When I grow up, I want to be Alma

Hello good people! 

This week was another great week here in good ol' Jamaica :) We started the week off great by going to the Caribbean Egg Hatchery. A member of the branch works there and he offered to take us and give us a tour... it was super interesting and really fun because we got to hold a bunch of brand new chicks! 

We're teaching a new family and we had a lesson with them this week about the Atonement. The mom said that her understanding of the Atonement is that Christ died for our sins and that's it. She didn't have any idea that in reality he suffered through every single thing we go through that's not so fun in life. I've been thinking about that a lot over the last few days. And the more I think about it, the more sad I get. That's just such a depressing concept to me. I take so much comfort every day knowing that Christ always is there because He knows exactly what I'm going through no matter what the cause of that particular trial is... He doesn't just know the pain associated with guilt from sin. The more I study the Atonement, the greater my gratitude for it is.. I just love knowing that I always can turn to Jesus for help and ahhh I don't even know. I'm so grateful. And I pray every single day that that family will be able to come to know the truth about the Atonement for themselves.

Last Thursday, we had the Sisters Training Conference! It's my favorite meeting we have as missionaries because every single sister in the mission comes and we get to just laugh and talk and hear testimonies and learn together as sisters! I got to see three of my past companions (the other ones have already gone home), and everyone else that I've served around that's still on a mission! So much fun!! 

We were talking about working effectively with people and I just love what Elder and Sister Pearson said about love. "Showing love might not be the universal answer, but it is close. If you're not loving, learning, or serving, you're probably wasting your time." If there's one thing I've learned over the last year or so, it's that never have truer words been spoken than those! This work is all about love... and because of that, I've decided to focus on charity again for this transfer! 

Alright last thing. Friday was a rough day. Because sometimes you just have rough days as missionaries. It seemed like every person we talked to on the street and every person we had lessons with was just set on tearing down the church and shaking our testimonies. Well first off, I'd just like to clarify that they did not shake my testimony. That will never happen. But it did kind of bring us down a little bit. It's hard to hear stuff like that all day when the thing that they're trying to tear down is so much a part of you... But anyways. Then Saturday morning during studies, I was just doing my usual reading of the Book of Mormon and I just so happened to be at the part that talks about Alma and Amulek. I was thinking about how hard it must have been for them to see all those innocent people burned because they believed in God, or how hard it must have been for them to just stay perfectly silent when people were slapping them and yelling at them and telling them the things they believed in weren't true. And then I realized that even though I haven't experienced anything that severe on my mission, I can relate in just a tiny way to what they went through. I guess that's just always going to be a part of believing in the true church... there's always going to be opposition. But it's up to us to decide what we do with that opposition... if we let it tear down our testimonies, or use it to build us and make us stronger. I've decided to use all those experiences to build my testimony. Because this church is true and nothing anyone ever says or does will change that. 

I love this gospel. And I just love how missions show you exactly how true the church is! 

Oh, also... ya'll should read the Old Testament sometime. I'm in 2 Samuel now and it's super interesting! 

xoxoxoxo, 

Sister Oman 

Egg Factory.  We had to get all dressed up to go inside.

This is the incubator...the eggs go in here for 18 days when they first get to the hatchery.

The chicks that barely hatched that day.

Some of the machinery used to vaccinate the chickens in the eggs right before they hatch.  Super duper cool to see!

Brother Thomas, the one who works at the factory.  He's super cool and a great member missionary!!

The big tower is where they kill all the "defective" baby chickens.  I got so sad about that part.  I almost cried.  

Our adopted puppies are so cute!  They actually belong to our neighbor but we feed them our leftovers that are too old sometimes so they love us.  

I got to see everyone at the sister's meeting on Thursday!

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We fit fourteen missionaries in this van, impressive right?

Our investigators are darlings and they give us giant papayas to eat sometimes.  Yummy Yummy!!

A cute kitten at a ward member's house.

We have to cross a giant bridge over the highway on our way to church every week.  This is the view...so you can see a lot of the area!

Nassau district reunion at the sisters meeting!  I love these ladies so much.  we just had a blast telling stories form Nassau and laughing for what seemed like days :)

Old Harbor!