Tender Mercies Galore

This week shall forever go down in my mind as the week of tender mercies. I still can't believe how blessed we were this week... it seems like every few minutes we just got little reminders that the Lord is mindful of us and especially of the people we're working with!! 

But let's back up a little... 

We spent a lot of the day Monday at the church playing Phase 10 with our district. Man, I love Phase 10! But... that meant that we didn't have a lot of time to clean and so we spent every minute of our lunch and dinner hour on Tuesday and all evening Monday cleaning and organizing the house and getting Sister Slater packed and ready to go. So that made for a pretty crazy couple of days! 

Wednesday we got picked up super early to go to transfer meeting! We got there like two or three hours early so we just had to sit in the church with some other missionaries to wait for the meeting to start... It felt so weird. I can't remember the last time I just sat around like that except for p-days. 

Anyways... at transfer meeting a few things happened. First, like half of the missionaries I know and have served around bore their final testimonies to go home. That was so weird. 

And then... drum roll please... I got my new companion!! Her name is Sister Thurgood, she's amazing, and I love her to death :) I can't even believe she's only been on a mission a few days! She's just absolutely a super prepared missionary and I am so lucky to be her companion :) 

Like I mentioned earlier... we've been seeing so many tender mercies this week. To name a few... 

• It's been cooler than usual and breezy so we don't die of heat when we walk places 
• We've had more than one free ride from members so we don't have to walk as much as we normally do 
• We had three meal appointments in one week... which is unheard of in this area. Usually we count ourselves super blessed if we get one meal appointment! 
• You know how the last few weeks our appointments keep falling through and we just walk a lot? That hasn't happened at all since Sister Thurgood got here. It's amazing! 

Not to mention the fact that ever since she got here random people just appear who seem super prepared to hear the gospel. Let me tell you about a few of the experiences we've had. 

• We were walking to an appointment a few nights ago when a car pulled up next to us. The guy said "You guys Mormon?" And of course we said yes. He then pulled a Book of Mormon out of his glove box, said, "Some missionaries in another parish gave this to me a few weeks ago. I used to take lessons from them and I went to church a bunch of times but I wasn't ready yet." So of course we asked him if he's ready now, he said yes, we asked him to start reading the Book of Mormon, and we're going to have a lesson with him in a few days! 
• Yesterday we were walking to another appointment and a lady yelled across the street asking for a Bible. We called her over and said that we didn't have any Bibles, but we did have the Book of Mormon. We taught her a little bit about what the Book of Mormon is, and she said she'd love to learn more. She walked over to her house and started to read. We're meeting with her again tomorrow. 
• We were leaving an appointment when a guy came up and asked us how a few other sister missionaries were. They used to serve here, so I asked him if they used to teach him. He said yes, he loved it and went to church every Sunday for about two months, but they had to stop because he got too busy with school. So we asked him if he was still busy and he said after this week he won't be, so we got his number and we're going to teach him!! 
• Andddd we got two referrals this week! Compared to the zero referrals we got last week and the week before, that's a pretty big deal. 

All of these things might not seem like very big deals to you guys, but to us, they were huge. Every time something like that happened, it just reminded us that the Lord is so mindful of us and this really is His work!! 

We didn't do much to celebrate the Fourth this year because we're in Jamaica... but we did sing America the Beautiful for companion studies and studied scriptures having to do with freedom in honor of America. So that was good. 

We did some super fun service this week! We got to pull down a bunch of vines, dig up some banana and plantain trees, and plant some new trees! The best part was that we found a snake (just a tiny little one probably no more than six inches long and like as fat as my little finger) and one of the elders chased his screaming companion around with it for about five minutes. I don't remember the last time I laughed that hard. It was hilarious. I love service projects haha. 

To close this email, I'd just like the share something Brother Pryce said yesterday when he was teaching gospel principles. 

"When we are obedient, we increase in the person God wants us to become." 

I love that quote. If there's one thing I've learned on my mission, it's that nothing in life happens the way it's supposed to when we aren't obedient to the commandments. When we are obedient, we draw closer to God and become more like him every day! 

Love you all!! Have a great week! 

xoxoxo,

Sister Oman 

Our district from last transfer. I can't remember the last time I had a normal district picture. Haha. 

Sister Slater....I miss her!

Dumpling and ackee!! This is the ackee we found on the road last week that I talked about in my email... it was delicious!! 

Meal appointment! Curry chicken and rice and peas! Yummy, yummy! 

Acrobatic Goat!!

Little sights like this are reasons I love Jamaica. 

I don't know who's idea it was to give me the cutlass, but I had it and I thoroughly enjoyed chopping vines like I was a jungle explorer! Haha. I love service projects. 

(Oh yeah! That's Sister Thurgood, my amazing new companion.)

I love this little girl!

Cute girls!!

This is our super fancy, state of the art entertainment system. we put our DVD player on a chair, put a towel on the back to block some back lighting, add some speakers and a fan to keep us cool, and we are all set to watch meet the Mormons to relax a little during lunch!