On the farm

You never know when you wake up what the day will bring. Monday, we planned to work on a project, do the laundry, and clean the house - well, after all it is Monday. We instead did the laundry (or some of it), helped the elders from Junction get their car registration replaced, and drove to "outer" Junction to a pepper farm. We returned home late in the day and then crashed.

Today, Tuesday, we helped the Junction elders redo their paper work for their car-which was unsuccessful and we will be driving the car to Kingston tomorrow to get the registration replaced.

The pepper farm is part of a project started last year to have the farmers in the Junction area (okay, look at a map of Jamaica for details, it's south of Mandeville) form a co-op. We met with two leaders of that co-op, and were told it was just being approved. There is a real drought this year and after this week they will be needing water. This is a very expensive cost for them because it has to be hauled by truck up to the top of the mountain where the farms are located and they are concerned about loosing their crops. The co-op will start with about 35 farmers. Each of these farms is experiencing the effects of this drought. Apparently it is worse than any other dry season for many years.

This is a short week here, it's Passover weekend and it's not just Good Friday, it will extend from Thursday to Monday. We will be working from home and staying close to home after we return from Kingston because the beach areas will be really full. Besides, we want to enjoy General Conference. We love that it falls on Easter Sunday this year!

Long Time No Write

You know we must be getting busy when we don't blog for a few days. Well, actually, we have been away from our home and then upon returning, our new Internet connection was down, so now you get several days worth of adventure.

Friday we drove up to the North side of the island to visit two NGOs that had written to the Humanitarian Directors C/O the mission office. The first was a nurse that was operating a community health clinic. She had been working the clinic for a little over a year and had done tremendous work in "reforming" the clinic. She has been able to hire six nurses that work in the community (making house calls) and one midwife to handle the needs of approximately 20,000 people in the area and has a doctor that commutes once a week from Kingston. She had written quite some time ago and has since be able to secure some of the items she had requested. As we looked over the tiny building we found several things we might be able to help with - two small desks w/locks, she asked for 6 sheets for the two beds/examination tables, a new outside door for a little break room so they could secure it, a "pocket size" blood pressure cuff, and a sterilizer. We figured that she would need at least a dozen sheets and possible a washing machine so the midwife doesn't have to wash them by hand and 2 or 3 blood pressure cuffs for the infield nurses, and a new clothes line. This will be our first project so we are just feeling our way into it. stand-by for more details.

The road to this place is called something like the Devils Razorback and is quite and adventure. Our landlords told us to go up around and back down so we didn't have to go on it, but said, "You're adventurous - we know you'll drive it" - - - Yep, we did, steep, narrow, and winding, kind of like every other road but worse.

The other NGO was a woman who was taking care of three old people in her home. The Preeces had given her a few things some time ago and we will probably help a little. She is not registered so it makes it a little harder to do much. She is doing an excellent job and the place was very clean and NO oder, unlike many nursing homes in Utah that I've been in. Note the side-by-side refrigerator doors that are cleverly use as a gate to keep the chickens in the yard.

We spent the night in Port Antonio and then along the Eastern coast back to Kingston. The North side of the island is much greener and more tropical than the south, with quite a few rivers. We stopped for a swim at Reach Falls in some very pretty pools and small falls. the river was quite low due to the drought.

Today after church, we went to our first DA (dinner appointment) at a members home and had our first Jamaica Jerk Chicken and it was great. Not too spicy at all and Sister Bodily told us where we could buy it. She and her grandson are the only members and he daughter and live-in started asking about what her son was taught about "spirits of dead people walking around with us". She was quite religious and well read but a little angry and wanting a fight. The Elders did a pretty good job with them, but in retrospect there are always better approaches. We've just got to be more in tune so we can think of them at the time rather than later. It was Shanna's first missionary experience, I wish it wasn't such an antagonistic one, but we all got through it with our testimonies in tact. The interesting part is that the woman offered the prayers as we were leaving and spoke about angels that are around us.

We're home and have full Internet access so we now have our Vonage phone up and running so you can call us anytime at our old home phone number 292-6788.

Wednesday we met with the Ron Burgess, the Chief Operations Officer, for the Jamaican office of Food For The Poor (FFTP). They have a hugh warehouse where they bring in several thousand shipping containers a year for humanitarian use here on the island. We provide some of them, we saw 6 palettes of school kits and several bales of clothing. They are our biggest NGO (Non-Government Organization) on the island. It was a very impressive organization with a large number of employees. On Tuesday we will arrange to go with one of their agronomists to visit the shade houses we provided for some of the 300,000 fruit tree seedlings. We spent a couple of hours again at the Spanish Town branch loading desk, chairs, filing cabinets, etc, etc, to complete our home office. The evening was spent cleaning rat feces and urine off from the desk top and files cabinet(did you know rat urine will remove paint - neither did I- maybe we could market it?!?!)

Today, we attended a Zone conference at our church in Mandeville. The president and APs gave some good training on teaching with the spirit. They came down pretty hard on the missionaries in an effort to get them out of their comfort zones. The have restricted them from using pamphlets for the next couple of weeks to force them to be more spontaneous and receptive to the spirit.

Photos: Spanish Town Branch Building, Zone conference, Highway to Mandeville

Tuesday, Wash Day

Today Sister Schaefermeyer did her first batch of laundry using the latest in ecologically friendly solar clothes dryers and she managed to perform some bend and stretch exercises at the same time. She is quite the multitasker.
Most of the day was spent cleaning the items we picked-up from the Spanish Town Church basement. We decided to get our own Internet connection so we could connect up our vonage and have wireless access in the office (think 2nd bedroom) so we went into Mandeville today and found the Flow Internet provider. They said that they would have us connected on Friday which seemed pretty quick, but we didn't complain.

