Morning seems so far away...

Then you dropped a note and we changed key...

Well, here we are. The last one from September. This month is always the fastest month of my life.  I love it.  Everything seems to calm down, Cache Valley turns into the most amazing bullet bike ride in the world, Green Day wakes up finally at the end.  It´s just a great month! 

This past week has been a good week.  They all seem to be good though.  Not easy always, but always good. Last P-day was Adel´s (who got baptized earlier this month) birthday, so we bought some ice cream and took it to him.  He enjoyed it a lot I think.  He was totally surprised.  I had it written down from his baptismal cédula so we couldn´t be fooled! So that went well.  On a worse note, Sonia got in a car crash (or so we think. Her Spanish in her text messages is terrible, and she hasn´t answered our calls for alittle bit.) So we haven´t been able to meet with her.  But she finally texted us back last night so we´ll see if we can do anything this week that comes.  We plan on taking her some brownies this afternoon.  Hopefully she´ll be home.

We also had a lesson with Neli this past week.  She is also a recent convert that I actually taught like 5 months ago.  Remember my little fingerprint getaway to Madrid from the Canary Islands? Well, in that 3 day stint I stayed with the Secretaries and we taught Neli her first lesson together.  She eventually got baptised, so it was kinda cool to return to the same little room where we kneeled for 3 minutes waiting for her to pray last time hahahaha....

Saturday went really fast cause we did intercambios with Elder Veintimilla, our district leader.  I was with him and Elder Woodbury went and worked with Elder Hilton in Barrio 4.  Barrio 4 lives with Barrio 2, where I started out, so it was kind of cool to go back to the piso that I started the mission in.  I got all nostalgic for a bit.  Are you all proud I remembered a word like nostalgic?  But it went well.  We didn´t have a ton planned, so we did a lot of contacting.  But that´s good, because Elder Woodbury and I have been so busy with all the other stuff we have to do that we haven´t really had the opportunity to search for new people, which is really important when you want to teach new people.  Make sense? I thought so.  I did set up some appointments with some members in the ward that I don´t really know still.  It´s so important to get to know the ward.  As Greg put it so perfectly: "The members: can´t live with them, can´t live without them."  So true.  Just don´t spread false doctrine to scare the investigadores (and don´t call them investigadores to their face as they continually ask what that is) and all will be well.  So it was a good weekend.  Went fast.

Church on Sunday was great. I honestly could have paid a little better attention to the talks in Sacrament Meeting, but it was just a great day of feeling the spirit and still trying to meet people.  Some American California girl came to church.  She´s in a band in Salt Lake called Bearclaw.  If some music guru wants to look it up on like myspace or something... She is here for like 9 months to learn Spanish.  It´s always great to have Americans in the ward.  But she says that like half her family is active and the other half isn´t, so we´re gonna try and get her on the active side.  Cool, eh?

Other than that not a lot has been going on on this side of the Atlantic (well, I don´t get the news actually, but as far as Alcobendas missionary work....).  It´s been good lately though.  Nani is super stoked for her baptism this Friday.  It´s been really cool to see her progress and change.  She´s super stoked for General Conference (which I am too. But we´ll get to that) too. 

Thank you for all the letters/packages/emails and stuff this past week.  I really appreciate all the happiness wishes and gifts and such.  I´m sorry Spain costs a batrillion dollars to send stuff to.  Do something nice for someone on Friday for me, is it super lame if I copy what the Prophet asked for?

Speaking of the Prophet...let´s listen to his voice this weekend!  My goodness I´m so stoked for Conference! With the baptism and conference, it´s gonna be a great weekend.  We truly are so blessed to be a part of the "Única iglesia viviente sobre la faz de la tierra."  The living church.  It´s still directed by Jesus Christ.  And this weekend we have the blessing of being able to learn from the leaders and more importantly, from the spirit.  My missionary challenge this week is two part.  Part 1-Invite somebody that doesn´t plan on watching it (whether member or not) to watch it with you and part 2-To have a question in mind beforehand that you want answered this conference. I know that if we start both of these parts with a supplication to the Lord, that he will bless us with answers, but we have to pay attention very closely to receive them!  Good luck. Let me know how it goes.  Especially Sammy.

I love you all.  Another week.  You´re in my prayers. 

-Elder Jeppson

I don´t know how to tell you this but.... there´s a Chinese family in our bathroom....

Bwah.  What a semana crazy I have had.  I know I say it every time, and you´re all sick of hearing it, but it was a very fast week.

