Colton's Homecoming Talk

Colton will be speaking on March 8, 2015 at 11:00 a.m. in the Beaver 5th Ward.  We look forward to hearing from him!  But mostly we looking forward to hugging him and welcoming him home! 

Last Letter Home;/

Everyone... well this is the last letter that I will write home from my mission. 2 years is up this week. Wow. It has been a super great experience for me! Jacob says around the time that he gets done writing that, “the time passed away with us.. like as it were unto us a dream." I feel the same way. At times it feels like a dream and it passed so quickly. I heard that my prayers were answered and that there was some snow this week! Sweet! Cody, welcome home as well.

So I saw pics of Adam, Tyler, and Marquez all together. While they were together on Saturday I was at a sweet baptism. We did the baptism for Sis A. at Old Wharf in Treasure Beach. It was super awesome! We had a private beach area all to ourselves.  IDK how I lucked out doing 3 ocean baptisms while here, most missionaries don't even get one. We realized that Sis A. is the first person ever to be baptized from the community/city of Treasure Beach. Junction Branch is pretty new, like less than 12 years old and Treasure Beach has only been worked recently. This is also the first baptism in the Junction Branch for almost 2 years, even with 2 companionships here the whole time; In our district it is the first in over a year as well so we were super excited about that!  I hope that it helps get the members in the branch more excited to do missionary work as well! Sis Ashby is great though. It has been an awesome journey these past 6 weeks. She is the first investigator of mine to make their first baptism date I think as well. Pictures of the baptism are below.  

Had my last zone meeting this week in Mandeville. On Wednesday it was Ash Wednesday. We don't really celebrate that back home I don't think but here EVERYTHING shut down. Taxis, fast food, .. even bars!! Normal holidays here is when everybody usually hits up the bar all day long, I still don't know what made this one different.

I gave my farewell talk yesterday in sacrament meeting. Cried during a few parts, but made it through okay.

Elder S’s mom is planning on getting baptized in March. She never even went to church once before his mission but now she is working towards a baptism date back in Yahlas. The Lord blesses families as others serve.

So I do look forward to seeing everyone this week. It has been way too long! I am sad that Devin won't be there though! I hope that you have a super happy birthday in Brazil! No better place to celebrate a birthday than in Brazil of all places!!

The missionary coming to replace me is Elder Sinae. He is from the Bahamas. I actually interviewed his mom for baptism before he was on a mission. He was the translator for that interview because his mom only speaks Haitian Creole well. He will do good here in Junction.

Side note about emailing you all today... my computer either shut down or restarted 6 times today, PLUS the power went out TWICE. Emailing today was a labor of love for sure!

Thanks for everyone's support! I truly have been so blessed to be able to serve a mission! It is one of the greatest gifts Heavenly Father has given to me. It seems hard to be able to top experiences like this but I will in the next 2 years. The gospel is all about progression, so if in 2 years I still think that my mission was the best 2 years of my life, I probably haven't been living the gospel very well. The church is true. This is Christ’s gospel. I am very privileged to have borne His name on my chest for 2 years, it will forever be on my heart! I love you all!

Love,

Elder Colton Harris

Can there be a sicker venue for a baptism??!!

I propose we move sacrament meeting out here too! #bejealous

The sun setting on Colton's mission...bittersweet...

 

Wheel and Deal!

What a week. We are still working with Sis A. from Treasure Beach. She has a baptism interview scheduled for this Wednesday so she should be getting baptized on Saturday! We are really looking forward to that! She has now come to church 5 weeks in a row.  She and Sis G. don't have a lot of money so they wake up really early on Sundays and go to the main road at 6 am and "look a drive" as Jamaicans say, but it is really just hitchhiking. Hitchhiking is pretty common here, but sometimes it takes them four different cars to just get to church, but they are always usually the first ones here. Takes a lot of faith for that. We are really looking forward to this baptism though for a lot of reasons. There hasn't been a baptism in almost 2 years even though there has always been 2 companionships here.  So this will really be able to boost the branch and hopefully get more of the members excited and involved in missionary work. Next week we should have pictures of the baptism.

So IDK if any of you have ever heard of Colin Powell. So I guess he is/was really high up in the US government, he worked under Bush and Clinton for a long time as Secretary of State and some other positions. Well he is a Jamaican and is actually from an area called Top Hill, right in Junction. We went and walked around that for a while on Monday. There are several members in the branch that are related to him as well. After that on Monday we went to the Sports Park in Treasure Beach and played some tennis there. That was fun. Topped off Monday with an FHE at Sis G.’s house.

