Un lugar para soñar

Familia! (y otros que lean esto)

Well wasn't that just a great little week filled with Christmas?  I even learned that there's a real apostrophe button on this keyboard instead of just using the accent button.  I don´t even think that makes one little bit of a difference for anyone, but good news anyway!

This past week was a good one.  We just keep on trucking along here in a trio. It´s different.  I agree with the Lord's way of doing it more though.  The new thing from this past week is Shirlley.  She is an 8 year old girl in the ward whose parents aren't members, but her grandparents and aunts and uncles are.  Her uncle is actually on a mission in Uruguay right now, so I'm sure he's right sick of eating meat.  But anyway,  she is all super excited to get baptised! As her parents are not members, we have to teach her everything and she has to get interviewed in the normal investigator way.  It's been really fun teaching her.  She is like this way smart little dignified girl and she reads way well (or way "good")!  It's fun to teach someone that is so cute and innocent.  

Efraín is holding his own too.  It's been hard for him to get to church for the last couple of weeks because of jobs and family parties, but I hope that changes as things die down after Reyes, which is January 6 and basically as big as Christmas here in España.  Between like the 15th of December and January 6th it's just giant fiesta time for them.  Which is cool, I suppose.  But Efraín keeps reading a lot and is already in like, Alma 35 or farther.  That´s like a miracle.  

Christmas Eve at the Mission Home

On Christmas Eve, we had a pretty normal day, and then towards the later part we went over to the Porta's house and they gave us food and we had a great time and then we went to the Mission home to sleep there.  It was just us three, the AP's, and the President and his grand wife.  We sang some Christmas songs and then we hit the hay (after opening my glorious pajamas of course).  Woke up and had a great Christmas morning!  Opened the presents we had brought to the house and then Hermana Watkins made us french toast!  Boom, baby!  We all know how Elder Jeppson loves his french toast.  After, we went to church, which was only an hour, just like the rest of the world.  We sang.  Yeah, that´s right.  Bishop, us 3 elders, and Elder Ovard, the other office elder, all sang Silent Night, or "Noche de Luz".  I feel like it went well, but anything sounds well here because South Americans haven't caught onto the singing thing like the Utah I was accustomed to.  

After church we went around dropping off some gifts for a "Secret Santa" in our ward.  It was fun to see the joy in their faces as they got their gifts from the unknown giver.  "Anonymous" can sometimes bring with it much joy.  We then took our Mediodía break and opened our presents and waited until the time to go back to the office and do Skype with the family.  Yeah!  Thanks to everybody who was there.  I almost got to see everybody and I even got some good surprises :).  It was a good time.  Everybody looks good.  We have a good looking family I suppose.  

 

Since then we've just gotten right back in the swing of things.  We have a blasted activity at 7:30 in the morning this Saturday that the Relief Society president has been wanting us to invite the whole world to.  So we're meeting with lots of less actives and ward members this week so that Elder Woodbury can say goodbye (we're pretty sure he's going to the north on Monday or Tuesday) and so we can invite everybody to this activity.  7:30 in the morning....  It'll be good.  

Segovia

Well, that's about all I have time for.  Big thanks to everybody for everything.  Today we went to Segovia for P-day.  Kind of a long drive, but worth it.  I'll add some pictures and you can google the rest.  Learn about the aqueduct and castle.  They're real cool.  Super Spanish.  Other than that, this is a wrap.  It was nice to see you all and have a great time together.  Thanks for all the love and support I feel from back in home base.  You're all the greatest.  The Lord lives.  He wants us to come unto him and we do that by reading the Book of Mormon and sharing the Gospel with everybody that might be ready.  

Elders Woodbury, Forrest and Jeppson

Love,

Elder Jeppson

P.S. Elder Ovard says hi.

Poverty stole your golden shoes. It didn´t steal your laughter.

¿Que tal chavales?  Echemos otra camarón a la barbie!

I will look back at these emails someday and just think I was an idiot.  But whatever!  

it´s been another one of those weeks....Ya know, where elder Woodbury is training Elder Forrest so we´re in the office a lot.  It should be relaxing time I guess, but I just get bored.  It´s like before the mission when I was bored so I would like get on facebook or something, except now I am not supposed to get on facebook so I just surf the heck out of lds.org hahaha.  I´mma gonna have to like major in reading apostles talks or something.  It´s fine though.  I really like having some extra time to study Spanish and the scriptures and talks and stuff.  

Before I forget, Merry Christmas! I´mma be skyping.  Dad, I will skype you at 8 in the morning your time since you have to be the big bad Santa boss and work Christmas morning.  Mom, I´ll skype your family at 12:15 your time.  It should be some quality skyping time, right? Dang straight it´s gonna be!  I don´t really care who is there, I just want to see all my loved ones, so pass the word around and we´ll see what magic goes down, eh?  Also, I got the package you sent me.  Thanks a bunch to you all! The CD´s are great, I wore the tie yesterday, and I´m stoked to open the rest on Christmas morning.  You´re all fantastic!  It´s been surreal, this whole December.  I doesn´t even feel like Christmas is in....4 days.  Jolín! The Christmas music is nice though.  Makes us want to have a Christmas dance party at night, which we don´t do, but it´d be fun.  Mom, President and Sister Watkins loved your Christmas card to them and they say thanks.  Well, President says "gracias por la tarjeta navideña!"

Highlights from this past week:  On Thursday, we picked up 2 elders that had to come down from the north to pick up their residency cards, on our way to the mission home, we were in a hurry and I ran through a crosswalk with people starting to enter it (I started to stop, but it was futile).  A cop saw and pulled me over.  Crap!  But he was just like menos mal que no les atropellaste.  Ten mas cuidado en el futuro.  And drove off (he was on a bike).  Lucky Elder Jeppson.  

