Busy Week

I thought I had better repent and make a post on this blog.  It has been a really busy week.  Monday we made a trip to Highgate to see two of our members and take them some food.  We visited with Sister Raymond and Sister Bennett.  I gave them each a "My Family" book so they could start gathering names for our temple trip in July.  The mission and stake have set a goal of 2,000 names so we are trying to get our members busy.  I am excited.  On our way home the elders called us.  They wanted to know if we were close at hand.  The water supply line to their toilet burst and they came home to two inches of water.  By the time we got back to Ocho it was cleaned up so we headed for home.  The plumber had just been out to their home to fix the toilet.  He actually taped up the small hole in the supply line so I am not surprised that it burst.

Tuesday we spent the morning at the branch.  I vacuumed and swept while Brian worked on some membership records for President Brown.  Later that afternoon we visited a less active sister and our elders quorum president.  We also went out to Huddersfield to visit with the Noble family. The rest of the evening was spent in studying for classes.

Wednesday was a very long day.  We left our condo at 8:10 so that we could make a trip to Port Antonio to pick up two of our elders.  We were hoping to see one of our members on the way but she didn't pick up her phone.  We found out later that she had been in Kingston.  We loaded up Elder Rammell and Elder Grossbeck and headed for Spanish Town.  We went over Stoney Hill.  It was the first time I had made the trip and it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be.  Luckily, we did not come across any big trucks.  We stopped at Pricesmart in Kingston to buy a pizza for lunch and then finished our trip into Spanish Town.  Elder Rammell was leaving to be one of the new zone leaders in Kingston and Elder Grossbeck was going back home to Oregon.  Some of my favorite elders and sisters were leaving to go home.  We had a nice meeting and it was fun to see some of the missionaries that we haven't seen for awhile.  After the meeting we headed back to Port Antonio with Elder Muirhead who is Jamaican and Elder Hunt.  When we got to Port Antonio, we unloaded the truck in pouring rain.  Brian was pretty wet when he got back in the truck.  From there, we headed back to Ocho in the dark.  It was a very long day.  We figured that we spent about 10 hours in the truck.  We also got two new missionaries in our branch.  Elder Gardner from Orem replaced Elder Jones and Sister Tuttle from Bountiful replaced Sister Garrett.

Thursday morning we paid our internet bill and then headed to the branch to pick up Sister Llewellan who was being dropped off by the AP's so that we could take her to her home.  It was fun to get to know her a little.  Her family had their porch decorated for her return.  We left her with her family and then stopped to purchase some ice cream for the branch social. Later in the afternoon we drove to the branch for seminary and institute.  Mark did not come and Brian's adult class fizzled out also.  We did get our YA's out for the 6:00 class so that was nice.  After class we stopped at the store and then took the elders back to their apartment before heading home.  The elders needed a few items and so did we so it worked out great for both of us.

Friday we went to Lime Hall to get the truck washed.  We got to visit with Humphrey for a few minutes.  He saw that Wayne was washing the truck and he had just gotten off work and was pretty tired but he came over to visit with us.  I love some of the expressions here.  Wayne said to Humphrey, "You look mashed up."  That was his way of saying "you look tired".  I love some of the Patwah  phrases.  I went home and made a pan of brownies and two sheet cake pans of banana cake for the branch activity.  The sisters dropped off a chocolate cake for us to take to the activity.  We headed to the branch for missionary correlation meeting at 5:00 and then set up for the branch social that started at 6:30.  We got about 50 people out and they seemed to have a lot of fun.  We are going to try having a branch social every other week.  We went through 6 gallons of ice cream.  Most of the branches and wards do not serve any refreshments at their activities so we will probably do the same.  However, the members love to eat sweets so I hope they will still come out even if we don't serve refreshments.

Saturday we made a trip into Spanish Town for our temple meeting.  We are excited about the trip and hope that we can encourage our members to participate.  We were going to stop at Pricesmart but decided to wait until we come to Kingston next Tuesday for family history training.  When we got home, I made dinner while Brian cleaned up the church.  We spent the rest of the evening getting ready for Sunday.

Sunday it rained so our attendance at the branch was not that great. Jamaicans do not like to go out in the rain so it always affects our attendance.  Lately, we have had a lot of rain on Sundays - a good test of their faith. I taught the YW's lesson on "Our body is a temple."  I really enjoyed teaching that lesson. I only had two girls in the class but we had a good time.  After church, Brian taught the Temple Preparation class.  He also taught the gospel doctrine class and was suppose to teach the YM but the Elder's quorum president asked him to come into priesthood to help out with the lesson so he turned the YM over to Rohan.  It was a busy day for him. When we got home I fixed dinner and then we made a visit to the Llewellans.  Jody was called to be the new YW's President.  That will free me up to concentrate on getting the members involved in family history since I am also the family history specialist in our branch.  It was a good day.  We got to Facetime and Skype with Amy, Jill and Emily.  Ben also called.  It is always nice to talk to family.

From left to right, David (Jasmine's husband), Jasmine, Cindy, Jody, and Jody's mom Marge.

Jody and Shawn (our two returned missionaries)  Tracy is in the back.