are excited to keep teaching her! Recently we have gotten a ton of really good investigators! I am hoping to see all of them at church tomorrow! All the investigators that we have currently none of them have we actually found on our own! They have all been referrals or people that called us over to them and wanted to know who we were. It has been great! The lord has definitely been blessing us for the all the work we put into the office all day. Our few hours of proselyting have been most effective this last week!
I gave myself another hair cut this week. Turned out decent. I missed a spot that I found in the morning that needed to be fixed, and I think it is still slightly uneven, but oh well, at least it was free! Haha
Ugh..I am running out of things to say. Lately I have been studying a lot out of the book of mormon! It has been great! I have also been trying to use only the book of mormon in all of our teaching. President graff asked us to study only Preach my gospel and the book of mormon, but a lot of the missionaries have also been trying to only use the book of mormon for their teaching also. It has been going very well! You really can teach all the missionary lessons souly with that book. I love it!
Things go well here in Jamaica. I enjoy the position I am in. It would be nice to get more teaching done, but someone has to run the office, and I guess I am that person for the time being. You will have to tell me all about your conference dad! I will be excited to hear about it! Thanks again for the pictures, they were marvelous and I look forward to getting some hardcopies of them! I need to remember to take more pictures, I have been fairly lazy these last few weeks.
I hope that all goes well back home and that this upcoming week is great! Tell alex and shea congrats for me! I am excited that they finally get to head out on their missions! They will love them! I need to go, next week I will try and think of something more interesting, haha.
Love you all,
Elder B. Kent Talbert
Friday, July 24, 2009
The Office
Family,
Well I am glad that the week has gone well so far. And I am happy that you all managed to get your emails sent! My preparation day is Saturday but depending on how busy we are I email at a random time, we try for mornings but sometimes it doesn't occur until late afternoon. The Family reunion sounds like it will be a lot of fun! I will be excited to hear how it all went next week. Tell the Rusts that Elder Josh White says Hello. He is from vernal and had Richard as a seminary teacher.
This week has been hectic. Got to Kingston Monday evening and went out teaching with the assistants all night because my companions weren't around. Kingston is a whole new world. It is nothing like Negril. Negril was run down, 3rd world country; everyone lives in shacks, etc. Kingston is moderately more modern. We have a huge area that covers all the downtown sections of Kingston. It is weird to have stepped from an uneducated world into one with a decent amount of education. Most everyone here can read, write, etc. It is very different from what the first quarter of my mission has been like.
Well being in the office is crazy. What we do is everyday we get up, study (if we have time, which is almost every day), and then go out and run errands all day, we get the mail, make sure that all the cars are working properly, handle the insurance, any medical problems missionaries have, repair all the broken vehicles, get visas/passport stuff organized, etc. We spend a lot of time just driving around, traffic is fairly terrible and so it goes slowly, but driving is fairly easy, the hardest part is that you drive on the left side instead of the right. And as such all the missionaries initially have a problem of driving to close on the left. We have a nice truck; it is the best vehicle in the mission. Has a nice turbo and a ton of power, the only problem is that its turn radius sucks and so sometimes it is a pain to get around.
We also spend a good amount of time sitting in the office working on computers. The office couple always has a good amount of stuff for us to do. Lately I have been working on locating every bike in the mission, and compiling a list of all the landlords along with a good amount of info about each house. Work a lot on Microsoft excel, wish I knew how to use it a bit better than I do, but oh well.
I don't get much proselyting time in, we try to leave by 3pm, but like yesterday we got caught up in a bunch of stuff, and had to take a few missionaries to the doctor and so we didn't get done till 7:30. our entire day was pretty much shot. Well I don't know what else to really say about the office, it is very busy and we always have a ton to do.
The house I live in is funny. There is 0% privacy in the bathroom due to the construction of the house. For some reason the bath room is also the hall way, when you enter the house you enter into the main room, from their you can't leave the main room unless you go through the bath room, there are a total of 3 doors in the bathroom and it connects to every part of the house. Don't know that the designers were thinking. We live with the assistants at the top of a very large hill, we can see over all of Kingston. The house currently has 6 missionaries stuff in it, and 5 missionaries living in it. We have 0 space, everything is crowded.
