Week #94 - Planning a Rave and a Couple Baptisms

Hey Family! 

I will keep this quick:

Unfortunately Jamaicans do NOT celebrate Thanksgiving...To be honest I didn't even realize it was Thanksgiving this week until the day of... It was sad haha but Christmas should be a blast here. Our bishop said he is planning on emptying the budget on the Christmas dinner party so prepare for a rave. Also, we should have two baptisms on the same day as the party! 

Whitewashing is great. We have made a lot of cool friends. When we tell people we are new to the area, everyone tries to help us out. We are teaching this guy who is friends with some recent converts, and he will literally fix our bicycles for free any time we need. It is awesome. I am not used to having SOOO many members to work with haha so that is a positive change!

We had to stay inside yesterday because of some political elections that were getting heated haha so surprise P-Day is on Tuesday this week! 

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Graham

The guys in our house:
Elders Robbins, Bischoff, Morris & Graham

We have a nice view from our house but pictures just don't do it justice

The return of Elder Riding

Week #93 - Ch-ch-changes

Hey Family!

This week was full of changes. 

Monday night a few members of the Junction Branch held one last little FHE (Family Home Evening) for me and it was awesome. I am going to miss those guys!

Kingston is SO much different than Junction. I had to catch a bus at 4:45 am Wednesday morning... It turned out that the bus wasn't actually supposed to come until 5:55am so we got up at 3am due to some miscommunications. It was all good tho. I received Elder Morris from Ohio (his family lives in Gilbert, AZ though) and we got into to our area and just did some exploring. 

On Thursday night we were walking around street contacting and we ran into this lady who told us she knew a member who lives nearby and offered to show us where he was. So we met Bro Lim and got to know him a bit, then we left and about 5 minutes later, the SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN. This guy came to us and said, "You looking for the Edwards?" We were like "No, but now we are. Who are they??" He explained that they are members of our church and missionaries always go there, so he just brought us to them. Turns out one of the members of the family is not a member of the church and just happens to be in the process of being taught by the missionaries which are now... us. So tender mercies have been all over the place for us, making things a bit easier because whitewashing is HARD! It is so cool though. We are beginning to pick up on main roads and neighborhoods and stuff.

Church was great. We had three investigators come and two of them will hopefully be baptized in December!

Love you guys. Have a great week!

Elder Graham

Red Hills

The Boulevard house that is actually in the Red Hills

Week #92 - This Place and These People

Hey Family!

Well I received a lot of news this week, besides Trump and stuff, so I will jump right into the details. 

On Wednesday after district meeting I got a phone call from the AP's telling me that Elder Dawson was coming to Junction to be the new branch president… which means that I will be transferred next week. They didn’t tell me where I was going until Saturday, so I will get to that later. I want to explain the rest of Wednesday because it was awesome:

So later that day Elder Callister and I were walking down the street to go to an appointment when this fragile old man beckoned us from the side of the street. He asked us to help him get up and get back to his house because he didn't really have the energy to do it on his own. So we got on both sides of him and started to walk with him (his arms were around our necks so we took most of his weight). After about 100 feet, his right leg gave out, so we sat him down for a second, and then Elder Callister was like "Don't worry, we're Boy Scouts." and we laughed and picked the guy up and carried him another 200 meters up a hill all the way his house. Now from the perspective of the woman inside his house, I imagine her walking out of her home to find this man being carried up the hill to her by two nicely dressed, dripping-wet sweaty white dudes. I have no idea what was going through her head, but I do know that she thanked us for our kindness... and now we are teaching her and her daughter. So you could say it was a miracle.

Okay back to transfer calls. They called on Saturday morning and told me that I will be going to Boulevard (in Kingston) and I will be training. Yeah, I am just as shocked and confused and surprised as you are. Shocked and surprised because typically when you’re training, you stay with that missionary for around three months.  Elders Graham and Callister have only been together for six weeks.

Sunday was great. I had a bit of a rough time getting through my talk. It will be my last in Junction for a while. I'm going to miss this place and these people. We took some pictures and signed some journals and the works. I am sad to leave Junction, but the work goes on!

We are having a big FHE at Sister Gayle's house tonight. I think it will be one last hoorah before I am outta here early Wednesday morning.

Lots of changes right before the end. Crazy huh? Three months will go by in about 46 minutes so it seems.

Love you guys!

Elder Graham

The Junction Branch... not everyone, but some of them

Sister Hudson's a baller

Elder Callister and I

Week #91 - Teaching the Wrong Guy

Hey Family!

This week was another one full of miracles and tender mercies.

We met a lady on the street about a week ago and invited her to church and SHE CAME and even bore testimony during fast and testimony meeting - it was awesome. And then to make it better, she invited us over for dinner and we taught her the Restoration with Omar. Omar said that she is basically already a member so that was awesome. She lives in the same complex as us too so we pass her all the time and say hi and stuff.

Alright here is a story... So we met a guy a few days ago named Kenny. He said we could come by on a Sunday so we called him and asked if it would be alright for us to come and talk to him and he said sure so we walked over to his yard. There are probably four or five houses on this little lane and we didn't know exactly which one it was, so we were just walking down the street yelling Kenny's name. Finally we heard someone respond, he came out from the bushes (he was farming, it wasn't as creepy as it sounds) and just said hi to us. But his hair was super short compared to when we first met him. He just looked a little different, but he invited us into his house and I said a prayer to start the lesson. After the prayer he looked at me and said, “I thought I should say that my name is Reginald, not Kenny.” Uhhhhhh what??  Then where the heck is Kenny? Who are you and why did you just let us into your house and start teaching you? What is going on?? He told us that Kenny was his brother. Okay so that explains why you look similar but different, but that didn't answer any of our other questions?? Ah man we were so confused, but we taught him the Restoration anyway and he accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and everything. So the second we were done, we ran around looking for Kenny because he was probably wondering where we were. Turns out we couldn't find Kenny but we accidentally taught his brother, Reginald. So there’s the story for the day.

This week was awesome. I love doing these baptismal challenges with the Book of Mormon when contacting. We see miracles pretty much every day. More stories to come later!

Love you guys!

Elder Graham

We took a "family photo" at the Halloween party. From left to right: Elder Callister (son, because Cody is training), myself, Elder Christensen (son, because Cody trained) and Elder Epps (grandson, because Elder Christensen is training)