Birthday Cake

Wow good emails this week! Lots going on it sounds like! Emma is so so cute in the water and with her swimming suit, Jennie your swimming suit was really cute too!

I am so glad that you got the alfajores! They got there a lot faster than I expected. The red ones really arent that great but they were super cheap. the blue aguila ones are the best. Also, Amy I got your package last week! With the hat the cake mixes and frosting and p. sugar and all. I don´t think any of the packages I have received have been tampered with, knock on wood. Did I mention how much I enjoyed the butterfinges renita and judy sent? American candy is so much better than the stuff they have here. I miss it and I was never even a big candy person.

Well anyways, so we have been teaching this couple maria and pablo and they are kind of duds. They have two cute kids though and the little girl is hilarious. This week we actually did have a really good lesson with them and we brought a member who did awesome and got them to commit to come to church and be baptized. So during this lesson they told us ana paula was having her birthday on sat and i decided i could make one of the cakes amy sent and share it with them. I also put together a cute little gift. I will tell you more about this in a letter but basically we made the cake and even used the rainbow chip frosting and it turned out so delicious (we cut off the edge before we took it over) but we got there and they were really awkward and didn´t eat the cake nor did they give us ANY and there were these guys that were really rude to us and one of the took pictures of me with his phone like a was an animal. After we left I wanted to cry, THEY DIDN´T EVEN GIVE US ANY OF THE CAKE AND I USED THE RAINBOW CHIP FROSTING!!! And then they didn´t even come to church so now they lose their baptismal date. Ugh, I was so peeved, like I said I will give you more deets an a letter. But amy thank you so much for the package! We also made the soup one day and it was so amazingly delicious. We addedj some tomatoes and corn and it was really good. You guys are awesome package senders! As I have said before though don´t feel obligated to send them, I know it can get pricey. But for the record I do really like twix and reeses (wink wink).

Other news, I got bit by a dog this week, don´t worry it only ripped my tights, not my skin. Last night i plugged in a hairdryer, something popped and now we are without power. Tried flipping the switch thing, not luck. I have fallen in mud multiple times. It rains here a lot, it is cold, it is gray and bleak and I decided I hate winter here. People always ask us if it gets cold where we live. We just say yes and shrug it off but hna salisbury puts it best, yes it gets cold there but it isnt such a big deal because we have central heat and cars. Here there is no escaping it. and there is no such thing as good lighting so I feel like I am always in the dark. Luckily though today was sunny and we played ultimate frisbee in a really pretty park. Took some fun pictures hope you enjoy.

Are you getting letters from me about once a week? Amy and Jennie a sent a sticker request in a letter to each of you. You should get those letters this week. Amy thats funny that you follow hna salisbury´s blog. Do you like it? I can´t say that I really love being here yet, but I am really grateful that I have an awesome companion. She is great and I love her so much. Yes we go running pretty much every morning, I bought new running shoes before I came, ask jennie she was there. We get up at 6:30 and dress and are out the door at about 6:40 and get back at 7 and do crunches and stuff. I like it but I hate it at the same time. Mostly I just don´t like doing it so early. It is dark and SO cold. I usually sleep pretty warm though. It is so weird that the weather is like this in june. I want to be where you are enjoying the warm temperatures! We haven´t had any investigators to church this whole change. Yesterday I actually thought we would get a few but the weather was no good and half the members didn´t even come. It´s hard because it´s not like they go into there garage and get in a car and drive to the church. They don´t have garages let alone cars. And there are tons of people with little babies so they dont take them out in the winter. I have a feeling it will always be a struggle during winter to get people to church.

Some things I really want to be grateful for when I get home are carpet, central heat, nice walls, good lighting, cars, nice shower (we are getting a new curtain, the old one was sick nasty with mold-note picture), sink in the kitchen with two sides and temperature settings, an oven, a stove and pretty much any modern day convenience.

This week hna salisbury and I were talking about how being here is like camping all the time, then later we met some people who had lived in newark n.j. for a while (there are a lot of people here who have lived in newark) anyways these people told us that being in uruguay must be like camping for us. They actually have a pretty sad story but are really nice happy people. In a nutshell they went there and worked and found a better life, there visa expired after six months but the stayed for ten years and got deported and there kids are still there and they cant get back to them. there kids are like 17-19 thereabouts. they were so humble though and despite all that they were like, we are so grateful to your country though because it showed us that there are some places in this world where if you work you can actually have a nice life. It is sad and true, really people here have hard time getting by even if they do work. Anyways, out of time. Love you so much!! I miss you and will keep my fingers crossed for letters tomorrow at district meeting!