Saturday, we had our ward Christmas dinner/party.  It was great.  The members loved it.  We got to eat good chicken from a Döner Kebab and they even asked us to be the narrators of the Belén program the niños did.  Yeah! Rock on.  After the shindig, the relief society gave us 4 freaking chickens that were leftovers.  Talk about good lunches for a few days!  

Sunday we gave talks.  I like giving talks on the mission. Call me crazy. They asked us to talk on Missionary work (crazy, eh?) but I didn´t really want to.  So I talked about the "gifts" that God has given us in 1)Jesus Christ and his Atonement, 2) The Book of Mormon and 3) Our testimony/the Gift of the Holy Ghost and then added a second half that was like the best thing to do during gift season is share gifts, so share these gifts with your friends and such.  I feel like it went well.  If not, I just blame it on my gringo Spanish, ha!

Today, for P-day, we had a zone party in the mission home.  It was fun.  They did a hot-dog eating contest, then we did a white elephant.  I got a little action figure of Ronaldinho from Barça.  There was a freaking pirate ship I could have traded for but I TOTALLY forgot about it when my turn rolled around! Ugh.  How lame is that.  I have always wanted to be a pirate...

I also went to the temple today and it was amazing.  I know I always say that but it was again today.  I love the spirit that can be felt there.  Then, as I left the temple, I saw my old mini-missionary companion from the Canary Islands!  ¿Que en el mundo?  I absolutely loved seeing him.  It was sweet.  

I´m tearing it up with my paragraphs, eh?  Greg has instilled in me a habit I think.  As for investigators our area is kind of suffering these days.  It´s a mix of us being in the office so much and the entire world being so busy for Christmas stuff.  Spain apparently eats a lot during Christmas time.  So everybody gets crazy busy with their jobs in December and never has time to meet with us.  I guess that makes it a good time to be in the office so much though. I dunno.  I think there´s still a lot of good stuff coming up though, January is full of hope for me.  Not that the next 10 days aren´t.  In fact, President is going to be putting in another companionship here in Alcobendas towards the end of January, so we have even started piso hunting.  Such is life.  

Merry Christmas to you all! Don´t forget about the reason behind it all.  The Lord loves us and has descended below it all so that we can rely on him to raise us above it all.  I love you all.  He loves us all.  He lives and wants us to remember him always.  Let´s find a way to serve somebody and be His hands here on the earth during this time of year so beautiful.  

Love,

Elder Jeppson

People throw rocks at things that shine...

G´day mates.  

Yesterday was December 13th...What a great day. Let´s all be a little more fearless. 

Well, It´s been a week very ajetreada.  My mind was so full of things to do and blah blah blah that I thought I was gonna have a brain grenade go off.  But we survived.  So it´s all good.  Kind of a slow week as far as the work goes unfortunately.  There´s only so much time in every day!  We have been in the office quite a bit with Elder Woodbury getting ready for Elder Forrest and both of us planning transfers and such.  We were still able to get some lessons in with Edwin and Nora though.  They´re pretty Peruvian.  We´ll see what happens with them.  She is the one that works right when church is every week.  That makes things harder.  But we´re gonna try and get him to church this week.  Efraín continues as well.  And we just continue waiting for his divorce papers.  But he still needs some work on the testimony portion too.  

Dinner at the mission home :)

On Sunday the Vierbuchen´s had us over as well as Adel and Claribel (they invited Nani too, but she was really sick this weekend).  It was really cool to be able to eat with the recent converts and the Vierbuchens.  They´re great.  It was cool.  We ate some German food that was super delicious.  Potato dumplings or something.  I dunno.  Then that night we got to eat at the mission home with the assistants.  Hermana Watkins made ribs and they were delicious.  Score one for being in the office!  Then Monday came and that is transfer day and it was crazy.  Driving people around and picking them up and then we had to go to the office to call all the zone leaders and all that good stuff.  I´m sorry if that´s all boring to you, but it´s just what I do these days.  The cool thing on Monday was that Elder Mills flight got delayed an hour, but we still got him to his train on time.  They were the very last ones.  Like we literally threw their bags on the train and the guy was like "viajas también?" and I was like "Cachorro, que no" and he was like "peace out then suckuh!"  Just kidding.  But seriously, right as we threw the their stuff on they shut the doors in my face and the train took off.  The Lord takes care of his missionaries.

Christmas is coming. I can´t believe it is literally and metaphorically within 2 weeks already.  I get to see all of our beautiful families beautiful faces again!  thank HEAVENS I´m not in Monterrey East mission. or west.  Or somewhere that gets pwn3d.  Hahaha I love you Austin!  But seriously.  Let me know when is best for ya´lls and I´ll see when I can do it.  It´ll be good times, for sure.  

Elders Woodbury, Jeppson & Forrest

To answer some questions: We are currently in a trio.  Elder Forrest is part of Elde Jeppbury now.  so we´re like Forrjeppbury I guess.  I dunno how it´d work, but we´ll be like this for 3 weeks, then Elder Woodbury will get whipped off to some distant(or close) part of Spain as a regular missionary again.  We don´t know where or with who.  So he´s in his 3 weeks of Limbo.  Limbo limbo limbo!  But don´t worry, it´s not like Inception.  It´s all very real and not on different levels of dreams.  So that´s basically where we stand these days.  

Thank you all for being grand ejemplos para mí.  I love you all and I wouldn´t be who I am or where I am without all of your help.  I´m grateful for an older brother that loved me enough to give me the chance to repent and become better little by little.  Don´t forget to help others know the He has restored his church and it´s true.  Thanks for all your support and letters and prayers and stuff.  I try to return the love, but there´s just too much!

Sin temor y con amor,

Elder Jeppson

Ohhhhh the cow in the meadow goes moo...the cow in the meadow goes moo....

