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!

 

 

 

 

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

 

Happy New Year!

Well everyone, it is that time of year again, where it is the end of the year.. Skyping on Christmas was great! I can't believe that this was mission Skype 4 out of 4, I never thought that I would get to this point! Christmas week was great and hot as well. So Christmas day we skyped, then had dinner with Elder and Sister Vance. That meal was good, had ham and all the normal side dishes, it has been a long time since I have had ham! Then we went and handed out some Christmas cards to a few members and non members then went up to our branch presidents house and had dinner with them. It was an effective Christmas. Throughout the day we looked for opportunities to do service and stuff as well. Christmas traditions are a little bit different than they are back home or in Cayman. So Christmas eve here seems like the big celebration. In all the town centers they have HUGE parties, they call it grand market. They line the streets with the massive speaker towers that you've seen in pictures. There are lots of things that they can buy at grand market so I think that the things they buy at grand market essentially are the equivalent of Christmas presents I think. But everyone at grand market just seems to be drunk and smoking weed and just chillin in front of loud music. They stay there all night long, then on Christmas day, Jamaica is very quiet, more quiet than I have ever heard, Everyone sleeps for most of Christmas day since they were up all night. They get up and they do eat a big Christmas meal in the afternoon. Give or take a little bit, that seems to be the Christmas traditions here for the majority of people. Not too much to talk about since we Skyped this week. We have been having very good success with working with less actives, that has been very productive recently. Working with investigators... doesn't seem to be going as well as the less actives, but going forward none the less.  Have a happy New Year! Enjoy the time in California! 

That truck has massive speakers all the way around it.  That is at grand market

Star apple

 

Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! To start off the letter today I want to start with the Christmas story in my nativish language.

"Iina dem die de, de Ruoman ruula, Siiza Agostos, gi aada fi rait dong di niem a evribadi iina im kingdom. (Dis a di fos taim niem a rait dong sins di taim wen Kiriniyous did a ruul uova Siriya.) Aal im piipl dem didafi go a di toun we dem baan fi get dem niem rait dong, so di gavament kyan taks dem. So kaaz Juozif did kom fram Dievid fambili an Dievid did baan iina Judiya, im did afi lef from Nazaret iina Gyalalii an go a Betliyem iina Judiya. Juozif go de wid Mieri fi get dem niem rait dong. Di tuu a dem did ingiej fi marie dem wan aneda an shi did av biebe iina beli. Wen dem de de, Mieri tek iin fi av biebi, an shi av ar fos pikni, wan bwai. Shi rap im op iina biebi blangkit an put im iina di baks we di animal dem nyam outa, kaaz no spies neva iina ges ous fi dem" -Luuk 2: 1-7

You can go read that alongside the English verses in Luke 2 if you can't understand them. That is copied straight from the patois bible in case you were wondering. Yes, they have a patois bible believe it or not. I can't wait for the patois version of the Book of Mormon, haha that would be the day! And for some reason, church headquarters calls this an English speaking mission, I don't see it, nor hear it very often. Nah, that patois above is very very thick even for locals out here.

Alright, we had our branch Christmas dinner on Saturday, it went well. We got just as many to that dinner as we do to sacrament meeting so that is good. We had almost 30 people. It was a pot-luck dinner. I made liver, turkey neck and curried chicken back and brought that to the dinner. I will say that I made them pretty good if I do say so myself. Watch out mom, your kitchen is about to get some new flavors brought into it in just a few weeks! At the Christmas dinner we put up the First Presidencies Christmas devotional to watch since I don't think anyone in the branch watched it last week.

Yesterday in church was just as hectic as last week. We had 4 speakers planned to give a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday and only 2 out of the 4 showed up. The first 2 speakers finished their talks at 10:40, which meant that there was still 25 mins left in Sacrament meeting. This time I had to give a talk in Sacrament meeting without any preparation. I still wasn't able to take up all of the time so we still finished early, but oh well. The Elders quorum presidency is getting rearranged so they never came prepared for the lesson, so taught that on the fly again like last week. At least we had bread for the sacrament this week though! We have been kept very busy the past couple of weeks. We got home last night at 9:20 and realized that we didn't take a lunch or dinner break yesterday. Not healthy or good for the body I'm sure, but by going that long without eating it makes Mac n' cheese taste so much more delicious than when you are getting 3 square meals! Don't tell my mission president our occasional eating habits lol. Speaking of my mission president, his wife had a baby this week, a little baby girl. I'm not sure what they named her but I did hear that she was born.   

