I guess that will be my legacy!

This is the baptism picture for Gopi. His real name is Pertab Singh.
(Elder Averette, Gopi, and Jonathan)

This is the baptism picture for Vicky Balkarran. He is Ricky's little brother. We baptized Ricky last week!
(Elder Averette, Ricky, and Jonathan)

This is Jonathan with a few of the kids in his area.

How has my week been? I don't even know where to start. We had
two more baptisms. We will be having another one this weekend, the lady's name is Sarah. If we are lucky, we might even be able to have 3 others! We had 5 for the month of September. That's the most that this area has had since May.

I went on a trade-off with Elder Ritchey (one of my zone leaders)
in Rose Hall this week. He asked me to come up with a symbol to represent confirmation. There is a symbol for baptism that all of the missionaries know so he wanted one for confirmation too. I came up with a pretty cool symbol that will be used in this mission forever.
I guess that will be my legacy!

As far as transfers go, we move on Tuesday's and they tell us the Friday night before. So we only have a couple of days to get everything packed and to say our goodbyes. If some of the "real" letters are left behind, they will give them to the Assistants to the President to deliver. They always come to zone conference with a suitcase full of letters for people that have moved.

I will get to watch all of conference this weekend. I'm jealous that you got to meet Elder Hales and President Eyring! Poor Julie having to speak in front of him (Pres. Eyring) at her farewell!!!

The scripture of the week isMosiah 4:9-10.

Things are going well right now

These are a few pictures from the combined Canje and Berbice Zone Conference held on September 17th.

Jonathan's zone (Canje) sang a musical number.

They enjoyed a Guyana style lunch of roti, curried chicken and pineapple. (Sis. Robison says that Guyana pineapple is the absolute best in the Caribbean)

If you look closely you will see Jonathan eating in the background.


The Mighty Missionaries of the Canje Zone!



Now onto Jonathan's e-mail from this week.

This is our baptism picture for this past weekend. (From left to right) Me, Ricky, Vijay, Vishal and Elder Averett. I was privileged enough to baptize Ricky and Vishal. We are hoping to have 3 more this weekend! Things are going well right now.

Sorry again about not being able to write much last week. Anyway,
I have a list of things I want to talk about so I'll dive right into it.

The dog that bit me didn't tear my pants. It just left permanent bite marks! (Battle wounds).

We have a lot of power problems around here but we always seem to have it when we absolutely need it.

Yes, we have a washer. We have to hang dry the clothes though.
As far as I can tell, that's how it is all over the mission. I hate the water we have to use though because it's so rusty. I have to use a rag to filter it as I fill up the tub or else my clothes get covered in rust stains. I have lost a couple of shirts because of that. (That was before I realized I could filter it!) Don't worry though. I still have 8 short sleeves and that's all I need at the present time. I could probably use one for Christmas though… :)

I almost blew myself up in the oven yesterday. I thought that the gas was turned off when I lit the match to turn the oven on. I leaned in and then all I know is that I was surrounded by light and flames!!!
The whole oven was engulfed in a fireball! It was so cool. By looking at me, you wouldn't know that I had done that though… All I had was a few singed hairs on my right arm! Other than that, I'm doing okay so don't worry about me. I know I'm protected because the flames weren't hot. They were just warm. It was a weird sensation. Probably like Nephi and Lehi in their furnace or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. I also got electrocuted this week while doing some wiring work at one of the other apartments. Again, I'm perfectly fine.

In my personal scripture study, I am in Helaman 5. And in my personal study of the Book of Mormon in French I am in 1 Nephi 6.
I have also ordered a Preach My Gospel in French to help me learn the language better. I know I didn't tell you, but I have decided to try and learn French while I'm out here. I'll keep you updated on my progress.

The scripture of the week is Proverbs 17:17.

Well, I gotta run. We have taught 105 lessons over the last 2 weeks so we are really busy. At the rate we are going, by the time this transfer is over, we will have taught 275 lessons! We are working really hard right now and I'm always worn out. I always have enough energy to play a good game of basketball like we did this morning though!

I love getting letters by the way. It makes me feel somewhat remembered.

We had a good teaching week

Here are excerpts from this week's letter dated Aug 28th:

"I want to thank everyone that I got a letter from on Monday. I got 5!
So, thanks Amanda, Mom & Dad, G&G Larson, and G&G Olson (for 2).
Here are the answers to the questions I was asked:
- I love getting the ward newsletter and program. It helps me feel like I'm somewhat connected dispite the 4100 miles between us.
- The Malouf's won't be over my mission since I'm technically in a caribbean mission. Maybe I could request him though.
- I take my vitamin, my antihistamine and a doxycycline pill (antibiotic) every morning. I'm back to normal weight and we try to eat vegetables everyday. We eat plenty of fruit!
- We get the Ensign every month and we get the Church News every week.
- We have a nice chapel to meet in. It's a phase I Stake Center. That just means when they organize a stake next winter, it will be the main building. We use to have a small keyboard but now we have a nice big electronic organ. It's fun to play.
- When I first got here, we had 45 people coming to church every week. On Aug. 17th we had 72. On Aug 24th we had 81! Members are usually willing to fellowship but our branch is so spread out that fellowshipping is hard.