I have 2 companions, but one of them I have only seen at nights, he has been with one of the assistants while the other assistant has been traveling around to all the islands with president Graff. Elder Tanner, the one that I have been working with is cool. He grew up in Massachusetts and later moved to Utah. He hasn't been in the office very long (3 weeks) so we have to figure out how to do most of our tasks, it is a pain and slows things down, but we are slowly getting the hang of everything. I am curious to see if I stay in the office at the end of this transfer. I like working in the office, it is nice, but I don't like how I get no missionary work done, at times it is hard to even imagine that I really am a missionary, we travel into the real world so often, and do things that don't resemble missionary work all day long. We deal singly with the physical needs of the mission.
Our area is nice, there are always people everywhere, you can stand in the same spot for 2 days and never meet the same person. We have some decent investigators. A family we have been teaching was doing well, but they are unsure if they will make it to church on Sunday, so that is a big problem. We have another investigator, Sis. Morgan, she is 14 yrs old and her mother is a member of the church, she is doing good, she wants to get baptized, just need to get her to come to church tomorrow! Our branch is still small...sort of, we get like 50 people at church weekly, but the branch has 350 people in it, 300 people are less active. We have a chapel so that is a decent advantage.
So random news, president monson, just shortened our Preparation day by and hour, now it is only 7 hours instead of 8 hours. Missionaries are finally in the turks and Caicos islands so that is sweet! I got to see elder sizemore again, he was in my zone..until Wednesday, then there was another transfer made, he became the Zone Leader of Spanish town! Haha he is the youngest zone leader in the mission, all the zone leaders are like 15-24 months out and he is only 5 months out. He was very surprised when he got the phone call, Wednesday afternoon. I get to see the senior couple for the office everyday, they are a lot of fun! Elder and sister Cheesman. They are from orem, Ut. Elder cheesman was a dentist down by harmens on 800 N for a long time. He is always telling great stories and does a lot of funny things! It is great to work around them everyday.
Hmmm! I am running out of things to really say. Yesterday I got to drive alone for the first time! My companion and I needed to transport 2 vehicles, so we drove in separate vehicles, it was weird to be without a companion - especially in a giant city where I don't have the slightest Idea where I am going. I just followed the truck. It went well. Haha
Studies have been going well, we are only allowed to use PMG and the book of mormon now, all other scriptures/books were banned, so that has been interesting. I don't really have any great spiritual insights to really share right now, I am running short on time and don't want to try and think of any haha.
I am jealous that half the family has seen harry potter! That is one movie I would love to see but will have to wait. The Grocery store we shop at is way different than the one in Negril! In Negril it was a little run down place that was lacking a lot of food and would randomly be out of things all the time. Now we have a giant grocery store that looks like a smiths or an Albertsons. Has everything all the time. Congrats on your Ap tests laura! that is great that you passed all of them! I am running low on things to say and my time is starting to run a bit low also. I still need to email President Graff. So I guess this will be it for the week. Tell the rest of the family hi and enjoy the family reunion!
Love, Elder B. Kent Talbert
Well I am glad that the week has gone well so far. And I am happy that you all managed to get your emails sent! My preparation day is Saturday but depending on how busy we are I email at a random time, we try for mornings but sometimes it doesn't occur until late afternoon. The Family reunion sounds like it will be a lot of fun! I will be excited to hear how it all went next week. Tell the Rusts that Elder Josh White says Hello. He is from vernal and had Richard as a seminary teacher.
This week has been hectic. Got to Kingston Monday evening and went out teaching with the assistants all night because my companions weren't around. Kingston is a whole new world. It is nothing like Negril. Negril was run down, 3rd world country; everyone lives in shacks, etc. Kingston is moderately more modern. We have a huge area that covers all the downtown sections of Kingston. It is weird to have stepped from an uneducated world into one with a decent amount of education. Most everyone here can read, write, etc. It is very different from what the first quarter of my mission has been like.
Well being in the office is crazy. What we do is everyday we get up, study (if we have time, which is almost every day), and then go out and run errands all day, we get the mail, make sure that all the cars are working properly, handle the insurance, any medical problems missionaries have, repair all the broken vehicles, get visas/passport stuff organized, etc. We spend a lot of time just driving around, traffic is fairly terrible and so it goes slowly, but driving is fairly easy, the hardest part is that you drive on the left side instead of the right. And as such all the missionaries initially have a problem of driving to close on the left. We have a nice truck; it is the best vehicle in the mission. Has a nice turbo and a ton of power, the only problem is that its turn radius sucks and so sometimes it is a pain to get around.
