A Tribute to Fran and Jack Andersen - a great senior missionary couple

We admire every senior couple who has enough faith to fulfill a mission and we know first hand that the Lord needs more of them!  It is amazing to us how close you become to other senior couples in such a short period of time.  That's just what happened with us and our good friends and former senior couple, Fran and Jack Andersen (it sounds better with Fran's name first).

Gail and Ross Cheesman, Fran and Jack Andersen, Us.

The Andersens arrived at the mission during the transition between mission presidents and thus we were assigned to be their "trainers" -- training for senior couples involves showing them where to shop, get their hair cut (and dyed), how to get cash from the ATM, and teaching the "ins and outs" of driving on the wrong side of the street. 

Andersens were called to work in the CES and PEF programs and that they did with all their hearts.  They took over the apartment we had in Mandeville because they worked with the branches on the west end of the island.  They made this apartment their home --even though they had to hang their laundry to dry and even though Jack always felt like he was in jail with all the bars and grated doors.

They attended the first hot dog (I use the term loosely) roast and provided marshmallows, chocolate bars and graham crackers for everyone..

Jack was relentless on reconciling the "99" account for the PEF student payments that was way behind.  Fran was entertained with "signs of Jamaica" and making cookies for everyone.

They were such a great addition to the Mandeville Branch.  Fran taught piano and played in Sacrament every once in a while and she really pulled the Relief Society together -- sometimes having to smooth the feathers of Sister Heath and Sister Palmer :) 

Early on, Jack had a very severe stomach problem and they left Jamaica to go to Utah and get it resolved.  We admire their commitment to the mission as they came back.  It was just two weeks ago that Fran hurt her shoulder.  There appeared to be no relief in site even with the pain medication Doctor Singh gave her.  Finally, she was able to get a cortisone shot which provided some relief.  However, the decision had to be made that they would end their mission about 4 months early and return home to Utah for surgery.  We know the decision was the best one, but we do miss them.

Now missing them is said selfishly because we now have to make one day runs to Santa Cruz and Mandeville to get chicken coops and other things started and finished.  No more staying with the Andersens.  We don't have their advice on the best restaurants and places to stay in Negril and we just plain don't have them to laugh with.

Fran petting a donkey during our Mandeville District food initiative tour.

We will miss Jack's famous hamburgers, Fran's cookies and good cooking, the sleepovers in Kingston with us and Mandeville with them, and Jack Sprat's Pizza.

Jack Sprat's at Treasure Beach - As Jack would say, "best pizza on the island."

We loved to hear their testimony and stories about the PEF and CES programs.  We loved their testimonies of the gospel.  We loved their ready smiles.  We loved their willingness to take on difficult assignments.  We loved to see them befriend their Jamaican neighbors.  We just plain loved them.  And we will love to see them in about 3 months!

Fran this one's for you to add to your collection -- the mermaid watching the urinal at the MayPen roundabout.

Close up of the Mermaid and the Urinal

This puts the clasic site in perspective with the bar.

Bees, Birthdays, Break ins

Some weeks are just like a roller coaster ride - lots of strain to get to the top, exhilaration as you crest the top and start down, hairpin turns (ours include potholes), and a quick stop at the end.  That's what this week has been.

Getting the food initiative started has been lots of stress and strain, but started it is -- chicken coops are going up all over Kingston, we received the lease payment for the 11 garden projects in Spanish Town and we have now delivered 45 of our 70 beehives.  At the RADA training sessions, we have 40-50 people and they are all excited about the opportunity to learn; and of course the training moves their project along.  You've got to do something to keep the momentum going.