So let´s begin.  Empecemos, pues.  I´m pretty sure that the last time I talked to you was last...Wednesday, right?  We had a Family Home Evening with the Morales family that night.  But it ended up being a mess...kind of.  We usually have it at the Ventura´s house with them, the Morales family, and Marjorie, and some other random members.  But this week The Morales family told us to come to theirs so they could invite a menos activo to come and get stoked on the church again.  So we did.  BUT apparently Marjorie had decided she wanted to have it in her house for once and so when we invited her to the Morales house she was like but what about in my house and blah blah blah people getting upset eventually everybody showed up at the Morales house except the menos activo.  Who thought it was Thursday after all of that.  Bahahaha. But it´s ok, because we´re going to Marjorie´s house tonight for it.  Nani did go last week though, so that was cool.

Speaking of Nani, I´ll just update ya´ll on her now.  Her fecha has officially been changed to the 30th instead of the 1st, since conference will have the stake center in Madrid going crazy busy.  So that´ll be next Friday.  We´re pretty excited for that.  She has progressed a ton since our first lesson with her (which was like my 1st or 2nd day here in Alcobendas).  It´s been cool to see.  In the past week she got a new job, super excited, then got laid off again, and super sad.  But she is handling it really well, which to me shows how much she has improved.  Yup.  All is well. 

Sonia has been crazy busy, so we haven´t been able to meet with her in like....a week and a half.  BUT she did come to church on Sunday, which was a really good sign.  Usually people just fall off the face of the earth.  But she´s still on the face, so that´s good.  We had an appointment with her at 3:00 today, but like all P-day lessons ever in the history of the world, it failed.  She forgot, so she told us to come back at 8:00 tonight.  So we´re going to.  Guess we´ll see how it goes and where she´s at on it all. 

Friday was spent planning all the transfer stuff and getting everything all ready.  Madre mía that was an adventure.  Not the planning.  That went really well.  We just have to figure out how everybody will get from one point of Spain to the other point without being alone if possible.  The crazy part was Monday and Tuesday when we were driving everybody everywhere to do everything.  I forgot the sad news last week too: Arrecife got closed :( Super sad.  The branch is still there obviously, but there are no missionaries working there right now.  That´s gonna be really really hard on the branch, but the president and mission leader have been fighting.  And President doesn´t like when leaders of the church fight together when it´s such a blessing to even have missionaries.  So Elder White came back to the peninsula.  He went all the way to the north in A Coruña.  He was in a trio with us for Monday afternoon and Tuesday Morning.  But at the end of yesterday, I was seriously DEAD.  Not literally, but metaphorically.  So yeah. First time doing transfers:survived.

That is seriously what my last week is composed of.  Transfer crap.  Blegh.  It´s hard to keep life balanced between all the jazz I have to do in the office and making sure that everything is taken care of with the actual missionary work in our area.  I think the Lord has a super busy future ahead for me and he´s just training me to have a headache and stress hahaha.  It´s not really that bad, I´ve only had like 3 headaches here.  Which is good.  I am really excited for this transfer that´s coming.  I think Elder Woodbury and I have a lot of potential together here as a companionship.  So we´re gonna do what we can do. 

As for regular world stuff, it sounds like all is well.  September is a birthday month.   So happy birthday to everybody.  Elder El-Bakri, Eskelson, Stephenson, Chad (Gunnell and Smith), Joe Quillen, and everybody else that I´m sure I didn´t mention.  I love hearing from all the other people.  I think Elder Gunnell goes into the MTC either today or in a week.  Either way,  good luck my friend.  It´s quite an adventure.  And I´m not even learning Russian.  Mom, give him a hug for me.  Or just somebody else.  Whoever gets around to it.  Thanks. 

Well, I still have 15 minutes, but I´m pretty much out of stuff to say.  I hope that all is well with everybody.  Seems to me like it is.  Enjoy the beautiful Utah Autumn, because it´s just not the same in the blasted middle of the Iberian Peninsula. Mountains are...non-existent.  The temperature is starting to bajar though, so that´s good.  Everybody in the world has come back from vacation now almost.  And that´s how it is these days. 

I know this church is true.  I love it.  Serving the mission is an amazing blessing. Thanks to all who have helped me to get here, especially my parents.  But all the friends too.  I wouldn´t be who I am without ya´ll´s.  The church is true.  I love you all. Elder Cardon, good luck out there.  Tear up Utah como si fuera Honduras.

