Training Again!

 Family! What's up?! Devin I can't believe that you are heading off to Brazil tomorrow! You are starting the best journey of your life! I have started to train again this week cuz I must not have done it right the first time and have been thinking that about your first couple weeks in the mission field, it's the best. Everything is just so brand new and it's just great. Transfers were on Tuesday this week. We went in and I swapped Elder Davidsen for Elder Chappell. Elder Chappell flew in Jamaica in Monday and is from Pleasant Grove Utah. He's 19 and Jamaica has made him super wide eyed! Ha both times I have trained I remember how I was when I arrived in Jamaica. It's funny cuz everything that I thought was "weird" has now become normal to me. He says that when people speak it might as well be Spanish because he can't understand any of it. He says he probably knows more Spanish than what he understands in Patios. He seriously thinks that the church should have us stay in the MTC for a couple extra weeks and learn how to understand Patois. When I think people are speaking clear and clean English he still looks at me and says he can't understand. There is a Jamaican elder in our house and the elder speaks good English but the accent makes it so he still can't understand him...it's kinda funny. He is a great missionary, wants to work hard and be obedient so it makes my job a lot easier. He is picking up on stuff quick, the language, the lessons, so it is pretty good. He loves the food. He asks a million questions but that is good, because of that he is going to learn things a lot quicker than I did cuz I just went with the flow of things. Also, answering all the questions make me feel super smart, so keep the questions coming! :)

 Well the chickungunia virus is behind me...I think. Sister Brown said symptoms could come off and on for years even if you think it is completely gone. YAY! :( On Monday my hands felt like I had dipped them in an acid bath. Anything I touched hurt so bad. I had to keep looking at my hands to make sure they weren't filled with blisters. It was crazy. Riding a bike was hard with that! Elder Davidsen had the same thing happen to him with his hands and so did a couple others in the mission who got the virus. It has turned into like a really bad thing in Jamaica. On Wednesday we gave 2 blessings to members who had the virus.

  So A. is planning on getting married to her baby father E., hopefully we can get all of that squared away so the marriage can happen in October. She didn't come to church yesterday so we are going to have to find out why. It's too bad. Have started teaching a couple others too. On Saturday night we stopped and asked this lady for directions to an address in her neighborhood. After we got the directions she told us that Sister missionaries used to hire her to clean their house. She told us how she was taught the Law of Chastity and the sisters must have made a good impression on her. She told us how her husband died a year ago and how her mom died earlier this year. We asked her if she knew where they were and she said she didn't know for sure but that she thinks she has an idea. We quickly taught a couple sections of the Plan of Salvation and she just lit up. We left the pamphlet with her to read in detail and told her we would come back and explain it in detail this week. We were about to go and we asked if there was anyone that she knew who was going through a rough time in their life, or who could benefit from the message we share. Wow she pulled out her address book and gave us like 12 referrals; her kids and some other people she knew. Not saying all of those referrals are going to be elect but at least we have names to work with already. It saves us the dirty work of being on the streets trying to start awkward conversations with people to get to know them. The spirit touched her heart when we taught that little section of the plan of salvation and she wanted everyone she loved to hear about it too.

 That's it. I am excited to get pictures from Devin next week from Brazil! Take care bro! 2 more years till I see ya. Love ya!

One Love.

Elder Colton Harris

Elder Chappell, Elder Stewart, Me, Elder Jackson
 

Dirty, grimy, gross light switch that I had to clean

My closet... I call it a "walk in" closet because before I rearranged our bedroom, every time I got out of bed I would accidentally "walk into" it. BTW it is just a piece of wood coming out of the grills

Our lovely floors that look like a 3 year old installed it. They got more glue on top of the plastic tiles than they got on the bottom! It is super bumpy too. If you look in the glare on the left side of the pic you can see how bumpy it is, the whole floor is like that.

 

 The fridge... I think the office elders found it in a gully. A couple weeks ago ants got into my food while it was in the fridge, we found out that the seal around the edge doesn't completely seal, so ants could get into it. That's why it doesn't keep our food very cold either. 

Our shower right when I got here. #Gross! We cleaned it, but most of it is permanent, even a lot of rust. That is why I shower with my flip flops ON! 