Tuesday and Wednesday nights, we delivered beehives -- well, Theron drives and lifts and places them and I ride in the seat.  We can get 10 hive boxes in the truck at one time.  We pick them up around 7:30 p.m. (You have to deliver bees in the dark of night.) then drive to the apiary site.  Some of these sites are a long way, like Patrick's site in Mandeville.  The direction was it's over by Comfort Hall.  Come to find out, there's no comfort in this place.  The site is indeed by that town and well beyond - at least a 1.5 hour drive from Mandeville on narrow, overgrown, potholed roads!  To give you some perspective, we pick up the bees in May Pen; drive 1 hour to Mandeville; then drive 1.5 hours to his site; the site is a good 15 minute walk, down hill over boulders and you can only carry one hive at a time, thus 5 trips. - it's now well after 11:00 p.m.  Then we drive back out and travel another 1/2 hour to President Morrison's site.  We drive to his site, unload in 1/2 an hour and get back to Andersen's house about 2:30 a.m.  We are so grateful that Andersens have a room for us in Mandeville.

Lyndon Butler, the person we are buying the bees from.

A few of Butler's hives

Just a little story, Patrick was carrying one box down and the lid slide over and bees escaped.  He had not totally zipped his hood and some got in and stung his face.  I walked down the first time and those escaped bees were pretty mad, I killed a few and received 2 stings.  Brave person that I am.  That's Tuesday.

Delivering bees in Santa Cruz.

Wednesday, we drive to Santa Cruz and purchase materials to build their first chicken coop and deliver "supers" to one of the bee sites and then drive the 2 hours back to May Pen for another bee load.  This time we return through Mandeville and over to Santa Cruz.  Luckily, both sites here are a short drive off the road and we can actually drive right up to the stands.  We arrived back at Andersen's home about midnight.  Not bad.  That's Wednesday.  These are actually "cresting" moments.  The people receiving these hives are so grateful and excited.

Thursday we have to be in Old Harbour for the 3rd bee training class that starts at 9:30 a.m. - an hour drive from Mandeville.  The class goes on and on and on.  At about 3:00 p.m., I have had it and go to the truck to read a book.  I recommend "Deception Point" by Dan Brown, it's really good.  The class breaks up at 6:00 p.m.  We were going to deliver more bees tonight, but I could see Theron was tired and just living on adrenalin, so we drove to Kingston and home.  That's the bees!

Friday was sleep in late, went to a wheelchair coordination meeting at Food For The Poor in Spanish Town and enjoyed a birthday dinner for Theron, Sister Hendricks and Sister Flake at the Terra Nova.  They have a delicious (and expensive) blue cheese stuffed filet mignon!  That's the birthday!

This sign indicates the world ends on my 60th birthday - Somehow I kind of agree with it!

In our Friday meeting at Food For The Poor, Susan Moore told us that their phone weren't working because someone stole the cables off from the poles to sell for scrap metal.

Today, Saturday, was District Priesthood meeting at the Spanish Town chapel.  Now, Theron didn't really want to go, but he did.  While in the meeting, someone broke the passenger side window in our truck and stole our GPS.  Elder Flake was also at the meeting and they also broke his window and stole his GPS.  Now, that really is a loss for us as it had all of our back wood, cow trail sites saved; all of our food project sites were in there.  We have been here 15 months with nothing stolen and now this.  However, this is not all of the weeks break-ins.

Wednesday night, someone broke into our new 40' emergency container (also located at the Spanish Town Chapel) and stole a few boxes of hygiene kits, tarps, etc.  It interesting to call the police and say that someone just stole something that we give away for free.  We assume that they will sell the items at the local market but I don't think we'll go looking for it.  We HOPE that's the (last) of the break-ins.

So goes the roller coaster ride this week.  We're at a bit of a low spot now but we're sure there are many more turns, twists, ups, and down (and potholes) in the remaining 3 months 16 days (but who's counting).

They took the boxes from the container and threw them over the fence.

They took a tent, but not the poles and left a hand tied quilt.

Bee-attitudes

There are quite a few things that we haven't found in Jamaica.  Some of those missing items such as brown sugar are shipped to us by family and friends in the U.S.  Luckily, one of the things not found in Jamaica are Killer Bees, and as you may have guessed we're really not complaining about that.  In fact, on Wednesday we decided that was a good thing as that is when we started delivering bee colonies to our 20 prospective apiarists (bee keepers). 