We also spend a good amount of time sitting in the office working on computers. The office couple always has a good amount of stuff for us to do. Lately I have been working on locating every bike in the mission, and compiling a list of all the landlords along with a good amount of info about each house. Work a lot on Microsoft excel, wish I knew how to use it a bit better than I do, but oh well.
I don't get much proselyting time in, we try to leave by 3pm, but like yesterday we got caught up in a bunch of stuff, and had to take a few missionaries to the doctor and so we didn't get done till 7:30. our entire day was pretty much shot. Well I don't know what else to really say about the office, it is very busy and we always have a ton to do.
The house I live in is funny. There is 0% privacy in the bathroom due to the construction of the house. For some reason the bath room is also the hall way, when you enter the house you enter into the main room, from their you can't leave the main room unless you go through the bath room, there are a total of 3 doors in the bathroom and it connects to every part of the house. Don't know that the designers were thinking. We live with the assistants at the top of a very large hill, we can see over all of Kingston. The house currently has 6 missionaries stuff in it, and 5 missionaries living in it. We have 0 space, everything is crowded.
I have 2 companions, but one of them I have only seen at nights, he has been with one of the assistants while the other assistant has been traveling around to all the islands with president Graff. Elder Tanner, the one that I have been working with is cool. He grew up in Massachusetts and later moved to Utah. He hasn't been in the office very long (3 weeks) so we have to figure out how to do most of our tasks, it is a pain and slows things down, but we are slowly getting the hang of everything. I am curious to see if I stay in the office at the end of this transfer. I like working in the office, it is nice, but I don't like how I get no missionary work done, at times it is hard to even imagine that I really am a missionary, we travel into the real world so often, and do things that don't resemble missionary work all day long. We deal singly with the physical needs of the mission.
Our area is nice, there are always people everywhere, you can stand in the same spot for 2 days and never meet the same person. We have some decent investigators. A family we have been teaching was doing well, but they are unsure if they will make it to church on Sunday, so that is a big problem. We have another investigator, Sis. Morgan, she is 14 yrs old and her mother is a member of the church, she is doing good, she wants to get baptized, just need to get her to come to church tomorrow! Our branch is still small...sort of, we get like 50 people at church weekly, but the branch has 350 people in it, 300 people are less active. We have a chapel so that is a decent advantage.
So random news, president monson, just shortened our Preparation day by and hour, now it is only 7 hours instead of 8 hours. Missionaries are finally in the turks and Caicos islands so that is sweet! I got to see elder sizemore again, he was in my zone..until Wednesday, then there was another transfer made, he became the Zone Leader of Spanish town! Haha he is the youngest zone leader in the mission, all the zone leaders are like 15-24 months out and he is only 5 months out. He was very surprised when he got the phone call, Wednesday afternoon. I get to see the senior couple for the office everyday, they are a lot of fun! Elder and sister Cheesman. They are from orem, Ut. Elder cheesman was a dentist down by harmens on 800 N for a long time. He is always telling great stories and does a lot of funny things! It is great to work around them everyday.
Hmmm! I am running out of things to really say. Yesterday I got to drive alone for the first time! My companion and I needed to transport 2 vehicles, so we drove in separate vehicles, it was weird to be without a companion - especially in a giant city where I don't have the slightest Idea where I am going. I just followed the truck. It went well. Haha
Studies have been going well, we are only allowed to use PMG and the book of mormon now, all other scriptures/books were banned, so that has been interesting. I don't really have any great spiritual insights to really share right now, I am running short on time and don't want to try and think of any haha.
I am jealous that half the family has seen harry potter! That is one movie I would love to see but will have to wait. The Grocery store we shop at is way different than the one in Negril! In Negril it was a little run down place that was lacking a lot of food and would randomly be out of things all the time. Now we have a giant grocery store that looks like a smiths or an Albertsons. Has everything all the time. Congrats on your Ap tests laura! that is great that you passed all of them! I am running low on things to say and my time is starting to run a bit low also. I still need to email President Graff. So I guess this will be it for the week. Tell the rest of the family hi and enjoy the family reunion!