Love Jessica

This Week

Hey there, I haven´t really read your emails yet so hopefully you sent them to the mission email and I´m going to type fast and I´ll read them after if there is time. Also, I´m attaching a few pictures, they are all from artigas.

I can´t say that I´m feeling too much better this week, but I´m sorry for my email last week, I shouldn´t have been so negative and I´ll try not to be so much today. I lots of letters and packages last week! Mom I love the sweatshirt from san jose! My favorite color! and I got the shirt and the mattress pad. Also I got some yummy treats from Renita and Judy, those butterfingers hit the spot and I still have some skittles and starburts left that I´m saving. Amy I got your blogposts and they were super fun to read. I also got a card from rochelle. I sent letters to everyone last tuesday so I hope you will get them this week. Also, I sent Ryan a card quite a while ago for his birthday, did he get it in time? Happy birthday a little late.

Mom I don´t remember if I told you that when I talked to the mission president I asked him if I could get my medication here or if he thought it would come if you sent it and he said he was going to talk to a doctor and told me to see if i could just pick it up in a pharmacy, so last week I went to a farmacia and they said all of uruguay has stopped carrying it. so i called the pres and told him that and he said he was going to have the zl´s close to brazil check in brazil. so they did and the had it there but only in .625 dosage, so he had them get it and I will just take to everyday. I guess it was funny though because the elder went and asked for premarin not knowing what it was and there were a bunch of women in that pharmacy and they were like, do you know what that is, are you buying this for a girl? How embarrassing! Anyways, the took it to a zl training and sent is with my zl who gave it to me at our service project on saturday when we helped build some houses, it looked like a drug deal, they even had it in some creepy bag. So funny. We are still getting to know the area and the ward. I feel like the ward here is not so interactive with us as it was in artigas, and that kind of makes it harder to me. But we´re getting there. We don´t really have any investigators though that are really progressing, so that has been kind of hard too.

At our zone activity this morning the zl told me, so did you here that hna moreno is being transferred to salto, and i said no. I don´t know why but apparently something happened in taecuerembo and she is being transferred here to be with hna roach. I have no idea why but I´m sure they are probably happy about that. I really think though as does my companion that hna roach helped hna moreno write that card. they would talk to eachother on the phone a lot in artigas and then at the at the hnas conference they went off by themselves for quite a while. but that isn´t important i guess.

we are starting to really get into winter here. everyday is glooming and drizzly. I´m really tired of it which is no good because it just started. this would be a good place for edward cullen to live. well what is new at home? How often do you receive my letters? Oh speaking of which thank you for the stamps renita and judy! Jennie, has emma started to eat baby foods? how is she doing with that? Mom when do you finish school? Ryan have you started doing phlabotomy or whatever? Dad are you taking the corvette out a lot?

Well I don´t really know what else to tell you. It has been a pretty dull week. Get up at 6 thirty, go run, get ready, study, go out to contacts and appointments, lunch, more contacts and appointments, go home to plan, go to bed, start over. That´s pretty much all we do. Yesterday though we did try and take a shortcut through a muddy gulley and I ended up falling after jumping a stream. I was a mess! That´s pretty much all. I´m going to write more letters today and send them tomorrow. I love you so much, thanks for all your support and good letter writing. also, i love getting packages, but don´t feel obligated to send them or anything, i know that can be a hassle. Hope you have a good week!

Love, Jessica

Cambios - Changes

Hey there everyone! I skimmed through your emails but don´t have to to print them and all that so I will try to answer some of your questions but your best bet is to send them to the mission email and I´ll try and write letters, because I have lots of other things I want to tell you today.