I am super excited to Skype on Thursday! I hope you all have a great Christmas week! As we invite the world to discover, embrace, and share the gift of Christ this year, also remember that the same invitation is being extended to us personally as well.

Big up yute.

Elder Colton Harris

 

 

Pomegranate or in Jamaican a pomgunut straight off of the tree.

In an area within our are named Munro, very often it is super foggy up there, it's high in the mountains and we drive through a cloud all the time!

Treasure Beach area



Anybody want a mango?

The top of the mountain that's covered in clouds is Munro! This picture is takin from Treasure Beach. Super glad that I don't have to ride my bike up that mountain!! :)



Our sign on the Santa Cruz chapel

The kids here love the little toys that you sent out to hand to them!!

Does this compete with the one Devin saw?

Busy Day at Church!

So this week was another busy busy week. We went to Mandeville on Friday for zone conference and also had our Christmas party. Thank you for the Christmas package as well! It was great to receive all of the American candy! The dinner was super good that we had! I was so full for the whole rest of the day too! The spiritual food was great too! Pres Brown did a super great job. Elder Martinez from the Area Presidency came to all the zone conferences around the mission except to Mandevilles, so that was sad. Afterwards there was a little Christmas musical thing by missionaries, I thought about showing off all my musical ability by whistling a Christmas song,, but then decided not to lol, I might have ended up throwing in some Flow Rida lines or something on accident that would not have been good haha. But everyone else's talent was pretty ok. We had to go back to Mandeville on Saturday, there was a district-wide branch presidencies meeting that we had to go to. That was pretty good, took up most of our day again. Talked a lot about strengthening the youth. So we had a lot of travelling to do, glad that I don't have to do this travelling in a taxi! We also took some trips to an area called Treasure Beach. There are a few investigators out there and a few less active members as well. It is a pretty cool area, hopefully we are able to swing some pdays out there soon. There is a member out there named Sis G., she is a picture perfect member missionary. We had her and Pres C. with us on Tuesday and she was telling us about how many years ago when she lived in Canada, she prayed and dreamed of the day when missionaries would be in her community, and then she realized that she was now with the missionaries in her community do missionary work, going to see her friends and acquaintances to share the gospel with them. 

Yesterday was a super busy day, I mean super busy. We got sustained yesterday in church by Elder Vance, he is a senior couple missionary that the district presidency asked to represent them. Pres. C. also had me conduct sacrament meeting as well. There was only one priesthood holder in the congregation that was able to bless the sacrament so I also blessed the sacrament. When I went to the sacrament table after I announced the sacrament hymn, I noticed that there wasn't any bread, so the C. family in the congregation noticed that there wasn't any bread so they sent up a package of crackers. Yes, I blessed essentially the equivalent of Ritz crackers for sacrament. After blessing the sacrament I gave a talk in sacrament meeting on sacrifice. It went well. After sacrament meeting I was supposed to be handing out donor statements to members and having them go to Pres C. for tithing settlement, I noticed that the primary had no teacher so I taught primary for the middle hour of church. After teaching primary, I also went and taught elders quorum for the 3rd hour of church. After church now we went and did the tithing, and had to update a bunch of stuff n MLS. MLS is the computer system the church uses to keep all records and forms etc on. So I had to train myself howto use MLS and then train the new branch clerk the things that I was learning. It was a hectic 3 hours of church I tell you!

So it was a busy week, this next week will be just as busy I hope. It is getting really close to Christmas! Can't believe it is coming so soon! Love all of you! 

 

Layta,

Love Elder Harris

Pic 1) Sunset view from Pres C.'s house last night.

Pic 2) Treasure Beach

Pic 3) The owner of a resort in Treasure Beach is a member of the church and grew up in Idaho... can you tell? :) Deer sheds (antlers) in a tiki hut thing on the beach!! :)

 

Junction!

