Kissing Lizards

Hello Mom,
That's awesome that you found Elder Fietkau's blog! He's so cool-- he was a convert for a year when he came out on his mission and he's one of the wisest and most spiritual kids I know, I really enjoyed serving around him:)

That's awesome Kate and Ella are doing Peter Pan! Film it so I can watch later. I can't believe Kate broke her arm again! Tell her I'm sending her all my loving healing energy.

The hurricane storm thing didn't even rain over here! In fact there's a drought in Jamacia right now. Since they don't irrigate, all the crops are starting to die. Don't worry, the mission has a great system for huricanes and TONS of precautions against them.

Thanks for sending the stuff mom, that means a lot and I've really missed my mints:)

Sorry I don't have as many pictures this week, not to much happened. But we did have 22 lessons which is the most I've ever had, but this is the 5th week in a row not having any one at church. People just don't like to come to church unless it's the one next door:) And literally every house has a church next door, half the time I think people choose their denomination based on which church is closest:)
I love you so much mom 

Love Luke

This picture is kinda random but seriously what are they doing!?!?!

Me and Elder Ashworth had some extra time the other day so we decided to branch out in to our area... we got lost in the middle of some million acre orange orchard, but it was really pretty:)

Burning some Gs in the front yard... perks to living in Jamaica. Got some trash?... burn it. Where? Anywhere.

Mad Machete Skillz Paying Off!!

Service project Jamaican style!!!! Chopping the grass in the yard with a machete, and mixing cement by hand with a shovel! Hardest work I've ever done! We helped a lady in the community fix up her school house:) It was a blast! 

Some mormons from Salt Lake who work for KSL came and filmed it all too and they said we would all be on in between sessions of the Oct. General Conference.

I could mix cement so good by the end of the day that all the Jamaicans in our ward were yelling that I could mix cement like a Jamaican:) but they said I chopped the yard like a white man and that I should just stick to mixing cement:)

In addition to laying a drive way and chopping the bush we also patched her roof with the stickers made of tar:) So I got on the roof:)

Elder Ashworth, Bro. Blake and Bro. Walker taking a rest in the shade. Me on the roof.

Mixing, and Bishop giving orders:) He ran the show like an Army drill! He's a cop.

Finished Product

 

Part of our area is up on a super tall mountain called Gibraltar.  Wow,  it was a tuff bike ride but going down was a blast!

They're also cutting a huge freeway in the side of the mountain! The Chinese are paying for it and Jamaica is going to pay them back over fifty years!

Doesn't look that steep right?:) Well think again!!! It's like the stairs in the Lord of the Rings!!!
This is how they do it on Jamaican construction sites:)

Service at a members, this is Elder Ashworth chopping a tree with a machete. We chopped this thing to pieces! It was awesome, bet you never thought my chopping skills would come in handy right mom? ;)

I thought this was funny, one of our investigators has a weed plant:)

Fastidious new companion, crashes, candy eating donkeys and slack lining stoners.... Oh my!

So this week I got my new companion Elder Ashworth, he's a total Mormon kid from Idaho. He's 20, I  think and he's cool, a total clean freak though!!! The first night he got to the house he cleaned everything!!! He mopped, he cleaned the stove, he cleaned under the stove! He cleaned under the washer and the fridge!!! But hey, I'm not complaining:) I feel like we make a good team for teaching others.

This is me and Elder Packer right before he went home. I already miss serving with him :)but the day before he left I crashed my bike hard! I was peddling up a really steep hill super fast and my gears broke, so I fell down, luckily I was wearing my helmet-- which saved me, literally. But my arm got pretty scraped up, and my front rim got folded up pretty good:) Don't worry though, my arm is almost all better and I fixed my bike. The guy at the bike shop gave me a rim with red, white and blue spokes. I can't tell if he did it on purpose or not:) but it's really cool looking.