First thing is first, my new area is SALTO!!!!! I have heard that it is the promised land and that they have tons of baptisms, it is beautiful (this i know because I´ve seen pictures, it really is georgeous, trees, lakes, etc) and it is one of the warmest areas during the winter. So I am really happy. Also, my new companion is Hermana SALISBURY!!!! I have heard wonderful things about her from all of the hermanas and before I even knew she would be my companion I probably would have said she is the most liked hermana in the mission. Everyone raves about how great she is and hermana flores called me last night and told me I am so lucky and that salto with salisbury is the most ideal change you can get. So yeah me! I just hope that I can be as good of a companion for her. The other thing that makes me so excited is that I don´t leave till tomorrow morning at 6 so tonight I am going to go stay with hermana flores because her companion comes tomorrow. hna moreno is going back to taecuarembo and is very excited about that, she was there before artigas and was working with a family of 8 who will be married and baptized this month. and as far as her being a great missionary, if you count baptisms yes she is. hna and mcewen and i talked about this and the thing is, she always has baptisms fall into her hands. like with us, the baptisms we had were investigators that the previous hnas had worked with and left for us in the area notebook, and cristian just showed up at the galvans house and wanted to be baptized, and judy i´m actually not worried about him because he has already been attending a while with his uncle and cousins and i think they will support him and keep him active, and he really doesn´t act like a typical ten year old, he is really an impressive kid.

Anyways, I also wanted to tell you because I forgot to over the phone that I have been making brownies this week! Amy thank you for the recipe. i have made them four different times and they turned out wonderful! Once for carmen and her family and then we went back and made them againg to teach her daughter how to do it, another day we made them with carlos and yolanda and then when we got done we went to the church so carlos could do his baptismal interview with the zl and we took some of the brownies to them and the liked them so much that yesterday the called us early in the day and told us the would give us our changes early if i would make them brownies again. So this morning I made more and some of our zone went to brazil and I took them with us. the elders were very happy. It was kind of weird though because it almost seemed like a dating activity that we would meet up somewhere and bring them brownies, but whatever, i just do what i´m told.

Mom I was going to tell you on the phone but forgot that i still don´t know if elder morris will get through because only two elders were able to when i was at the airport. for one thing there are only two phones in the terminal and they are hard to figure out and the operator speaks spanish and it took us a couple of hours before we finally figured it out. So tell her if she doesn´t hear from him that is probably why.

Amy, I think caprincho is a some kind of big rat, they also eat armadillo. The other day carlos cooked for us and the rice had meat in it and the next day he told us it was caprincho and something else that sounds gross but the food had been really good. and yes people here drink mate all the time but we are not allowed to drink it and they know that so it hasn´t been a problem. Oh, and I was so not mad at all, I´m sorry it seemed like it! I was just so shocked and didn´t know if I should be happy or cry or what and it just took me by such a surprise! But I wish that you had called on Sunday! bummer. Oh and i think i know what shoes she is talking about. they are super cool and i really want to get some. to me they look like toms shoes but they have kind of a straw-woven bottom if that makes sense. or she might be talking about some others that are kind of like the old jelly water shoes but they are really cute. I´ll definitley end up buying some of the toms ones and i´ll send pictures.

Jennie thanks for the pictures, emma is so big! I can´t believe how much she has changed. tell her to stop growing and wait for me to get home!

A couple days ago I finally sent a couple of packages that I have had sitting around. one i sent to amy and paul and one to mom and dad. amy and pauls have two alfajores and mom and dads have a whole bunch. alfajores are a south american treat and i like them a lot. kind of like ding dongs but better i send them cheap though so it might take a month or so to get them.

Okay well I´m out of time but I love you a lot, I´m excited about this change, I´m hoping a package will arrive on thursday, and I will email you next monday, i think. LOVE YOU SOOO MUCH!!

Hermanas' Conference and First Baptism

Thanks for the recipes Amy! I think those should work, except for the chocolate cake one because I they don´t have buttermilk here but I think I can do the yellow one and I think we´ll just eat it without frosting because I also can´t get powdered sugar. But the brownie and banana bread recipes should work great.