Week number 1 is down in Junction and I love it! Man this is area is super sweet! We got here Wednesday evening, got in right when it was getting dark and we were following the zone leaders so I didn't know where we were going, which means that if I ever have to leave Junction I don't know where to go since there aren't nice and easy street signs to follow, but we're here and that's all that matters! Thursday we hit the ground and started to get a feel of the area. We headed up to President C.’s house and got to know him a little bit, then he came out teaching with us. He is super awesome and very converted! He has been a member for a long time and has even been branch president a few times. When we went to his house, if I hadn't known before hand that he couldn't see then it would have taken me a long long time to figure that out! He is pretty young, under 50 for sure just lost his vision pretty recently due to other complications so he knows the area here in Junction really good. He was leading us around telling us where to turn, how far to go and what store or shop or kind of tree to look for, just landmarks to help us. He has this place memorized, and trust me, this would be a difficult place to memorize! He loves missionary work too, I need to get him a name tag since he wants to go out with us so often. The branch is very small, about 25 people were there for sacrament. We are going to get it back up and running. We have church in a rented space, they don't have a building of their own. Our area is super beautiful as well! I thought that I was in the bush when I went to May Pen, I was way wrong. May Pen was less city than Spanish Town and Kingston but Junction is pure bush as they say here in Jamaica. There is a ton of farm land, they grow everything under the sun it seems. The parish that we are in (St. Elizabeth) is called the bread basket of Jamaica meaning that most produce comes from here. It seems that everyone here has a farm. It goes house, farm, house, farm, house, etc. They aren't large farms like we picture back home with acres and acres of land, but they are farms that like a family would be able to handle doing all the work by hand and not machinery, so that is the main source of income here. There is really red dirt everywhere too. We are essentially in the mountains of Jamaica, there are so many hills, I am so glad that I don't have to cover this area on a bike! That would be terrible! Although, it did ruin my plans for "3 months to sexy." I have told essentially everyone that I don't care what I do for the first 21 months of my mission as long as I ride a bike my last 2 transfers. Well, so much for that! My transfer call to Junction with a truck was essentially my "3 months to fatter and whiter." I wanted to get a good tan, get slim before I go home, so this is my luck. Where has this truck been the past year? Yeah so since we are in the mountains, they are arranged perfectly so that we see the ocean from the mountains almost everywhere we go. If you look one way you see for miles down into a valley of Jamaica, and you look the other way and you look down at the ocean! We get to see the ocean from up high in the mountains,,, that's a sweet combination!!!  It is very beautiful! I love it! Another thing that I like about coming to Junction is that we moved into the apartment the sisters lived in. I told everyone before I left May Pen that the house we move into would be super nice since sisters lived there before,, I was right! Man how would it be to be a sister in this mission! Hot water in the house, non-rusty fridge, carpet in the bedroom! (first carpet I've seen in Jamaica btw). They did take the couch out of the house, only sisters can have couches in the mission according to Prez Brown, that isn't even exaggerating either.  But yeah I don't even feel that I am in Jamaica since I don't get yelled "whitey" or “chiny man" anymore at me and because of hot water and carpet and a truck. My new comp is Elder Sullivan. He is Jamaica from Yallahas. He is a recent convert, baptized about 2 years ago, only member of the church in his family. It'll be good. We have a long way to go as far as getting down the missionary lessons and etc etc, but it's all good. That's why we have 3 months to train. No I am not district leader anymore! I realized that I haven't seen another missionaries district meeting in about 16 months or so since in Cayman even though we were zone leaders there were no district leaders so it was just us! Finally don't have to worry about coming up with teaching plans for district meeting all the time! I am in the same zone I was in while I was in May Pen. So another story, Prez P., the district president was here to put Bro C. in as branch president, after sacrament meeting Pres P. called me into talk with him. I thought he was going to explain that I should help out and be branch clerk like Prez Brown told me I might be doing. Well Prez C. called a branch clerk actually, but he called me to be the first councilor in the branch presidency. I was surprised at that. Guess it is another opportunity to serve, stretch, and grow. I've never seen that before, some missionaries go branch president but IDK if I have seen them as councilors. It'll be fun. The First Presidency Christmas devotion was great! It doesn't look, feel, sound, smell, you name it like Christmastime here. I can't believe that it is so close cuz it feels like summer time down here. That is the week. I'm sure we will have another great week this upcoming week as well!

 Likkle more.

 Elder Colton Harris

Pic 1) Elder Sullivan

Pic 2) Upgraded the ol' bike
Pic 3) Part of the area we cover
Pic 4) View from our area

To Junction!

