Colorado to Kingston : Free fruit, Puddle jumping and the Atonement!!

Wat a gwaan!!

This week was AMAZING. Again! I don't know what we're doing to be blessed this much, but the work has just picked up and it's moving full force ahead. We couldn't be more blessed! My heart is just full of gratitude :)

Here's some highlights of the week:

We were walking to a lesson with a less active member when a guy called to us. We stopped for a minute and he said that he just wanted to give us some guinep (actually I don't know how to spell that word but it's my most favorite fruit in the entire world) and so that's the story of how we each got an insane amount of guinep for free!

We stopped at a house to talk to someone and after we finished getting his number and stuff we were like "Hey, can we have one of those mangos?" (He had a HUGE mango tree just full of the delicious fruit in his yard.) He said of course, and gave us not just one each... but seven mangos. Woohoo it was a great day.

Haha a lot of our highlights this week apparently came from food... We had cleaning checks on Thursday, and the senior couple that did our cleaning check brought us home-made chocolate chip cookies!! You guys. They were the first home-made chocolate chip cookies I've had in almost 15 months. That's a really long time. It was heaven on earth. We just sat on the floor and ate them and talked about how grateful we are for senior couples haha.

We had branch conference yesterday at church, and you know what that means... lots of visitors from the stake! Which meant I got to see some of my favourite people from Portmore :) It's like a sort of family reunion every time that happens. I just love it :)

There was a huge rainstorm Saturday night. When the rain started, we were in our last appointment for the night. By the time the lesson was over, it was just dumping buckets of rain. Like buckets and buckets and buckets of rain. I've never seen raindrops that big. Our investigator asked us if we wanted an umbrella (Because silly me left my umbrella at home. Sister Thurgood was prepared and brought hers.) but since it was our last appointment of the night, we decided to just walk in the rain. You guys, puddle jumping on deserted streets in Jamaica at 9:00 at night in the pouring rain is officially my favourite pastime. That is going to be probably one of my favourite memories from my entire mission :) I love puddle jumping.

Alright now for why this week was amazing work wise. We had TWO PEOPLE at church yesterday. That's the first time that's happened in who knows how long. They both loved it. And they're coming back next week hopefully. And one of them accepted a baptism date. It's amazing!

Anyways. One of the people at church yesterday was the lady I talked about in my last email that stopped us and asked us for a Bible, which we didn't have... but we did give her a Book of Mormon. When we came back for a lesson, she'd read eight pages and was loving it. She invited herself to church, told us when she knows it's true she'll be baptized, and then told us how she's been looking for a church that has the whole truth. Well we had good news for her: she's found it! We're so excited to work with her. And her family :)

I've been studying about the Atonement and change and becoming like Christ and the Plan of Salvation and faith and a bunch of other stuff lately... and I just keep coming back to this quote. I love it, so I want to share it with you :)

"The purpose and central blessing of this life is change. It is to incorporate into your character the qualities of His character. It is to move from one degree of intelligence and capacity to the next, and from there to the next, until you see God face to face and know Him as He knows you." -Lawrence E. Corbridge

I love that. I'm so grateful for the atonement and how we are all able to change and come to know God and Jesus Christ just a little more every day. Over the course of my mission, I've seen so many people come closer to Christ through the changes that they make in their lives, and I don't think there could ever be a greater miracle than seeing that happen. I've experienced more than ever before how the Atonement blesses my life, and I think over the last two weeks I've come to appreciate that more than ever before in my life.

Christ lives. Heavenly Father loves us. This church is true!

I love you all.

xoxoxoxo,

Sister Oman

I made homemade pizza last week and it was delicious. the end.

Guinep. Or however you spell it. You bite open the outside, take that orange part out of the middle, suck all the delicious fruit off the seed, and then spit the seed out. It's amazing.

This is Jamaica!!

These cows are my friends. Sometimes I moo at them when we walk by and they moo back.

During out weekly planning session this week, there were goats AND a tractor in our backyard. It was a bit chaotic...only in Jamaica!

The Jamaican flag on the way home from church.

We climbed a very tall wall and took pictures. All the while we sand, "I'm up on to top of the world, hey". WE were going to do service so it did have a purpose. Don't worry we weren't slacking off!!