Wednesday was my last district meeting.  Went to Santa Cruz for that. On the way home there was a shop that was selling carvings. I stopped and asked the guy how much for them and he said they start at $50 US. Well I asked him what the Jamaican price was, not the tourist price and he said $3,000. Then I asked him what his name was and he pointed to a sign that said 'Wheel and Deal'. I thought, “Man this guy is cocky, I'll show him wheel and deal.”  Needless to say I walked out with a carving and paid less than $10 US. There we go, Mr. Wheel and Deal just got Wheeled and Dealed.

Thursday was quite the crazy day. There were 4 auditors from the Area that came and they said that they were going to do financial training for the branch leadership. They planned on spending 2 hours at all the branches, and for a lot of the branches they spent less than 2 hours. Well, they ended up staying for over 6 hours! There were so many things that were out of order, and I can't explain it over email but there were 5 professional accountants that were just baffled for 6 hours. They organized everything good though and straightened out most of what needed to be straightened out.

Friday the 13th wasn't a bad day either surprisingly.

On Saturday Elder Sullivan was my valentine! <3 He loves me lol... (He just called me gay cuz he read that part, Jamaicans are pretty homophobic.:) I asked Elder Stewart to be my valentine as well and he accepted so I had 2 valentines. Oh yeah.

Sunday Sunday Sunday. Church was great. I once again conducted Sacrament meeting, taught gospel principles class, and taught Elder’s quorum. Teachers that were supposed to show up didn't, so that left me. We had a new investigator come to church yesterday, Bro W. The lesson in Elder’s quorum was on Pray Always from Ezra Taft Benson and we shared a story about how Pres Benson started all his meetings with prayer, even while he was serving in the US government. We went and saw Bro W. last night and the first thing he said before we could even get situated into our chairs he said, "We need to follow Pres Benson and say a prayer now." We were like wow, someone was paying attention. He is super cool though, really educated which is nice. He got a doctorate degree in England and moved back, and he found out that he knows like 6 members of the branch so that was a bonus as well.

Today we went to Mandeville for a zone Pday. It was pretty great! Played some volleyball and other things.  Going back to Mandeville on Wednesday for my last zone meeting. Sad day :(

Someone needs to make it SNOW back home! I am tired of hearing that there isn't any snow. Your weather sounds a lot like my weather! That is not a good thing for this time of the year! Hopefully that can change that fast! Love you all! See ya soon.

 
Blessed.

Elder Colton Harris

General Colin Powell's land

My homecoming suit

I think He's Getting Ready to Come Home...

So I am getting way too lazy to type my email this week, plus I had a very limited time on the internet today! We had 2 progressing investigators this week. D. and S. A. Both of them are from Treasure Beach and both are on date for the 21st of this month! I am really excited about that! I am pretty sure that they will both be able to make it for that day! I will see you all really soon! Love you! Sorry this was short! 

21st Birthday...Woah!

Dear Anyone,

This week was the big 21 birthday week! Wow, that is a big number! Sometime this week was also my 23 month mark. My birthday was great. We went to a restaurant called Jack Sprat. I was eating jerked sausage pizza on the beach, what could be better on a birthday than that! It was a good day. Later that night Pres. C. bought some jerked chicken so we had that to celebrate with too.

This week we had a Caribbean wide stake/ district conference broadcast from Salt Lake City. That was really good. But since the internet was slow it would work for about 10 seconds and then buffer for about 20 seconds then work for 10 seconds and buffer again. So that went on for the whole conference, but other than that it was really good. President Packer, Sister Oscarson, Elder Holland, and Elder Wilford Anderson spoke. That was cool since I have met Elder Holland and Elder Anderson while on my mission. I was reading in my journal about when we were taking Elder Anderson to the airport in Cayman and he told us at that time to work extra hard at that time of our missions because it could be the only time that we are "equally yoked" for the rest of our missions. By equally yoked he was referring to how we were both seasoned missionaries at that time so take advantage of it. Looking back I think, "At that time did he know that after Cayman all of my companions would have been on their missions for 0 to 3 months when I was with them?" Anyways, conference was great though!

 We also had zone meeting this past week in Mandeville, that was alright, it was just really long! Not too much happened else happened this week. See you later this month.

Love Elder Colton Harris

Pic 1) Jerked sausage pizza on the beach! Happy birthday to me! :)
Pic 2) My favorite road signs around here!