Hello from Jamaica everyone! things are great here. I arrived at 8:00 pm after leaving the MTC at 3:00 a.m. I then went to the mission presidents house where we were fed and i got to spend the night there. My mission president is a great guy. He is a former fbi agent so he knows his stuff haha. Driving to his house from the airport was pretty crazy... probably the craziest drivers i have ever seen haha but it was fun. I love being here. the people are all great and it is definitely different. most people make their livings by setting up little shacks in their yards or on the street selling pretty much anything. everywhere i go its like a big party is going on all the time. people blast music super loud wherever i am. people just go in the street and talk and do whatever they do. It is funny because here people call me a white guy. i will be riding my bike down the street and people will shout out hey look its a white guy on a bicycle haha. and little kids are always like "look its a white man" haha so definitely different from utah where everyone always called me the black guy. my companion is really cool though i will be his last companion before he leaves the mission. he is from Jamaica and his name is Elder Johnson. I am trying to learn patwa from him and all that i can about jamaica so that when people say "look its a white man" i can talk to them and they will be like "oh never mind he is from Jamaica" haha. he is a good guy though and works hard which is good. The area that i am serving in is called may pen. it is a very big city. its cool because half of it is bush (rain forest) and the other half is city where there are tons of people. I heard it is one of the roughest cities other than kingston and spanish town. but everyone here is usually pretty nice. definitely different but nice. the branch is pretty cool. there are about 50 people that went to church last sunday lots of them know grandma and grandpa. oh another funny thing is that as soon as i arrived in jamaica all of the elders i talked to called me harry potter because im famous among the members and i dont really know it haha. so my nick name is harry potter. we live in this tiny place above someones house its nice though. i still remember a lot about jamaica from when i came about 11 years ago. i remember the smells mostly and i love it. the food here is sooo  good some of the best food ive ever had. the members are all nice. Elder Johsnon and i are both new to the area so we are "white washing" meaning we dont know anyone and there were no investigators when we got there so we have been using most of our time finding. People here are really easy to talk to about the gospel. most anyone will listen and let you come back and share the message. i hear the thing that people struggle with is committing to things like going to church reading etc. so that is our focus committing the people we meet to do the things they need to do. well as you can tell im pretty excited about being here. i love it. it is intense. i never feel afraid of anyone or anything here i know im on the Lords errand and he will protect me. I hope everything is going well down there. everyone write me at the jamaica address. I only get mail about once a month so dont get mad if it takes me a while to respond.

Love,
Elder Nugent

Hello everyone! things here are going good. As you all know my visa has been
delayed so I dont know when I will finally be able to go out to Jamaica.
They said hopefully it will come in a week so i will keep my fingers
crossed. But until then i have been assigned to a new district. It is weird
being with different missionaries. i am always trying to set a good example
to help these missionaries get off on a good start when they get into the
field. Everyone write to me and let me know how you are doing. Yesterday,
Elder Richard G. Scott came and gave a devotional to the missionaries. One
thing that stood out to me was he said, "I KNOW God, and I KNOW His Son" and
it made me think that we too can all know God. It is through our obedience
and diligence in following God that we can truly know him. I would suggest
everyone who reads this email to read Alma Chapter 32 in the Book of Mormon
where Alma teaches how we can know if any part of the gospel is true. It is
by acting on faith and obedience, and as we continually show our obedience
and continually act on our faith, our faith begins to turn into knowledge
and we can KNOW any part of the gospel whether it is true. This is how
people can gain a divine witness of God to the point where they can know
him. It is when we compeletly submit our will to Gods will that we can gain
knowledge and perform miracles. I firmly believe this. And I challenge all
of you to gain a testimony of this principle by living it and experimenting
on it just as Alma teaches. This is the only way to become truly converted
to the gospel as well. I hope everything in the outside world is going well.
I want you all to know that God loves us each individually and that he will
answer sincere prayers guaranteed. It might not be the answer we want, or
the answer that we are looking for but our prayers will be answered. How
wonderfull is it to think that the maker of the universe cares and knows
about each one of His many many children. So much so that He sent His only
begotten Son to take upon himself all the pains of the world and to die for
us so that we could choose to repent and to turn to Him and rely on Him so
that we could be happy forever. I know this is true in the name of Jesus
Christ, amen.

