Hi Ken,
you wrote that you are
having great difficulty understanding the concept of methods passing values and returning values.
As I do not really know what the understanding problem is, I can only advice to search for java tutorials and about invoking methods.
You can search for the java tutorials at sun.com, or here on the java ranch.
But the best thing to do is to visit your local library and borrow a book about Java fundamentals.
OK, library may be closed on sundays.
But as method invoking may be the bottle neck in the moment, leave your own example for a moment and play around with easier examples as the following:
Basically, a method is made out of the following elements:
example as above
Additionally a method signature can have access modifiers, other modifiers (eg The Big One: static) and errors to be thrown, but
you should leave this out (ok, except static) for the moment.
The next topics to look at would be overriding and overloading.
Yours,
Bu.