The long long week.
Last Saturday we picked up the Cullimores. They are Welfare Project Supervisors for Wheelchair and Food Initiative projects throughout the whole world. We had a tight hard schedule for the whole week. The Cullimore’s arrived Saturday evening and later that night we had dinner with the other Senior couples.
Sunday we went to the Yallahs Branch for Church. We are starting some new food projects, gardens and chickens, with the Yallahs members.
Monday we meet with District President Medley, Salvation Army, where we starting computer lab and computer class project. We are also trying to start a new wheelchair major initiative with the Salvation Army. This is a project where Salvation Army will receive wheelchairs from our church and place them with mobility impaired people. You will learn more about this as it develops. Finally on Monday we met with our Mission President, President Hendricks.
Tuesday we met with Remounah Anderson our Wheelchair Specialist. Remounah monitors the wheelchair program in Jamaica, she coordinates with Food For the Poor who is a large Charity Organization who receives wheelchairs, clothing, kits and other supplies for our church. She also checks on people who receive wheelchairs and makes sure everything is ok. Then we met with Food For the Poor and toured their facility which is quite large and well organized. We also traveled to May Pen met with District President Piper and visited several Food Projects in the May Pen area.
Wednesday we drove to Mandeville and visited Projects there. Including one way up in the mountains so high our breaks got hot and stopped working. Not a good thing to happen in traffic. We pulled over and the breaks cooled and started to work again. We also drove to Hopeton where we visited more projects.
Thursday we were in Junction and Santa Cruz visiting more projects. Friday we drove home.
Saturday we attended the Spanish Town District Health Fair which was also a Humanitarian Project.
Well I am getting tired just writing about it. So let’s tell some stories and look at pictures.
First, since they have been asking we found a cute young Jamaican girl to bring home to Marcie or Megan. She even put on her biggest smile for the picture. See Picture: “Adopt me”.
The next picture is of a members home where we were visiting a project ( Chickens ). The bench out front was the shower, wash room, kitchen and laundry room. We see many like this but there are also some that have nicer homes.
The next picture is of Sister Murdock climbing back up the mountain after visiting a pig pen some ways below. We were in the mountains all morning. It was great, even if the mountains were covered with jungle. The lady who lived there was in her 60’s and she climbed those rock steps several time a day. It was probably 100 feet down from the road. She is an amazing lady. They will have to kill and butcher the pigs where they are and bring them up in quarters just to get them out! The jungle was so thick there you would never guess there was anything down there beyond the house. She also had a craft house where she made necklaces and did some sewing as well.
The four children in the next picture just wanted to have their picture taken. Then they would giggle when we showed them the picture of themselves and want us to take more pictures. They belonged to a member whose project we were visiting.
Roye is a young member who is an honor student and looking forward being a musician, artist, and engineer. He was studying for his GSAT tests. The school system is all based on testing. The better you do in the test the better school you can get into. This applies to all ages and grade levels from basic school age 3 to 5 to Universities. If you do not study and learn, you go to the worst schools where discipline and learning is not as good because the good teachers are recruited by the good schools. Roye knows because of his handicap he has to be extra smart in order to be able to get a job so he works hard, studies and reads. He is an amazing young man. He lives at least 4 or 5 miles from the chapel and pushes his wheelchair while his family walks the distance to church every week. Believe me the terrain he covers in that chair is unbelievable.
The last picture is of the Yallahs Branch chapel where Sister Murdock and Cullimore are waiting for the church to start. Eventually around 30 members showed up. Twelve of them were Priesthood members. Before, only 3 or 4 would come. We have been talking to them about starting some food projects in their Branch. They have been told the Priesthood had to supervise and be responsible for the projects and we did not think they had enough Priesthood members to get the job done. The sisters who are faithful and regularly attend church promised us they would make sure the Priesthood would be there and do their job. So far they are full filling their promise. Who says the world is run by men.
Well time to send this off…hope all is well at home and you are growing in the gospel.Stagnation is the death of testimony.Keep the Faith
