Mon, Sep 27, 2010
We had a good week this week. We are still having a lot of rain, but I haven't gotten too wet. We've been struggling lately finding new investigators so that's what we focused on this week. Last Tuesday morning we had an appoointment cancel on us so we were riding through different neighborhood when we passed one house with the door open. Elder Ronhaar felt like we should stop and call at the house. We did and we met a man named Carl who lives there with his wife and daughter (a family!). He is awesome and we've been able to teach a few times now. He is full of questions but we've been able to answer them using the Book of Mormon. His wife hasn't opened up to us yet, but I hope she will soon. I also felt like we should try contacting in a fairly new housing development on the far end of town. We just started calling at doors and throughout the week we were able to teach a lot of people and find several new investigators. There are three of them especially who I feel were truly prepared to receive our message. The Lord has truly blessed in our efforts.
Yes, the people here have to go to Panama to get to the temple. There is no flights that go directly from Jamaica to the DR.
Attendance at church yesterday was quite small (less than 20 people) due to the rain, but it was still good. I'm looking forward to General Conference this weekend. We get to watch it at the building in Spanish Town.
So I'll try to rehearse the 8 principles of Preach My Gospel. I haven't gotten all the training on them yet, but I'll at least list them off. The first focuses on our purpose as missionaries as found on page 1 of PMG, and clearly teaching these basic doctrines of Christ. The second emphasizes the role of the Holy Ghost in conversion. The 3rd is to teach investigators to receive revelation through the Book of Mormon. 4th is teach them to receive revelation through church attendance. 5th is to teach them to receive revelation through prayer. the 6th emphasizes the importance of teaching people, not lessons. the 7th has to do with the commitment pattern in that we invite, they commit, and we follow up. the 8th is about how to begin teaching. There is a lot more to each one of these principles, but I don't know all the details yet.
As far as some ideas for primary, maybe you could share a bit about the food. we get all kinds of good stuff here like chicken foot soup, goat head soup, cow foot, ox tail, stew peas (made with pig tail), stew pork (cooked with all the fat and skin with the hair still on it). For transportation, very few people have cars. most people walk, ride a bike if they have one, or take a taxi or bus. All the school kids have to wear matching uniforms and the girls have to wear dresses. There are dogs and goats everywhere. you'll be walking down the street and pass through a herd of 20 goats. Instead of baseball, they play cricket. They also play a lot of soccer and dominoes. As far as their dress, they don't wear enough, so that might not be the best topic of discussion. The Rastafarian men wear their hair in dred locks. For church we meet upstairs above an old hardware store. The only way you can tell that it is a church is because of the small sign that hangs out front. The primary meets in a small room where the chalk board is a piece of plywood spray painted black. On a good sunday we have about a dozen primary kids that meet in there. Hope that's enough. I can't really think of anything else.
Thanks for the emails and prayers. Love you all.
Elder Kartchner
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