Aquí estamos.  ¿Cómo estáis familia?

It has been quite a week.  The truth is it has been more of a boring week over here.  It´s ok though, cause I really don´t have a lot of time to write about it.  So that is good...I guess?

Claribel's baptism

The investigators. The reason I´m here.  Things have been going through the cycle. Some are falling away. Some are too busy.  Some are actually reading.  And one got baptized!  I´ll start with the baptism I suppose.  Claribel.  Yesterday.  It´s cold these days, so bishops pool wasn´t gonna work, and we don´t have a font in our church here, so we went to the temple.  The zone leaders are working there.  We called them Monday night to make sure the font would get filled and all.  They said they would do it.  They didn´t. Sooooo like 40 people of our ward showed up (which is only like 20 less than on Sundays) and there was an empty font! It takes 3 hours to fill it up to where they like to fill it up to.  After lots of running around and lots of "oh crap!"s we filled the font up for like 25 minutes and just did the program/sang hymns until there was like....buah, 20 inches of water in the font.  Maybe 25.  And she got baptized.  Her cousin, Melvin, did it. I´m pretty sure it´s like a record for least amount of water ever.  Not really, but it was close.  But it worked out fine.  So yeah! Thought you would all like that.  When the bishop asked her if she wanted to postpone it to a different day she was like "No! I´m getting baptized today!"  It was legit.  

The Mexican family has been lame lately.  Just busy and the dad doesn´t want anything to do with it and so that makes the rest of the family more hesitant and such.  It is pretty much their challenge I´m pretty sure.  We´ll see if they can overcome it.  If nothing else, they´ve made me miss my best friend.

We had a lesson with a Colombian (heaven forbid it be a Spaniard) this last week out in Tres Cantos.  She lives in a house! Say what? Crazy!  But she was way chill.  She seems interested and had really good questions.  She is married to a Spaniard that she met while going to school in Canada.  Her name is Gisel and We´re pretty dang excited.  But now we get to see if she is willing to sacrifice a little and read the scriptures, go to church, etc.  

Efraín is the same as always.  Waiting to get divorced so he can get married so he can get baptized.  That sentence is more fun in Spanish cause they´re all reflexive verbs.  

That´s basically what we have for right now that should be talked about.  Other than that we have been busy with office stuff.  Elder Pérez got his US visa and got shipped off to the Grand States.  He is currently in the Provo MTC for 3 weeks, so feel free to write a DearElder to Efraín Pérez going to Tempe Arizona.  He´ll love it, but you have to do it in English.  None of this Google Translate crap.  We found out transfers last Friday(which is like a miracle cause we have more than 2 days to plan them, not that we have done any planning, leaving us with...2 days to plan them) and basically the only groundbreaking news is that Elder Woodbury is going to be training a newb in the office.  Which means I´m gonna have a new companion.  We´ll be in a trio for 3 weeks.  His name is Elder Forrest and he is from Arizona.  It´s gonna be his 4th transfer in the mission.  Which is pretty dang young.  It will be fun.  It´ll be hard for him, calling all the piso dueños and stuff in Spanish, but challenging times bring out the best in us, right?  I´m excited.  It´ll be good times.  Plus, it means I´m that much closer to spreading my Spanish adventures into even more parts.  I don´t really want to leave yet though, so whatever.  

Picture of the district

That´s basically all I have.  I will be able to Skype again on Christmas day.  Let me know what time will be best for all.  Just make sure not to pick 2:30 AM Zion(Utah) time cause that´s when I have to go to church.  I would appreciate that.  Thanks!  

Welp, I´m grateful for you all. You´re great.  I´m blessed. The Lord loves us.  If we put our trust in him then everything will go well.  He loves to hear from us and he loves when we listen to his words.  Which I can relate with, cause I love hearing from you all as well!  Ohhhh the cow in the meadow goes moo...

Love,

Elder Jeppson

The pictures: Our district.  It´s gonna be changing (not that they know) so we took pictures.  And, the baptism.  Good stuff.

Like when the cat stuck his tail in the fan...

¡Buenos días familia!  ¡Se ven muy guapos hoy!

 

The mission is a glorious thing. I am very grateful for the chance I have to be here.  I hope Thanksgiving went well for everyone.  We ate at the mission home last p-day.  Don´t know if I mentioned that.  But it was good.  Then on Thanksgiving, the Portas family invited us over to eat.  Their son is actually serving a mission in the Salt Lake mission right now.  Elder Portas.  Greg, if you come across a Spaniard with a New Jersey accent, give him a hug or something that glitters.  So it was a pretty good thanksgiving.  Although it did lack little young cousins/nephews running around all over being hooligans.  Ohhhh the hooligans are always the most missed. 

 

This past week has been a whirlwind of things for me.  We have an elder right now that is from the Canary Islands (moment of silence, please) and is waiting in our mission for his visa to serve in Tempe, Arizona.  We got his R-1 packet (Yeah, I am learning about stuff like R-1 packets now) last week so I called the US embassy to get him an appointment. Dec. 12th.  Well, he was supposed to go into Provo on Dec. 6.  10 days after his appointment he would get his visa.  Can´t fly until after Christmas (blackout days between 20-25). So he was gonna get pushed back until like Jan. 18th and was pretty bummed.  On Friday, as I was leaving the office I quickly did a emergency change of appointment thing just to see what would happen. It says to not even try if you don´t have a real emergency (like even if you´re gonna miss your starting weeks of a semester as an exchange student) and all I put was "Going to serve a mission needs to enter the missionary training center Dec. 6".  Completely without faith.  BUT on Monday we had an email that it worked and his appointment got moved to the 29th! So I was all busy trying to get everything together for that and have him brought down from Salamanca and they stayed with us and stuff.  It was like a mini-miracle.  I might have just bored the crap out of everybody, but I thought it was good stuff. The Lord answered that Elder´s prayers.