So far since I've been in Jamiaca, I've been asked or begged for practically everything.
My money, my tie, my shirt, my shoes, my socks! I know right?! A lady asked me for my socks! My bike, my helmet, my bag, even my daily planner someone asked me for! Also, I've been asked to get married twice:) and someone asked me for my face once and my hair. It's so funny people will just ask you for stuff even if they don't need it:) They do it kinda as a joke, but if you offer, they'll actually take it:) I've also been asked for my guinep fruit,  which I actually share:)

We also did a service project for one of our investigators named Vavine. We helped her move a ton of dirt to lay for her foundation of her house. We also carried some crazy heavy railroad ties for her fence posts. It was really hard work and I'm pretty sure she started taking lessons so we would help her with her house... but I'm happy to help anyway:)

I also caught this crazy 40 legger while we were working. It's like 8 inches long and they are extremely poisonous. One bite will render you useless for a week, so I smashed it up:)

Ok first crazy story! So today for P day we went to a members house who has a field and we played cricket and football (soccer) and frisbee, but we also set up my slackline and everyone tried it! It was awesome! This picture is a high rasta man who just walked over and hoped on! It was sick-- he was flailing around all over the place and everyone was laughing and all the littile kids were so excited to see the white man game:) Wow, I never thought my slack line would make such a good picture but all these little kids are awesome!

White man up to bat

White man up a tree

Trade offs in the rain! It poured for like 5 hours, everything was a river! Everyone thinks we are crazy :)

Rasta man on a donkey asking you to buy it some candy to eat. Classic Jamaica :)

The district before Elder Packer left. Now we are back up to six elders in Linstead Jamaica. Elder Hall is training a new missionary who looks like he's 15:) He's really cool though, poor kid crashed his bike the first day in Jamaica and then again later that week. But he's doing good:)

Yes, this is a three gallon box of ice cream:) It was wonderful:)

Bad Haircuts, Racism, and Creative Cooking

 Transfers are not this week but next, and then Elder Packer will be leaving. I will most likely stay in this area for one or two more transfers but I will be leading it, since I will get a new companion or possibly a trainee. That would be crazy if I trained. Since I killed two different trainers I'm kind of a legend, since that's never happened before. It will be weird when Elder Packer leaves because I kinda feel like he was my real trainer the whole time. He's really awesome, I will miss him when he leaves.
If I did leave this area this transfer, I think that would actually be pretty cool. I'm already ready for a change of scenery, but the people here I love-- so either way is good.

This is my new hair cut! It's really short, I just had Elder Gordan (the Jamaican) cut it really short because it's so hot. He cut it pretty well actually, it's only a little uneven, or as the say in Jamaica-- 'lickle'. 

The other day in church the police came before sacrament and told us all about the murder statistics and how we as a church need to do more. It was strange, but we sang a song after which brought back the spirit haha:) 

Also, I said a prayer (kneeling) in the middle of the road the other day! This guy chased us down on our bikes yelling like a madman for us to pray for him. So we said yes and he just prostrated himself on the ground in the middle of the road! So I knelt and said a prayer for him that he wouldn't be crazy basically:) and then he got up and just walked away...  Regular day in Jamaica for the white guys:)
Why can everyone out here call us 'white man' but if we call them black man they freak out??!?! The Jamaican missionary I live with explained it to me like this, "You see Elder Johnson,  this is our country so we can call you white man, but you can't call us black man in our country, that's racist. If we were in your country you could call us black man and that would be fine." I just said,  "Oh,  is that what you think? hahaha,  take it from the guy who's been in both countries, that wouldn't fly in America!" :) Elder Gordan is so funny, he does the funniest things sometimes:) 

This week I was pretty broke because I had to pay for a hospital visit for when I got worms and it took them a while to reimburse me:) So I tried some pretty interesting combinations:) I'm just grateful I can buy something other than rice today:)

 peanut butter and jelly rice

 rice and syrup (just don't even try it)

I also made some dumplings (boiled flour) with some canned mackerel on it (mackerel is the whole fish head bones everything all in tomato sauce) but that was actually pretty good on the dumplings:)
Some things I haven't eaten yet and am not looking forward to are:
Chicken foot soup (it looks like baby hands)
Ox tail stew (literally a cows tail)

Big foot stew (it's all bones and skin-- what the freak!?!?!)
There's a few interesting dishes out here but my companion tells me all of the above are his favorite and he'd rather eat them than fried chicken (the usual dish). At first I didn't believe him, but now I think he's serious. 