Love,

Elder Jefeson

The Biggoron´s Sword!

Well good ´ay ´ere mates.

Adel's Baptism

It has been a week.  It has been a really grand week.  Buenísimo.  The baptism of Adel went over smooth as ever.  He was super stoked.  He bore this grand testimony after about how he didn´t want to wait even minute longer and how he was afraid he was going to have to work during his baptism but in the end he didn´t have to and all this great stuff.  It was cool because Nani was there and it got her all stoked to have her baptism too.  She was like crying and all.  It was spiritual.  So that was a good Friday.  We also have been meeting with Sonia.  She is also from Paraguay.  I honestly don´t remember if I have said anything about her or not.  We just contacted her on the street during the fiestas of San Sebastián de los Reyes and now she has like a batrillion questions and said that she had only ever heard of tithing before but that she is really interested about learning more but wants to be sure of it before she makes a big change in her life and basically yeah.  And I made that a giant run on sentence so you could feel what it is like when she is asking question after question.   But something super cool with her is that after our first lesson she was like "well I have a sister that believes in the evangelio (gospel) but she is from a different church. I´ll talk to her about you guys".  We were just kinda like...ummmm....alright.....(oh crap).  And she did.  And her sister told her that she should never meet with us again and that if she did then there was a hell waiting for her instead of a heaven and that we didn´t even believe in the second coming and blah blah blah.  So for our second meeting with her she was like...."I have some doubts.  I talked to me sister and she told me [Insert all that stuff in here^^].  But I decided I needed to give you two fantastic boys another chance (she always calls us fantastic boys or her amazing children bahahaha).  We were like oh thank you so much! There´s tons of rumors about us and whatnot but we can tell you the truth about what we really believe.  And that´s when the million questions started haha.  But so that seems to us like there is quite a bit of potential.  Fingers crossed at least.  Sorry if that´s a lot of stuff.  She´s 40 years old and has 3 kids (of 21, 19, and 6 years). The 19 year old daughter went to church with her on Sunday but is really quite atheist/agnostic and doesn´t really care to learn more (like everybody in Spain that age).  So yeah. 

That brings me to my next thing.  Church on Sunday.  Elder Woodbury and I had talks.  I felt like my talk actually went really well.   This ward really kind of sucks at having like member involvement and leaders keeping everything in control and all that jazz so we really focused our talks on that.  Since it was the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 I talked about how there was a terrorist attack and how there were amazing firemen, police officers, soldiers, and all that helped save lots of lives but that really the mayhem was helped and overcome because of the willingness of all the ordinary people to get involved.  Likewise, there is still a spiritual terrorist that is constantly attacking us and his name is Satan.  Luckily, the Lord has blessed us with many "firemen, police officers, soldiers, etc."  These people are the Apostles, Bishops, Relief Society presidents, and other people with leadership in the church that help us, but that to really beat the spiritual terrorism that surrounds us we need the help of all the regular members.  Just like the importance that the regular citizens of the US helped us overcome that terrorist attack.  Then I talked to them about 3 principles that can help the regular members overcome Satan. 1-Invite everybody that is not a member or is less active to activities.  They might turn us down, but we need to be continuous in inviting people.  2-Magnify your calling.  Magnify your calling doesn´t mean you need to be some sobresaliente superstar at whatever you do, it just means you need to fulfill all your responsibilities and lift where you stand.  If everybody fulfills their responsibilities (like home and visiting teaching coughcough) then the Church will progress faster, and the 3rd principle was work with the missionaries instead of just giving the missionaries work.  If members and missionaries worked TOGETHER more then there would be sooo many more baptisms.  That was pretty much my talk in a nutshell, translated to English.  I hope you enjoyed it. 

Sonia was in church.  She liked it.  She told us that somebody had invited her to Zaragoza for the weekend, but that she turned them down cause had given us her word that she was going to church with us. I wish all investigators did that. Scoundrels.  Her daughter went with her (which I apparently already said).  They seemed to enjoy it.  The daughter was dead afraid of the Sacrament. ("What happens if I don´t partake of it? Do I have to? What is it?")  So I explained it to her and all. Then gospel principles went well except the teacher kept calling them investigators and they didn´t have any idea what that meant. "Are you an investigator?" "Ummmm. I dunno."  "Are you an investigator?"...hahahaha It was...interesting.  The sad part was Relief Society.  Ay ay ay....The Relief Society.  The Relief Society here is more like the Lion´s Den that Daniel was put into, except the investigators don´t know to pray for protection from the lionesses.  Luckily, Sonia is outgoing enough that she just had fun in the giant doctrinal argument that is our Relief Society.  You can imagine that the Spirit World after this life was pretty confusing to somebody we had only showed the Restoration DVD and explained a little bit about the Book of Mormon. 

