It's like watching a cloud go through myself...

Elders Merrriman and Jeppson

 Well hello hello! Well aren't you all looking quite fine today.

Al grano.  The work is picking up a bit. Not like, a TON, but slowly but surely.  We're definitely setting a good base for La Laguna to be a really good area.  It makes me wish I was going to have more time here.  But alas, even paradise has a time and a season to it I suppose.  The coolest thing from this past week is that Edid told us she wants to get baptized.  Awww yeah! We don't have a date with her.  She works "interna" so she is at work literally all work long, sleeping there and everything but gets out on Saturdays at like 4 and enters Sunday afternoons.  So she comes to our English classes and church on Sunday.  We teach her right before English classes.  But so that's cool.  We'll see if we can't get a goal for her on the baptismal date.  

Another sweet guy we're teaching is Argenis.  He's way cool! He's technically Venezolano, but he came to the islands when he had like one year and considers himself canario. So chacho, he's canario.  But he has heard the missionaries a bunch of times before and never really clicked I guess.  We've started teaching him and this time he's married and his wife is preggers so I guess he's looking more at eternal things and plus he's like me if I was canario.  But a lot more tranquilo.  So we basically get along really well.  I feel like he's one of those people that I was sent to La Laguna to teach.  Maybe that's just me being crazy, but whatever.  I was born this way.  I can't change, right? Wrong. You can change.  But don't let me get distracted on that topic. 

Other than that we have had some lessons with some cool jovenes since there are about 6 million of them walking around EVERYWHERE.  It's way cool. It's just like serving on campus, since it is.  Sometimes it's way cool, sometimes it's like "Alright, how is this not supposed to be killing me?" But it's all good.  But it's fun to talk to them if they don't make fun of us and think they're hilarious.  The down to earth ones are way sweet. I wish I could have just worked with YSA aged people my whole mission.  that'd be a sick senior couple mission to serve.  But I might be getting ahead of myself on that one.

Hmmmm, for p-day today we continued our giant island tour.  We had already nailed the coast and mountains, so today we went for the forest.  Rough life, I know.  We went up on the very north-east part to a national park thing called Anaga.  It was beautiful.  It was a lot like going up Logan canyon, but less mountain and more green/alive-ness.  Yup.  So now we have the island down I think.  We're gonna move onto all the fun activities there are to do on the island now.  We even made a schedule.  I call it "going down in style".  It includes La Gomera.  ´Nuff said.

That's about all I have for today.  thanks for all the love and support.  I know this is the church of Jesus Christ.  I love being a missionary.  It's crazy that this is the only time I'll get to do it this way.  There's nothing else to do than to darle duro! 

Like a boss,

Elder Jeppson

On the picture where Elder Merriman and I are the EXACT same in the air, that was our very first jump picture EVER together. And completely unchoreagraphed.  I guess we're just the exact same person in the end....

The other one is us above La Laguna.  What a beautiful area....

Oh my column!!!

Well hello there family-a.  

Good week. No time. typical missionary stuff. It's cool to hear about Jeppson's in other parts of Europe though. What luck!

Basically the work continues over here.  We're still in the looking and finding process, just as always.  We do have some good people that look like they will be investigating the church though.  O sea, investigators.  investigatores.  Pick the correct one.  Yup.  One of them had listened in the past, but now he's married to his girlfriend and she's pregnant and he's worried about being a good dad and all that stuff that comes along with starting a family.  Hopefully he'll realize how much the church can help him do it well.  Yeah. So... cool! What else? A lot of our investigators have been busy with new jobs/school starting and whatnot.  It looks like Ernesto might be able to come to church this week. That'll be cool.  Hopefully the Spirit can get in there and wedge open that heart of his.  We'll see.

All is well with the Merriman. We actually have less time than normal to do proselyting work because the church has this 12 week training program that has us stay in an hour extra everyday and go over a lot of the basic missionary mtc stuff again.  It's cool. I loike it a lot.  loike wasn't a typo like all the other ones above it.  

Today for p-day we did an inland adventure instead of the coast and went up to Teide.  It's the mountain I went to April 28th-ish of 2011. Remember that? Well we went up today and actually took the cable car up and everything. It went well. Good day with a fun drive through windy forest roads.  The beach last week, the forest/mountains this week. It's like a mini continent!  Pray for investigators, snow, and the NHL. Ay ay ay I am already out of time...

I love you all like a missionary loves when people listen to him.  Keep up the work back home.

-Elder Jeppson

Makin hair grow on a bullfrog

Reppin' the lone star.  Betcha didn't see that one comin', did ya?

Elder Jeppson & Elder Merriman

The adventure I've come to call the mission continues off the coast of Africa over here.  I'll start with today just to mix things up.  Today we did what could be called the boomerang.  We threw ourselves down the south coast of the island, stopped at the cliffs that were in "Princess Bride" They're called Los gigantes. I'll see if you can translate that one on your own. It's a toughie.  It was really sweet.  Then we experienced this crazy effect called "going home on the north coast".  It was essentially that, we went home on the north coast.  So basically we did a giant loop of the entire island.  It was definitely pretty cool.  We saw the cliffs, went to a cool lookout by a town called Masca.  Beautiful.  Simply beautiful.  Then we stopped in Icod de los vinos and saw this really really old tree that is apparently pretty cool.  Just seemed like a tree to me, call me crazy.  El Drago Milenario. Look it up if you're that interested.  Now we're back up here in La Laguna.  it was quite a fun little adventure.  The north of the island is way more pretty than the south half. that's for sure.  

