Like the Guyanese Do

We got Elizabeth baptized on Saturday and for once I have to say that I was happy that I didn't baptize her. We did it in a "clean" trench but it was considered clean because it had no trash floating around in it. We also had Diwali this week and I did a trade off over in Rose Hall and it was pretty cool. I went into a Hindu Temple and it was a pretty interesting experience. People believe some interesting things. We didn't have many lessons this week because we prepared for the baptism and people were partying too much because of Diwali. There were plenty of fireworks and it was neat. We got a good amount of food for free but it was all sweets. The Caribbean is full of sweet things and sometimes I just want something savory to eat. I did get 7 curry for the first time just a few days before Diwali. I don't know all the 7 curries in it but some are pumpkin and chickpeas. Diwali is supposed to be vegetarian so there were no meats. I ate the 7 curry with my hands like the Guyanese do it. We are going to be focusing on another area named Bushlot now. They have like 13 people come to church a week. I raised Rosignol from about 30 to 60 in about the last transfer. I think the free chicken sign up thing is why a lot of people are coming to church though. They get free chickens to harvest and grow. In Bushlot we have the acting branch president who has a friend who wants to join the church and leave being a pastor behind and he wants to bring 5 other people with him into the church. I think Bushlot is about to boom. We had a goal for 5 baptisms this transfer but it might be possible that we go beyond that. Things are looking way positive and I hope that I get to make a positive report on that. I might finish up these last few transfers with a lot of success. Well not much left to say so I will talk to you all next week.

Classic Guyana

This week has been the cliche Guyana week. We got quite a few laughs and some good hard work done. We are covering 2 branches and just opened up a new area or actually starting to work in there. We plan on getting 2 baptisms there in Blairemont. It will be from a part member family so hopefully it reactivates the family. I made my new planner cover and I like it except we didn't have contact paper so the tape just looks unattractive. I decided that since I have only a few transfers left I would start putting cool memories from back at home as backside covers for planners. This one had a picture of Me and Jace with the singer of Silverstein and I showed it off to some people and they must have bad eye sight because they thought the singer was either: my mom, girlfriend or sister. She said that "she" also has a beard. Had to get the glasses on for that one I guess. This week we have found success with using a Gospel Art Book. It has pictures of all the Bible and Book of Mormon stories and shows a lot of good visuals. It's perfect to use with the average Guyanese. We took it to a less active member's house and they brought a friend over. Sister Gampat (The less active member) saw 

us open up and talk about prophets. Me: Who was the first prophet? (Picture of Adam and Eve kneeling at an alter) Sis Gampat: (Looking at the picture) THOMAS S. MONSON!

They only know Thomas S. Monson and Joseph Smith. Then we got to a picture of Jesus and she screams out "JESUS!" We showed a picture of Abraham and Issac and the guy there who is a less active Muslim says: Abraham and Ishmael.

I had to tell him it was Issac which felt somewhat weird. We dropped him later that week because he knows he needs to change but he won't. This week we visited a part member family and taught the kids something good and then the dad starts walking home as drunk as a skunk and the kids were a bit embarrassed that they had to go help their dad walk to the house. This makes me glad that I have righteous parents who don't drink or disobey God's commandments. I love my parents for being such a good example to me. I would hate to have to help my Dad get into the house from being too drunk. We also ran into a teenager who was in a van ride with us and he was a bit rowdy because he was drinking his second beer and he started to talk disrespectfully about women. Elder Palavi being pretty big especially to a small Indian punk teenager had him shut up pretty quick. The teenager said his father was a pastor for a church. He sure didn't act like a pastor's son either. He thought Ephesians was in the Old Testament. I remember when I was a teenager. Well good news is that Elder Dearing who is one of my two MTC companions is coming to Guyana but to Georgetown side! My other companion is a Zone Leader in Georgetown. I am going to meet up with them on my birthday in Georgetown so it will be so fun! Elder Dearing will be in my first area called Diamond. I hope I get to serve there before I come home! Well lastly it's sad that we are getting contention in the branch. Someone was offended because their kid didn't get a cookie and I guess it was faults on both ends. Everyone here just wants to argue so we are here to help there be peace. We have a baptism this Saturday for Elizabeth! She is the lady in the middle of the picture. She isn't too smart but she sure is a great lady and we hope having a baptism unifies the branch a little more. Working hard out here with lots of ground to cover. That's Guyana though. Big big areas.

