"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."