After we cleaned it.. still gross

Chickungunya Virus and Oval Rim

Well everyone we have had quite the week! It started out all good, then went downhill, then went into a big pit, and then came back up again. It started out good as I said. The rim on my bike got pretty messed up this week. I broke a spoke, and then throughout the rest of the day spokes just kept breaking. By the end of the day I had like 6 broken spokes. The next day we decided to ride to Rastaman Bike Repair Guy so that he could fix it, on the way there 6 more spokes broke and my rim looked like the letter C almost that's how bad it kept getting bent. It started out with 1 broken spoke and a small small bend in the rim, and ended up with 12 broken spokes and a super bent rim. Usually getting the bicycle rim tuned is a really routine fix, but this time it wasn't. It couldn't get fixed all the way so now my rim is oval, that kind of makes riding more interesting and more difficult as well. So Wednesday is when it got great though. Had district meeting in the morning, Ap's called minutes before it started and said they were going to be there. It turned out really good. Elder Davidsen woke up with red dots all over his body and seemed pretty sick. After district meeting he couldn't do anything so he went home with Elder Campbell because I was going on a trade off. I went out to an area called Hayes, if you get a chance look it up in conjunction to Maypen because it was a trek! Well the next day I got sick too. We called Sister Brown and she said that we have Chickungunya virus. Apparently it is a virus that is being spread throughout Jamaica right now through mosquitoes. Oh it was terrible. My body temperature was so hot! Joint pain comes with this virus too and my joints hurt so bad! I could barely walk, it hurt to even move my fingers and stuff. I got the red dots too. There is no cure for it so she said to take tylenol for the pain. I was really only sick for Thursday and a little bit on Friday. Elder Davidsen had it a lot worse than I did. He was sick Wed- Saturday. Man staying home while on the mission is so boring. I could have left the house on friday but because of Elder Davidsen we stayed in. 

So I am going to be training next transfer! I guess I am pretty excited about that. I go into Spanish Town tomorrow to pick the new comp up. Should be a good week. A. and E. are getting married the first week of October, after that she can then get baptized! I got to go, the computer is about to lock me out, I ran out of time. Have a good week! Love you!

 Big UP.

Elder Colton Harris

I might have gotten hit by a car this week

Hey everyone! Well as dad says, I am officially in the 4th quarter of my mission, it is way weird to think about! In a typical 4th quarter of sports it lasts the longest because there is always a lot of time outs, and the 2 minute warning timeout etc, but I have a sad feeling that the 4th quarter of my mission will by far go by the fastest! We had a really great week this week, I hope everyone back home had a great week too. Well this week we had a really good, effective week. Had electricity and water for the whole week so it was successful.  Well investigator wise we also had a good week. We extended 4 baptism dates this week and they all accepted, now we need to work in getting them to church on time so that they will be progressing. If they miss the sacrament then we can't count them as attending church, and we had 4 investigators show up all after the sacrament was passed. I mean that's not too bad considering there were only 10 people (not including missionaries) in the chapel at 10 o'clock when church was supposed to start. No one from the branch presidency was even in the chapel at 10, so we obviously started late.  That's something we are working on. I also gave a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. Every 5th Sunday of the month this branch has the missionaries speak, so a missionary from each companionship spoke. My topic was, 'A Loving Father, An Eternal Plan.' It went pretty well. I was the last speaker and I was left with basically no time. I figured that less time for a talk is more difficult than additional time.  It's hard to take a lot of stuff out cuz you wonder if it will still flow, but if you have extra time you just bare a little bit longer testimony and speak a little bit slower. It ended up turning out well.

So our investigators, most of them have been being taught for a while. One of them, A., she just a baby 2 weeks ago. She keeps commitments really well, all of them except marrying her baby father who she lives with. The baby father joined us in some lessons this week and said that he is down to marry her whenever, so now the ball is in her court to see if she wants to. It's not an easy situation or decision for her because of things that have happened in the past, but also if she decides to not marry him then she will literally have no income whatsoever or support financially. So hopefully things work out soon. She really wants to be baptized. She has to walk to church every week on Sundays and also comes to the Friday night activities that the branch holds every Friday night. She did that while 9 months pregnant. She actually had the baby on a Sunday so she missed that week, but the very next week, (last week) she was at church again. Her walk is probably about 2 miles, there are 2 really steep hills up on her way to the church, one of them is very steep and rocky, and 1 really steep long down hill, and then reverse that for her walk home. I get tired just thinking about heading to her house for lessons. Dedication. Once certain people feel the spirit of the gospel nothing can stop them. The Sunday before she had the baby she walked in the rain too.

