One month left today!

Hey family! This week was great! We had no Pday on Monday since we spent the whole time in Kingston and coming back. Tuesday was our really our only real proselyting day of the week. We had our branch presidency meeting that day and got a bunch of stuff done that we needed to. On Wednesday we went to Santa Cruz for district meeting. Had a good little meeting there and then Elder Mathews came back to our area for a trade-off. I am pretty sure that after he came here for a day he did not want to go back to Santa Cruz! Even though it is only about 45 minutes away, they are very different! Coming from Mandeville, to go to Junction you turn towards the ocean, to go to Santa Cruz, you turn towards the desert. It is super-hot over there! It is always 15 degrees cooler in Junction than Santa Cruz and they are on bikes. I've turned into a pansy again, I can't stand being outdoors while in Santa Cruz because it is too hard! So the trade off went well; had good lessons with him there. Thursday we proselyted in the morning then I drove him back to Santa Cruz and we picked up Elder Sullivan. Pres. C. was with us and he showed us a back way to get to Treasure Beach. We were heading over there for a cottage meeting at Sister G.’s house. We had a good cottage meeting. There we 6 non-members there and 3 members plus us. We got to know each other and then we had a good spiritual thought on the importance of prophets. After that she fed us dinner. Had curry chicken, fish, and you guessed it, rice & peas. Friday was weekly planning. That is the only thing that I am excited not to do in a month. We went to a new seminary class in an area called T.  Last week only 1 girl showed up to seminary in that area so her parents said it would be good to have more youth there with her. Obviously we agreed, but the youth that are members in that area just aren't coming. They took it up to invite neighbors of theirs. Altogether there were 12 youth there this time, ranging from 5 to 15. It is a good thing the seminary teacher didn't show up because the lesson was supposed to be on D&C 77 I think. A question and answer given to Joseph Smith about the Book of Revelations, yeah that would have confused all them. We had a fun FHE thing with them tho and then explained that seminary is for a certain age group, but at least they invited people. Saturday we woke up early. We had to drive up to Munroe to pick up Prez C. and then we picked up the Santa Cruz elders and drove up to Mandeville. We had a few meetings there on Saturday. There was a family history training for family history consultants and missionaries. Only missionaries showed up tho. That was good. Then there was a priesthood leadership meeting as part of District Conference. Then there was the general Saturday session of District Conference after that. Only about 30- 40 people were at the Saturday session. Not that good for 5 branches. We took our mattresses up and we stayed the night in Mandeville on Saturday. We had to go to MayPen on Sunday for the Sunday session. It was super awesome to go back and see everyone from MayPen! I loved it!!! This conference this weekend was presided over by Elder Gammiet, he is an area 70 for the Carribean. It was good to spend a weekend with him.

I realized that I am down to 1 month left today...woah. Time keeps creepin’ up fast. I am usually too busy to keep track of time constantly so every few days when I realize how many days have passed since the last time I counted it blows my mind. I am enjoying this last little bit of time here. Thanks for the birthday wishes. For all of you congratulating me and saying now I am legal to drink, I have to say that I have been legal to drink for the past two years! The drinking age is 18 in Jamaica so all of that is old news lol. And now that I am 21, I am old news too. Have a good week. Enjoy the Super Bowl. Love ya!

Respect.

Elder Colton Harris



My 3 sons!

 

Restoration in Jamaica!

 

Alligator Pond and Kingston Traffic

So last week we went to Alligator Pond with a member of the Hopeton Branch and the Hopeton missionaries. We had a great time out there! We went and fried some fish. We didn't bring plates so we ate fish on banana leaves and almond tree leaves. How sweet is that ? I thought it was pretty cool anyways. Afterwards we went to a river and went fishing for a couple hours. That was super great too except that we didn't catch any fish ;( The locals said it is super easy to catch fish in that river but I wasn't seein' it. The river was sweet. It was this jungle river area. Tons of big trees with vines hangig down, I even went a little Tarzan for a second on the vines! After that we went to a sweet beach area. It had a big fresh water river that you can swim in running along the coast of the beach with amazing sand in the middle. That was a cool area.

Well I am sorry that I am sending this email very late! Today was a crazy day. I wrote the previous paragraph at the mission office this morning and now I am at the Vance's emailing. So we had to take our truck into Kingston to it serviced this morning. We woke up at 530 am so that we could get out quick and it took us 2 1/2 hours to get there. We got there early and stayed all day in Kingston at the mission office. We left the mission office at 445 pm and it took us an hour and fifteen minutes to get from one side of Kingston to the other! I hate traffic!! I was so ready to get back to Junction in the bush where there are no stoplights, no rush hour, etc. I am super glad I have never had a driving responsibility in Kingston cuz it would drive me crazy! It drove me crazy today!! Anyways, we had a great week. District conference in MayPen this week. I am glad to go back and see everyone in May Pen. Anyways, I'll talk to you next week. See ya next month. Love ya!

