Chickens -- Pride, Service and Missionary Work

Yesterday and today (June 21 and 22) were premier missionary days, at least premier humanitarian missionary days.  We will relate all of the things that happened when we see you in-person, but we want to relate some important lessons we have learned through the Lord's humanitarian work.

We delivered 216 baby chicks yesterday and 160 layers (hens) today.  The delivery of the chickens was the culmination of many hours of planning, preparation in the form of service and physical labor.  The work that it took to complete these first 8 chicken coops was certainly worth it.  Seeing the light in the eyes of those who received this blessing has shown us that every hour of service and all of the hours of worry are worth it.  We are seeing the gospel of service as it builds lives.  These coops and others that will follow are all built by families, branch members and others who freely give of their time and talents.  Just a couple of stories to help demonstrate what we are seeing happen in the lives of the recipients from the missionary service and involvement as they work together on these projects. 

Checking the health of the day-old chicks

A chick holding a hen

Mark Johnson, a less active member of the Church, whose wife signed up for this project, carefully put everything for his project together and beamed with pride at the workmanship of his own hands as he worked tirelessly on his own coop and spent hundreds of volunteer hours helping build five or six other coops, he even put a small radio in his coop for the chickens enjoyment!  He attended all of the training, he was there when we picked up the chicks and rode in the back of the truck so he could watch over them.  He could not stop smiling the entire day.    He has come back into full activity and faithfulness and has been enjoying the relationships with the other branch members as they worked along side each other.  There is nothing in the Lord's work that is temporal; it's all spiritual.

Mark Johnson's ear to ear grin as he caresses the first 50 chicks of his 100 chicks.

Location of the Johnson coop.  His house is on the left.

Eulalee Davis, a single mother,  has been selling eggs for years as one way of supporting her family.  However, she wasn't producing the eggs, she was buying them from others and selling them at a 5 cent per egg mark-up.  Having her own layers will greatly improve her ability to support her family.  The problemm is she lives in an inner city housing scheme which has about two feet of land around each side of her house.  The only spot available for a coop was on her roof.  Theron calls it, "a coop with a view".  She could not hammer, saw or staple, but she was always there, she was doing all the work she could and she was so appreciative.  How grateful she is for this project, how much hope this gives her and her family and how much she is beaming with pride and enthusiasm.

This is the width of the land around Eulalee's home.  The stairs to the roof (center of the picture) are less than 1 ft wide

Unloading the chickens (Elder and Sister Whitehead and Theron).

Eulalee loves her new chickens

The finished Coop on a Roof!  Extreme home makeover eat your heart out.

President Jason Piper, the Branch President of the LDS May Pen Branch doesn't have a job, his wife works for the post office.  The three of them live in the same house as his parents and his brother's family of 6.  Jason's family is the only member family in the household.  Jason and his brother were building a beautiful coop on their own prior to the food initiative and just needed a little assistance.  The food project funded their zinc roof, nesting boxes, mesh, and a few other things to get their coop finished.  As branch president, he knows the needs of all his people and he reminds us of President Monson in his early years when he was taking care of widows.  Pres. Piper worked one full-week, 10-15 hours a day, building Sister Woodburne and Sister Grant's coops -- both widows, and both in need.  They both had selected layer chickens and we needed these coops build rather quickly because the chickens were grown and ready for delivery.  These are the "chicks" we ordered 6-months ago.  What a great example of a leader and faithful priesthood holder. 'When you are in the service of "the widows in your midst" you are only in the service of your Lord.

Pres. Piper and his son with their first chickens.

For us, these eight finished coops confirm that this food project is at the right time, doing the right thing, and giving the right kind of hope and pride to the right kind of people.  We have so much more we could write about, but we'll just have to tell you in person one of these days.  Using chickens to build character, testimony, hearts of service and lives is certainly something we did not expect 16 months ago when we boarded the plane for Jamaica. 

