More Chicken Coop pictures

More pictures of the wonderful chicken coop built on Tuesday - Bro. Lloyd built the door, with Bro. Powell's help. The tin roof took a lot of hammering - several of the little kids played with the cut ends of the boards and built their own 'house' - with Sister Lloyd, our Primary President. Yay! for the whole branch - we are excited to build the rest and get our members diets better, and their resources increased! Thanks to the Church Humanitarian service: they provide the materials, the chicks, the feed for three months, so the enterprise can get started.

Building Chicken Coop

The Humanitarian missionary couple - Elder and Sister Whitehead, came to Junction yesterday and helped the branch members to build a chicken coop. We will build nine more for members and non-member neighbors! Here is Sister Whitehead and Elder Smith standing on the block foundation and floor that Sister Ellington's neighbors helped her to get ready for the building crew! Our Sister Missionaries, Sister Everett and Sister Walker learned how to hand saw. The walls going up - back and front. Elder and Sister Smith with the work going on behind!

Building Chicken Coops - Junction

More Junction Life

More of our everyday life here ... We have joined the digital age - we have windmills on the ridge above our valley - neat huh? Here is a pretty flower that reminds me of making hollyhock dolls with my sisters when we were kids - also a beautiful sunrise out of our window - through the screen! this is such a pretty place to live.

Junction Chapel

This is the rented room we use for a chapel in the Junction Branch. Elder Smith in the Branch President's office, the whole chapel and at the back of the room ... our church mouse hole! Really, isn't that just the perfect mouse hole that you see in the cartoons?? I think it was a hole for some electric wires or something, but I prefer to think we have a church mouse!

Junction Life!

Just some misc. things here in Junction. See how long that night crawler is? Elder Smith got a stick and picked it up and saved it's life! See also how tall the grass is at the side of the road we walk on in the morning! Here is Elder Smith with Brother Collins, the tall one, and Brother Powell - General Colin Powell's first cousin!! Pictured is also one of the water cistern's that many people have here ... they collect the rain water into the big cement tank and then use it in their house. It reminded me of the Mouse trap game our children used to play! We sure like it here.

Friday Night Activity II

Friday Evening Activity - we watched the Church Video "The John Tanner Story" - all should see it - great man and great lesson. We played "Pictionary" on the chalkboard after and ate chocolate cake! Lots of fun welcoming our New Sister Walker - from London, Ontario, Canada...glad we got to keep Sister Everett from Elm City, near Raleigh, North Carolina.

More Hospital Pictures

Here is the Charge Nurse I talked about in the last post! Also the head table of the ceremony, and the lady in the coral suit coat is the Regional Director of Health for the North Island Region; St. Ann's Bay Hospital serves all of 3 or 4 Parrish's - like counties in the US - 350,000. The Regional Director found out some things at the meeting - like the reports say they do 10-15 surgeries a day, and it is about doubled that - she was interested to hear that...maybe the government will fund them better now. A sad note, one of the branch members, Sister Rose, was in the hospital with cervical cancer - we went to visit with her after the meeting. She has two grown daughters and a school age son and daughter. Her sister was taking care of the kids, her husband left here last year. They raise pigs for a living and she was worried about who was feeding the pigs - so Paul said he would look into it and she wasn't to worry. She is facing soon and will probably be using the new machine. The hospital has three surgical rooms and the machine will stay in one but the doctors rotate in all of them, so they will all get to use it. I can't explain how appreciative they all were - we hope that the TV channel used some of the footage they took, and there were three reporters from the print media there also - hopefully the church will get a little good publicity out of it - we don't do it for the publicity BUT there is plenty of bad rumors going around Jamaica about the Mormons!

St. Ann's Bay Hospital Ceremony

Elder Smith had a wonderful birthday on Thursday, Sept. 15th. We drove to Ocho Rios then Saint Ann's Bay Hospital for the "Handing Over" Ceremony of the new anaestheology (sp) machine. We first set up a meeting with Dr. Dawkins, the director of the hospital in December of 2010 ... and here it is come to fruition! We thought it was taking a long time, but the hospital was thrilled that it only took 8/9 months. Brother Paul Lester represented the Ocho Rios Branch Presidency in the ceremony - here he is shaking hands with Dr. Dawkins. Elder Whitehead spoke about the Church Humanitarian services, told about Fast Sunday and Fast Offerings that the whole church contributed to this wonderful machine being here..he did a great job. Told everyone that the Church is trying to follow the Savior's example of serving our fellow men. Dr. Scarlett from the surgery dept. called the machine a Merecedes Benz and joked that he had the keys! Dr. Dawkins corrected him and said it was a Jaguar, but the head of surgery called it a Rolls Royce!! Actually Dr. Scarlett said that this is high tech - state of the art - and he was so grateful for it. He labeled it a Number Seven, and they started with number one, their 25 years old machine was at a number four -- so this is a major improvement to say the least! They all called it a Dream Come True, and one of the doctors told Elder Smith that they do 30 surgeries a day and this will make their work safer and they will save more patients lives because of it. The company that makes the machine also contributed - lowering the price significantly so that the Church could afford to buy it for the hospital. Humanitarian Couples have only so many US dollars they can spend on any one single project ...so their good gets spread around the whole island. It was a wonderful ceremony and the hospital appreciated it so much - made me cry! They also appreciated the service project and the wheelchair training that the Church does...what a huge blessing to the lives of the Jamaicans! so glad to be a small part of it! The Nurse pictured is the Charge Nurse for Surgery and Sister Whitehead and I loved her white cap! The Whiteheads have two daughters that are RN's and we have Heidi and Ben - yay for good nurses!

Primary Junction and Hopeton

We had a Mandeville District Primary Activity at the Hopeton Chapel - here the children are lined up to get their food and also playing outside the chapel. The Junction Branch Primary last Sunday, Sister Lloyd, Primary President in the back, Sister Smith, First Counselor in the front and the darling children!!

Sisters

Sister Wilkinson and Sister Everett walking up a 'bush' trail to a members house, at the members house they took a long bamboo pole and knocked Ackee out of the tree. They aren't ripe until they open on the tree. You throw away the black seeds and boil then fry the yellow part - it is good!