Love, Elder B. Kent Talbert
Monday, July 13, 2009
It's A Trap!!!
Family,
Sounds like you have all had a good week! I am quite interested in your whole speaker thing dad, it sounds like you had a lot of hard work but also learned quite a bit of interesting things. Thanks for the complete description-I think I could go build one now. That is one thing I do look forward to in another 20 or so months-physics! Tunnel singing is cool, I have never been but I did know of it, a handful of my friends use to always go. Make sure to tell me how harry potter 6 is! To bad I will miss the opening show, oh well, not really going to ruin my life. Glad you liked those pictures! I had needed some pictures for some things I had been doing, but those were extra, so you got all the weird ones, but hopefully you enjoyed them.
A lot has happened this week! Huge Changes! I really don't remember the start of the week, it is just a blur now. Zone Conference was Friday, met president graff. He is really cool! And fairly young. He is very excited for the work and has some fairly impressive credentials (like turning a branch of 28 in the DR to a district with over 200 people in a few months). He gave a really good talk and mentioned how one thing that is changing is that he will transfer people a lot less, he wants missionaries to stay In their area for 6-10 months now. Well when it was all done he had interviews with the missionaries and then we went back to Negril-and that was when the fun began. We got home, got a call from the assistants informing us that our zone had collapsed, our leaders were released, 2 missionaries were sent home, an area was closed, and everything had fallen into chaos. So we went to bed wondering what in the world had happened, 8 missionaries had been moved and everything was a mess. The next morning we got ready and went out side when our phone rang, president Graff was on the phone and was calling Elder Hillam to be Zone leader, and that the Zone headquarters would be in Negril, so we weren't moving. E. Hillam was now the only district leader and the only Zone Leader in our zone (normally there are 2) and I was his young assistant. Well Sunday came and we spent all day driving around with the assistants moving missionaries around as they reorganized the zone and put different missionaries into different places. It was a lot of driving and we accomplished no teaching. The good thing was that since E. Hillam was zone leader we got a truck! No more bike riding In Negril! It was crazy all day long. Well we got home, and everything was calm again, got ready for bed, knelt down to pray and the phone rang again. It was presidents ring tone, so we stopped our prayer and answered. President Graff had changed his mind, he wanted Elder Hillam to have a companion instead of being the single zone leader. I was told that I would be leaving Negril in the morning! So When was I going to pack? It was night, and bed time, we have to be in bed by 10:30, no changes. So I went to bed and got up this morning and packed quickly. Now I am emailing in Negril, preparing to go to my New area. Another elder is coming to Negril to be with Elder Hillam to be his companion. I will be going all the way to Kingston, in the area that every missionary and senior couple has guessed I would go at some point in my mission-The Office! So now everyday I get up, study, go to the office and sit on a computer/run errands till 3pm at 3pm my companions and I (Elder Hill and Elder Tanner) go to our area and teach. Our area is Trenchtown-don't know if you have heard of it or listened to enough bob Marley to know about it (he has a song about it) but it is one of the biggest Ghettos in the Entire world. It will be interesting. I will be in a driving area, so that will be nice, and I live with the assistants (and they have a microwave!). well I don't really have anything else to say about that, I know little, and it was very very unexpected, even the assistants (who we had been with all day yesterday) were surprised. It will be a wild few days. The biggest change will be Preparation Day, it is now Saturday (fairly positive)-so you will have to change when you email me, because if you email me on Sunday I will have no emails to read this upcoming Saturday. Overall it has been an absolutely crazy weekend and a lot has changed (in our zone-the other zones were unaffected). And this is a very long paragraph!
So enough for the craziness, I would have liked to say good bye to people, but don't have anytime, I am just vanishing. Haha Well Natalie is still doing good, she came to church again and doesn't really have any major concerns, she is hesitant to accept a baptismal date and we don't know why. But hopefully this next week she will have a date of August 2nd. Joan is out of town for a few days but is still doing well, it will be a lot easier to teach her now that we have a truck. Where we taught her was about a 45-60 minute ride from our house. Negril is going to have a lot more teaching time with that vehicle.