These first coops were built to test the design, construction techniques, and "buildability" of our plans by untrained carpenters and masons.  Now we have just two months left to buy materials for the remaining 145 chicken coops in the project.   It's going to be a busy two months.

This picture says it all.  Sis. Woodburne's house is the structure in the foreground and we are working in the coop.

Dejavu - Chicken coops

This has been crunch week and we think we passed - the chickens are coming and we needed to get 8 coops ready by Tuesday. Saturday we spent the day with Elder Nelson and Elder Campbell in May Pen putting chicken wire around one coop while the branch members erected a second coop. Whiteheads help the members of the Boulevard branch finished the "coop-on-a-roof" coop, yup it resides on the roof of Sister Davis' house, while Flakes worked with the Constant Spring Branch to finished four broiler coops; they have been such stalwarts to see this through. Well, after Tuesday (the birthing day of the chickens) we will show you the delivery event.

We, the Whiteheads, and the Flakes are absolutely worn out, exhausted, and sunburned, and we all have realized that we are not "spring chicks"ourselves. We more closely resemble the "tough ole birds" category.

From our perspective a coop is not something much to look at, but in some of the locations it actually seems to improve the appearance of the place. It's wonderful to see the pride that the coop owners have in their coops and how proud they are of being able to help build them. They have certainly taken ownership in the projects by attending the training, assisting build their coop and helping with the construction of other coops as well. When the coops are built, there is pride in their eyes, a straightening of their back and excitement in their anticipation of receiving their chickens. We are seeing service freely given between the members which is something new to most of them. They are getting to know each other on an entirely new level and now have projects in common to discuss and to share experiences about. We are hearing of some that are planning to cooperatively help with slaughtering and they are bartering with each other for eggs and broilers.


Here are some pictures of our activities this week.

Sister Grant and Elder Campbell (in red stripe) are stapling netting, Elder Nelson (in green) and Theron in the Helping Hands shirt are attaching sway bracing.

In the foreground is Sister Woodburne's house and the chicken coop is back where the people are standing. 

Sister Woodbure inside with nesting boxes and hanging feeder and waterer

This is the road to the front of Eulalee Davis' house.

Here are the beginnings of the Coop-on-a-roof project.

Speaking of chickens, we were just given an itinerary that say we will "fly-the-coop" on September 1, 2011.  Our daughter says, it's a happy and sad day -- we want you home, but it means that summer in Utah will be over (if it ever gets there).

June 14, 1974

I'm sure that on June 14, 1974, we looked across the alter in the Salt Lake Temple and said to each other, 'on our 37th wedding anniversary let's go to a tropical island in the Caribbean and live, oh, and while we are there, let's build chicken coops.'

This is our classic anniversary picture.

It seems as if chicken coops are possessing our lives.  This week we started two news ones in May Pen and today we (mostly Theron - I kind of hold a board now and then and take some pictures) waited all day for the lumber delivery for one in Kingston.  The rush this week is that our "layer" chickens are coming June 21 and, other than our second bedroom, we have no coops for them.  You have to order layers 6 months in advance, thus in January we ordered 400 which is enough for 10 coops, but the rains came for two weeks and we will only have 4 coops ready so the order was decreased to 160.  We win some and we partially win some; there is no loss here because 4 families will be blessed and the other coops will "soon come".

We spent the evening of this anniversary watching a movie with Elder and Sister Flake.  It was only interrupted 12-20 times with phone calls.  Guess the best part of this anniversary is that we spent it together on a tropical Caribbean island.  The weather  37 years ago was extremely hot, just as it is today, but there wasn't nearly the humidity.  It is also significant in that we are serving a mission for the Lord; who would have thought we would be in this place at this time 37 years ago.