N. and C. are 2 other investigators. We are working on getting them married as well. They have a date for the 14th. They don't live together, but they are together if that makes sense so they can get baptized before getting married as long as they live and will continue to live the Law of Chastity. They both have a date for Sept 14. Marriage would be the ideal situation for them tho. They want to be married but they have zero money to do it with. Even with us providing the building and a person to do the ceremony for free, they still have to come up with about $15,000 (US $140) to get a marriage certificate from the government and stuff but there is just no money flowing in. He works whenever he can find work, but with that they still barely have the bare necessities. US $140 is probably more than a months salary for him, and that is if he saves all of the money he makes, which obviously isn't feasible. Hopefully they can have the strength to live the law of chastity.

The zone leaders came to district meeting this week. Had a really good district meeting. We went on splits with them in our area cuz they didn't have enough miles to do a trade off. Yeah, just my luck, I thought I would be going back to Hopeton with them for a day, nope. Hopeton is just an area in Mandeville, it's not that big of a deal. Played a football (soccer) game with a bunch of Jamaican youths on Wednesday. Elder Barber, one of the zone leaders set it up, yeah they are way good and control the ball like professionals and we are all super uncoordinated with our feet. They laughed at us for a while. We played on this really small rocky dirt patch that was on the corner of the road and the field was shaped like a triangle and mostly everyone was playing without shoes, but it was fun. I also went and bought a fan this week! Yes! Not super hot at nights or during studies anymore, it's moved down a notch from super hot to just hot. There are no signs of fall anywhere out here, but it has been raining quite a bit so that's been nice.

On my 18 month mark I got fed what they call turned cornmeal. This was my first time having it. It is cornmeal cooked in coconut water and has seasonings in it too. Also had chicken back as part of that meal. It was pretty good. Chicken back is very common, I eat it at least 2 or 3 times a month, it's just a lot of bones and no meat, I don't eat chicken back bones either by the way. I might start tho so at least I get some nutrients off of it.

I might have gotten hit by a car this week, it was a low speed collision. He basically crossed the intersection while I was riding and hit the front of my bicycle and then took the front of it under his car and ran it over. I wasn't in harms way at all. He pulled over and got out but there really wasn't anything that he could do. It was his fault cuz I was on the main road going straight and had the right away he just wasn't being very vigilant and pulled out in front of me. Happy 18 month mark to me! :)

The camera guy who is supposed to be fixing my camera keeps saying, "You can pick it up tomorrow." Well he has been saying that for over 3 weeks now. I finally put my SD card in my comp’s camera so there are a few pictures today.

Have a great week everyone! Enjoy school!

Big Up.
One Love.
Elder Colton Harris

Pic 1, what it looked like when I pulled it out of the car
Pics 2 and 3, I straightened the handle bars out and that's what we got lol

Awesome Zone Conference!

Well this week was really good! Tuesday we went into Mandeville for zone conference. That was really great! Elder Cornish was he for that and wow it was just great! In the past I have tried really hard in letters to quote things that they say or lessons that they give and when I read over them after they are typed I realize that they make no sense, so I don't think that I will do that this week, but just know that it was powerful! He talked a lot about working with less actives to do missionary work. Not just to get them reactivated but as a way to kill two birds with one stone essentially. He said to find non members around the less actives and start teaching them. This way when the less active is being taught with the non member friend it will bring back the good feelings the less active used to have when they were active. It works really good. The vast majority of less actives that you talk to love the gospel, they don't have any bad things to say about the church, just that they haven't come for a few years. So it was a 7 hour meeting of awesomeness and I was just able to ruin it in 1 paragraph.  Anyways we also had DLC (District Leader Council) before zone conference with him. It was a great meeting too. Elder Cornish and his wife, Prez Brown and his wife, the Assistants, the zone leaders, and us 3 district leaders were the only people in that meeting and it was powerful as well! For zone conference preparation like 2 weeks ago, Elder Cornish had all the missionaries prepare a 5 minute talk on the process of true conversion and another 5 min talk on My purpose as a missionary. They said that they were going to randomly call 2 missionaries to give those talks in zone conference. Well I prepared a really good talk on The Process of True conversion. I made it so good that I didn't even leave time to make a talk on My Purpose. So I said there is like a 1 in 30 chance that I even have to speak so I won't even worry about making one. Well pres announces who is giving talks about half way through zone conference and I was one of them. I am so glad he had me talk on the process of true conversion! I would have been able to wing a decent talk on the missionary purpose but I know that I always have to be prepared now just in case! The taxi ride to Mandeville was awful, they put like 30 people I swear in a 15 passenger van. Ugh it's awful.