Blessings, Fruit and Worms

So far I’ve given a lot of blessings out here, including one to an investigator who is dying of a kidney disease. my patriarchal blessing says everyone I lay my hands on to be healed, will in fact be healed, and I have faith in God that He can really do that, so I’m really excited to see how that all happens.

God’s been showing me that there are a ton of spiritual gifts, like recently He’s given me the gift to mourn with those that mourn. It’s awesome, I feel like I can feel what people are going through, but instead of making me sad, it just makes me have hope for them and then I can help them because I know where they’re coming from. It’s cool.

Let me tell you Dad, I love families. Out here it is almost impossible to find a functioning family. No one gets married, everyone lives with everyone and no one knows whose kid is whose. It hurts me so bad because all I can feel is the pain that comes from it. The people we find out here with families are usually always the most prepared to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ into their lives. It just made me so grateful that I was raised in such a strong family, and I’ve learned that I have to do everything I can to raise a strong family too.

So the guy with kidney disease is still alive, he’s not doing so good though. We’ve been trying to help him understand the nature of Christ. He doesn’t even really understand the virgin birth. But in the blessing I gave him I told him he would, in fact, be healed, but the speed in which he would be healed would be dependent on his obedience and faith in God and His commandments. It definitely wasn’t me giving the blessing.

It’s not rude to take pictures of people(I asked why he hasn’t sent any photos home of Jamaicans). I just try not to pull out my camera when there’s a lot of people around (which is almost all the time), cause if people know you have nice things welllll they rob you. I’ll try to take some pics with a few of my investigators -there’s a few I can trust:)

I guess what I do with my time is this, I’m in the house with Elder Packer till 10:00 am, then we leave and walk or bike probably like a 5 mile radius around our house, sometimes farther. We just teach people we’ve made previous appointments with or we find new people to teach by talking to people on the street (everyone just walks up and down the street if they have nothing to do-- which is a lot). Right now me and Elder Packer have got the next 5 days full of appointments with investigators. The only thing is that almost everyone will make an appointment with you and then not be there or tell you they’re busy when you come at the time they set up, hahaha. It’s just kind of the chill mentality of Jamaica, so mostly we just teach whoever is home, right on the spot:) We get more lessons in that way anyway:)

We figured out that Thunder man actually is crazy, whether he’s high or not, he just makes up his own gospel every time:) He calls me Elder Thunder though, which is pretty sick! It’s kinda become my yard name (everyone here has a yard name) plus like 6 other names! It’s so hard to find people sometimes! We’ll ask people, "Hey do you know where Horace lives?" and they say, "Who?"
" You know the Rasta with the dreads?"
"OH Robot!" and then we’re like "... yeah Robot!" It’s funny everyone kinda has their own code language.

They have these crazy trees out here called bread fruit, and it’s basically a green potato tree and you roast them right on the stove top, and then fry them and they’re so good! Look up bread fruit trees online, they look like it’s where Dr.Seuss got his inspiration, in fact I think he got all his illustrations from here.

This is one of the Elders who lives with us in our house, his name his Elder Ostrowskei. In this picture he’s holding a jack fruit. They grow right out of the trunk of trees and get bigger than watermelons! He really likes it, so he’s pretty happy about it:)

This other picture is some guinep fruit, I climbed a guinep tree to get it! It’s so good!!!!! You crack off the shell and then you pop the yellow part in your mouth and kinda suck and chew all the meat off the cherry-like size pit, and WOW! They are soooooooo good --favorite fruit by far!!!!! BoM in the back ground just cause.

This is me and my companion at the church field, we are about to play soccer, and the missionaries actually beat the Jamaican members, but probably only cause of Elder Gordan who’s a Jamaican:) It was a fun night on the way home I got some jerk chicken from a street vendor who was selling it out of a 50 gallon drum/make shift barbecue. It was so good, but I asked for hot sauce and this guys homemade hot sauce was killer! It was so freaking hot, I thought I was going to die! They easily have peppers out here hotter than ghost peppers!