 

We met with the Mexican family on Monday.  It went really well!  The dad wasn´t there unfortunately.  But even that was kind of a good thing because the mom was then able to explain a bit to us about how he is feeling about it and what he needs and stuff.  We´ll try and focus on him a bit more now to get him up to pace with the rest of the family.  Basically, they´re fantastic people.  Even if they don´t get baptized, they´re fantastic people.  The world (including Spain) needs more people like them.  But I guess that´s the purpose of missionary work.  To help others realize there is hope and a purpose to this life.  There is hope and a purpose to this life!

 

Another cool thing from this past week is I went on exchanges with Elder Wilson.  He´s from ghetto little Monroe Utah.  It was the first time I have worked with someone younger than me in the mission so that was a bit interesting.  He is a really good guy and will be a good missionary. Well, he already is.  We had a pretty good time.  The cool thing was that he is serving in Barrio 4, which lives with Barrio 2, which is where I started.  So I got to go back my very first piso again! Yeah! I thought you would all like to know the beds there are just as ghetto as when I started the mission.  Ugh.  But still, made me a bit nostalgic.  I loved that first transfer so much!  Good way to start out.  It´s been quite the adventure running around this country ever since.

 

Well, there is an elder here that is going to serve in Uraguay.  He is from A Coruña, which means President Watkins has to set him apart. He leaves for Uruguay (or the MTC in Argentina or something) tomorrow so until then he is our 3rd companion.  But he isn´t writing his family, cause he woke up in his own house this morning, so we´re gonna get going so he doesn´t die from boredom.  Thank you for all your prayers and letters and advice and help and for the new nephew I have and the niece I´ll soon have.  I´m like, really blessed.  So thanks!

 

Love,

Elder Jeppson

 

Happy birthdays to Greg and Kristina. I swear I didn´t forget about either of them. 

 

P.S.  Amor es sin temor. 

Because you don´t get lucky twice...

Well.  Here we are.  Wednesday.  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  Eat your hearts out. 

 

Well howdy ya´ll.  It´s been another 7 days so I thought I´d take some time to write you about it.  I´ll start with talking about stuff.

 

Last Wednesday we met with the Mexican family again.  They´re fantastic people!  The hard part is they fall in that category of 80% that have jobs and crazy lives.  So we can´t meet with them very often.  We took a legit member with us to it and gave, what I felt like, a very spirit-filled lesson about the restoration of the church.  We gave them some ejemplares del libro de mormón and explained to them the promise.  They said they´d do it.  I´m not really sure why, but we didn´t invite them to church. We should have.  We had another appointment set up for this afternoon, but earlier today they called us and told us they can´t.  BUT the good news is we asked them if they have been able to read and they said yes! and that they would tell us their "experience" when we meet with them again.  We´re hoping it´s good news and not like, "when we opened the book it dropped and the sharp corner cut open my sons toe."  We´ll see I guess. 

 

Sonia.  We taught her the second half of the plan of salvation. We took Leyddy (yup, really spelled like that), Farrah, and Laura to it.  And it was like a party.  It is what Sonia wants though.  She wants to see/hear the testimony of lots of people.  It´s good. I think it really helps her. I guess we´ll see if she has the courage to make the necessary changes.  BUT she is currently taking an extra course that her work requires so she is even more busy and can´t even meet with us at 9:30 at night for two weeks.  So we´ll see what happens after 2 weeks of not being able to meet with her. 

 

Unfortunately María pulled one of those disappearing off the face of the earth tricks.  We have NO idea what happened, but she´s sure as heck gone.  It´s a super bummer.  She was so chosen.  So escogida to accept. So I guess we´re gonna have to see if she ever comes back again.  We´ll pray so. 

 

Have I mentioned Elsa? Yes. I remember my flojo dominican comment from last week.  So cool.  She seems promising.  Couldn´t come to church, but we´ll try and press forward saints.  She had read from the folleto and seems to understand pretty well.  Let´s hope she doesn´t pull a Victor on us and tell us she´s already a member.  Buah!

 

Efraín is the same old.  Progressing, actually.  The problem is that he is just progressing towards a giant stone wall that says "get married."  Behind that wall are the waters of baptism though.  It´s been fun to see him progress from loving idols like all catholics to himself telling his girlfriend/wife that he should probably take them down...  Crazy.

 

Claribel is going well still. She lost her job unfortunately, so add her to the over 20% that don´t have a job.  I want you all to know that I am currently listening to some lady raise her voice angrily in a crazy language off to my right.  Probably Arabic.  Elder El-Bakri should come translate for me.  Did I get distracted? Sorry.  So we can meet with Clari more, but it´s kind of unfortunate now that she´s all ready to be interviewed and everything.  Would have been nice earlier.  Oh well. She´s well prepared and her date is the 6th of December.  It´s a holiday here so more people will be able to come. I´m sure I´ve explained that 5 times to you all already though.

 

Also, on yesterday, we had a ZONE conference.  What is that you ask? I´m not sure either since I haven´t had one in 7 blasted months.  But I guess it´s this great event where missionaries all get together and talk about cool experiences and cool things that will help us all seek the spirit more and re-boost our batteries.  It was pretty fantastic.  I don´t have any pictures unfortunately, cause I just assume these days that I´m in the office so I´ll get them somehow. I never do.  Buah.  But that was good times fo shizzle.

 

Hmmmm...On Sunday a member and his wife made us food. She is from Romania and so she cooked us some crazy food. It was like a chicken rollup, but the outside was a crepe and inside was rice and meet and stuff.  Maybe Doug can help me put a name on that.  I dunno. It was..pretty good.  At best. Haha. I was sent to Spain for a reason.

