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.