Long Term Investments

June 4, 2012

Hola Familia,

Well this week has kind of just been more of the same here in Jamaica. Working hard but still not seeing a bunch a results, other than some long term investment stuff, which I will explain about a little later.

We really didn't have much of anything of note happen on Tuesday or Wednesday. On Thursday we started out the day with the baptismal interview for Nineth, who is someone the other elders were teaching. This one went really well. She is a rock. But once again I will explain more about a little later. But after the interview she took us all out to lunch, which was really cool. She seems to be a bit more well to do than most of the Hispanics here.

But after that we did our weekly planning, most of which was spent just discussing what we could do better as a companionship and as a district to get more success. In the end we decided we needed to set a goal to get 3 baptismal dates by the end of the transfer, which is in two weeks. That is a pretty tall order, especially considering we have 0 investigators right now.

Hopefully we will have a lot more chances to get out and work now though since the area organizing and English class organizing are basically done. That is what I was talking about with the long term investment stuff. It has been hurting our work for the last few weeks but will make the work a lot easier for the next few months. As long as no major changes happen the area organization could last for a year or more and the English class will last as long as the missionaries keep advertising (which we have all the fliers and everything, they just need to tape them up). Speaking of English class, it is turning into a real success. Probably within the next month we will be able to start reaping some of that crop. Our attendance totals for the four classes we have had is 6, 8, 10, 16. We are already able to feel out who has a lot of potential as investigators, we just have to wait for them to come to us about it because once we start asking people if we can come teach them, students start dropping like flies. We give a spiritual message at the end of every class and then just say if you would like to hear more about our message come talk to us after the class. So it takes a while but I think we could easily start to get some investigators soon.

On Friday we had a lesson with Jenny and family. We decided to watch the Testaments with them. It was super spiritual. They all felt it pretty strong. Unfortunately they still haven't chosen to act on all these things they have been feeling. We found out that Antonio made a pretty big mistake a few years ago and because of gossip all of the members seem to know about it and that is probably a reason why he hasn't come to church. But that is no excuse for anybody else not to come and for them not to read. So we are going to have to drop them. This is going to easily be the most painful drop that I have had to do. This family is awesome. I am really going to miss them but we just have to move on. On the way home from the lesson (about 10 o'clock, the movie went really late so we were just hurrying home as fast as we could) we met a family from Utah. A just straight up white Mormon family. In the middle of Jamaica New York. Still trying to figure that one out.

Saturday, we went out and worked most of the day, didn't get much success. Saturday night we had Celso for our dinner appointment. He took us to Punto Rojo, which is a Colombian restaurant. He challenged us both to get La Bandeja Punto Rojo for dinner. La Bandeja Punto Rojo... for $15 (we felt really bad for that) we got a big piece of chicken, a big piece of steak, an arepa (which is like really dense, less flavorful cornbread), half a sweet plantain, a full strip of chicharron (fried pigskin, with about an inch of the flesh underneath on this one), a slice of avocado, two fried eggs, and a separate plate of rice and beans because the first plate was too full. Ya I woke up feeling pretty sick the next morning. I don't think I will ever do that again but it was really good.

On Sunday, church was good. We didn't have any investigators there but it was good. Delilah finally got confirmed. After church we had Nineth's baptism, which went really well. She brought a bunch of her family there. Her daughter Rosio is probably going to get baptized either next Sunday or the week after. Her husband has been coming to church for the last few weeks and now he wants to get baptized too. He just needs to find the time to take the lessons. Her other daughter is a seven year old with Down Syndrome and she loves primary. Now Nineth's sister is taking the lessons and getting really excited about the church. This family is soon going to be filling up the branch.

And today, we all went to the Mets game this morning against the Cardinals. The better part of six zones came, which means there were over a hundred missionaries there. So that was fun. More the socializing than the actual game. Baseball just isn't very exciting. Although there were three home runs this game. Mets lost 4-5 by the way. I will probably send my memory card after this transfer is over, so expect that in three or four weeks.

Well that is about it for this week,

Keep the prayers coming,

Love you all,

Elder Pearce