 

Well, that´s all I´ve got for this week.  I´m hoping it makes somebody happy back home. If not, I´ll try again next Wednesday.  I do know this church is true, so I plan on talking about it for the next 7 days. I´ll let you know how it goes.  But until next time, you stay class, Utah.

 

Love,

Elder Jekkson(they can´t for the life of them say the p sound in my name...)

Pelea por lo que quieres

G´day there mates.

It´s been another week here in Spain.  Craziness. I am proud to be a new uncle.  I don´t know when he was born, but at least I know he´s here! Wahoo! It´s crazy. I was gone for the whole entire pregnancy.  Maybe I´ll swing in for the first birthday party though.  Probably not though.  Unless he was born after the 13th.  Alright, let´s have a fun time writing this bad boy.

  

Thursday was the 10th of November, so that was pretty cool.  We went out to eat at VIP´S.  It was delicious, and free, because a member had given us coupons a while back.  Legit!  We did not burn a shirt, cause I guess we´re just lame-o´s.  It´s ok though.  We also taught María a lesson about the importance of HOLA. Orar-praying, Leer-reading, and Asistir-getting your lazy butt to church.  These three things really are so crucial in helping set a foundation for our testimony.  If we only do two of these things, or worse, one (Let´s not talk about none) then we can still have a testimony of course, but it just doesn´t have the same strong foundation as if we get in gear and do all three.  It was a good lesson.  We´ve been teacher her in the home of a less active member, so they´re getting to help each other.  Double win. 

Victor dropped a bomb-shell on us on Friday.  He´s the Peruvian that I don´t think I´ve told you about.  He has been living with a Colombian girl (bahaha) that now wants to leave him and he is trying to help the relationship and all that good stuff.  He actually lives in Madrid, but only wants to meet with the missionaries while he is working, and works in SanSe so we have been teaching him out here.  Well Friday was like our 5th lesson with him and he was like, hey elders, I have something to confess: I´m already baptized.  So we were like oh yeah lots of people were baptized into the Catholic church. and he was like, no, in this church.  I was 15 in Peru.  He´s 28 now.  What a freaking scoundrel! Punk´d us for like 5 visits.  So we´ve changed our focus a little bit now that we know he already knows all the stuff hahahaha and we just thought he understood things really well.... haha.  But he later got kicked out of his house so we´re hoping he can go to church now that she isn´t holding him back from going.  We´ll see I suppose.

Things are continuing well with Sonia.  She went to church on Sunday and that´s fantastic.  She works a ton so we still meet with her  late.  But we have a visit with her tonight and we´re taking a different sister from our ward that is like her freaking twin.  She´s even from Paraguay too.  So that should be good.  MJ, the Californian girl, has been reading the scriptures more and is liking that. And I like teaching her in English cause she always says stuff like "ballin´" and "homie" and great slang like that.  It makes me feel at home.  Claribell is now officially getting baptized on the 6th of December, after lots of date changing and talking to her bosses at work and blah blah blah. It´s nice to have a fijo date.  We also taught a nice lady from the Dominican Republic.  There are lots of Dominicans over here, just like every other Spanish speaking country, and they have a great reputation of being...flojo.  But it´s all good, this one seemed great.  We will have another lesson with her tomorrow, so I guess we´ll see how it goes. 

Apart from that I don´t have a lot to say.  Just kidding! Sunday we had the primary program!  My first one in...two years!  It was great, and that Colombian family came to church! all 5 of them.  That was cool.  The bad part is that he 15 year old son literally broke out laughing while a 11 year old girl was crying while bearing her testimony.  Argghhh I was not very happy.  Luckily Sacrament meeting is like one of the easiest places in the world to control yourself if you´re upset so it was ok.  But still, come on man.  So we´re hoping the parents weren´t too embarrassed to go back again (they left as fast as they could after the meeting ended unfortunately).  Patience is one of those things I´m pretty sure I will be working on for basically ever, but I feel like it´s getting a bit better, so 3 cheers for 5 years! 

The book of Mormon is true.

Valle de los Caidos

That´s what I´ve got for the last week.  It´s been great.  Things to do, the office isn´t suffocating my happiness, and today we went to Valle de los Caídos!  It´s a giant cross on the mountain on the outskirts of Madrid.  They have buried a lot of those that died there in the Spanish Civil War.  Also, when Franco died they buried him there.  It´s like this giant basílica in the mountain underneath the cross.  Like a giant cathedral, but underground.  It was really cool.  Super catholic, but super cool.  I am sure you will all enjoy the pictures.  As always, glad to hear all is well back home.  Krista, name the baby Tanton! 

Love,

Elder Jeppson

Elder Jeppson

Elder Jeppson climbing the wall

Chugga´ luggin´ up one side...Slidin´ down the other...

Well, no nos andemos por las ramas, it´s wicked weird.

It´s been a pretty good week.  Lots to tell.  Lots can happen if you find time to hit the streets of Spain.  We see some weeeirrdd stuff sometimes.  Europe isn´t as...clean as the states are.  hahah but I don´t really have any stories that have anything to do with that, so I don´t have any idea why I brought it up or why I don´t delete it.  Oh well...

Claribel is doing well. She pretty much already knows everything but we are still re-going over everything to make sure she´s ready for her baptism.  It´s either gonna be on the 3rd, or the 8th.  She works interna, which means she´s always living with some family taking care of their kids.  If she can get all of Saturday the 3rd off, it´ll be then.  If she can´t it´ll be the 6th or the8th because they´re both holidays, so she doesn´t have work.  Basically, Spain has holidays like every 5 days, so it´s not really a problem luckily.  But she is good.  She feels ready and that´s the important part. 

