10/27/2014: Back to the Basics :)

Hello Family!

This week was fantastic! And crazy. I loved it! The work is definitely keeping us busy! :)

Monday (which was Heroes day here in Jamaica!), Sister Walker and I had to drive to Spanishtown for the training meeting for trainers, which was fantastic! President Brown really is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. It helped me to really understand better my role as a trainer. The Lord is trusting me with a brand new missionary and I have definitely been blessed to have her as my companion. :) She is the greatest!! Her name is Sister Garrett from Sacramento, California. I love her to death! We have grown really, really close and are definitely the best of friends :) We clicked right from the start.

So on Wednesday, Sister Walker and I drove to Spanishtown again.... for transfer meeting this time. I was so excited to finally find out who my companion would be! But I was sad that Sister Walker and I would be leaving each other after only 6 weeks together... That night Sister Garrett and I drove up to Parrytown to see some recent converts, Tajara, Rajaro, and Eli. I'm pretty sure I have talked about them. They are the ones that we have to hike all the way up a mountain to see. haha! Sister Garrett got a good taste of missionary work in Jamaica. ;) We had a great spiritual lesson with them though. Sister Garrett is still trying to get down understanding the patois and the accents haha. I guess I never really saw the progression I had made with being able to tell what they are saying until she came with wide eyes and blank looks. She was giving me confused looks all night long and then when we talked about the lesson after she understood what was going on more and what they said. haha! It was kinda funny. I really do LOVE Sister Garrett! She just has this great fire and enthusiasm for missionary work. :)

Thursday we had a cool experience. We met Kimoya at the church and the senior couple, Elder and Sister Hardy happened to be there. Well they were going to leave but we asked if they wanted to join us. Elder Hardy and to do some Branch business so Sister Hardy stayed. It was cool because we talked about the importance of church attendance and the sacrament and how she would need to make that sacrifice of money to come to church.  Sister Hardy happened to have watched this GREAT video about making sacrifices the other day and we were able to show it to Kimoya right then because sister Hardy has this cool high-tech thing called an iPad that we could watch it on! It REALLY brought the spirit in even stronger and we could tell the influence it made on Kimoya. Then sunday came and she was at church! It was THE MOST AMAZING thing! I LOVE his Gospel with all my heart! :) Gotta love the Spirit. :)

We have had a great week though. Training is amazing because I am going back to the basics and that is where we lay the foundation. Sister Garrett is SUCH a strong missionary. Haha. The people just love her! She is so good with people. :) Her Testimony is really strong and I know these next eleven weeks that we have together, hopefully longer, are just going to get better and better.

I love you all. Thanks for your emails and updates. Have a safe and blessed week!

Love,

Sister Mouritsen

Here is a portion of Sister Garrett's email on the same day describing her new companion and her initial impressions of Jamaica: 

"I am in Ocho Rios with Sister Mouritson.  We call it Ochi because that is how you say it in patios.  This is one of the "nicer" parts of the country because it is where the tourists go.  Everyone on the island loves Ochi.  So Sister Mouritson is amazing.  She is from Kaysville, UT and guess who was her YW president?  RHODELLE GRAHAM!!!  I was showing her my photo album this morning and she saw a picture that has Sierra and Kami in it and she freaks out and tells me that they are in her ward!  Such a small world.  I love my trainer so much.  She is seriously amazing.  She has taught me so much and is constantly teaching me.  We have such a tight companionship.  We are on the same page and we are in such unity.  I love it!   Funny story so the Monday before I got here was a holiday and so they couldn't go shopping.  So guess what I have had every morning since transfers?  Ricearoni broccli rice...  Disgusting.  It is good but not for breakfast every morning for a week.  But what can you do when you have nothing else in the apartment?  Other than that I love it here!   Ochi is a beautiful place.  We have a truck which is a good thing because our area is HUGE.  Some of the members live an hour and a half away.  Don't worry mom, Sister Mouritson likes to run and we go running everyday.  Sister Mouritson and I live in a house by ourselves which is great because we only have one bathroom.  So the roads here are INSANE.  The only road that is good is the highway.  Jamaica is such a poor country.  You should see some of the "houses" that are here...  Unbelievable.  Just thinking about what I have back home compared to what is here makes me realize how blessed I am.  Some of the things I have seen here are hard to even put into words. The two biggest problems here are ganja, aka weed (obviously) and the law of chastity.  The question isn't do you have any kids?  It's how many kids do you have?  We have recent converts with 14 kids with 14 different baby mamas.  Not exaggerating at all. There isn't really a concept of marriage and family.  There isn't a day that goes by that I don't smell weed.  People just smoke it on the street like its no big deal.  Basically the MTC was amazing but didn't prepare me for how I would be teaching lessons.  We teach lessons with rasta music blasting.  You can hardly walk anywhere without hearing that music.  People put boom boxes on top of their car.  Super ghetto like haha.  Or they have it in their houses.  It is so loud.  But even with the music blasting we can still have such spiritual lessons.  I love it!  I am understanding about 50% right now, which according to Sister Mouritson is really good.  Even though I can't understand a lot I love the language.  They mumble, speak fast and use words I have no idea what they are saying so my companion teaches most of the lessons and then when we get to the car I just look at her and she busts up laughing because she knows exactly what is going on in my head. 
So being a white person here I haven't ever felt so out of place. We get a lot of "HEY WHITIES".  Oh and we get hit on.  Daily.  I got pretty much proposed to the other day when we went to visit Brother McNish at his work.  This guy told me that he wanted to marry me and all this stuff.  Sister Mouritson told him he had to go to church."