Sis. Hylton is still doing amazing! We got her a member packet yesterday (bible, triple, gospel principles, hymn, etc.) It is cool how they just give all the recent converts all those books for free. She said the closing prayer in Sacrament meeting yesterday and loves church! It has been really amazing to see her progress, she is a solid member.
Umm! My mind is just blank on what happened this week, these past few days have just been over whelming, especially the news that I was leaving Negril and had 13 hours to prepare, 8 of which would be sleep, 2 would be study, and 1 would be email. I am curious to see how long I stay in the office, if it becomes my permanent area for a while or if it is just until they find me a new home. The office elders always are the first to get the tri-panionships and normally they remove the extra one as soon as they find a place for them to go. I have a feeling that I will be there for a while, the other 2 are good missionaries but one of them is a Native Jamaican and really has very little idea about how to operate a computer. It will be nice to be around President Graff a bunch, get to know him really well. In the office building there is the presidents office, the missionaries and the senior couple. Elder Sizemore will be surprised to see me again at District meeting on Wednesday. I am in a different branch than him but still the same zone. The branch will be big, won't have just 30 people anymore. Probably closer to 60-70. I don't really know any definites, but it is just the only thing on my mind so it is what I am typing about haha.
We visited a lot of Less Actives all week and had 5 at church! It was really nice to see the fruit of our labors! Church had 34 people yesterday! The most that I have seen! Well I am running short on time, hopefully everything made sense that I wrote, it was sort of everywhere. I need to email president real quick. Thanks for the emails and don't forget to write before Saturday, just in case. I need to write Alex back, but I think that will also wait till Saturday, don't think I will have any time today, my preparation day is mostly just my email time and a ton of driving time. That is cool that everyones farewells are happening! It's about time that more of my friends left! No one will be home when I get home. Life goes well, sort of crazy at the moment, but by next week, (or Saturday) I will be back into the swing of things. Enjoy the week and enjoy the family reunion! I hope it is a lot of fun-when is it exactly and what are you all doing? Well that is all I got for the day! Enjoy, and I love you all!
Elder B. Kent Talbert
Sounds like you have all had a good week! I am quite interested in your whole speaker thing dad, it sounds like you had a lot of hard work but also learned quite a bit of interesting things. Thanks for the complete description-I think I could go build one now. That is one thing I do look forward to in another 20 or so months-physics! Tunnel singing is cool, I have never been but I did know of it, a handful of my friends use to always go. Make sure to tell me how harry potter 6 is! To bad I will miss the opening show, oh well, not really going to ruin my life. Glad you liked those pictures! I had needed some pictures for some things I had been doing, but those were extra, so you got all the weird ones, but hopefully you enjoyed them.
A lot has happened this week! Huge Changes! I really don't remember the start of the week, it is just a blur now. Zone Conference was Friday, met president graff. He is really cool! And fairly young. He is very excited for the work and has some fairly impressive credentials (like turning a branch of 28 in the DR to a district with over 200 people in a few months). He gave a really good talk and mentioned how one thing that is changing is that he will transfer people a lot less, he wants missionaries to stay In their area for 6-10 months now. Well when it was all done he had interviews with the missionaries and then we went back to Negril-and that was when the fun began. We got home, got a call from the assistants informing us that our zone had collapsed, our leaders were released, 2 missionaries were sent home, an area was closed, and everything had fallen into chaos. So we went to bed wondering what in the world had happened, 8 missionaries had been moved and everything was a mess. The next morning we got ready and went out side when our phone rang, president Graff was on the phone and was calling Elder Hillam to be Zone leader, and that the Zone headquarters would be in Negril, so we weren't moving. E. Hillam was now the only district leader and the only Zone Leader in our zone (normally there are 2) and I was his young assistant. Well Sunday came and we spent all day driving around with the assistants moving missionaries around as they reorganized the zone and put different missionaries into different places. It was a lot of driving and we accomplished no teaching. The good thing was that since E. Hillam was zone leader we got a truck! No more bike riding In Negril! It was crazy all day long. Well we got home, and everything was calm again, got ready for bed, knelt down to pray and the phone rang again. It was presidents ring tone, so we stopped our prayer and answered. President Graff had changed his mind, he wanted Elder Hillam to have a companion instead of being the single zone leader. I was told that I would be leaving Negril in the morning! So When was I going to pack? It was night, and bed time, we have to be in bed by 10:30, no changes. So I went to bed and got up this morning and packed quickly. Now I am emailing in Negril, preparing to go to my New area. Another elder is coming to Negril to be with Elder Hillam to be his companion. I will be going all the way to Kingston, in the area that every missionary and senior couple has guessed I would go at some point in my mission-The Office! So now everyday I get up, study, go to the office and sit on a computer/run errands till 3pm at 3pm my companions and I (Elder Hill and Elder Tanner) go to our area and teach. Our area is Trenchtown-don't know if you have heard of it or listened to enough bob Marley to know about it (he has a song about it) but it is one of the biggest Ghettos in the Entire world. It will be interesting. I will be in a driving area, so that will be nice, and I live with the assistants (and they have a microwave!). well I don't really have anything else to say about that, I know little, and it was very very unexpected, even the assistants (who we had been with all day yesterday) were surprised. It will be a wild few days. The biggest change will be Preparation Day, it is now Saturday (fairly positive)-so you will have to change when you email me, because if you email me on Sunday I will have no emails to read this upcoming Saturday. Overall it has been an absolutely crazy weekend and a lot has changed (in our zone-the other zones were unaffected). And this is a very long paragraph!