Gustavo is legit. Colombiano.  I don´t know if you all remember, but like everybody in Lanzarote was from Columbia. Well come to find out Gustavo was freaking in Lanzarote! I guess I couldn´t find him there so he chased me down to Alcobendas.  He´s a good guy, but we´re a little worried about if he wants to get baptized to get baptized and repent, or if he wants to have the church as a welfare system supporting him.... So I guess that will be something that time will tell. 

Sonia is back on the map haha.  She works a ton, so we can only meet with her at 9:30 at night, but we talked to President and got his permission and now when we can we meet with her.  She works the first Sunday of every month, so she can´t really experience the testimony meeting thing, but we´re hoping to see her in the church the rest of the Sundays.  I guess we´ll have to see.  She´s definitely got potential though, she even read from Alma 5 when we left her it! Miracles happen once in a while....

Nani continues to be pretty good.  Sometimes we wonder about if she understands everything suuupeer well, but she´s been trying to visit the people that need visits, like less actives and old people that are lonely in the ward, in their homes and stuff so that´s really cool to see.  It´s such a blessing to be able to watch people progress.  We actually bought here a little himnario this last week so she can start memorizing hymns to sing to herself haha. Early birthday present....

Saturday we went with Efraín to the temple.  It was the first temple tour I have ever given.  It was good, but I didn´t like it.  It´s mean to be able to go there and not go inside! Haha it really was great though.  He told us he wants to be able to go inside someday.  He´s still got the whole being married to somebody in Ecuador and wanting to marry somebody here problem though.  But other than that little snag he´s doing well. Reading the Book of Mormon, going to church, and Seguiring adelante.

Adel is legit.  he is doing amazingly well these days.  He goes with us on tons of visits now that he is Ward Missionary and even invited us over to his house on Saturday.  He made us Paella.  It´s like Spain´s food.  It´s rice with like seafood mixed in and it´s the most "Spanish" food there is.  It´s pretty good usually, but I hate having to worry about if a mussel shell fragment is going to engrave itself into the roof of my mouth.  Luckily, it was fragment free paella, and had chicken in it to.  I love me some chicken! Speaking of which, isn´t there a chick-fil-a in Logan now? Gah.  I love me a chicken lover...

  

Sunday is still a great day.  Just like before the mission.  Gustavo, Claribel, and Efraín all went to church.  It was a good day in the capilla.  Fast Sunday.  There are unmistakable blessings for fasting.  After church, the Vierbuchen´s invited us over to eat with them. Aleluyah!  That´s our German Bishop´s family by the way.  It is Bishop, his wife, Tim, Teresa, and Tomo.  They´re all fantastic. They all speak German and English, and Bishop speaks Spanish.  The rest...más o menos.  But they are fantastic people.  I love them.  It was fun to eat with them, but we lost track of time and had to leave in a flash without sharing a spiritual message or anything. Ugh.  But still a successful visit. She cooks like a boss.

Elder Tanton Jeppson :)

That´s basically what I have been up to the past week.  Does it seem like good times, cause it sure as heck is.  I can´t believe how much the time flies.  I will not be burning a shirt this week.  I ripped one last Thursday though on accident, so I think that should basically count.  But there´s just not tons of shirt-burning safe areas around here unfortunately.  Whatevs.  It´s been a fast year, and I hear the second one goes faster.  Which doesn´t make any sense logically, but I trust it to be true.  It´s crazy to me the differences that can happen in one fast year.  Thanks for all the support and prayers in part number 1.  This church is true.  The gospel isn´t complicated unless we make it complicated.  We´re extremely blessed to have this blessing in our life.  The restored gospel.  I love you all. You´re all wicked legit.

Love,

Elder Jeppson

P.S. we went to a castle today. Pictures attached.  It´s super rough being over here in Spain and going to 700 year old castles....:)

Elder Woodbury

Spain Flag

You gotta love with your heart wide open

G´day mates. 

Boom. Transfers. Over.  Glorious.  We waited until Friday to plan them.  Which probably wasn´t smart.  But everything really ended up working out.  Then on Monday we actually did them.  It´s always fun to get to see all the other missionaries and drive them around and find out what´s been happening in the north and all that fun stuff.  That´s one advantage of being an office missionary.  Then today, the Watkins took us out to a restaurant called "Yesterday´s".  It´s an American diner from the 50´s type restaurant.  It was glorious!  Sooo good.  I still haven´t taken any more pictures. Sorry. So you´ll all have to wait to see my pretty little face again.

This past week has been more of a logistics of the mission week.  It always happens between week 6 and 1 of the two different transfers.  But we´ve still been able to keep up with the work for the most part.  A lot is happening these days in Alcobendas.  We´ve been very blessed.  Claribel is still going for her baptismal date of December 3. El Salvador.  Pretty cool.  I had never met a Salvadorean until I got here and now I´ve met like 4.  Which still isn´t a lot. But whatevs.  The coolest thing from this past week has been María.  I don´t know if I´ve talked about her, so I´ll explain the story again in case I haven´t.  Like 2 or maybe even 3 weeks ago we were walking into the church to go to English classes(which Hermana Ovard teaches, yeah!) and there was this lady looking at the sign on the church with like a puzzled look so I randomly was just like "Quiere pasar?" and she was like sure.  So she went in.  We quickly gave her a tour starting in the sacrament room then the classrooms and we ended in the room with the English class.  We explained to her that we were teaching English and she was like well I would like to stay and learn. So her and her daughter of like 3 years stayed.  But we were stupid and didn´t get her number after. Argh.  BUT two weeks later, she went again! Wahoo.  So we invited her to the Noche de Hogar that we do in the Church every Friday and she went! So we invited her to the Ward Activity that was Saturday, and she went! and then we invited her to church on Sunday and.....she went! Wowser.  She stayed for the first 2 hours even.  It was super great.  We have a lesson with her in 22 minutes.  So hopefully that goes well. 

