Colorado to Kingston : Let Go and Let God

Hey ya'll! First of all... you guys are the best people in the world! I love getting your emails and letters and cards and ahhh I just love you all!

Real quick rundown of what's happened this last week...

Monday's are our p-days, so we usually try to do something entertaining. but... last week our source of entertainment was skyping with President Brown for most of the afternoon. Because he is in Jamaica and we are not and he wanted to talk to us. #offislandprobs That man is one of the most inspired men (man? men? I don't know.) I have ever met! I'm so glad he's my mission president. Then after we did our shopping and stuff, we went home and got ready to go out! We went and taught AJ, then we saw the Taylor family for a while and headed home for the night!

Tuesday, we spent a longgggg time in the morning going through the area book and contacting about 50,000 past investigators and members and less actives and basically just everyone in Nassau trying to build our teaching pool. Then we went out to teach a few lessons and... surprise surprise! The Lord blessed us for our efforts! We had just finished our last teaching appointment and we still had about three hours before we had to go home when our phone rang. It was someone we had met at the parade a couple of weeks ago... he had read the pamphlet we gave him and wanted to know more! Then after we met with him, another guy we met on the beach a while ago called and wanted us to come see him! So basically the Lord really does bless us when we show him we care enough to work hard even when we aren't seeing any progress from our efforts.

Wednesday we had district meeting. The Freeport elders skyped in again, and it was a really good meeting! Sister Rampersad has become such an awesome district leader over the last three months! After district meeting, we went to lunch with a member of the branch, and then went out teaching for the rest of the day!

Thursday was Jervance's birthday! (He's one of our recent converts... I feel like I've talked about him before. He's so cool.) And you know what birthdays mean here in the Jamaica Kingston mission... FLOUR TIME!! Sister Rampersad and I called him and asked him to come teaching with us. So we met him outside of AJ's (our investigator's) house (who was totally in on this by the way), and we bombarded him with like five pounds of flour! Hahahaha it was fantastic. I will never get tired of flouring people. I'm going to carry that tradition home with me and do it to everyone for the rest of my life. :) Thursday, I spent a lot of time thinking about the expression they say down here... let go and let God. I think that is just absolutely beautiful. We all spend so much time worrying about silly little trivial things all the time that we tend to lose sight of the things that matter most. So something I've started to work on is putting that expression into play. I'm working on not worrying about the little things, and just trusting that God knows what's best for me, and He'll take care of me. Worrying never fixes anything. It really only makes the situation worse... face everything with a positive attitude and trust in God and life goes a lot smoother! (I know... easier said than done. But I figure if I keep saying that to myself I'll be able to make it second nature eventually. haha.)

Friday is weekly planning. Which means we sit at our desks for 2 hours for studies, and then take a five minute break and sit there again for three hours to plan our upcoming week. Needless to say, it's not my favorite activity. I'm not very good at the whole holding still thing. Oops. So this week, about an hour into planning, it started pouring rain. And if you guys know anything about me... you would know that I LOVE PUDDLE JUMPING! So I coerced Sister Rampersad into coming outside with me and we went puddle jumping for about twenty minutes. We used that for our lunch break. So we weren't being disobedient... don't worry mom. In the process of puddle jumping in the pouring rain, we got thoroughly soaked. So we had to change into dry clothes but we finished super planning and all was well. I finished the Book of Mormon on Friday too!!! First time on my mission- check! I was hoping to have read it twice by now... but alas, I must spend time studying other important things too. I wish there was an 8th day of the week that I could just spend studying all day. I would love that. Man. We also had a very interesting lesson all about weed Friday evening. We were supposed to be teaching the plan of salvation... but it turned into the word of wisdom which turned into an angry man who really enjoys his weed. It felt just like home. You know... Colorado and such? hahahahahah just kidding :) But anyways he still wants to meet with us again and he's coming to church on Sunday so I guess we didn't completely scare him off. That's good.

Saturday. Man oh man. Saturday was one of those days where you don't completely understand anything that happens to you.We were supposed to have a baptism Saturday night, so we spent all morning cleaning and filling the font. Then we went and taught a lesson... and it was one of those afternoons where literally every single one of your appointments fall through. So we had a dinner appointment, and we were there when the phone rang. It was the person who was supposed to get baptized... well his dad. And his dad said that he changed his mind and he doesn't want his son to get baptized anymore. So that was a shock and we spent a while talking to his dad... we're going to continue to work with both of them. Then we went to see a home bound member, and we had a really nice lesson with her. She is so sweet and she shared a really nice thought with us about trusting in God. Remember what I said about let go and let God? It was along those same lines. And I realized that even though I don't understand why anything on Saturday happened the way it did, I know that it all happened for a reason and it's in God's hands. So it'll all work out in the end. Yep. So also I forgot the house keys inside on Saturday and we got home a half an hour before the other sisters so we had to stand outside and play charades until they came home. Which was fun but I still felt a little dumb because I didn't mean to lock the keys inside. Oops.

Sunday we had church... same old same old. It was super good though! We didn't teach a single lesson, so we actually got to just sit and be taught! It was fantastic. After church, we went over to Sister Dauphin's house and she fed us the best chicken lasagna ever. Seriously it was delicious. Then we went and taught a few lessons, and ended the night with some of our recent converts! We talked about enduring to the end and acted out a few bible stories. Mucho fun. haha.

So. Let's chat.

Law of Consecration ya'll. I've spent a lot of time studying it this last week. And while the whole temporal aspect of the law of consecration isn't exactly in effect... it's still an eternal law. Which means that it technically is in effect. Now.. right now, we don't have to give all of our worldly possessions to the church in order to further the Lord's kingdom here on earth. Nope. All He asks of us is a measly 10% of our income. Which is nothing, especially when you consider the fact that we're really just returning a tiny portion of the blessings He has given us. Which led me to think... the Lord gave us everything we have, so even if we give him all we have, it's still nothing he hasn't given us already. We have the agency to choose if we want to follow him or not... and the one thing we can give him that He doesn't already have is our will. We can choose to follow him and serve him with all of our heart, might, mind and strength. We can choose to love him and trust him and submit ourselves completely and entirely to his will. If we trust in the Lord, and give him our entire self, we will find more peace and happiness in this life and in the life to come than we ever could otherwise. So while we don't have to give our wordy possessions to the Lord, we should still give our will. And I know that includes a lot of sacrifices... but we will be blessed for the sacrifices we make. I hope that sort of made sense. I would explain more but I'm running out of time. Oops.

In other news... I've been out 3 months already! What? Where did time go? And transfer calls are this weekend! Two transfers down! (Almost!)

Well, that's all for now folks! Have a fantastic week everyone! I love you all!!

xoxoxoxo,

Sister Oman

PS Someone in the branch told me I'm turning ghetto. I'm not actually sure what that means, but if I come back talking like I'm from the ghetto, I guess you've been warned. Hahaha.