So enough for the craziness, I would have liked to say good bye to people, but don't have anytime, I am just vanishing. Haha Well Natalie is still doing good, she came to church again and doesn't really have any major concerns, she is hesitant to accept a baptismal date and we don't know why. But hopefully this next week she will have a date of August 2nd. Joan is out of town for a few days but is still doing well, it will be a lot easier to teach her now that we have a truck. Where we taught her was about a 45-60 minute ride from our house. Negril is going to have a lot more teaching time with that vehicle.
Sis. Hylton is still doing amazing! We got her a member packet yesterday (bible, triple, gospel principles, hymn, etc.) It is cool how they just give all the recent converts all those books for free. She said the closing prayer in Sacrament meeting yesterday and loves church! It has been really amazing to see her progress, she is a solid member.
Umm! My mind is just blank on what happened this week, these past few days have just been over whelming, especially the news that I was leaving Negril and had 13 hours to prepare, 8 of which would be sleep, 2 would be study, and 1 would be email. I am curious to see how long I stay in the office, if it becomes my permanent area for a while or if it is just until they find me a new home. The office elders always are the first to get the tri-panionships and normally they remove the extra one as soon as they find a place for them to go. I have a feeling that I will be there for a while, the other 2 are good missionaries but one of them is a Native Jamaican and really has very little idea about how to operate a computer. It will be nice to be around President Graff a bunch, get to know him really well. In the office building there is the presidents office, the missionaries and the senior couple. Elder Sizemore will be surprised to see me again at District meeting on Wednesday. I am in a different branch than him but still the same zone. The branch will be big, won't have just 30 people anymore. Probably closer to 60-70. I don't really know any definites, but it is just the only thing on my mind so it is what I am typing about haha.
We visited a lot of Less Actives all week and had 5 at church! It was really nice to see the fruit of our labors! Church had 34 people yesterday! The most that I have seen! Well I am running short on time, hopefully everything made sense that I wrote, it was sort of everywhere. I need to email president real quick. Thanks for the emails and don't forget to write before Saturday, just in case. I need to write Alex back, but I think that will also wait till Saturday, don't think I will have any time today, my preparation day is mostly just my email time and a ton of driving time. That is cool that everyones farewells are happening! It's about time that more of my friends left! No one will be home when I get home. Life goes well, sort of crazy at the moment, but by next week, (or Saturday) I will be back into the swing of things. Enjoy the week and enjoy the family reunion! I hope it is a lot of fun-when is it exactly and what are you all doing? Well that is all I got for the day! Enjoy, and I love you all!
Elder B. Kent Talbert
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Photos From Kent
We got more pictures! The first one is just a random sign that Kent thought was funny. He says that there are many like this all over the place. He was hoping for Death Star plans, but it turns out all they were selling that day were plants.The Mitchells that Kent writes about so much. They take good care of the missionaries in Negril. Thank you, Brother and Sister Mitchell.
Kent looks good with short hair. This might be the hair cut he did himself. L to R: Kent, Elder Sizemore (MTC comp), Elder Robinson, Elder Jones. Maybe its a Borg Cube in disguise.
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