In Church on Sunday there were like 8 or 9 non-members.  They´re not all technically our investigators, but still, it was sweet.  I called Sonia on Saturday night just like a what-the-heck-why-not situation and she ended up coming too with her daughter and daughter´s boyfriend.  Yesterday was a holiday in Spain(Just like every other day in Spain, I swear) and so she had time and we got to go teach her again.  I don´t know what will happen in the future.  We can only meet with here like at 9:30 or 10.  So we´re gonna talk to president and see if we can get permission.  Suppose we´ll see.  I don´t really know what else to talk about.  Claribel is going well, María seems cool. Oh, the Colombian family.  They´re fine. The dad seems to be trying to get us to come by less and less.  We did go visit them on Sunday though and read a chapter of the book of Mormon with them.  The Peruvians....Let´s just say if they were cave diving they left the line. 

Well, it´s been a good week.  Busy. This won´t make much sense to anybody, but I want to remember it in the future. So today I had my Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D adventure.  Ohhhh those Germans.  Sneaky buggers. Greg, I got your package. Thank you very much. Mis oídos están felices.  As is my soul. 

Today for my personal study I read 2 Nefi 9.  It was just as legit as the last time I read it.  But I realized while reading it just how much purpose everything God does.  He has everything in check.  No big deal.  No worries.  It´s nice to know that we´re not alone.  Even when we feel like it, we always have so many chances to pray, and read, and we´ll invite the spirit to come kick it with us.  Take that Satan.  Pwn3d. 

Alright, we´re gonna go see what we can do to help this ecuatoriana make covenants with her Heavenly Father.  Love you all!

Love,

Elder Jepperface

Cuando a Roma fueres, haz como vieres

Hello Hello,

It’s been a week.  Not a crazy one. A pretty normal one.  I feel like I always tell you that it’s been a fast week and that I don’t have that much time to write, so I’ll just stop writing that and let everybody assume that it is always true.  Sound good? Perfect.

Last Wednesday we had that Family Home evening thing with Melissa and Wilmur, Sonia’s daughter and her boyfriend.  It went really well. We did an activity with drawings and let them see for 30 seconds but then took it away and they had to draw however much they could remember and explained that was like the Great Apostasy.  People made churches out of what they could remember. Some things were correct and some things were close, but they were still far from the original drawing.  Pretty cool. We told them we would call and set something up to get them a book of Mormon for this week too, but we still haven’t been able to get a hold of them and they didn’t go to church.

The Colombians did though.  The parents, the non-rebel child, the baby, and the grandma.  Just sacrament meeting, but still cool.  They then set up an appointment with us for yesterday afternoon, but when we went they were all at work, so we found out that they’re super busy this entire week.  Lame.  But we’ll see what’s up with them on Sunday. Hopefully they come to church again.  It’s hard not being able to meet with them though. Ugh. If you’re looking fro work and it’s super hard just meet with the missionaries and you’ll ALWAYS get too much work to be able to meet with them again. That’s the secret in this blasted crisis that everybody talks about.

The Peruvian family, busy.  He has been working a lot and we haven’t been able to meet with them either.  Lame.  We also met with a legit Mexican family this past week though.  Mom, Dad, and two kids.  They’re from la capital.  The City. They were way cool.  Trying to keep the family really important and the all. They were like the core family that this country can’t seem to find.  They did seem a little hesitant about meeting with us again though.  We’re gonna pass by tonight to see if we can set something up.  There really was a different feeling there in that lesson though. It made me all trunky and think about Elder Robbins.  Mexicans. Elder Robbins.  Ay, ay, ay.  Chido.  Jajaja.

Apart from that we just keep trabajando the normal stuff.  Adel, the baptism from early September, is a freakin machine!  He is our new ward missionary and he is supperrr legit.  We have taken him to some visits and he’s always up for it and he’s always legit. I feel like karma is helping me out after going out with the missionaries in North Logan.  Except I’m receiving a bigger blessing than I ever was. 

Transfers are this week.  We actually found them out today.  So we’ll be planning those in the next couple of days and delivering them out on Monday and Tuesday.  I’m sure it’ll be great fun/this transfer doesn’t seem to be too crazy, so hopefully it all goes well.  Elder Woodbury and I are still together, but the last 2 office workers were in for 4 and a half transfers.  Elder Woodbury is at 3 and a half, so we think in 3 weeks he’ll get his trainee (my next companion) and in 6 weeks he’ll be out.  He definitely is wanting out of the office at this point haha but he’s great about it. He’s not like some of the older office workers that hated the world.  Ugh. So lame. 

That’s it. Happy Birthdays to Gavin (21) and Anne Fitzgerald (yesterday). Those are the two I remembered from last week. I’m gonna get better at announcing these bad boys (hopefully).  Also, I think it’s important to point out that we’ve all been "speaking now" for 1 year.  Hahahaha I’m so ridiculous...

Love,

Elder Jeppson

P.S. sorry. No pictures. Lame.

P.P.S. The punk is getting his/herself in trouble...¡Sollajo!

P.P.P.S. Gotta catch´em all....

The helm of my ship, the captain of my soul

Familia.  ¿Me habéis echado de menos?  I´m sorry I didn´t really have time to write last week, but it´s cool.  He vuelto.

It´s great to hear that you are all well. I assume that you are all well at least. Things are grand over here in España.  The weather has been beautiful, I finally wore an American suit again today and people told me I had gained weight, and we´re getting out of the office earlier and earlier now that I have tackled and conquered the mountain of stuff to do in there.  I feel settled in, and things are going well these days.  Which is good.  Hooray.  But really, it´s all about the missionary work, so let´s talk about the good stuff.