Burning of the pants

Well not too much craziness happened this week other than hitting the big 18 month mark! It's all down hill from here. Of course I did some pants burning and they smelled really bad. I had this pair of pants from basically the time I left home. They were really raggy and I just didn't bother to ever wear them. They were a little small too. They surprisingly were actually pretty hard to get on fire too. Well I officially feel old now too. Time is really just going to fly by. Next month is my birthday and then December is Christmas and then it's 2015 and I will be headed home at the beginning of April. Three whole months when the year ends. I have made myself a little goal though. I want to get pictures with animals every week so I have been doing that since I got back here in Guyana. Our baptism date for Elizabeth is still going good. We have to teach really slow and repeat ourselves a lot. She didn't get a really good education so we are working hard to help her. We also are going to start covering another branch that we live next to. We have a lot of work we can do and we need more investigators. Just getting to the area where we usually work takes about 30 minutes by van ride. We have that area in between and even further. We are going to be planning days to be going to one area's branch and then other days in other branches. The branch we live next to has about less than 10 people going to church each week so we got a lot of work to do there. We only know one family there so we are going to have to work through them. My hair has grown pretty long as you can see with the bird in my hair. I am going to go get it cut after emails. Fast and testimony meeting was interesting. We had one of our.... Interesting members go up and bear his testimony about how the Dictionary is scripture. He called me out and asked me if that's right. I wonder what it will be like to be in a real fast and testimony meeting in 6 months. He also talked about D&C 132 about Joseph Smith and the wives. I went up after and bore my testimony using Ephesians chapter 4. I really like the book of Ephesians and how it talks about the organization of Christ's church. I talked about how it is such a blessing that today we have a prophet and apostles as we saw last week in conference. Well there is not much left to say other than we got a busy week this next week in getting to know our other area. Hopefully we get a car or something so we can cover tons of area. That probably won't happen plus it would probably make me lazy. Well I love you all and talk to you next week!

Mormon Weekend vs Muslim Weekend

Well this weekend just kinda snuck up on me. For most of the week I didn't even think that Conference was coming. We had a busy week but not busy teaching wise. We had an apartment inspection and that surprisingly took up took the whole day because the Senior Couple didn't know where we live. We live way too far from our area and so we need to move more into our area. We found a nice place and look forward to moving in hopefully at the beginning of next month. Well a somewhat funny story is that we helped a member make a Skype account but the computer was being strange. It came time for him to make a password. He asked us what he should make his password. I told him something like his mom's name or his favorite color or Elder Brown is the best. His password was "Elderbrownbest123" I guess out here in Berbice they take things literally. Well this weekend was a Muslim holiday where they sacrifice bulls and then give meat to people. I got to eat some beef curry for lunch after the morning session of Sunday Conference. I didn't have to say a prayer to bless the food but I did anyways just to make sure the right God blessed it. I thought it was really funny because one of the talks that was on right before we went there was talking about how we don't need to make sacrifices anymore. We missed Priesthood session but I hope to download it and watch it some time soon. We live far from the church and it's hard to catch travel late at night. Priesthood ends at 10pm so we went to the church near our house but the internet was way too slow to watch conference. I saw all the conference except for Priesthood. Elder Bednar gave one of my favorite talks. I always want to hear talks that are directed to investigators because if it's all about the members then investigators are totally lost. I just envisioned the story he told about his sons with the band aids and laughed so much. That is why we share the Gospel though. We want others to feel good too. It really made me think about why I signed up for 2 years. Well not much left to say but I really enjoyed conference and here is a picture of the water I used to wash. This is before I put any clothes in it.

Love,
Elder Kyle Joseph