Hello everyone, things are still going great here. Today is my last p-day in
the United States. it is weird to think that in just 6 days i will be in
Jamaica. Time has been flying by so fast it is so crazy. This past week I
was able to give two blessings to two different sister missionaries that
were sick. One of the sisters that my companion and I blessed was better
from her very bad illness in a matter of hours so that was really cool. But
things here havent changed much, still just reading and practicing teaching
all the time. We have devotionals and firesides every tuesday and sunday
that are really neat. They all talk about missionary work and what a
blessing it will be in our lives as well as in the lives of others. I must
say some missionaries say they struggle getting adjusted to the mission but
it has been pretty easy for me. Waking up at 6 30 is still a piece of
cake.... kind of haha. and i just go to work learning and teaching and
before you know it im fast asleep by 10 30. also to all of you who thought i
would gain weight here, i have actually been losing weight. I have been
losing about a pound a week which i am kind of dissapointed about because I
was really looking forward to getting bigger... oh well maybe in jamaica i
will be able to gain some haha. I eat a lot too, well at least until im
full. maybe its because im balling it up every day and walking fast
everywhere because I always seem to be running a little bit behind. My
district is really cool still. sometimes everyone gets outta control whil
studying but we always seem to bring back the spirit after we remember why
we are here. One cool experience that happend this week was we were teaching
a real investigator who will be baptized soon and in the middle of the
lesson he said I feel like i need to tell you something. He then continued
to tell us that he was changing he said that ever since he started living
the gospel his life has changed so much. He said that before he learned of
God and the church he and his wife were going to commit suicide because he
lost his leg and they were both going through severe depression. He was
heavily medicated because of his depression and nothing helped him....
Untill he found out about the gospel from some ward members who lived near
by him. ever since then he has been meeting with the missionaries and his
life has been so much happier. I bear my testimony that I know that Jesus is
the Christ and that he atoned for the sins of all mankind. The only way to
happiness in this life is by living and learning of the restored gospel here
on the earth. I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and that the book
of Mormon is scripture from God that teaches us how to live our lives and
come closer to Christ by living the principles of the restored gospel. I
urge you all to read your scriptures daily and they will change your life.
no doubt about it. I say these things as a representative of the Lord Jesus
Christ in His name amen.

‎... But anyways things are going good here. My companion is good, he likes to work and play basketball so that is always a plus right? haha. But i have just been working hard here keeping all the rules. On my second day they called me to be a district leader so of course i am following the rules ha. Tell everyone to keep writing me cause i hardly get any mail. just tell them to dearelder.com it. but yeah i just wake up at 6 30 am busy all day and go to 10 30...

...conference was good this weekend a lot of it was on missionary work so that was cool. we also have had a devotional and fireside about missionary work. here the stress is on being completely obedient, which is what i plan to do. But i have made a lot of friends here my district is very cohesive sometimes they can get outta hand so i just try to remind them that we are here to serve the Lord...

I have just been busy praying reading the scriptures and learning how to teach which is great. It is a lot of fun. People that say missionary work is not fun is very wrong. I have fun all the time just talking to people and learning and sharing with them what i believe. Every day we just practice teaching fake and real investigators and doing personal gospel study and sharing what we learned. DId you get my letter i sent? also can you post this email on my blog? and to all my blog readers i say to you whats up ma tacos haha. but I havent learned anything about Jamaica here cause my teacher served in Ohio. right now i am the only missionary going to Jamaica besides this other sister named sister nautu who is in my district. my companion is going to serve in sacramento. Oh and right now my P days are on wednesdays. Also I learned that I fly to jamaica on Oct. 18. Less then two weeks away. I am so excited. if i think the mtc is fun just wait until i get out and start teaching real people and helping them to change their lives. anyways I want you all to know that this church is true and it was restored through Joseph Smith. Jesus Christ did atone for our sins and you can know these things by acting on the teachings of the gospel for yourself and praying about them. I love you all and I would love to here from you all. My address is on my facebook page. I hope you dont miss me too much yet cause i still have like more than 700 more days to go haha. but as one of the general authorities who talked in a devotional here said, It is not about serving time, it is about serving the Lord. So Im just gonna focus on serving the Lord. I already feel that 2 years isn't enough time. If you think about it, Jesus dedicated every part of his whole life for us and right now all he is asking of me is to dedicate every part of my life for the next two years for him what a blessing it is to be here. I encourge all of you reading this to read the book of moromon every day because it really will change your life, even if you think that your life is good enough, reading the book of moromon every day will make it that much better. You better do it to cause im gonna follow up on it next week i email haha. but always remember the Savior, be nice to eachother and forget me not. till next week,

Love,
Elder Nugent