Last month we contracted with Mr. Lynden Butler to create 100 new hives for us by splitting some of his hives.  A hive is split by moving 3-4 of the 10 frames of comb from an existing bee colony and placing them in an empty hive box.  The bees that have been moved will then create a new queen and begin growing the hive colony in the new box. Once the hive is strong it can be transported to a new area.

Technically our first deliveries were on Wednesday/Thursday since the transport of bees needs to be after dark when the worker bees have all returned to the hive. It wouldn't make much sense to transport the hive during the day when all the bees are out doing their bee business, so shortly after dark we drove our truck to Mr. Butler's and there met Norvel Bedward, the agronomist from Food For The Poor, who helped us deliver our first ten hives. 

Hives with dark masses of bees huddled near the opening (also, note the bee flying at the camera)

We donned our bee veils, gloves, and took our flashlights to look at Mr. Butler's apiary of about 250 hives located right next to his home.  Many of the hives had swarms of bees "sleeping" just outside of the hive opening and quite a few bees were patrolling the area.  We quickly learned, that just like my spouse, bees have an attitude about being awakened in the middle of the night by a bright light.  They would swarm on the flashlights (I think they were trying to learn how to shut them off so they could go back to sleep) so we tried not to shine the lights directly on the hives.

Mr. Butler applied smoke to the hive and the bees quickly disappeared inside.  A piece of window screen was then nailed over the slot to keep the bees inside during transport.  We spent over an hour preparing the 10 hive boxes and carrying them to our two trucks.  Shanna learned about the bee-attitudes as she received three stings before we finished loading the hives.  I guess the bees heard me call her "honey" and responded accordingly. 
Although the bees are contained in the hive by the piece of screen there are quite a few bees that will travel on the outside of the boxes and will then transfer to flying and crawling around the bee keeper (in this case ME!).   This was a problem only when it was time to take off the bee veil and get back in the truck.   First it was necessary to brush off the crawling bees and then walk around until the flying bees lost interest in us (luckily they don't have a long attention span). Once the buzzing stopped, we remove the gloves and veils and jumped in the truck. One of the gloves was then used to kill the remaining few bees that have found their way inside the truck.  The hives were delivered without incident and we were home shortly after midnight.

The second night Thursday/Friday we made two trips and hauled 15 hives.  Norvel was not able to help us so we became the bee "experts" to the three recipients of bees that night.  One of the recipients slid a hive body off the hive base board which spilled bees all over the bed of the truck.  I then had to get the hive back together and carry the box to the the apiary with a great many bees accompanying me whom all seem to have a bad bee-attitude about their sleep again being interrupted!  We tried to smoke the bees but the primary function of smoke is to prevent the bees from communicating the danger to the hive.  These bees had already sent out the alarm when the hive was disrupted so they weren't calmed much by the smoke.  This time it took quite a few minutes to rid myself of the bees before I could remove the protective clothing and return to the truck.

On the second day after receiving their hives, the beekeepers needed to remove the hive lids and placed a "super" (empty hive box) on top of the hive and replace the lid.  We were a little worried about some of our new apiarists so we traveled back out to assist in the "supering" and with a little coaching, they seemed to do fine.  We helped instill confidence by ACTING like we had worked with bees all our lives and amazingly it seemed to work.

Theron looking at a frame containing new bee larvae.

We planned to deliver more hives on Friday and Saturday, but Mr. Butler is a Seventh Day Adventist and so, like the Jews, his Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday.  We found that we were in need of a day of rest ourselves so were happy to have a few nights without a midnight ride around Jamaica.
It is amazing how nonchalant you become about the little critters after working with them only a short time. I guess that our "bee-attitudes" have changed as we've gotten to understand them better. but then I guess that understanding usually helps us get over fears and prejudices that we may have.