This week an investigator invited us over for dinner. We got fed Kidney, calaloo, boiled green banana, and dumpling. It wasn't too bad. I will say that because there was kidney on my plate, boiled green bananas have never tasted so good in my life before! :) I ate it, it was doable, I think I like liver better though. I eat chicken bones now too. I think for you guys to hear that it might sound weird but it's not too bad, you guys should try it sometime after you get done with some KFC chicken or something.

Yesterday we woke up and had no electricity AND no water in our house. Try getting ready for church without a shower or an ironing board while on a mission lol. We actually have a reserve tank of water that is hooked up to our bathroom so that is good! Water goes out pretty often so I am so grateful for that! Sometimes when the water goes out in the house, I have to go and rinse off my lettuce or whatever I want to wash off in the shower. It's a little bit awkward gut it gets the job done. It's better than other houses in the mission tho, there is one house where they only have water in the shower, so they do everything from putting water in their oatmeal to washing all the dishes with the shower. We have to fill up our washing machine from filling up buckets in the shower and taking them to the back of our house and dumping it in the washing machine. Hey it's a heck of a lot better than hand washing so I deal with it!

Well have a good week now that school is starting! Happy birthday Grandpa Newman and Kierstin this week! Pictures are coming next week hopefully. The camera fixer man is on Jamaica time and keeps saying "Your camera soon come." <-- that's Jamaican for it's going to take a long time! :)

Big Up.

Elder Colton Harris

Yard names, ginneup, and chcoolate!

This week was just another week in paradise. So last week we had a really good zone p-day in Mandeville. We went there and played volleyball in the rain, ordered pizza (ordering pizza is like better than Christmas here), did some other stuff too. My explanation right now is making it sound really lame. It took like and hour long taxi ride to get there and then we got dropped off at the taxi park and had to walk for a half hour to get to the church building. Then the same thing when we went home. We get to do it all over again because we have zone conference in Mandeville. Elder Cornish is coming to this one as well so I am pretty excited.

The past few weeks the area presidency has asked that we contact all of the potential seminary and institute members and invite them to attend when it starts back up. That has been a huge issue. Most of them are completely inactive. Most members don't know them. So we do what any decent missionaries would do and look them up on the branch directory. Well the problem with that is that there are no phone numbers for them, or the phone numbers that are written aren't connected. So next plan is to go to their house. Yeah right. For almost all of them under "street address" it has an area. So it would essentially say 'North Creek', or 'Canyon Road' or 'Manderfield' instead of their actual address, but for our area out here it says 'Juno Crescent' or 'Palmers Cross' etc. So we decide to go to that area and start asking if anyone knows of the person we are looking for. It wouldn't be so bad except that people's real names are on church records but all Jamaicans have what's called a 'Yard Name' or Pet Name'…essentially it just means nickname. Now these nicknames are the only names they go by except for official documents. So we go to an area looking for 'John Doe' but his yard name and the name everyone knows him by is 'Pitbull'. It makes it impossible because these nicknames aren't like they are back home. They are straight up the ONLY name they have gone by for many, many years. It's been really hard and we have only found like half. The yard name thing doesn't make it just hard to find less actives, but also to do family history in Jamaica. A lot of members only know their aunts and uncles by their yard names. They don't know a lot of their relatives first or last names and it's hard to ask others because they only know them by their yard name too.

Well we have been eating a lot of ginneup lately. It is a fruit, IDK how to explain it but there is a ginnuep tree in our area and so we stop and pick a bunch all the time. Last week I took like a whole branch and just hung it off my handlebars and so I rode around picking ginnuep off of this branch and eating it while riding. It turned out pretty good!

We have been getting quite a bit of rain the past 3 weeks. It hadn't rained for many months before that and Jamaica was in a big drought and so as a mission we had a fast for rain and since then it has been raining quite a bit.

Well we are working with some cool people right now and we have been finding some new people as well! We are excited. None of them have baptism dates right but that'll soon come. I also had chocolate this week made by and investigator named D. It was made with the real coco plant or seed or whatever it is. It was really good! Also had and investigator chop us off some plantain from his plantain tree this week so we have been frying that up Jamaican style this past week.

Well take care and have a great week! Hopefully pictures will come next week! One Love.

Elder Colton Harris

Colton, his companion, and another roommate in front of their fridge.  Colton says, "You think the fridge is bad...wait till I send a pic of the bathtub... the fridge looks like it still should be in its brand new packaging compared to our shower!"  Despite this, his apartment won the clean apartment challenge that is held within the mission.  The senior missionary couple over cleaning checks had this to say, "They live amongst rust and rot but they had their apartment looking great despite the deteriorating surroundings!!"  Good job, Colton!  I had my doubts as I visited his college apartment and saw how he lived there;)

New mattress...check. Fan...not yet.