This week was the Hermanas conference. We left here on Tuesday night and got to Montevideo in the morning where we went to the hostel to spruce ourselves up, Hermana Peterson likes her sister missionaries to pretty. Whatever. So then we ate breakfast at the mission home which was french toast and bananas and it was really good. Later the president spoke to us and told the story of Winston Churchill and...was it Alexander Flemming who discovered penicillan? Anyways I think I had heard it but it is really cool. It´s starts out about a poor man who saves a young boy from drowning and then come to find out the father is a rich man and offers compensation for saving his son but the poor man doesn´t want anything so the rich man offers to pay for the poor man´s son to have the same schooling as his son. The poor man´s son becomes a great doctor and discovers penicillan which saved the life of Winston Churchill who was the rich man´s son. I think it goes something like that, but it was in Spanish so I might not have gotten that all right. It was good though. After that Hermana Peterson had someone speak to us who was there visiting but had been their first couple missionaries. The lady´s sister started some company where for 100 bucks you go and they tell you if you are spring summer winter or fall, and from that what colors look best on you. So she explained about what colors look good on what types of people and then she took each of us one by one to the front to tell us what we are. It took about two and a half hours and to me was the biggest waste of time. I couldn´t believe that they took that much time with missionaries to talk about appearance, how ironic considering that missionaries are usually thought of as being drab. At the end everyone got a scarf that was a ´´good color´´ for them. Mine is leapord print. Whoo whoo! Can you believe that they gave a sister missionary a leapord print scarf? It is hilarious and have made good use out of it already.

Later for lunch we had that soup that they make at cafe rio and it was good but not very filling and then we had oriental chicken salad for dessert. It was all really delicious. We also listened to the wife of the new temple president speak to us and she was really fun and I liked her talk. Of course we had the talent show thing and I was super nervous about singing and when my part came my voice pretty much came out as a whisper and hermana moreno started laughing, it was not the funnest thing but oh well, it´s over now. Hermana Peterson did give two more blankets to the new missionaries since it the nights are getting colder with winter coming. It was fun to do something different and see hna crofts, who is doing well, but I don´t know if it was worth 16 hours on a bus and two nights of sleeping sitting up halfway. I am probabaly just being a little negative though.

Adriana and Gabriel were baptized on Friday and confirmed yesterday during church. the baptism was really nice and hermana moreno and i sang our portuguese hymn again and i did much better singing for a people that i was a little more familiar with and I knew can´t carry a tune themselves. I sang the harmony for I know that my Redeemer lives and I think everyone was genuinely touched, especially Adriana who is from Brazil.

In other big news, Carlos, not sure if I have mentioned him, also accepted a baptismal date for next Saturday as well a man named Jesus. Those are interesting stories, more because they are weird than anything, and wrote about it in a letter that I will send plus I will talk to you on Sunday.

Speaking of which, I guess is will be better if you call me at 8:00 my time, so I think 5:00 your time. Once again my phone number is 00598 773-1633. If our phone doesn´t ring I will be calling you in a panick.

I know I just told you a new address to mail things to, but I guess the offices they were going to move to didn´t work out. So discard that last address and use this one:

Enrique Martinez 1175
Montevideo Uruguay
C.P. 11.600

Oh, I almost forgot to talk about my letters and packages! I got a package with Easter candy and cards from renita and judy and grandma and grandpa, and also the package from mom with knee highs, crystal light, cherry sour balls, and snackwells and some other things. It seems like they weren´t opened or anything and got here just fine. I also got a letter from mom with stamps! That is wonderful and I´m excited to send some letters tomorrow. I also got a dear elder from mom and lanae and natasha and some emails and a letter from rochelle and renita. It was a GREAT tuesday. Thank you everyone! and here´s wishing that tomorrow is just as great!

The next change is coming next week, we will find out on monday and then tuesday is when we move. So I´m not sure what day I will email but I think it will be tuesday. but that´s no biggy because I will have just talked to you on Sunday. I´m really excited about this change. I think that I will get a new companion, hna moreno says they never leave a new gringa with a latina for more than one change, and also the missionaries that i traveled with to the mtc will be coming so, hopefully I will see hna smith in the near future at a conference or something. i think that I will stay in Artigas though. I feel like I´ve just started to get comfortable here and I like our house and the our ward. They have been talking about changing our area so that there will be areas in the darker area but I think they might just altogether take out one pair of hermanas and since hna mcewen is done I think she and hna moreno will leave and I´m hoping they will move hna flores over to our house to be my companion. I´ll tell you more about that on Sunday. I can´t wait to talk to you and I hope you are all doing good. I feel like there´s something I´m forgetting to tell you but I don´t know what and I´m out of time. I love you so much! Talk to you on Sunday!!!!!!!!!!!

Love, Jessica