Sunday is always an amazing day!

I love Sundays here.  We are attending the Kingston Branch which is the southwest Kingston area; this means everyone lives in the concrete jungle of the city.  The branch has a lot of members, but usually only about 50 attend.  There is no one in the branch who plays the piano (or electric keyboard I should say) and so the music is provided from the hymn CDs.  The organist sits by the CD player and starts the music and the chorister stands at ground level and conducts.  The theme this month has been 'charity' and all of the talks have been about charity; amazingly none of them have sounded alike even though they quote many of the same scriptures.  The Relief Society has a 'charity never faileth' box to collect canned goods for others - I didn't see anything in the box today.

The district president was the concluding speaker and he talked about paying your tithing and visiting our neighbors, i.e., home and visiting teaching.  Here is a branch with probably 50% unemployment; I just wonder what they were thinking, yet tithing is a true principle and one that needs to be obeyed if ever we hope to get a stake her in Jamaica.

Sunday School was directly from the manual and the teacher even drew the tree and 4 anchors (see lesson 19) on the board.  One member started reading verses from his former Church's version of the Bible, it sounded like one of the new language versions.  The district president had me get a Bible that was on the table and have him read from our Church's edition.  There are always only about 4-5 people that read and I wonder if some cannot read.  I haven't been here long enough.

Then Relief Society, there are some wonderful sisters and the lesson was on Elder Holland's conference talk.  There is a 'jeans' dance on Friday and I told them I didn't bring any jeans.  They laughed and began chatting about where I could get some.  As I was leaving, one sister spoke up and said she didn't have any jeans either; so I said, great, let's where skirts together and we will.

This was Theron's first piano lesson and 6 members wanted to learn.  They are so anxious to learn a new skill. He went to the chapel where there is a keyboard and we brought the one we borrowed from the mission office.  He was only expecting 2 students, but the word got out.  I went to a baptism.  The brother being baptized today was in his 60s and a brother who was baptized just two months ago performed the baptism.  It is always a treat to see members baptizing rather than the missionaries.  As we started to sing the opening song, "I Need Thee Every Hour" the man getting baptized, Clayton Campbell started crying.  This is unusual in this culture.  It was a three dunk baptism with Brother Shakespeare struggling to say the prayer correctly, but it was worth it.  Oh, by the way, it took about 3 hours to fill the font and everyone was worried about running out of water.

We are ending the evening in lock down.  Elder and Sister Chessman came for dinner and he fielded calls from the Kingston and Spanish Town elders.  The downtown elders are moving across town for the night and staying with the Constant Spring elders.  The Coke incident is beginning to escalate.  Tonight there are no buses running in Kingston.  The police and military are out and starting to fight with the gangs and probably trying to get into Trivoli Garden where Coke is supposed to be.  If you haven't heard, Coke is being extradited to the US on drug trafficking charges.  He is in control of all the youth gangs in the city and they will try to protect him.  We are totally safe where we are; Neala, do not worry!

I love Sundays.  The spirit is so great, the people are trying so hard to do the right thing.  Many comments are always given on how others they meet during the week call them strange, members of a cult, weird.  They are strong and are constantly saying how that just makes them want to live the gospel to a higher level.

Back in Utah, Adrian was sustained as the young women president.  She has been all the presidents now and does such a great job.  These girls will be blessed because of her spirit!