(Picture captions)
Devon House Sister Daniels, Sister Lofters
Daniels, Flakes, H&D Smiths, Sorensens Alex, Russell, Britney, Javon, Giulivani,
13 Dec 2011 Brandon, Gregory, Ruel --- 18 Dec 2011
Dear Family,
Happy Birthday, Jeanne!
The Sorensen’s completed their mission and went home last Wednesday. We are down another senior missionary couple this week since Elder David and Sister Colleen Smith went home to attend their grandson’s wedding. Elder Smith is a sealer and was able to perform the marriage. We are grateful for the recent change in missionary policy that allows senior missionaries to go home for significant family events and then return to complete their missions.
We finally received the work permit for the missionary to be transferred to the Bahamas. We are still waiting for the one from Turks and Caicos Islands. I had lots of letters to type for President Hendricks this week—welcomes to missionaries who recently received their mission calls, letters to stake presidents and bishops for missionaries who soon will complete their missions, letters to the Area and to the First Presidency. We received documents for three more missionaries so we can start applying for their immigration papers. We still need papers for one more due to come in February.
We went to the University of West Indies bookstore to purchase more copies of Gone is the Ancient Glory: Spanish Town, Jamaica¸1534-2000, by James Robertson, a professor at UWI we met in the Miami airport on our way to Jamaica. Then we met with Dr. Robertson in his office and he signed them for us. We are planning to give them to the other couples for Christmas. Dr. Robertson is a member of the Church of England and was very interested in the documentaries on the Bible being translated into English (“Fires of Faith).
Elder Daniels had an interesting experience when he went to JPS (Jamaica Public Service, the island electric company) to change a missionary apartment account. Their electricity was out because of a traffic accident nearby. The humorous part, to us, was that their back-up generators didn’t work!
Elder and Sister Whitehead’s daughter and son-in-law came to visit, so Friday night all the senior couples went out to dinner at Gaucho’s and met them. The Whitehead’s are the humanitarian missionaries and will be showing them some of their projects—the 5 acre farm in Spanish Town, several chicken coops, goat pens, pig pens, and beehives for people in the Food Initatives project, as well as some schools where they have done computer labs, repaired bathrooms, and painted. They have other projects as well.
Saturday we worked at the mission office—Elder Daniels on mission finances, me on things for Primary. We took the Office Elders to lunch and then did our shopping and ordered copies of pictures we are going to put on Christmas cards for members of the Yallahs branch. We were sorry to hear that our Yallahs meetinghouse was broken into again. This time the thieves broke out the window, got hold of the power cord and pulled out everything attached that was small enough to fit through the grills. So we are back to carrying the computer back and forth to Kingston to be able to transmit records to Salt Lake City. I was especially disappointed because we had planned on showing the First Presidency Devotional after our meetings the next day.
Sunday before and after our meetings I worked with the people doing special musical numbers for our Christmas Sacrament Meeting. We adapted the program Sister Flake prepared using exerpts from First Presidency devotionals. At first I omitted all the choir numbers since we don’t have a choir and substituted congregational hymns. But “Gifts That Are Mine to Give” by David Len Allen fit so perfectly that I decided to teach the first part to those who wanted to participate. We had 4 women and 2 men volunteer and they worked hard to learn it.
One of our recent converts gave her first talk in Sacrament Meeting and our newest missionary also spoke. We had four investigators back that we hadn’t seen in several months. The boys were happy to be back in Primary. We had seven boys and one girl in Primary—the first time we have had more boys than girls. A bad experience for me was when I reached into the closet to get the construction paper for the children to glue on their Christmas stars, I found the paper full of termites! They had eaten holes throughout the paper and their mud trails were everywhere. We had termites in this closet once before, but had it sprayed. After our meetings the missionaries helped us sort out the damaged manuals, the out-dated materials, and organize what we need to keep. Now the closet is ready to be treated again. Hopefully we won’t have them get in things again.
Elder Daniels was busy with tithing settlement interviews before and after our meetings. They all have to be held on Sundays because of our schedule and the difficultly and expense for people getting to the church.
We are looking forward to the mission Christmas party this Friday, to family phone calls and Skypes, and to celebrating the Lord’s birthday by worshipping on Christmas.
Love,
Sister and Elder Daniels
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