We lost 2 golden investigators because she got scared of one of her neighbors. To be honest, we have called their neighbor Cruella de Vil and Ursula because she is evil.

Well, that's all to report. We made pizza this week. We also made chili and some tortillas. It's been a good food week. Right now I'm eating a giant bowl of homemade tomato soup. It just needs goldfish to be perfect!"

Excerpts from today's e-mail:

"Sorry I don't have lots of time today. I will have extra time next week because my new companion, Elder Averett, is pretty bad at time management and we have an appointment in like 10 minutes!

We bought bikes today. I'm excited and I will send you pictures next week. Our weather got up to 109 degrees a couple days ago. The low for the week was yesterday night 82 degrees. It's so hot during the "dry season"!

We had a good teaching week. We taught 27 lessons to investigators with a member present. We taught 55 total lessons. Both are records for the area for the year! We had a wedding on Friday. That was exciting. We should have a couple of baptisms this week. Hopefully they work out.

I saw an amazing show of faith this past week. I was with Elder Jones in the bank in New Amsterdam. We had been sitting there for 45 minutes with no power to the whole city. He then said, "It's easy. It's just 'clap on, clap off' right?" He then clapped his hands twice and, I kid you not, in less than a second, the power turned back on! I was amazed and I couldn't help from laughing.

Zone Conference is tomorrow and Wednesday. To prepare for it,
I had Elder Ritchey polish my shoes. That's the first time they have been done because I don't know how to do it myself and I'm too lazy to learn! Luckily it's at my building this week so I don't have to go to Georgetown." (Keep and eye on the mission blog for pictures of Zone Conference)


This is a sunset from a few days ago.


This is Elder Jones "cleaning" out the East Canje apartment. I spent a week in that apartment with him because his new companion was stuck in the Dominican Republic MTC. We spent 9 hours that day cleaning out that place and torching the cockroaches.


This is a guy named Orin Moses. He is so cool. His mission papers are in right now and we are all excited to see where he's going.

The scripture of the week is Alma 26:22.

This week I am also including a few items we found interesting from Sister Robison's blog. We enjoy visiting both the West Indies Mission Blog and the West Indies Mission Website to learn about what is going on throughout Jonathan's mission. We have even used some of the pictures posted by Sis Robison in this blog. The new mission video should be on the WIM website some time after September 22nd. Be sure to take a look. It was so fun to see such a great picture of Jonathan in the last one! The following are quotes from Sis. Robison's blog:

"Here's some interesting info on this blog. It averages 90-100 visitors per day. People from the following countries visited this blog during the past 30 days: United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, Egypt, Burkina Faso (Africa), South Africa, India, China, Indonesia, and Australia.

I am curious about our visitors. For example, there have been 18 visits from Hangzhou, China this month. I would love to know more about international visitors - why don't you leave a comment and let us know who you are."

"I have learned some mission lingo. A 'son' is a new missionary being trained and the 'father', of course, is the trainer. The 'mother' is a new elder's second companion. I even heard one elder, yesterday, refer to himself as a 'test tube baby' because he never had a 'mother' - he went strait from trainee to co-companion. 'Brothers' are missionaries trained by the same trainer. There are 'grandsons' and 'great grandsons' as they go down the line of trainers and trainees. Missions have quite the genealogy."

Hot and hotter!

I finally added the post with the letters we received last week.
To see it, click on the Older Posts link at the end of this one.

"I'm doing alright. I have a new companion. His name is Elder Averett. He seems like a nice guy but he's trying to hard to be my friend. He's trying to be funny and it just comes off unnatural. Oh well.

I've got a couple of cool pictures to send but we ran out of time to do stuff so they will be sent next week.

Glad to hear your reading is going well. I'm in Alma 22. I didn't have much time to read this week because I was living in another area in a threesome with Elders Averett and Jones. Jones' new companion (Rosales) is in the MTC in the Dominican Republic until Wednesday so we have to stay with him."

Excerpt from an e-mail to Jonathan's Uncle Jay:

"I would do anything to have a little bit of cold weather! The weather around here has 2 different seasons. Hot and hotter!

As far as hurricanes go, we don't really worry about them hitting us here in Guyana but the guys on St. Martin and some of the other northern islands worry. We are all required to have food storage in our apartments that would last us at least 2 weeks. So even if one comes we'll be okay. I'm sure it would humble some people around here though.

My area is full of JW's and 7th Day's. It's been fun the last couple of days with the JW's because I got a copy of the "New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures" and I can now prove that Jehovah is Jesus Christ using their own scriptures! It made one lady really mad. Oh well."