William and Claudia are from Peru. I really can´t remember if I´ve talked about them already, but they´re legit.  He worked in the distribution center in Peru, but right as he started listening to the missionaries, he whisked off to Spain.  Five years later we contacted them on the street.  She was SUPER pregnant.  I called a couple times and nobody ever answered. Which is pretty typical. But we ran into them on the street again. Gave me a different number (the wife´s).  Called it.  The husband answered.  Ummm my wife is giving birth right now, can you call back later?  Well yeah dude, good luck with everything.  Called back 2 weeks later.  Taught them a lesson.  It was true.  She had given birth.  She was skinny(er), and there was an extra child in their house.  They´re way good. When we had gone back the second time, they had read the folleto we had left and were like answering our questions with sentences like this "Well that pamphlet you left us told us that prophets are people who tell the people what God wants for them." That never happens.  The problem? He works on Sundays at 10:30 in the morning, which is when our church starts.  So we´ll have to see if he´s willing to find the solution to that desafío.  Sometimes Spanish words come to my head faster than English ones. Forgive me.

There is also a Colombian family that we have been teaching lately that is pretty cool.  The mom has a 14 year son that is going wayward and "fumando porros" and causing problems in the family.  He doesn´t want to be in our lessons, but the family wants more harmony in the home.  So they´re giving the church a shot.  But the mom is married to a guy in Colombia (two kids dad) and living with a different guy here now (and they have a kid).  So that´s a situation. But we´ll keep going and see what the Lord has in store for them. 

The best part of our week was Sunday.  Let me explain.  So Saturday night I was saying my prayers and I asked Heavenly Father to bless us with a miracle.  Not like a vision or something super crazy, but just like some situation that He needed His missionaries to be in.  Sunday morning, we were going to pick up a Dominican menos activo (who had contacted US in the street about a week before, a miracle in itself) and as we were on our way two people stopped us. "Hey elders!"  We were like, what the....Elders? They explained to us that they were members and hadn´t been to church in a while because they didn´t know where it was.  That morning they had decided to just go out in the street looking for it and look at that, they had found us.  We were like yeah! Let´s go to church!  So we all went together to pick up José (Dominican) and then to church.  She bore her testimony and José was super active in lessons and stuff.  Legit!  Then Sonia´s (remember her?) daughter, who we had run into in the street Saturday night and invited to church, came to church with her boyfriend.  He is from Columbia and has gone to a lot of different churches so we asked a member if we could do a Noche de Hogar with them this week and asked them to invite those two.  We´ll see what happens.  Super cool, eh? I´m not done.  ALSO there was a guy from Ecuador there that has been dating a member and they want to get married but she wants him to learn more about the church before they get married (even though she doesn´t ever go, go figure).  So he was there telling us that he would like to meet with the missionaries too! Ugh.  "Ask and ye shall receive".  If you don´t believe it, try it.  I know that the couple could have looked up the church´s address on the Internet and the others could just be called fluke people showing up at church, but I definitely know it was the Hand of the Lord blessing us.  So that was a really cool story I thought ya´ll might like to hear.

Haha! Sweet a street named after Sil!

That´s basically it for this past week.  We taught Nani and Adel about the temple and are hoping they can go with the youth to a Baptisms for the Dead activity that is coming up in November.   We also went to the temple today for P-day.  As I was sitting in there feeling so happy, I decided I was definitely called to this mission for a reason: I need the temple. hahaha I know we ALL do technically, but I seriously just realized how much refuge I find in the temple from the storms of this crazy Spanish sea.  It´s been a good week.  I´m extremely grateful to have a temple in my mission that I can attend.  I´m grateful for a family that´s so dang legit.  I´m grateful for TWO families that are so dang legit.  Keep it up.  Invite a friend.  Maybe a life will be changed.

Love,

Elder Jeppson




Let every creature go for broke and sing....

Typical bench in Spain - Buzon (mailbox) where all our letters get mailed home!  Yay!

Hello familia.  

It´s Thursday. I´m sorry.  I didn´t really get time to email yesterday and honestly I only have about 10 minutes today, so it´ll be a shorty I suppose.

This last week has been good.  We had Stake Conference on Sunday and they talked a lot about EFY that happened here in Madarid this last summer and how important it is to continue living it.  The coolest was at the end a bunch of the jovens that went all sang the EFY medley in Spanish.  Just as spiritual as ever. Ugh. I love the medley so much.  It really is so important to continue living the spiritual things after.  Sometimes we have these awesome moments when we feel the spirit so strong but then we get all wrapped up in the things of this life that they get toned down or maybe even forgotten about.  It´s one reason why a journal is so important, so we can go back and remember those important moments. 

Salamanca Spain -delivering to the missionaries.

Today we took a road trip to Salamanca.  It was sweet. We also stopped at Ávila on our way back.  There were a lot of things in the office that needed to be delivered to them and Hermana Ovard, who is in charge of the pedidos en la misión asked one day in the office "How in the world are we going to get all this stuff to Salamanca?" Well, Elder Woodbury and I had already been wanting to go up there since we have a car but it´s outside of our zone and like a 2 and a half hour drive, so we had kind of counted it out.  But at that moment we were like yeah we´ll just take it to them! And president was ok with it, so we did it.  Boom.  Salamanca trip.  Ávila was actually cooler.  Google picture that stuff.  It was sweet. 

That´s all for this week.  Sorry. I´m sure you all understand and love me still. If not, I´ll fight to earn it back.  Love you all!

Love,

Elder Jeppson

P.S. On Monday, I bought a pack of Pokémon cards.  Ahhhh yeah!!!!

Avila Spain - Road Trip to Salamanca
Elders Jeppson and Woodbury

Avila Spain

Avila Spain