P Day?

Today is officially P Day for the mission so we picked-up Elder Allen and Elder Wilson and took them to town to do their grocery shopping and show us around town a bit. They showed us some local items at the store and we bought a quart of Sorrel juice with ginger. It is good but has a bit of a ginger kick. Elder Allen is from Jamaica and told us quite a bit about the local fruit. Apparently we want to buy the "number mango" which means number 11 mango (it's like Chanel #5 - they don't sell any other number). It's the best for eating (no, I don't know what you do with the other varieties but there are several).
After shopping they wrote their emails to home on our computers. We took them home around noon and then drove the hour to Spanish Town and loaded-up the truck with a lot of the kitchen, and office supplies that the Preeces had stored for us when they left last September. It was very hot and humid work and from the droppings we found, there had been a family of rats that liked the smell of the spices, etc. We were very glad they had been stored in large plastic containers.
Then it was off to the University of West Indies where a company had developed the GPS data for the Garmin units. They charged us $130 US but I think it will help us quite a bit. It doesn't work like a GPS in the US since their addressing system is either non-existent or rather random. It will find streets and we can mark on the screen map where we want to go and it will route us.
We then had dinner at Gauchos with the Cheesmans (office couple) and had to make the one and a half hour drive home in the dark. I think we will plan not to do that again. These are some scary, narrow, windy, bumps, pot-holed roads with crazy drivers, taxi's, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Our landlady called on our cell phone to see why we weren't home yet. But we made it home and survived our first official P-day.

On the Seventh Day - We Rested

The Mandeville Branch is about 45 strong and that included today 2 elders and us. What wonderful people. A new convert gave a talk on prayer that a mature member would be proud to give. We were asked to bear our testimony and at the end of Sunday School, the elders president asked him to teach the Priesthood lesson. That's way far in advance. He did an excellent job - I am told. I love the lessons in branches like this; they follow the lesson materials and use the scripture references. It was wonderful to read the questions, discuss them, and read the scriptures. So simple, so powerful! The picture is the Mandeville Branch building. We gave the elders a ride home from Church.

Just a little followup from yesterday, we went grocery shopping so we would have some food for Sunday. When you come, expect chicken. The liver, pork leg, and other meat products just didn't have any appeal. Don't expect skim milk, it's whole and that's it. Do expect the best orange juice in the world - well comparable to Harvey's - Adrian.

Here's a little tour of our apartment and a couple of views of the neighborhood for your viewing pleasure.










This is the outside of our building. We live on the bottom floor. The garage is where we have our pickup truck. The mountain view is from our window looking across the street.

They loaded-up the truck and they moved to Beverly

We were born in the mission on Wednesday and we grew-up and left home on Saturday. This morning we spent some time with the Mehrs (think Mayors) who are the Area Public Relations Missionary couple and live in the Dominican Republic. They taught us about how they can help with the closing ceremonies when we finish a project and they are the ones who will get our pictures in the church news. They have also been staying with President and Sister Graff and so we have had a great time eating out and traveling around with them.

Then it was load up the Toyota truck and head-out for Mandeville. We made a stop in May Pen and replace a computer in the branch clerk's office so President Graff could conduct a video conference this afternoon. He has been speaking with multiple groups of branch leadership throughout the island teaching them about the church employment website that they now have access to. He is asking each branch to have every member who is under-employed or unemployed enter their information on LDSJobs website within the next 60 days. The young elders will be in the clerks office every Thursday from 10-2:00 to open the "LDS Employment Center" to facilitate the computer work. Non-members are also welcome to come to the church and enter their information (ooooh a missionary tie-in). Then those elders not manning the employment center will be visiting with companies to introduce them to the LDS Employment services. Pres. Graff is also arranging with the University of the West Indies to provide sort-term training (think cooking, housekeeping, blue collar work, etc.) He also has three women who are doing Career Training Workshops to instruct on how to interview, write a resume, "me in 30 seconds", etc.

Okay, we met branch president Piper (sp) and installed the computer then on to our new home. We actually found the place on the first try which was quite amazing to us - everything seem to be going so well, then we parked in the carport and I left the keys in the ignition. This is no big deal in most cars, however, ours has an alarm that automatically locks the doors after about 15 seconds! (note to self: get that second key hidden somewhere on the truck). Our landlord bro White offered to call a locksmith but I declined and asked him for a coat hanger and in about 10 minutes had the door open (note to self: hide a coat hanger on the truck also).

The truck was unloaded and then we headed into town to buy the food, again things went very well - we found the town, the store, they took Visa, we found the food, we backed out of the parking stall and met with a woman who was also backing out of a stall right behind us!!!! No big deal, a one inch mark on her bumper and a license plate with a little crease. (note to self: make wife stand outside and direct when backing up - like the elders do).

Driving on the left side of the road is not too difficult other than turning on the windshield wipers when ever I try to turn on the turn signal. The traffic is crazy they drive like maniacs but no one cares or gets upset about it. Their system works quite well - get the maximum number of vehicles over the smallest amount of pavement. Horns are used to alert someone that you are passing, giving them right-of-way, or as a thank you.

Here is a picture of the video conference we attended in the presidents office. He was speaking with about 5 branches at this first conference session. The two APs Elder Tanner and McGraff on left, Pres Graff, Elder and Sister Meher on front with Bro. Osborn (employment specialist, back, Shanna, and two office elders. This mission extends to 5 countries so this video conferencing is also being used to conduct interviews with leadership, branch members, and missionaries.