Well, well, well, here we go again. I'm writing this one Tuesday this week. Yesterday was a national holiday, Hero's Day or something so the stores and email shops were closed. Plus people were home so we decided to trade P-days. This week was great. Elder Chappell got over the Chickengunia virus on Wednesday, so we were able to work for most of the week. Not too much happened on Monday or Tuesday since we stayed home. I did make this banana bread stuff on Monday, it didn't turn out like normal banana bread tho. I got the recipe from off the box of Elder Chappell’s Wheat Pancake mix. I looked at it and was like, woah, we actually have the majority of these ingredients. That means the odds are in our favor for it to turn out edible. It was edible, but it didn't look like it did on the box, probably didn't taste like it was supposed to either but it was good. I had to cook it in like a sauce pan. That's pretty ratchet I know, but we don't have any baking pans. Also, the fire in the oven went out about 4 times too without me noticing. Ovens are weird here, they don't have the automatic start, you have to take a match, or in my case quite a few matches to get it to light. Then for some reason it didn't stay lit for very long so I had to relight it too. We have to light the stove part with matches every time too. Kinda lame cuz I singe me fingers every day, but it's all good.
On Wednesday we had a great district meeting. Afterwards I went on a trade off with Elder Campbell. He came into my area with me. We went to our first lesson in Palmers Cross where P. lives. He lives with some others in the same yard too, a grandma looking lady named C. and her daughter, Ch., and also her baby daughter. Well they don't have running water either where they live. They were running really low on water and had been for a few days so we took about 4 of the 5 gallon buckets and went to walk down to the pipe where they can get water for that area. It's close, it's only about a 6 or 7 minute walk away from their house. We go down there and there is this lady there with 3 little daughters. She just got done like giving them a bath down there or something and we see that she is filling up water containers as well. The littlest daughter had like a water bottle bottle full, the next one up had like a 2 liter soda bottle filled up, and the oldest one had a little bit bigger container. They also had a 5 gallon bucket they were filling up. We asked if we could help carry the 5 gallon bucket for her, she said no for a few minutes. I wasn't going to let her carry it tho, she was little petite lady, I think the water would have weighed more than she does. Come to find out, she always carries the 5 gallon bucket of water on her head.... (when I found that out I kind of wanted her to carry it cuz I wanted a picture of that really really bad actually). But yeah, she does that every day. She puts the weight on her head and stabilizes it with her hands. We follow her to her house, and she lives way further than P. does from the pipe. It was up a steep rocky hill too. 3 different places walking up this dirt path we had to step up rock ledge things that were probably 3 feet tall each, it doesn't seem that tall but with that amount of water that’s a lot! I was super tired just carrying the water in my hands, I have no idea at how she does it. We told her next time we are in Palmers Cross we are going to carry water for her. She said we can only do that if we come and share the gospel with her family... Uhm sure, we can do that! :) Tender mercy right there.
Speaking of water, the house that I told you we built general conference weekend; we are going back over there this weekend. It rained last week and apparently everything on the inside of the house got soaked, including them. I knew that would happen but we did the best we could with what we had at the time. It sounds like more supplies have been gathered and we will be able to fix it up a little bit better this weekend.
On Wednesday I trapped a Satan cat in our house. This cat gets into our outside trash all the time and tears it apart and makes a mess. (btw, the trash collectors haven't come for 6 weeks, so we are having to burn all of our trash in our backyard the past few weeks). It also gets into our house almost every day. It climbs through our windows. We can't leave our windows closed even when we are gone cuz our house will melt I think if we do that. So it tears our inside trash apart all the time, eats loaves of bread, and other stuff. So on Wednesday I closed all the windows, doors, and exits to our house except the kitchen door and I sat behind the kitchen door. It came in our house and went right to the trash right on cue. I slammed the door shut and then that thing went CCRAZZY for a few minutes. It ran around our house trying to get out everywhere, even running into the doors and windows a few times each to see if it could push it open, and then it hid. I didn't really think about what to do once I trapped it in the house. That cat was one feisty thing. It was terrifying; I didn't know that cats could be so defensive. 4 grown men in our house were scared of this thing. We all grabbed our machetes and a box and tried to catch it; it was not going to get caught tho. We ended up just having to let it go after quite a while. I just realized there was no point in telling you this story. It would have been a lot better if you were actually there. We caught 3 scorpions in our house in 3 days too. Yay.
On Thursday, a recent convert in the branch died. Her name was Sister H. She was S's sister, and S. is our investigator. Sister H. was only 40 years old. She has been sick off and on for years now, she had bad kidneys and was on dialysis and stuff. It was pretty sad. Hopefully we get to go over soon and reemphasize the Plan of Salvation to S. She has just been busy this weekend since that went on. Sis H. left behind two kids, a 9 year old girl and a 14 year old son. The kids took it way hard. Yesterday at a lesson with some recent convert kids in our area we made cards for them and stuff. I bet the funeral won't be for about 2 months, they put off funerals for a LONG time here in Jamaica every time, IDK why.
Saturday, the missionaries all cleaned the church. That was a funish service project lol.
A. apparently broke up with her baby father. Sh. didn't come to church this week. P. didn't come to church this week. Went to see P. yesterday. Apparently C., the grandmother like ran away on Friday. No one knows where she is. They have called all the family and friends they know around the island and no one can find her. She doesn't have a penny to her name to get anywhere, that's why she left, doesn't have any food or water at her house so stress and stuff must have built up. Her daughter Ch. is super concerned about her. I am too, cuz from what I have seen I didn't even know she was able to walk. While we were the yesterday we went and got more water for them. While we were filling up the water I noticed a sweet sop tree right next to us. Actually Elder Chappell noticed it and asked what it was. I told him that it is the most delicious fruit in the world. I am going to carry water all the time now that I know there is a sweet sop tree down there! Wish ya'll could taste it!
Sorry the letter is so long. I have a good keyboard at the email shop today, one where the keys don't stick so I was able to cruise. Have a good week! Love you!
Nuff love.
Elder Colton Harris
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| the district |
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| the clothing store in MayPen, in the MayPen street mall |
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