Nani was also in church.  But she had to leave after the Sacrament meeting.  Her baptismal date is currently the 1st of October, but we talked about it in Ward Council last night and I guess that since it is Conference weekend that Saturday will be way too busy to be able to do it, so we´re gonna have to change the date.  Either to Friday the 30th, or to the week after (which is Stake Conference, so I dunno if that´ll work either).  We´re gonna talk with Nani about that soon.  She seems to be doing well though.  Elder Woodbury is worried about her if she really has a testimony of the church, but I think she is totally ready. 

Speaking of Elder Woodbury, all is well.  A lot of people have asked me if we get along hahaha.  Yeah.  We do. It´s really nice being with him again.  The work is picking up here in Alcobendas for the most part (considering we´re in the office for like 15-20 hours every week).  The office work is going well too.  This week is transfers (which we actually already found out).  This transfer ends on Sunday and next week is week one.  Crazily enough I am staying here in the Office with Elder Woodbury. It´s pretty normal to be here for 4 1/2 transfers, which equals out to about 6 months exactly.  1/4 of the mission.  Crazy.  This past month/transfer has been the fastest of my mission.  I mean, literally, it was probably pretty much the same as the others, but you know what I mean.  I´m lucky that Ben LeVere prepared me so much to be an office secretary.  Haha I learned all about the keeping computers organized and Word and Excel and all that blah before the mission, and I had not idea how much it was preparing me to this now.  Either preparing or condemning ;)  Así es la vida.

Pues, yo sé que esta iglesia es la iglesia verdadera.  I´m super grateful to be here riding the bull.  It´s rough and tough work, but it´s worth it.  It´s crazy because before the mission you just hear all the amazing miracle stories and how great the two years are.  It´s all true.  But there´s some other stuff in between the lines too jajaja.  I´m grateful to you all for being so dang good to me.  I love you all.  Keep on keepin´ on.  Let me know if there´s anything I can do for ya´lls. 

Love,

El Gran Elder Hijo de Jepp

P.S.  I guess I better explain the pictures.  P-day we went to the mission home to have a big "Everybody in Madrid together in the mission office" party.  Tell Ashley (Shane´s wife) to look at it and I´m pretty sure her sister or cousin or somebody related to her is Hermana Clark.  I could be wrong, but I think so. Also, um, that´s my district.  Which isn´t really changing.  And yeah.  Aquí es la vida del Elder Jeppson. 

I´d run over to your house and I´d scale the chain link fence

Well howdy hey ya´lls.  ¿Qué tal estáis? Espero que la semana pasada os haya ido bien. 

Well let´s play a little game here.  It´ll take two years, but it´s called: How many babies can we have while Elder Jepperjep is serving a mission?  We´re up to two. Congrats Kristina! and Greg too!  You´re wonderful.  Boston is excited to have a brother (or sister)!!  

Look, I´m still making paragraphs!  So this past week has been a good one.  In some ways it seems like I haven´t emailed in ages, and in other ways it just seems like it´s been a week.  Everything has been going well over here.  The office junk is junking along nicely.  I call people and tell them what to they have to do to stay in the country, and then they either do it or they don´t.  If they do then we´re all smiles and hugs and fluffy things (as if we were serving in Mexico, where miracles read the Book of Mormon overnight between lessons) and if they don´t do it then things are maces and metal spiky things and politics (or anything else that makes you cringe upon hearing it).  I try not to worry too much about it.  That will either be a strength or a weakness in the future.  Yes, I did just point out the only two completely obvious options.  Grand! 