Alright so I am starting to email you at 5:45 p.m. today! Today has been a crazy day! I woke up early and started studies at about 7 this morning because the zone leaders came and picked me up at about 8 so that we could go into Kingston. This morning there was a trainers meeting in Kingston, so yes as you can guess by now, for the last 3 months of my mission I will be training again! So transfer calls came on Saturday. I am not in my new area right now like some people think I am, but I am going to be serving in the village of Junction! It is in the parish of St Elizabeth. There is more to it though.  So there is a sister companionship that has been working there, they are leaving.  And me and my new trainee will be white washing the area, and we have the whole area all to ourselves. I go into Spanish Town on Wednesday to pick him up. After that we are going to the area not knowing any investigators or members or anything. I have never been to Junction and there are no missionaries there to show us around so it is going to be great! I am really excited for this, it is going to be challenging but also great! We went to the mission office today after the trainers meeting and Prez Brown pulled me into his office. He told me that I came within an inch of becoming branch president out there. I'll be honest, I am super glad that I don't have to train and be branch president! But, they decided to make a guy named Bro C. branch president. Bro C. is blind, and there are only 18 people that show up to this branch so pres said I will be the branch clerk and branch this and that and that we are going to be driving Bro C. around helping him to fulfill his calling and stuff. I am super excited, it is going to be a great 3 months! I have never met Bro C. but everyone says he is the most awesome guy ever! So that is that, I'll let you know next week how Junction is. I am also excited about the new "He is the Gift' Christmas initiative that the church is doing this year. As missionaries it will be a great tool to find new investigators, especially since I will be in a brand new area, I am going to use that so much in order to find new investigators. If you haven't seen the video you should watch it, He is the Gift.  Watch it and then find ways to #sharethegift this Christmas season with anyone and everyone.

I am really sad that I am leaving May Pen. It has been great here, and honestly the past 4 1/2 months have flown by like just a few weeks!

For Thanksgiving this week we made rice and peas and then we went and bought an apple pie from the grocery store! That was the best part! We were in Mandeville this Wednesday for zone meeting so we went to this American style grill.  It was great. We also considered that part of our Thanksgiving.

This week there were 3 baptisms in the branch. They were from 2 of the sister companionships here. I had interviews with them all this week and they are great! Originally all 3 of them asked me to baptize them, I told them to spread the wealth a little bit so one of them asked Pres Brown to do it and the other one then chose Elder Martin. Pres Brown agreed to do it throughout the week but then on Saturday I talked to him and he said he wouldn't be able to make it to May Pen and asked if I would baptize the person for him. Long story short, I baptized 2 people this week which was great and then I confirmed the other one in church on Sunday.

Sorry that this is so short and scattered, time was super limited.

Have a great week! Love you all!
Elder Colton Harris

Thought this shack was great!

Grateful for so much!

So here comes another week. Realized today that we are starting Elder Chappell’s 12th week in the 12 week training program... (no this is not a 12 we addiction recovery program). 3 months with him have passed by really quick. 4 1/2 months here in May Pen have passed by in the twinkling of an eye! I gotta enjoy this last week that I have here in May Pen. Don't know where I am heading yet but I know that I am leaving. This week, actually the past 2 weeks we have gotten drenched by rain every single day I think! We have been coming home so muddy every night and a few days where we have been wet all the way through from the time we leave the house at 10 till the time we come home at night. All in a day’s work in the JKM.

C. got baptized on Sunday! Elder Chappell baptized her. Finally!  It was great! She kinda put up a fight to get all the way under the water. The first time right when her head was about to go under she put out a pretty loud "Ahh", and then couldn't go down. The 2nd time basically the same thing happened, she had a little panic attack I think. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first time in her life that she has been completely submerged in water. The 3rd time Elder Chappell put a little bit more force and she finally got down, not all on her own will lol. I confirmed her in church too, that was pretty great!

We have been finding a few new people this week. The good thing is that the people we are finding are pretty elect and they are pretty well established people with good educations and jobs and stuff. That is good because they will be able to be baptized and contribute to the branch right away to establish real growth out here.

