Sunday, September 18, 2016

We continue to enjoy the beauty of Jamaica and especially the wonderful people. They are so friendly and helpful.

This week our travels involved going to Port Antonio by way of another mountainous road.  Port Antonio is on the northern coast, so we drove up through the middle of the island once again but on a different road. The scenery was gorgeous, but the road had almost constant switch backs and was very narrow and a bit rough in places. I commented that it was a good thing neither of us get car sick.  (Laura, Heather, Kaylee, and all the others who do get car sick, you would NOT have enjoyed the ride!) We saw a huge banana plantation and a botanical garden on the way; maybe we'll be able to visit these in the future.

We were surprised to find the LDS Meetinghouse right on the coastline road. The young elder who serves as the Branch President, Elder Rowley, and his companion, Elder Wood, greeted us as well as several branch and community members.  Many hands made quick work of assembling the 100 school kits that will be so useful to elementary students. This project is a combined effort with an NGO (non-governmental organization) called Triumphant Outreach Ministries. It was great to interact with these fine people and to see this project nearing completion.  The kits were to be distributed on Saturday. 

It had been raining in the mountains, so the drive back was all the more challenging even needing to dodge a rock slide that had closed off our lane in one place. Many of the streets back in Kingston were flooded, but we made it home just fine. 

  

  

Immunization is one of the major humanitarian initiatives of the Church—the others being: clean water, emergency response, food production, neonatal resuscitation training, vision care, and wheelchairs. The Church has contributed millions of dollars to help provide funding for immunization supplies such as vaccines and syringes. Our part as Welfare Services Missionaries in this initiative is to receive requests from medical clinics for vaccines, pick up the vaccines from the Health Department, and then deliver them in coolers quickly back to the clinics. We attempted this on Friday, but unfortunately the GPS sent us on a bit of a wild goose chase resulting in our missing the open hours of the Health Department. We will take care of that first thing Monday morning. 

Mandeville Meetinghouse

Sunday - we drove 1 1/2 hours west of Kingston to visit the Mandeville Branch. We didn't know ahead of time that the office couple, the Browns, and the newly arrived senior missionary couple, the Gotfredsons, would be there also. It was great to meet and welcome the new couple to Jamaica. They will be serving as Member Leadership Support missionaries beginning with an assignment in May Pen. There was quite a stir as the office elder (who also serves in the Mission Presidency) presented large white envelopes to two young sisters - their mission calls.  One sister is called to serve in the Trinidad Port of Spain Mission (learning Dutch), and the other in Cape Verde Praia Mission (learning Portuguese). We are so excited for these sisters. Their willingness to leave their families, step into the total unknown, and learn new languages shows their amazing faith, their love of the Lord, and their desire to share the message of the Gospel.