Onto not so boring and office-y things.  Adel is getting baptized in 2 days!!! Wahoo!  He´s ready.  He has been one of those already prepared people.  He has just been waiting for the OK go on the baptism.  But he does have the OK...Go! on the baptism and he passed his interview on Saturday.  Full steam ahead!  Also, we set a fecha (date) with Nani!  She wants to be baptized on October 1st.  I´m super stoked.  We had a lesson with her on....last week sometime and I challenged her to that date, and she shut us down and told us she wanted to read the whole Book of Mormon first and then tell us when she wanted to be baptised.  But then last night at the end of the lesson I was still really feeling like the Spirit wanted it, so I asked her WHEN she would like to be baptized and she said the first of October.  I think the first invitation was the Spirit´s way of preparing her for the second invitation.  Now we get to see how Satan throws her curveballs in the next few weeks and how she handles them.  Every investigator has his or her own little thing to overcome it seems.  Some find strength in God to do it, and some don´t.  It´s not easy.  Never has been, never will be.  It IS worth it.  Always has been, always will be.  So we´re excited about that.  We also found another lady from Paraguay named Sonia that seems really good to us. But in the first lesson she straight up told us she is lazy but wants a change in her life.  But that when people are comfortable in life (and she told us she is) that changes are harder. So I guess we´ll see if she fulfills her own prophecy.  That´s where we lie in the scheme of things in Alcobendas/SanSe de los Reyes.  Elder Woodbury and I are great.  We laugh.  We cry.  We have a companionship hug at the end of everyday (and he makes it suck on purpose).  It´s good times.  The best is when we both get rocked by Spanish.  It doesn´t happen too often, but when it does it´s funny.  It´ll be lame to like understand everyword and phrase someday.  It just won´t be as fun.  But for now it´s still fun.

This past week I would say that Labor day went well, but I didn´t even know we had it.  So it was fun to see that it went well in the states.  Everybody is back off to school it seems.  Even USU.  Crazy how fast the last year has gone.  The next time I talk to anybody over yonder habré cumplido otro paso de la misión.  Wowzer.  The time just flies.  Hey, something that is fun is when people send me random quotes and random lyrics form Taylor Swift and Mayday Parade songs (and other bands too, but probably only Kylie and Austin should brave into that category).  Just so you all know. 

Hey! other fun thing from the past week.  We ate at the Bishop´s house on Sunday! Bishop Vierbuchen.  It´s pronounced like Fear-Boook-ennnnn.  They´re from the great land of Germany.  They´re a legit family.  The parents.  17-year old Tim.  14-Year old Teresa and 11-year old Tomo.  The mom made us all this delicious food that I´ll never be able to cook so I´ll just marry somebody who loves to cook. 

The move went well last P-day.  Today for P-day we did a bunch of office-secretary missionary stuff, so basically we just worked like normal.  It kind of is lame.  But it´s whatevs.  There are plenty of free days after the mission.  And I still got to email.  So everybody is happy. 

Something else to note is that on Monday´s the AP´s don´t come in and do their shindig now. President has assigned those projects to us, so we have even more to do.  We´ll see how it goes.  I mostly just wrote that because I think I forgot to write it in my journal(I keep one! Miracles happen once in a while...)

One of my "Happy thoughts" (I call them TS moments) from this week was: Today I saw a shirt that said "I will cut skalps off".  People just wear whatever shirt they can find if it´s in English.  The translation is usually something ridiculous or crappy and is always funny. 

I´m kind of in ramble mode right now.  I didn´t have time to write any letters home today.  None.  It´s like I´m in B2 again.  Sad.

I talked to Hermano Koller´s grandma finally.  Does he still read these?

Does Keaton Cluff have a freaking address?

This church is true.  Thank you for supporting me.  I´m grateful as well that the Savior supported us 2000 years ago when the Atonement was fulfilled for us.  I´m grateful that the Savior still supports us when we humble ourselves in prayer and we have faith in him and do all that we need to do to be worthy of his blessings.  I´m grateful for my family.  You all support and guide me and have helped me to become who I am today.  I´m grateful for babies.  They keep our families going and there´s gonna be at least two more to bully around and love when I get home.  Wahoo!  I´m grateful for the Book of Mormon.  I´m grateful that I read it.  I´m grateful I have time set aside every day in my schedule to continue reading it.  I´m grateful for my parents.  All 4 of them.  I don´t know how I got double lucky.  But I got double lucky.  I´m grateful for my friends.  You all know who you are.  I am still waiting for Tonya and Bekka though ;)  I´m grateful for you all.  Big and small.  Long time knowing you and short.  You´re all the best.  and yes, I am talking to you. 

Love you all!  ¡Que Dios os bendiga!

Elder Jeppson

P.S.  Mom, will you tell Chad that I thought of him yesterday.  He´s a great cousin. You can tell him happy birthday for me too.  Thanks!