Elder Colton Harris' Mission: Four flat tires this week!

Wow another week is here and gone. It was another good week. It looks like you guys had a good week at home as well. Thanks for the pictures that you sent out. I loved looking at them. Well, dad, to answer your question real quick; as of right now there is no patriarch on the island. There was a missionary couple out here that was here for 18 months that was the patriarch for Jamaica but they went home about 2 months ago. Um, there really isn't anything they can do if they do not have one that I know about. Unless they go on missions where there is a patriarch at the MTC as far as I know they can't get one. I guess there actually should be some sort of plan that the church has set up but I don't know of it. They did a big, big push for members to get that blessing before the patriarch left because now they don't know how long it will be until the island gets another one.

So I got 4 flat tires on my bike this week. So sad, but it was still a good week. I tried to change all of them on the side of the road but Jamaicans see us white people and as soon as we get our hands dirty they come and do it all for ya. They just never do a good job and the patches don't seal 100% so air leaks out of them soon again. But it is still nice of them.

So as for how my week went, it went great. So I don't remember if I told you this last week of not but our area got realigned. Since we moved to a new area we re-did the area so that we take all the close areas around where we live and the other missionaries take the far areas since they have the truck. We lost a lot of members in the realignment so it has forced us to continue working with less actives, which is the best thing ever. Missionary work is so effective while working through less actives. For every less active we reactivate we are just getting a lot of referrals. Tracting is so ineffective and I am so glad that it is a mission goal to never ever go tracting. I did it once when I was getting trained before it was a goal and I hated it. When you find through less actives not only do re activate the less actives, but their friends or family members that you start teaching already have contact in some way with the church. The less activess are there so it isn't as awkward as 2 random whites guys talking to ya. They have a friend to ask questions or concerns in private. It just is perfect. That has been working really good for us, we have been finding some elect people that way. In the bible dictionary under 'election' it talks about who the elect are. Now you can take election in a couple different ways but a different elder brought this up and in the bible dictionary it says something to the effect that the elect are people who come in favorable contact with the church. That favorable contact has to come to these elect people through less actives. They were placed in that favorable contact, whether it be in the same house, friends, family, co-workers for a reason. So I guess in short we have been finding some cool people to work with. I love the bible dictionary though. You can get lost for days in there, it's terrible. But there are a ton of good things that I never realized till I got out here.

S. should be getting baptized this week if everything goes well with his interview. He asked Pres. Brown to baptize him and he accepted so that will be a really neat experience. The baptism is going to be a really early baptism apparently cuz Pres is flying out to Turks and Caicos Islands for a couple days that afternoon. I am excited though! :)

So we were also supposed to have a baptism for this 18 year old girl named Sh. this Saturday as well. She didn't show up to church yesterday so we asked her friend/ fellow shipper where she was and he said that she wanted to come really bad but her mom said that she would completely disown her if she gets baptized in this church. She would be living on the streets so that was really sad. We are still working with her. We actually have an appointment with the mom tonight so we'll see how that goes. J., her 17 year old fellow shipper, and his nonmember mom have been working with Sh’s mom so that is good. Hopefully her heart gets softened. Well got to go. Love you all. Have a good week. Sorry again, I'll write more about day to day activity next week.

Love, Elder Harris