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.