Theron and Elder Whitehead traveled to Linstead to start a coop.  Theron relates that Sister Davis' son knows how to lay block, but didn't know how to make it square (a skill that seems to be lacking in most of Jamaica).  A great teaching moment for Elder Whitehead who is a professional builder.  Great moment for a young man to learn a valuable lesson.  This is just one more experience we didn't anticipate 37 years ago

 Oh, the broiler chickens are coming to 4 projects next Tuesday and we will be transporting 40 of the full grown layers in the back of a pick-up; this should make for priceless pictures!

Elder Schaefermeyer and President Singh (Branch President) putting tarps on a roof during the big rains.

I can still throw sand around.  Sis. Whitehead and I loading sand at Sis. Grant's chicken project site.

Who's In Charge?

This blog ends with me telling you that we now know who the senior missionary couple is that will replace us, and the story begins last fall with our first contact with them.  But the interesting part is the story of how it all "came to pass" and the understanding of just how things work when the Lord is in charge.

Vince and Corliss Whitehead contacted us last fall after they had completed a Humanitarian Services (HS) Mission in Guyana, which, like Jamaica, is under the direction of the Caribbean Area Presidency.  Vince mentioned in an email that they had thoroughly enjoyed HS and were thinking about applying to be our replacements.  We, of course, were pleased that Jamaica wouldn't have another 9 month vacancy like the one that we filled.

We didn't hear much more from the Whiteheads until our supervisor in the Dominican Republic, Bennie Lilly, told us that the Whiteheads had been recruited to serve at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii and had sent-in their papers early this year.  We sent Vince an email calling them traitors, but we wished them well on their upcoming assignment. 

Shortly after their papers were submitted, Whiteheads received a phone call from the Missionary Department stating that "anyone could perform a mission at the Polynesian Cultural Center and would they accept a mission call outside the US."  They agreed and waited for a few weeks until their mission call arrived.

Okay, so you've already figured-out that when the packet arrived they were called to serve in the Jamaica Kingston Mission.  The part you don't know is that they were called as a re-activation couple and they would arrive some three and a half months before we complete our mission.

When Vince and Coreliss arrived in Kingston, mid-May, it was assumed that they would take-over the responsibilities of the Herberts who had recently returned to their home in Alaska.  However,  The president interviewed them and didn't immediately give them an assignment and when I quizzed him as to where he was going to send them he replied that he wasn't sure.

Well, that was all the encouragement that I needed.  I called Bennie Lilly and told him that the Whiteheads had arrived and that they had told us that they would still very much like to serve in HS.  In subsequent conversations with President Hendricks, Whiteheads had also told him of their interest. 

Now, it is possible to have a mission assignment changed, but there are two rather sensitive issues involved.  First, there is the issue of requesting the change from the area presidency (which is in effect telling them that the Missionary Department, i.e., the apostles, got it "wrong") and second, requesting that the mission president relinquish a desperately needed and hard to come-by senior couple.  Of course, in the Lord's work there is no such thing as "getting it wrong."

The short story here is that the change was granted, the paper-work completed, and Whiteheads are now officially Humanitarian Service Missionaries.

Whiteheads are seated in front.  Welcome to Jamaica! This was our May FHE group.

Now, speaking of "who's in charge" let me help you realize how perfect this chain of events actually has been.  As you know we have been busily involved in this food initiative, and at this time we are up to our giblets in chicken projects.  The logistics of evaluating the projects, purchasing materials, and following-up with each branch's welfare specialist has now become completely overwhelming.  The timing of Whiteheads arrival and reassignment was truly orchestrated to perfection!  Had Whiteheads continued with their original plans to be our replacements, they would have fallen into the HS mission call timing cycle that would have placed them in Jamaica just before we leave.   With the complexity of the food initiative it would have been impossible for us to keep up with the rigors of the work without help over the next 3 months during the implementation of the projects, and it would have been impossible to introduce the Whiteheads to the people and projects so that continuity could have been maintained.

We recognize the Lord's hand in all that transpires around us and hope that we can continue to be an effective instrument in helping move his work forward for we truly understand and know that it is He "who's in charge".

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.