This is a pic of me making chocolate pancakes ( healthy right?;) made from pancake mix cocoa powder and chocolate lasco ( chocolate milk powder).

This is Elder Packer and I. There’s a lady in our ward who’s extremely crafty and he had her make matching planner covers for us- they are so cool! Mine has 51 stars on the American flag haha! She only charged him the equivalent of like $10. She also makes scripture cases! I’m going to get one that is an American flag with 1/4 of the corner a Japanese flag, it’s going to be sick!

A view over the orange fields of Linsted, Jamaica. White people own these orange fields and they live in this huge mansion.

Everyone here calls us white man or white boy. so when I see a white person here I want to say "Hah! white man!" in a Jamaican accent haha!  E. Packer goes home in two weeks! Then I’ll be done with training and I might end up being a trainer myself! That would be crazy though. I doubt they’ll do that:) It’s to bad I’m killing all my trainers- I’m back to only knowing like two missionaries again:) (killing means you’re with them for their last transfer)

My Patois sucks, I can still barely understand it even. Oh, I almost forgot, I got worms!!! I had to take a pill to get rid of them but I was eating so much for a couple of weeks!:) They’re gone now, no side effects from them or the medication, just have to wash the mangos better.

Don’t miss me Dad. Love you both, love the family, Luke

Wild goats

We've got like over ten different investigators right now, some are really doing well. We have one family who we teach ( it's crazy hard to find a family) and the mother has seen angels and both parents believe in love and Christ and devoting their lives to God. I've felt very strongly to teach them baptism, and so far they've agreed to be baptized and our lessons have really been powerful.

This week we taught an older lady named Pam and we invited her to church and she said she didn't have money for a taxi but she'd come anyway because she knew God would provide a way for her, and she came! It really is special to find someone with true faith in God, even to action, and coming to church.

Some of our area is waaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere! hahaha-- it's my favorite place:)

The thunder and lightning out here are insane!!! This is a picture of lightning so far away you couldn't even hear it.

Everyone thinks we're crazy for walking in the rain out here ( they believe that the rain makes you sick). People will just yell out to us, "White man!! Get out of the rain!!" There's one guy in our area, every time he sees us he just yells, "WHITE!" and then leaves! hahaha he's so funny:)

Goats!!!! Lots of goats out here, I can't tell if they're wild or domestic.

Me and my companion. He's really cool.

Jamaica Kingston Missionaries

Rastafarians

Hi everyone,

Things here have been good, it’s really hot, but the rain has died down. Luckily, I’m getting used to just sweating a small ocean every time I step out into the sun:)

Teaching here is really quite difficult. I think it’s because of the doctrine thing. People here just believe the first doctrine they hear from their church-- so when we introduce new doctrine, they rarely listen, because they are so caught up in their way vs. your way-- kind of thing. I’ve found the only way to get through to them, is to talk about Christ, and love and help them realize that on the spiritual level, we’re on the same page, but even still there are just some people who won’t listen to anything you say no matter what. But I still love everyone I come across, and it pushes me forward every day.

Last week like I said, we went to the beach. The water is soooooo clear!!! We played soccer until they kicked us off the beach for not paying a huge amount of money for drinks. Dang it the pictures won’t download again. Sorry, I’ll try and make it work, but no promises, my card gets a virus like every two seconds so I have to keep getting it cleared.

This is the end of my first transfer (first six weeks). One of my companions, Elder Humphrys is leaving, so my other companion, Elder Packer, will finish my training and it will just be the two of us. I’m excited for it to only be two of us—I’m starting to feel like I don’t get to say much. I like Elder Packer, he’s a really cool guy, but after this next six weeks he goes home too, so both of my trainers are leaving and then I won’t know anyone again. Oh well.

It’s so much fun talking to all the people here, some of them really do have some crazy ideas, especially the Rastas! :) Rastafarians are totally different than I expected. Out here, they’re usually in the lower class, and are always crazy-stoned-out-of-their-mind, but are not exactly chill. In fact they’re often hostile and some carry machetes all over the place. You just walk away from those ones. :)

I love you mom and I love you family!









My District in front of the church



Cook shop meal, fried chicken, veggies, akki and salt fish, dumpling and rice and peas