As far as the work goes we have been getting things rolling here a bit more in La Laguna.  Our best prospect right now is a colombiana.  The Santa Cruz elders had started teaching her right before we got here. But she lives up here in La Laguna so we have since taken over the teaching.  She is really trying to learn English too haha.  But she has had a lot of learning the bible as she has grown up so that's a big help when it comes to explaining things.  She knows her stuff better than most.  

Speaking of people that know their stuff well, we had a cool experience with Ernesto this past week.  He is the one that likes to "talk" about the bible.  He wasn't really liking the idea of having Joseph Smith as a prophet or having the Book of Mormon.  The lessons were way too long and didn't feel the Spirit during them.  but on Monday we had a lesson with him that started out the same, but I did my absolute best to control my tone and almost talk in like a bored voice haha. Something quiet and controlled, sabéis? it totally changed everything.  I felt the spirit bearing testimony of the Savior that day more strong than I can almost remember in any other moment of the mission.  I love talking about the Atonement and testifying of our Savior, but this time was just different. I think he felt it too, cause he accepted the Book of Mormon and said he would come to church in two weeks (of course he can't this week..).  It was really cool though.  Just a nice reminder of what the mission is all about, ya know? It's about sharing the gospel.

That's about I've got for ya this week.  I gave a talk on Sunday. It went well. I honestly think I prefer to give talks on the gospel in Spanish now instead of English. Crazy how that works. I also remembered Chad's birthday on the 6th.  I didn't necessarily throw a party, but I hope he knows I love him from the Canary Islands too.  Welp... Love you all I suppose. Thanks for all your support.  Eat a bowl of Cocoa (or Fruity, if your name is Tim) Pebbles for me. Unless you're on a mission in a remote (to cocoa pebbles) country. In which case, the wait continues....

-Elder Jeppson

A lagoon, sunsets, and a cool ocean breeze...

Kickin' it old school in the Canary Islands.  Awww yeah!

We stayed on our own island this week.  It was cool.  Tenerife.  Lanzarote still holds that special place in my heart, but I'm definitely thinking Tenerife is a lot more beautiful.  We've pretty much got to get around the whole island in the past week.  On Friday I got to do an interview for baptism in Los Cristianos. I was actually in San Isidro.  But we got to drive down the whole coast (did I tell you we have a car in this area too? If not, we have a car in this area too) and see that side.  We also are in charge of Puerto de la Cruz on the west side of the island.  We have been over there about 3 times and it is another beautiful drive with a cliff down to the ocean on one side and a beautiful view of Teide on the other side. Teide is the highest point in all of Spain.  So we see sea level and the highest point in all of Spain at the same time.  It's pretty cool.

I can tell you a little more about La Laguna as well now that this week I actually have a little bit of time.  La Laguna is a city up a ways from the ocean.  I heard it was the first city established on the island, that might be a myth though.  It's above the island's capital, Santa Cruz.  We actually go down there every now and then for district meetings and whatnot.  It's a branch here that has about 50-60 people that attend.  We have our own chapel. The only one in all the islands.  Yup.  Elder Merriman and I get along amazingly well. It's like we're almost the same person sometimes.  I even got him to drop the theta and become a Barça fan.  hahaha I don't know if you would call that training or corruption, but we're doing well.

Since we're opening the area, it's been a LOT of talking to people in the street.  It's weird going from Barrio 2 where we didn't really have that much time to street contact to now having all day long to do it.  It's nice, and sometimes long, but things are starting to pick up now.  We have one investigator that Elder Woodbury had been teaching, and a Columbian that we found on the street.  There our only like legit 2 investigators for now.  We've got some potentials set up for this afternoon and basically we're just doing what we can do find people to teach.  I believe that we're going to start some activities like English Classes and whatnot to see if we can get the members involved too.  I don't think I'm qualified to teach them these days though, half the words that I use these days are spanglish. Buah. Don't make fun of me when you see me next.

I don't know what else to say. Are my emails seeming shorter and shorter these days? Welp, sorry.  I hope they're still interesting.  If you've made it to the point of reading this I guess I haven't lost you completely. So that's cool. Thanks.

Welp, it's quite a blessing to be over here serving the Lord. I don't know how I have gotten so lucky to be here serving him in this place at this time, but the only option I really see is to keep working hard and show that I'm amazingly grateful for all the experiences I have had up ´til now in my mission.  I know this church is true.  The more I learn about it and the more questions and doubts people ask us the more and more I realize that it just all makes sense.  We are children of God.  He loves us.  He has a plan for us.  Obey and serve and receive the blessings.  Learn the lessons that need to be learned.  Life is good.  I love you all.

-Elder Jeppson