So this week is Thanksgiving! Being out here has made me so grateful for so much! It is amazing how my attitude about so many things has completely changed being out here. I have come to think that when I go home and I get stuck in traffic because of road construction I might actually be grateful for that. In the year and a half that I have been in Jamaica I don't think that I have seen any road construction. Normally I would think that is great! But I realize that road construction= nice well-kept smooth roads.  No road construction= very bumpy, pot-holed, mostly dirt, narrow roads. If you were to tell me 2 years ago that throughout my mission I would come to develop a love for road construction, I would think that you were the craziest person on the face of the earth. Obviously I have also come to be grateful for many other things. I have thought about why I am so lucky to have been born into a family in the church, that is a small percentage of people compared to everyone. If I wasn't born into the church I probably never would have joined it honestly. I have come to be super grateful for my family! I have also come to be very grateful for temples, and the ease we have to get to temples. People would give up anything to go to the temple or to go back to the temple. Members dreams are to visit Utah. Yes, Utah of all places is where people of the Caribbean want to visit. Seems a little backwards since everyone in Utah wants to visit the Caribbean. Our mission president said that he would give up anything to live within a day’s run of any temple! Some of us aren't very happy if we live more than an hour’s drive of a temple, or if the temple session lasts longer than an hour. New perspectives are great! Have a great Thanksgiving day! Enjoy all that food! And happy Black Friday too since that basically seems to be a holiday now.

Have a great week!

Blessed Love!
Elder Colton Harris

Homemade guitar with a board, sardine can, and fishing line

Rainy season equals muddy clothing!

Singing "I am a Child of God" with a drummer's accompaniment

Everyone what's up! This week has been a great week! Saturday was the funeral for Sister H. The family didn't want to hold the funeral at our church because they said that no one wanted to come to a funeral at our church. It was instead held at a Pentecostal church in Canaan Heights. Wow, that was a party lol. We walk in and us 4 missionaries had some of the ushers come up and they walked us right up to the front of the building to the reserved seating, I don't know why but we had the best seats in the house. We did get seats right in front of the band. Most of it was like a concert. I think our seats also should have had a splash zone warning on them, with a lot of shouting (what they called singing and praising the Lord) a couple times I think that I got splashed on. Overall it was good, just loud and different. They had some of us from our church sing a song and we sang 'I am a Child of God.' The best part of the song was that the drummer gave us a beat while we were singing, I'm proposing a drum beat to the MoTab, it adds a sweet new element to songs lol. A lot of people were at the funeral. Unlike back home where you only go to a funeral if the person who has died is very close to you, everyone and then some who knows the person who died shows up. They even go if it is a friend of a friend or if they live in or have lived in the same community together, so lots of people always attend funerals. The excuse, "I can't come to church this weekend, I am going to a funeral" is probably the #1 excuse we get from investigators and others who we invite to church. We told some people about how back home we only go to a funeral if you know the person really well and they all said' "No man, that's just weird." So I guess it's all just what you are used to.

C. should be getting baptized this weekend! She has an interview planned for this week, so hopefully this works out now! It has been a long, long time in the making, but the time is finally here. I am excited about that! She is doing great, and has improved a lot even in the past week or 2.

We went earlier this week to re-drop A. From what she said to us at church last week we thought she didn't understand what we meant when we dropped her. We go there and we are like alright, you asked why we haven't been coming to see you anymore, do you know why we can't come and see you anymore? And she says, "Cuz you gave me 3 options and I didn't choose one of the options that would alow you to come back and see me." (The 3 options that we told her she had was 1) work towards marriage with E. 2) Break up with E. or 3) continue living with E. while you aren't married and if that is what you choose we can't keep coming to see you because there wouldn't be much else that we could help her with at that point.) She obviously understood our drop lesson, but then she tells us her and E. are getting married now... again. From talking with both of them it sounds real this time. It's been a big headache working with her. She is so close and I think she will make it this time. I think her 10 day drop was very good for her, it made her realize that we are serious about these things and pushed her to act. So instead of re-dropping her, we ended up picking her back up in our teaching pool.

So IDK if you remember me talking about J. last month, she is the lady that we asked for directions one night, then she gave us like 15 referrals for us to contact and we thought that she was an investigator. IDK if I told you this part tho, well we came to find out a few weeks later that she is a member of our church, just is very less active. We found that out because the referrals that we received from her told the sister missionaries that she was a member. We go and look and we can't find her name on the branch list, so we call her and ask her and sure enough she is a member. J. is her pet name, when she told us her real name we found it really quick on the branch list. Well her daughter is going to be baptized in a few months and her granddaughter is going to be baptized in 2 weeks. J., her daughter and granddaughter and her niece were all at church yesterday. It was great! J.’s daughter and granddaughter were actually the sister missionaries’ investigators before we sent them the referral, so that is also pretty cool, don't know how it happened but somehow it worked out like that. Hopefully they all become active in the gospel, that would be a sweet family story. 

