A Mission for Our Church: Food, Water, Conference

Food Initiative:

We have a terrific, forward thinking, humanitarian missionary couple in our mission named Elder and Sister Schaefermeyer. They wrote up this gigantic plan to help the people here in Jamaica, sent it into the Dominican Republic (over our area) and then to church headquarters for approval. It was approved and funded 100%. Nothing exactly like this has ever been done by the church in the whole world. Other similar things have been tried other places but the church has learned from their mistakes and are doing things a little differently. Before the Schaefermeyers wrote up the proposal they went around to branches in the two districts in Jamaica. They introduced their plan and interested people signed up. It is for members and nonmembers alike so members could tell their neighbors and have them sign up too. (Unfortunately now others are wanting to get in on the plan but the church had to cut it off somewhere, so they are not accepting any new people now). These people who signed up have a choice of 6 projects they can do. Chickens (for eating), Layer chickens, pigs, goats, bees, or gardens. The government agriculture department here (RADDA....I have not idea what that stands for), will train the people in their separate projects. No one can have anything for their projects until they are trained....including financial training on how to keep the projects going and make them self sustaining projects. After they have been trained and their land is checked to make sure they have areas to put their projects, everything will be provided for the project...materials for the pens, the animals, the food and antibiotics/medicine to keep them alive, seeds for the garden, along with fertilizer and whatever is needed to make the project successful. The Jamaicans are responsible to build their own pens (and are required to help each other). Here is what makes it different that other places in the past and also makes it so exciting.

The people got to choose their project...no one is pushed into something they don’t want to do.
Each project receiver must be trained before the church provides help.
There will be follow-up by missionaries and/or RADDA.
It is designed to be self perpetuating....so the people must learn to keep it going...not eating/selling everything at one time.

There are so many problems here...so impoverished. Many have never learned how to think ahead, plan, and organize. So much is done in “survival mode.”

A few major problems with the Food Inititive:

1. Their projects must be secured so the animals are not stolen.

2. What will they do when their neighbors come and ask for food because they are hungry?

We will teach them that they must take care of their own lives before they can help others. They must plan how much they can give away, eat, sell, etc to allow them to be successful. We know there will be failures..... but what a wonderful opportunity for them. I can’t help but feel such pride for the church and its programs to “lift” the lives of others, in and out of the church.

3 1/2 months of cold water....

We have been in Jamaica for 3 1/2 months. For 3 1/2 months we have had cold showers, sometimes warm. We could not figure out why our hot water heater was not working. Well the other day a missionary was in our house and just happened to say.... “OK, their is your stove power, there is your hot water heater.” So there we had the answer. For 3 1/2 months we did not know that we needed to turn on that switch. We had turned it on when I cooked because I thought both switches were for the stove so periodic warm water in the morning....because I had cooked the night before. So goes the secrets of life in Jamaica. If we just just know the right switch, life goes much better.

District Conference

We have 7 branches in our district and we had district conference this weekend. What a spiritual feast. It was wonderful! Probably the most fun was that Mike had a priesthood meeting and I got the car for 3 hours, with some other cute ladies, and we got some fun visits in......without men.

Have a great week. Love, The Herberts