Hello everyone! Hope you are all enjoying your nice summer break. The kids here in Jamaica are still in school right now, so count your many blessings. This past week has been quite busy with a lot of missionary things. Wednesday was transfer day, so it kept us pretty occupied. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we were dropping off and picking up missionaries from the airport. On Wednesday night, we had a departing devotional for the missionaries who have finished their mission. Then, on Thursday, we had our mission leadership conference. Needless to say we had a very busy week.

On Tuesday, we had a funny experience picking up the new missionaries from the airport. My companion and I arrived at the airport Tuesday night at about 9pm, and learned that the flight that the new missionaries were on got delayed for about an hour. At about 10pm the new missionaries arrived (three Elders and one Sister). My companion and I took one of the Elders, 2 Sister missionaries who followed us to the airport drove the new sister, and President Hendricks took the other two Elders. That night, Jamaica was playing a much anticipated soccer game against mexico at the national stadium, which is on the route that we usually take to go from the airport to the mission home. To avoid traffic, my companion and I decided to try to go an alternate way through downtown Kingston near the Cornation Market to the mission home, and the sisters decided to follow us in their car. Little did my companion and I know however, that many of the people on the streets in downtown kingston near Cornation Market at 10pm are either crazy, homeless, or looking for no good. The streets were lined with piles upon piles of garbage, there were many crazy people,  there was a naked man trying to break a brick on the sidewalk, there were packs of wild dogs roaming the streets, the roads were dimly lit, and the new missionaries were on a once in a lifetime ride. I can only imagine how shocked they must have been. But, we arrived safe and sound at the mission home, and explained that that is not how Jamaica is most places, and apologized to them.

This past week had been crazy, and sadly we were unable to do a lot of proselyting because we were moving people around. This week will be pretty crazy as well. On Thursday we will be flying to Cayman to do some training and have a zone conference. We will leave Cayman on Saturday and fly to Nassau Bahamas where we will do some more training and have another zone conference out there. We will then return on Tuesday to Jamaica. We will then be having a zone conference in Sav-la-mar on thursday, and we will be doing our last zone conference in Kingston on Friday.

This past week, I have been thinking more about how much of a gift repentance really is. Repentance and forgiveness is a divine gift purchased for us by the shedding of the blood of our Savior Jesus Christ. Without repentance, we would be doomed to despair, we would not be able to change for the better, we would be without hope in this world, and we would only reap misery and despair in the world to come. We would be lost to the heavens forever. Too many times, people view repentance as something bad, or as something undesirable. Sin is bad and undesirable and creates lasting misery. Repentance is the escape route. Faith in Jesus Christ, repentance and the ordinances of salvation is the key to gain hold upon the atonement of Christ the Lord and allow his sacrifice to save and change us. Christ did not sacrifice himself to save us in our sins. He sacrificed himself to save us from our sins and provide us with an escape from our sins. He sacrificed himself to provide us with the divine gift of repentance. May we all use that gift.

Love you all,

Elder Nugent