This is from an e-mail to Jonathan's friend Jeff who is getting ready to go into the MTC:

"I would countdown but don't dwell on it too much. I guess I didn't fully realize how long 2 years was. I had a major eye opener while I was in the MTC and I was only in for 18 days! It's alright though.
Just tell your parents that you love them every chance you get and don't forget to hug everyone as often as you can. Trust me! I've been out for almost 4 months and the thing I miss most are the people that I can't hug anymore. In fact, if you get the time, (I know you're busy) go give my parents a hug for me!"

The scripture of the week is 2 Nephi 1:20-23. I really like it.

I still make paper boats to represent Nephi's boat!

Last week we received two letters from Jonathan and I am finally putting them on the blog.

Jonathan sent some Guyanesse money for his collection so Shane scanned them. Just in case you are wondering, the thousands of Guyanesse dollars in this picture are worth only $22.25 in U.S. dollars! Jonathan said "I would send some of the coins too but I can't find any good ones. Then again, no one uses them because they are only 1 and 5 dollars. (1/2 and 2 1/2 U.S. cents respectively)"


"So you guys want to hear about some of my more interesting experiences huh? Well, let's see... 1) I almost got bit by a dog.
I jumped really fast and it only caught my pant leg. That was close!
2) I had potato and belangi curry on Tuesday (belangi is eggplant).
A couple hours after eating it, I threw it all up on the side of the road. I wiped my mouth off and we continued on our way!
3) I went on a trade-off with Elder Mundy in Rose Hall. It was fun to meet new people and see how else missionary work can be done."

"I'm not sure what other types of experiences you want me to write about. I could write about the 3 green tree frogs that live in our 48 degree shower. I had one jump on my leg this morning! Stupid thing!"

"I have a funny story for you. We have a kid who was suppose to come to Church yesterday so he could get baptized on Saturday. He chose not to come and he suffered the consequences. While he was hanging out with his friends, he broke his foot! Now I think he realizes that he shouldn't have skipped church!"

"Tell my primary class they need to listen and learn as much as possible. Being a missionary is hard work and people question everything you say. I use the same exact stuff out here that I taught them in class. I hope they learned as much from it as I did."
(I still make paper boats to represent Nephi's boat!)
"At the MTC I had to have a couple of scriptures from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon for every lesson. Here in Guyana though, we teach like we are talking to 11 or 12 year olds. We teach things so simply."

We told Jonathan that Michael is learning to play a few hymns after hearing that he is playing the organ at church. Michael has been a little resistant because he already plays the saxophone.

"Tell Michael not to worry about learning to play the piano yet. He still has a long time and I'll help him when I come home. The excuse of knowing how to play one instrument is pretty lame. I can play the guitar but I have to play the piano. There will be no saxophones at church, but we've passed a few Assemblies of God that were really rockin'! Their guitar players were terrible."

"Elder Hamilton is a pretty nice guy. We are both strange in the fact that we are both sports nuts and we love music. "We're like two trippy peas in a far out pod man." (Scooby Doo Movie) It's fun because we both like a lot of the same bands so we will just sing away while we walk down the road, he even loves Disney movies. He was a pretty good trainer. There are some things I will do differently once we're separated. We get along well most of the time but there are moments where I would love to cross-check him! The one major difference between us is that he loves Federer and I love Nadal!"

Jonathan also sent a chart that outlines what he does each day.

The 999th person baptized in the Canje District!

Today we received several pictures from Jonathan. He said, "Sorry I haven't sent pictures the last couple weeks. There have been some computer problems... So here are the last 3 weeks worth."

This is a picture of Jonathan studying and playing around with the settings on his camera.

Jonathan and Elder Williams (Assistant to the President) a couple of weeks ago during their trip to Georgetown.

Jonathan with Elder Williams (who was Elder Hamilton's trainer) and
Elder Hamilton (who has been Jonathan's trainer).

Jonathan's first attempt at making pizza since being in Guyana.
I guess working at Little Caesars paid off!

Jonathan has being trying to cook a few new things.
This is chili with homemade tortillas.

"I was the happiest person in the world yesterday when I made vanilla pudding!!!"

"This is me with Jacko the monkey. He is a crazy little animal. I finally understand why parents call their children monkeys."

"This is a picture of our baptism this week. His name is Manmohan Praymey. (Praymey for short. Pronounced pray-me) He was the 999th person baptized in the Canje District."

"Today, it is hot, humid and there isn't a cloud in the sky. Perfect weather to go surfing...but I can' do that! :)

Well, my companion and I set a record last week (for our area). We taught 43 lessons! Our transfer total was 205! That is also a record for our area.

I get a new comp this week. I can't wait because I get to retrain him to be a Guyana Elder. He has been in Trinidad for his whole mission and it's totally different up there than it is here. I hope he can handle it! His name is Elder Averet. That's all I know about him at this point.
I'll let you know more next week.

I have one good story I forgot to tell you from last week. We had a wicked thunderstorm come in and our apartment got struck by lightning!!! Elder Hamilton screamed, our light bulb blew up and my fan started on fire!!! It was so cool."

The scripture of the week is D&C 58:26-28.

We received 2 letters from Jonathan over the week end and will add another post dated before this one. So be sure to check back in a day or so.