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

We must paint with all the colors of the wind...

Familia, mis seres queridos, desconocidos, y cualquier otra alma que vea este mensaje,

I had a great week.  Me fue genial.  Thank you first of all for all the happy birthday wishes.  Super cool of ya´ll´s.  I have a lot to say I feel like, so I´mma be I´mma be. I mean I´mma start.  I wish I could personally hug and thank you all for the gifts and thoughts, but there´s too many and I would be afraid of forgetting one, so a joint thank you to all: THANK YOU.

Nani's Baptism

So I don´t remember a single thing from Thursday.  Friday was Nani´s baptism.  It was super good!  Oh she was so excited.  We did it in Bishop´s pool.  She asked me to do it so I got to go swimming! But not really.  It´s not heated either, so it was really quite cold.  But as the ordinance was performed there was an inner warmth that can´t be explained, so I guess the spirit is more amazing than cold water.  She was also confirmed at the baptismal service since General Conference was last Sunday and Stake Conference is this sunday.  Instead of having her wait 3 weeks, we did it there.  Elder Ovard, a senior missionary that serves in the Office with us, confirmed her and it was fantastic.  I testify that the Spirit guided him on that, because all the doubts/things she needed to hear were addressed.  About not letting struggles with members challenge our testimony and stuff like that.  WAY too many people in Spain have just been offended by some member and then decide they should stop going.  Doesn´t seem like the most sure way of solving a problem to me, but I definitely haven´t become a Spaniard in my thoughts still (in fact, one member calls me Elder Americano, cause I´m more American than the other American missionaries. Compliment?) It was really spirit filled.  After that, the Watkins invited us out to dinner! Oh snap.  That is so not President Watkins style.  Super cool of them.  We went to Wok. A chinese buffet.  Appropriate Spanish food, right? 

Tanton's Birthday :)

Oh, they also sang to me at the baptism after all so don´t worry mom, I got a south-american/spaniard rendition, which is even worse than Brad...

Ummm...General Conference? What? Legit! What else would we expect from the Prophet and Apostles though. I would love to hear what everybody learned, what they loved, what made them laugh, and anything else.  I´m gonna go ahead and say it was a fantastic Priesthood Session to be a missionary in.  They brought out the hacha on that one.  We. Need. More. Missionaries.  Join the team.  God has a specific mission prepared just for us.  Stuff like that.  Elder Holland even got up in our faces and singed our eyebrows with fire, the way a good coach does when the game´s on the line and you´ve gotta win.  It´s nice to know that there really is so much revelation in callings and assignments.  The Lord has his hand in our lives, no doubt.  It´s up to us if we want to recognize it or not.  And the 2nd Provo temple? Oh I looovveee that idea. I was in the MTC when the tabernacle burned down.  Star Valley temple? I´m sure the Robinson´s are so excited they don´t know what to do.  Brigham City almost built, Star Valley on the way. Oh snap!  Times are good. The temple is a refuge in the world from the world. 

Apart from those 3 heavy hitting days my week was pretty normal/blargh.  There have been some emergency transfers going on so I´ve been in the office helping President come up with travel plans and buy tickets and all that stuff.  Also, Elder Woodbury is sick, and I´m getting sick, so perfect time for the Day and Ny-Quil.  Elder Robbins, we´re still bestest enough friends that across the ocean we get sick together.  Ahhhhh soooo cute! 

I got a little more Spanish for P-Day today.   Elder McGrath is involved in those emergency transfers I was talking about so he was actually with us today too waiting to go to his new area in paradise (the islands).  We went back to my Barrio 2 area and took a tour of the Plaza de Toros en Ventas.  I used to pick up investigatores there. So once again, I got homesick to be in Barrio 2 hahaha. Such a good area! Oh, speaking of which, I saw Gorki, Gloria, Gino, and Rosemary at General Conference.  They´re so legit.  Such a good first transfer, I still wish I could have had more time with Elder Driggs there.  But it´s whatevs.  He´ll be married here in like a month I´m sure. hhahaah I hope he reads these.

I love you all. I love hearing from you all.  I fell asleep during letter writing time today, so sorry if you don´t get letters this week.  The sleep was worth it.  I´ve been pretty bleh today and yesterday.  Enjoy the pictures. I enjoy your faces.

Love,

Elder Jeppson