Love Elder Colton Harris

Fish! (I wish that we caught these!)

We forgot to bring plates, thank goodness for banana and almond tree leaves!!

Some beach

 

Alligator Pond!

Good morning everyone. Our week this week was pretty good. I am pretty sure that for the past 98 weeks or so I have started all of my letters with "our week was pretty good" guess that I am not original at all.

So I don't have a lot of time this week to email. I got on the computer earlier today and had to rush. We were meeting some other missionaries and a member from Mandeville down in Alligator Pond! I'll have to tell you about that trip next week and send pictures next week cuz it was super fun! Last week for Pday we also went to Alligator pond. We went down there are played soccer on the beach for a few hours. It was pretty fun because half of the field that we were playing on was sand and the other half of the field that we were playing on was the ocean every time a wave would come in. If you think a bunch of Americans can look uncoordinated with their feet while playing on grass, wait till you see a bunch of Americans playing soccer in moving water!   It was fun and that's all that counts. We also went to a restaurant. I ordered jerked lobster. It was pretty good, I would definitely recommend it to anyone if you get the chance.

We also did some missionary work this week. Next week I will have to tell you the story about a less active named P.G. I don't have time this week but next week I will.

Devin, I've heard that the sickness you got is comparable to chickungunya, if it is then I feel super bad for you. Chickungunya is terrible so I assume yours was too! Keep up the good work though!

On Saturday we received transfer calls. I am obviously staying here with my comp. It was just bitter sweet because this is the last transfer call that I will receive before the infamous "Elder Harris, yuu a gaa yuu yaad!!” (Elder Harris, you are going to your house.) 6 weeks is all I got, going to make it count.

Keep it Irie.

Love Elder Colton Harris

These are of last week’s Pday pictures.

Played soccer on this beach for a few hours last week. Was pretty fun. This is near alligator pond

Jerked lobster platter!

Jerked lobster again! It tasted pretty dang good!

2K15!!!

Happy 2015 officially now! Our New Year's celebration was was very simple lol. Just had our typical proselyting day, then New Year's day we did our normal proselyting as well. Actually we had a bunch of Kilometers (miles) left for the month of December so we decided to take our dinner break and drive to Treasure Beach to see if we could find somewhere to go get dessert or something, we get there and only bars are open.. nothing else so we had to come all the way back and ended up going to get ice cream at a little shop across the street from our apartment. Got some coconut ice cream and that was it.

We have been having a lot of success with less actives here, I might have said that before but it is true. President C. just has a great connection with all of them, and they all respect him a lot. There were only 29 people at Sacrament meeting yesterday, I conducted so I got to bear my testimony first. It went well. The Stake and the mission here in Jamaica are organizing another huge temple trip to Santa Domingo this summer. We are trying to prepare members so that they can go on that. There will be 154 persons from Jamaica going on this temple trip. They are chartering another airplane and are staying there for a week. The participants are going to only have to pay $150 US, and everything else is essentially covered for most people. The Lord's work truly is great and marvelous. It's a miracle the church is able to make it that cheap for those here in Jamaica. Even though it is only $150, it is still a HUGE HUGE HUGE sacrifice for essentially everybody. But these temple trips show the commitment that the church has to help establish real growth here in Jamaica, not superficial growth where we baptize everyone but they don't really progress too far after that.   

 

As for our investigators, they are still progressing slowly. Too bad, so sad. It is hard in this area. Taxis don't run on Sundays. For most here they either walk long long distances to get to church or they have to charter a taxi. Chartering a taxi costs about $1,500 even for just a few kilometres away from the church, that would be hard for me to pay $15 just to go to church every Sunday. It is difficult to help investigators see the importance of making the sacrifice necessary to get to church, especially when there are so many churches in their own communities that they could go to.

 

So with everyone freezing over there on that side of the world I'll go soak up some sunshine for all of you. We are heading to Alligator Pond right now with some other missionaries. It is the same place I went when I was at the very beginning of my mission and got jerked lion fish to eat, now I am going back at the end.

 

Well, I guess that I will see you guys next month.. crazy to say that. Have a great week, see you soon! Love you!

 

Elder Colton Harris

$1 US per strawberry anyone?

BIG COW! tiny truck