Dear Family!

It's been a full week in the Play Pen! It's been a good week too. We are working to build our teaching pool right now. We are trying to find 'Kingdom Builders'. People who will be able to contribute to the branch right away after they are baptized instead of people who take a lot of the branches energy to retain them. It's more difficult to find that way but it is better than baptizing a less active. We are following the Lords council in D&C 58: verses like 5 through 10... I think that is the scripture reference for what I am explaining lol. I finally got a new mattress! I had one brought out from Kingston this week. It kinda got rained on while in the back of the truck on the way here, but I still slept on it that night because I was not going to sleep on those foam pads anymore! I am still working on getting a fan. I would buy one but then I would have to bicycle home with it, and our house is like 4 miles away from the stores and there are a lot of big hills in between so I haven't been in too big of a hurry to purchase one yet simply because I don't want to ride with it home. This week on the 6th was Jamaicas independence day. There was a huge party going on right across the street from the church during district meeting. Since we have to windows open in the church, it made for one loud district meeting! :) I was teaching to the beat of all sorts of music. Friday night the branch had 'Jamaica Night'. They did a talent show and had some food afterwards. I think this is the first branch activity that I have been a part of in Jamaica.. it was pretty nice. Well we are heading to Mandeville for Pday today so I have to be quick on the computer. Sorry there wasn't much this week. I also don't have pictures because I broke my camera, so when I get that replaced I'll throw ya some pics! Have a good week! One Love.

Elder Colton Harris

Excruciatingly Hot...Day and Night!

Well everyone it has been another week! My last week in Kingston went good. Said a lot of goodbyes, did a lot of packing etc. We had transfers on Friday this week so we all headed to Spanish Town. Transfer meeting was good, and then we headed out. Had a very squishy ride to Maypen! we fit 6 elders and all of our luggage, bicycles, and so much more in a little like half sized truck. Lets just say that it was stacked high! we got pulled over on the way cuz of how it was stacked, but he saw that we had strapped it down good and let us go. I got to Maypen and things are going pretty good. I'll send ya pictures of my new house next week to see if it compares to Dallon Ebmeyer's new apartment, I'll let you guys be the judge of deciding lol. So I sleep on a foam pad, nope that's a lie.. I actually sleep on 3 foam pads stacked on top of each other. I would sleep only on one, but there is a board that is missing on my bed frame, so anything less than 3 foam pads I fall down in it. These foam pads are killing my back, I can't sleep at all on them. I did get to sleep but I keep waking up in the middle of the nights. I wake up and I am completely wet, and I wonder why, and then I remember that there isn't even a fan in the house for me. So not only is there no A/C, but I don't even have a fan so it is excruciatingly hot at nights! With a fan blowing on high it is bearable to sleep, but without a fan it's impossible. When we go to bed, not just here in Maypen, but all over the island, our house is about 92 degrees. When we wake up in the mornings it is about 87 degrees in our house, and during studies and lunch it's about 96 degrees. It's draining to be in that heat literally 24/7 but it's all good. Back home when you're in the shade it's a little bit cooler, but because of the humidity the only difference between the sun and shade is that you don't get blinded since we aren't allowed to wear sunglasses since we are 'CIA'. On a bike in the sun all day is even worse since we are outside all hours of the day, not one lesson indoors ever. The only time I am indoors is at our house or for 3 hours at church on Sundays. So my new comp is great, he's from Canada. The area is pretty okay as well. There are a lot more hills here compared to Kingston and Spain! My legs have just been on fire because of these hills lol. It's fun because we ride around on like mtn bike trails all day that are in the bush so it is kind of like a jungle, just a little bit of a dry jungle right now because we are in a bit of a drought here in Jamaica. The drought is pretty bad. We had a mission wide fast for rain yesterday so hopefully things start to turn around. I'm going to have to repair my bike a lot more often because of the terrain here! I've been getting chased by dogs again that are ferocious while on our bicycles. These aren't your typical United States dogs that might chase you. I never got chased in Kingston, but here we do. They keep ya awake while riding. I kicked one the other day when it jumped to get my heel while I was riding, that just made it come at me even faster. Whoops. Our teaching pool is small so we have to do a lot of finding. The branch is good too. There was about 90 people at church yesterday. It's just a little bit smaller than my previous 3 branches that I served in. Well that's about everything I think. Big up to di brim ya ear! Live up what's left of summer! Enjoy the sun going down so late at nights cuz it get completely dark at like 6:15pm basically year round here! One Love.

Elder Colton Harris