Different Activities in Jamaica

“Another thing that was kind of important in my time in Jamaica, I mentioned that I attended the Priory School and there they had a Girl Guide Troop. In the United 

States it is Girl Scouts because it was British Crown Colony, Jamaica had the Girl Guides which were out of England.  We had blue uniforms. We had a lovely lady by the name of Jean Taylor who was our leader and we did lots of fun things with her. We did service and had activities. Those were great experiences for me, we were earning badges and doing different things. Come to find out the highest rank that you can achieve as a Girl Guide is the Queen Scout, Queen Guide. It was normally never awarded to anybody who was not a citizen of England or one of the colonies. I had done everything that needed to be done to receive this award comparable to an Eagle Scout, I did everything that needed to be done and they petitioned, and they got permission to award me the Queen Guide badge award. They actually had a special ceremony for it, Clifford Campbell who was the liaison from the Queen there in Jamaica awarded it to me. It was really sweet, it was a great opportunity and it was a great honor, but one of the things that I remember is by the time I got there to that point I was probably 13 years old, almost 13 and I had grown quite a bit I didn't hardly fit in my uniform anymore, but I squeezed into it the best I could and was able to receive that, so that was kind of a special unique honor. I learned a lot and it was really a great program.”

Church Activity in Jamaica

“By the time we went to Jamaica we were used to having church in our front room, but it was wonderful because when we got to Jamaica, we started finding other members of the church that were there. We first had a branch in Kingston, and we'd have church in our front room. We also found some families up in Mandeville, which was 80 miles away up in the hills. But it would take about two hours to drive because of narrow winding mountain roads. We would go back and forth between two places - one week we would meet in Kingston and the next week we would meet in Mandeville. Some of those families that we got to know at that time are still dear friends of mine and the parents of those families are friends all these years later. They are dear, dear wonderful people. We moved there when I was nine almost going to be 10.”

“It was great to have some other families that we could meet with, and my dad jokes that we were the first block system for church because we would drive together and we would have all the meetings together in a block, that we'd have lunch together, we've spent several hours together just visiting. It was so great being around other members of the church, and it was so great to have that bond and that commonality with them and then we would drive home. So that was our Sundays.”

“There were challenges in Jamaica because of the fact there were so few members of the church. There was my brother and I and one other boy that attended our school so that made it kind of difficult sometimes, none of my friends were LDS it was a challenge. We would have primary one day of the week, there was another sister who we would go to her house and a couple of other kids that came and meet with us so that we could have primary. It was very challenging to try and have primary when you only had a handful of kids. My parents were trying really hard to give us the programs of the church. When we were there in Jamaica, we'd have church in our front room or up in Mandeville where some of the other members of the church were. It got to the point by the time we are leaving there were two branches, there was a branch up in Mandeville and there was a branch there in Kingston where we lived. We were under the auspices of the Florida Fort Lauderdale mission and the first mission president that we were under was Glenn Rutt. I remember him coming down to visit us. And then the next mission president was Murray Lason he and his wife would travel down to see us about once every three months or four months they would travel down to see us three or four times a year they would visit our little branch there and spend the weekend with us. They would come in on a Saturday and fly out on a Monday. They would also fly down to Guantánamo Bay Cuba and visit the servicemen that were there because that was also under the auspices of their mission. Just a lovely family that my parents have kept in contact for many years afterward. Recently they have passed in January just this year, [2012?], great, great people.”

Many companies were mining bauxite and other members of the church came to work with those companies. Paul Shmiel and his wife Marilyn came to Jamaica. She was an inactive member of the church, but her records showed up when they lived in Mandeville. Due to fellowshipping, she was reactivated, and Paul Shmiel joined the church. “I remember going down to the ocean. He was baptized there in the Caribbean ocean. He became a great member of the church. A little while later, it was lunchtime while he was at work, he was reading the Bible. A man noticed him reading, a native Jamaican, he said, “what are you doing?” “Well I'm reading the Scriptures”, and the man said he also like to read the Bible and the man's name was Victor Nugent and he was, later on, baptized a member of the church. He was like the linchpin to start or the beginning or the start of missionary work there in Jamaica. Jamaica is now its own mission and they have lots of members of the church there and many different branches and wards there. But it all started when Victor Nugent saw that Paul was reading his Scriptures at lunchtime and asked him about it and then Victor and his family were baptized. It was very small beginnings for the church there but a lot of good members of the church there now. 

FStory from Victor Nugent's view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45WopYjAsxE  youtube video of the first saints in Jamaica. A quick shot of the Bills family is shown in this segment.

“Every year with we would have the 30 days plus travel time so we would travel back to the United States and visit with family and one year my parents decided that they wanted us to use some of that time to go visit Mexico. We went and visited family for three weeks and then we flew down to Mexico City and we visited there for three days and just had a wonderful time seeing Chapultepec Park and some of the beautiful cathedrals and just the beauty of Mexico City and King Maximilian's Castle. Then we travel over briefly to the Yucatan Peninsula we were able to visit Chechen Itza, which is a site that has been excavated showing a lot of pyramids and the old buildings of things from the book of Mormon time from the Mayans people. And it was wonderful climbing up on those pyramids be able to look at and seeing all those, that was a great opportunity.”