2 weeks ago we were walking out of Value Mart where we do our weekly shopping and a guy came up to us. He was like, “You’re missionaries for the LDS church right?” We said yeah. Well come to find out he had just moved back to Jamaica from living the Nassau, Bahamas for the past 11 years. While in Nassau and during the presidential elections 2 years ago with Mitt Romney he started researching the church online. When I hear that someone has researched the church online it usually is only bad things that they remember and want to talk about, but he seems to be focusing on most of the good. He said he has seen good and bad but that he knows not everything could have been true. He asks really great questions, requested a visit from the missionaries and a Book of Mormon from mormon.org but no one ever came to see him. He has basically taught himself so, so much about the church, and even started reading the Book of Mormon from the internet. He goes to the MormonChannel on Youtube and watches sections of general conference that they post on there. In Nassau he even went to the church building a few times to try and talk to someone but all the times he went no one was ever there. He is super prepared to receive the gospel. He asked us at the end of our lesson, "Do you think it would be ok if I could attend your church with you?" We were like, uhm yeah , I think we will be able to arrange that. And then we told him about institute and activities that our branch has on Friday nights so he is actually going to be coming to both of those too. He even invited us into his house to have the lesson, first lesson that I have had IN a house since I have been in May Pen, it was great. This is fulfilling the Lords promise in Preach My Gospel that He will either lead us to them that are prepared or He will lead the prepared to us. I am super excited about him, he is 18 years old, and will be able to be a strong member that can contribute to the branch as soon as he is baptized. When he walked us out to the front yard after the lesson he said, "I have been wanting to join this church but I just haven't received an opportunity yet." He has studied other religions as well and went on for a few minutes about what he likes about this church compared to other churches. Things have been a little slow lately with our investigators and this is definitely a tender mercy of from the Lord.

 Have a great week! Happy 5th birthday Marissa! I love you!

 Blessed Love.
Elder Colton Harris
Also, it is still really, really hot here unlike back home! #bejealous

Pictures:

1) Funeral services in Jamaica are a HUGE business! In all reality, if you want to get rich in Jamaica then open a funeral home.. they spend so so so so much money on funerals. They don't have normal hearses here, just Cadillac Escalade hearses, the only Cadillacs on the entire island I would say all are owned by funeral homes. When I die, that's what I want. Notice the speakers on the outside of the car, they blast music up and down the streets constantly...and there are many of these throughout May Pen, throughout every city really.

2) Lots of rain, fully soaked from being in a downpour for over an hour.

Colton enjoying the rain in Jamaica

 

Had to add this picture of Devin who is enjoying the rain in Brazil!  These brothers may be thousands of miles apart geographically, but they are obviously still very close at heart!

 

3) Fixing my shoe with silicone :) I really just did it for fun

All in a Day's Work Here in the JKM!

Hello. My name is Elder Harris and I am going to write about my week right now. My week was great. About like any other week the past couple weeks.

A., the one we dropped last week showed up to church yesterday. She wouldn't let me shake her hand because she said that she didn't like us anymore. I asked why and she said because we haven't called her or stopped by her house this week. I guess she didn't really understand what we meant when we said, "Because you aren't progressing, we aren't going to be come over here anymore, we still encourage you to read your Book of Mormon, Pray, and come to church but we aren't going to be able to stop by as often." Obviously we said it a little bit nicer then that but you get the point. I wish that she would get married or separated because she shows up to church even though we hadn't seen her for 10 days. She also taught FHE at C.’s house on Monday, (she is related to C., and C. is also one of our investigators) and she chose to talk on the Law of Chastity, now if only she would live it! Hopefully this drop pushes her  to start working towards something in a serious way.

We did service for Sister M.'s family again, the one we built the house for. We chopped her yard for her, and it was ridonkulous! It was super thick weeds! Chopping yard here with a machete is pretty fun, it's like taking a sword outside to cut your grass and all the weeds, but the weeds are MUCH larger in stature out here! It's fun, except we did it in the heat of the day and I got so many blisters! They would come in and then they would pop and then they would reblister after that. That was super lame, but it is all in a day’s work in the JKM!

So the Chickingunia virus is for reals when they say symptoms could last for months and years! I have bad joint pain in my wrists, and feet every morning! It's been like that for... basically the past 2 months since I got it. It wears off throughout the day, but every morning I feel like a super old person, everyone still has the joint pain symptoms sometimes. Whatever, only have a few more years until it wears off apparently :)

 Well not too much happened this week, have a great week!

Nuff Love!

Elder Colton Harris

The preferred way of carrying groceries home.

I will never complain of a push mower again!