Week 1!

¡Hola!

Wow, what a week! It went by really fast. A lot happened, as I´m sure you can imagine. I will first off give a quick rundown of what happened and then see if I have time for much else haha.

So last Wednesday we had a lesson after P-day ended (at 6:30) and we set a baptismal date with Fernando! hahaha what a first lesson for me, eh? I didn´t teach a ton, but I did whenever Elder Driggs would throw it over to me. And I really like bearing testimony. But after that we had 2 other lessons, one was just a regular lesson, and one was a no-show. So basically, my first day had everything possible in it! Thursday was a little bit different. We do our weekly planning on Thursday in the morning, so we were there doing that for a while, then had Mediodia, then went out and I think did some contacting. We do a lot of street contacting, which I really like most of the time. It´s super weird to think that I am randomly stopping people on the street and telling them about Jesus Christ, but they need to find out somehow! I don´t really remember anything too specific with what happened on what days. Sorry. But also we had a pretty sweet lesson with this one guy that was at a house that the person we intended to meet with wasn´t there, so we just taught him, I think his name was Marcell? I dunno. But it was really spiritual and got me all excited and stuff, and then we tried to call him a little later and he falso-ed us! haha but it was ok with me because I was still really glad that I had the opportunity to have that lesson with him. Really Spiritual. Hmmm, oh! So the AP´s have been going on intercambios with all the missionaries in teh Madrid area, so they are on exchanges like 3 times a week. When they do this, they are obviously not our companions, so Elder Gardner and I are either left with each other (always an interesting experience) or else we go on splits with Elder Reist and Elder Carey, the other two elders that live with us. I do not sleep on the couch, I sleep on a mattress on the floor usually. Saturday was the baptism of Francisca and Javiera, they are 9 and 10 years old I think. It was cool to see their dad baptise them. They are all new in the church, and they were invited by a different recent member haha It just goes to show how much missionary work you can do by inviting others to come unto Christ. Sunday was a really busy day. I don´t really remember specifics (sorry) but we did a lot of running around and we had a good amount of investigators that made it to church. Monday is the day that my life got a little harder. The AP´s decided that since it was weird having 4 missionaries in the same area and sharing investigators that they were going to open up ¨Barrio 2 B¨ which has the exact same boundaries. This means that I have not had any investigators for the last couple days and all I have been doing is contacting people trying to find people to teach. That is a lot of contacting! I really like getting to talk to that many people though. Sometimes it does make for long days though. Yesterday we had District Meeting, but the office elders are in our district and they had to leave to go do something so it was pretty short. That´s a very brief overview of my last week! Now, onto answering questions and talking about the mission life here.

First off, this is the best mission ever! We get up at 7:00 instead of 6:30 (and between april and October 7:30) and we go to bed a half hour later than the usual schedule because the Spaniard culture is later than usual cultures. That is such a blessing to me! For Mediodia, we go back to the piso (apartment) for 2 hours each day, whenver fits best with our teaching schedule. We have 30 minutes of language study and get to eat lunch during that time. If necessary, we are allowed to take a 20 minute nap as long as our companion wakes us up on time, hahaha. How amazing is that? But we are supposed to avoid taking one if we can. So that just depends on how you´re feeling each day. I am going to try and not take naps if possible. We will see. Elder Driggs is legit. I like him because he´s stoked about the work, does a good job, but doesn´t like suck the fun out of what we are doing everyday. That´s good. His family is the family that founded Driggs in Idaho. His great great great grandfather or something, but he has actually never been there, funny, eh? Brad will love to know that I thought though. There is also a lady in our ward that is here from Driggs. What in the world? Small world. The people here are...various. There is such a variety. Pretty much everybody from Madrid/Spain is Catholic/Atheist, so that´s really hard to contact, but there are a TON of people from South & Central America here. Honduras, Bolivia, Dominnican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador. Tons. It makes it really nice to start conversations cause you can always ask them where they are from. They are way more golden for missionaries. They have believing blood. It´s true! I don´t really know President Watkins very well yet. I had a quick interview with him last Wednesday and then today we had a big get together at the Mission home. He was there, but I didn´t really get to talk to him or anything. I am excited to get to know him better over the next two years. But the shindig today was for P-day and a lot of fun. All of the Missionaries that live within like an hour of Madrid came, so there was like 50 missionaries there. We just played futbol and ate and talked and chilled. It was great! My zip code is 28027 I think, but look that up on the internet before you send anything. Make sure. It might actually be better if all letters are just sent to the mission office for now because the AP´s are there every monday so we get our mail from there weekly. When I get transferred in 3 weeks I will let you know my address and it might be better to send my letters write to me after that. Packages always to the office though. Speaking of which, thank you for the packages this week! I love the cocoa krispies and stuff. Oh, Greg, Dad, Doug, Tim, all the moms out there, if you have any advice on what foods are quick and easy to make, I would love suggestions, because I don´t always have a lot of time and I would like to try things and improve my cooking abilities, so I´m open to all suggestions! The food here is good. It doesn´t taste like anything super crazy to me. I did eat a huge lunch on Sunday, then went to 2 different lessons that ended up feeding me. It was SO hard to eat all that food and not want to vomit. I didn´t want to offend them though so I tried to eat as much as I could. Ugh. The trials of a missionary ;) Spanish is great. I speak really well I feel like for my time I´ve had to learn it. I can almost always say what I want and people tell me I have a decent accent. My weakness though is understanding. Ugh. I´m bad enough at listening in English that when people whip off a sentence in Spanish sometimes I just stare/smile/nod my head then continue with my message hahaha it will come with time. It´s just hard cause I have never been able to practice it much! The weather has been cold lately. It´s a good thing I am used to Utah/Cache Valley. So it isn´t really too terrible. Just being in the streets all days makes my hands cold. But that coat I got is legit! Thank heavens. Also, I was glad to hear everything went well with Natalie and her surgery. I would love videos if anybody has any or anything.

Welp, I know this gospel is true! There are lots of hard times out here but the more I bear testimony of this gospel and see how it affects lives and how everything just makes sense with the gospel really builds my testimony! I´m so grateful to have the gospel in my life, and amazing people like my family and everyone else that reads this :) Thank you!

Love,
Elder Jeppson

Abby-Heard you did a great job in your first meet, so great job! Also, I´m jealous you got to go in and watch Brad do surgery.

Kristina-Congrats on the internship! You´ll do great.

All Immediate family and I guess anybody-I would love immediate family email addresses and anybody can email me, but I am only allowed to email direct family and mission president. Love you all though!