It's been a year since we first started talking about a bee project.  We wish we could have delivered sooner but we are very pleased with the people who are getting the bee hives and they are very excited about the gift that they are receiving.  It has been very rewarding to see them start out on their adventure and we only hope that their "bee-attitudes" continue to be positive ones.

One of my favorite television programs as a kid was Green Acres with Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.  I found its off-beat humor and the pretext of the city folk working on the farm quite humorous, I just didn't realize how closely I would come to resembling the lead character.  However, I now find myself frequently out working on the farm in my white shirt and tie and Shanna in her dress (but but a slightly more modest dress and without all the jewelry).

White Shirt and Tie - Chicken Coop Inspector

This week we bought the material for our first chicken coop and, like all proud parents, stopped by numerous time to see how our baby was doing.  Elder and Sister Flake worked directly with the Peart family and the branch members who were doing the construction.  Elder Flake and I spent four hours Monday morning in hardware stores buying the tools, cement blocks, cement, lumber, zinc (corrugated steel), poultry netting (chicken wire), hinges, hasp, lock, nails, and screws.  Things just take longer here than what you are familiar with at home.  We still need to buy the chicken feeders, waterers, warming lights and of course the chickens, feed, and vet supplies, but those will come after the training is finished and other coops have been built. 

Speaking of training, when I accepted this mission call, I figured I wouldn't be doing a lot of gospel teaching, but that one page document signed by the prophet certainly didn't indicate the scope of teaching that I would be doing.  Here again, in my Eddie Albert roll as the out of place city dweller in the wilds of Jamaica, I found myself conducting an hour and a half training session for the members of the Constant Spring and Boulevard Branches on the economics and financial aspects of chicken raising!  I titled my presentation Chicken Scratch and explained to the 40+ members in attendance that we were going to talk about chickens and money and that scratch is another name for money.  I also told them that the title describes my efforts at writing on the blackboard!

I really didn't do much to prepare for the presentation, but I was amazed when they started asking questions at how well prepared I had become.  i.e. At the age of one week a chick uses 80% of its feed for growth and at week seven only 20% of its consumed food results in weight gain. - Adding cheaper corn meal to the feed is only cost effective if given during the week before slaughter.  (When I return home I'm going to attend our Stake Mission Prep class and let them know what kind of training missionaries really need!)

Some of the training consisted of asking them questions about how to insure their projects continue to be self sustaining.  "What do you say when your neighbor, brother, etc, says to you - you've got a bunch of chickens, can I have one to eat?"  When you sell your chickens and the buyer says, "I'll pay you next week", what does that do to your project budget?

Salisbury Plain water tank delivery

Friday we purchased a 1000 gallon water tank and hauled it up the mountain to the Salisbury Plain Greenhouse project.  We met with Mr. Murray of Christiana Potato Grower's who offered to give some starts off from a Macadamia nut tree to include in the tree project.  Macadamia nuts are not known in Jamaica but should do very well and could provide a great cash crop.  We offered to take a couple of the men from the 4H with us to do the starts.  It's a four hour drive so it will be another long day.

Delivery of Bee Boxes in Old Harbor

Storing Bee boxes in the church

This week we took delivery of 60 bee boxes and delivered them to many of the projects.  On Saturday we loaded bee boxes in two pick-ups and had a "Senior Couples Travel Day" with Flakes, Daniels, and Andersens.  We took them through some beautiful parts of the island and had a pleasant day which included pizza on Treasure Beach South of Mandeville.

Daniels, Schaefermeyers Flakes, Andersens at Jack Sprats Pizza on Treasure Beach

We just completed a small project refurbishing a room for the ancillary staff at Errol Miller Residence Hall.  This was an effort directed by Sister Arienne Segree as part of her graduation requirements.  Small project but still requires a lot of paper work and documentation.

Painting Crew with Mormon Helping Hands Vests

Kingston Branch service component at Errol Miller Residence Hall Project

  I'm sure we did a few other things this past week but if we didn't take a picture, I can't remember what they were.