Hola!
What a week. This past week has felt like it has been two weeks since last p-day, but I'm pretty sure that that is because of how much happened over the past week. Let's get crackin, eh?
First off I'll answer some questions people have asked me. I sleep great here. The beds are nothing too amazing, but I have always been able to sleep pretty much anywhere and I find myself grateful for that once again here in the MTC. I found my other SD card, so I have three now. Of course. I knew I would find it. That's what I get for being impatient I suppose. I got everybody's packages I believe. Thank you all so much for all of the food/candy/stuff. I especially love the no bakes (as does my teacher, Hermano Koller). Everybody seemed to think that I had like a super bad cold, which I would like to clear up, and let you all know that it was merely my average cold that I get at this time of the year. I haven't even had a cough really! Although it has been making a comeback for the last couple of days as I feel my nose begin to be stuffy again. Oh well... I got the audio tape of everybody at the Christmas party. It was great to hear everybody's voices again. Thank you for all the love and support expressed in that. This week is the big surgery for Natalie! I will be sure to keep her in my prayers as well as the whole family. I hope everything goes well. I especially hope that Sophie and Dylan can behave for Grandpa Larson. But at the same time I kind of hope he doesn't get away with too easy of a week taking care of them.... I got the Christmas card from Holly/family. Dad, if you could tell them thanks or they see this then...Thanks! My P-day in Spain (once I'm in the field at least, not sure about the CCM (If I even get there)) will be Wednesday I believe. Greg buzzed his head. 'Nuff said. Thank you everybody for the Max updates. It's nice to get his blog updates mom. It truly is a miracle that he is progressing as fast as he is. I loved hearing his sarcasm back to the nurse. "I'm Max, your patient" hahah that's so Max... Happy birthday this week Colby! I love you bro. And when does USU start back up again? It sounds like everybody needs that to happen to stop having such a good time back home! Thank you Aunt Kim for your package. That's some major points in the "favorite aunt" battle! ;)
Now, onto the biggest news of the week. There is a hockey game on New Years day. The Bridgestone Classic or something. Anyways, it's the annual outdoors game of the year. Well, it's the Penguins vs. the Capitals this year. OK, so this is like the Jazz playing the Bulls in the finals was for Tim. So anybody that gets me some straight up amazing stats of that game will be my hero forever. If multiple people do, well then we can figure that out later. But I would really appreciate it if somebody lets me know about that. Phew. The rest of this e-mail should be a breeze now.
So apparently last week was Christmas or something, right? Well it was pretty fantastic here in the MTC. I did feel a little homesick in the morning, but that's to be expected as my first Christmas away from home. But anyways the Christmas stuff here really began on Christmas eve. We had a 2 hour fireside with the counselors of the MTC presidency here. They talked to us about the gifts of the Spirit and how they are gifts from God that are GIVEN to us. They also talked about why they are important and how we can ask for them and work for them, but they are still gifts we must remember to be grateful for. About halfway through, on the gift of music, we got to sing a 12 days of Christmas MTC style. It was pretty funny. Stuff like 1 rock solid testimony, 3 new companions, 4 glasses of chocolate milk, 5 hours of gym, 6:30 wakeup, 8 hours of sleep, lukewarm showers and just random stuff like that. It was funny and fun. That was all we had on Christmas eve. Then Christmas day was pretty chill. We had a big ol' talent show at 9:30 in the morning. Tryouts were last Tuesday and as I was walking by there was a group of missionaries going to Sweden that needed one more person to perform a traditional swedish folk dance, and since I had so much experience in the art of swedish folk dancing with Greg's wedding I stepped right in and performed in front of everybody! Ok, that's a lie. But how awesome would that have been, hahahaha, I still can't believe we did that at Greg's wedding. Anyways, the talent show was amazing. There was a ton of talent there. Mormons are good at stuff! A lot of people sang and played stuff and changed lyrics. One that I really liked was a cover of Jimmy Eat World that was about "It just take some time, have a little faith to choose the right, everything everything will be alright" and had missionary lyrics haha another great act was the like 8 or 9 Russian missionaries here. They are the only ones here from Russia and they got up and, to the tune of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" did a "You missionary now" song and dance. They didn't use music. Just their voices, and terrible dancing. It was terrible, and that made it so amazing. Everybody is quoting it here. They're like rockstars now. Later, we had a devotional with Elder Russell M. Nelson and his wife. It was fantastic. The only Christmas I've ever got to spend with an Apostle anyways. He talked about the Hebrew origin of names and stuff relating to the Christmas story and pretty much blew our minds with intellect. No big deal. His wife spoke on the "signs" that we have along the road of life and how following signs can help us to be safe and happy and that sometimes signs are more obvious to us with the gospel and that it is our job to help clear up the ones that are "confusing" to investigators. AKA commandments. That night we had another fireside that was two volunteer people (not missionaries) that acted out the Christmas carol thing with Ebenezer Scrooge. Then Elder Nelson got up (he was still here) and said a few things to us. Also, President Smith said a bit too. It was really great. Also, in the morning we had a gift exchange amongst our district which I thought was pretty cool. On Sunday we were delighted to find out that Elder Nelson had returned again to teach all the MTC in Priesthood meeting and Sister Nelson taught the Relief Society. He talked about the Abrahamic covenant and the responsibility we have to do missionary work and all that good stuff. That was really spiritual and once again, the only time I've ever had an apostle direct my Sunday Priesthood meeting haha. Later on Sunday we had our weekly fireside of course. It was Stephen Allen again. I don't know if I told you but he came like 5 weeks ago too. He is the managing director of the Missionary Department or something. He always has good talks to give us and it was different than his last talk so that was good.
Here is some more big news from this week. Elder Woodbury got his visa yesterday! That was sweet. He applied at the end of September and I applied in the middle of September and Elder Call (going to Barcelona) applied at the start of September so pretty much it means that visa could happen at any time now. Elder Woodbury applied last and got his first. Crazy, but not completely weird. There really is that possibility with all visas. But so he got his visa yesterday, and he leaves at 8:00 tomorrow morning! I am not sure if I want to get my visa or not. I will just let the Lord decide. I really do think it would be awesome to get reassigned somewhere for a little bit though. Get to experience even more places! But I will be honest I am very excited to get to Spain. But since Elder Woodbury got his visa and I am his companion we had to go down to the Consolate and since he was going I got to go too and sign the paper saying that I receive my visa from the Spain Government and not the Church haha. Anyways that meant I got to leave the MTC campus though! It was so crazy seeing people driving around and like society is still out there. Mind blowing. It was fun driving past all the places on BYU campus that I have memories at though. Well, I'm the district leader still so I will be rearranging the trio companionship and stealing somebody to be my new companion for the next two weeks. It's not completely for sure yet, but I am pretty sure I will be putting Elder Martell as my new companion. So that's some pretty cool stuff too.
Thank you everybody for all your support, prayers, love, packages and everything else. I really am blessed to have you all in my life!
Love, Elder Jeppson
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