Baptisms and such

Hello family! It has been a long and busy week. We had baptisms on Friday for miriam and javier and fernando and a little girl who was a ward baptism. It all went really well and the spirit in the baptism was really strong so we feel really good about it and feel like wse had three really good, solid baptisms and they have been fellowshipped so well so we know they are in good hands.

Last week I on Thursday we got woken up during the night by some loud banging noises. It sounded like our gate was being clanged like someone was shaking it or something. I woke up first at 4:30 to it and I woke up hna salisbury because it really scared me but she was pretty out of it. Then we both woke up to it again at 5:30 and we knew there was something going on, but we just stayed hidden under our covers. Then the next day we found out that our neigbors had been robbed two grafas (the stove things). So I guess we had heard them jumping our gate to get over to the neighbors house. Don´t worry though we have a barred gate right on our door too with three locks. We are safe!

RENITA AND JUDY!!! I got your package this week! Holy smokes, cornbread, MINT oreos, craisins, chocolate chip cookies, and more! Thank you so much! We have been enjoying it very much but I am trying to hold of on the oreos so that I don´t completely ruin our diet goal for this change. But come next change I am going to scarf them down! In the mean time we made the cornbread and it was super good and easy. We only had to add water! That is really nice as a missionary and you really don´t have time or money to go to a lot of extensive cooking. Also, last pday we did make a chocolate cake with rainbow chip frosting and we ate it all ourselves! Delicious.

This week we did divisions. We are suppossed to do them twice a week but we never do because we don´t have a lot of people in our ward that will go with us. But we got some girls from another ward to come with us and they were really excited to do it and want to come back and do it again. I have to admit though I really hate doing divisions. It is just really hard for me because it forces me to be the senior companion and do everything and I still feel like I have no idea what I´m doing. It went fine though but I still didn´t really like it.

While I am thinking about it, the whatever week the 8th of July is in, I will probably not email on that monday, i will email on the 8th, it think. do you remember me saying anything about the familia Galvan from Artigas? Well they were Hna Salisbury´s converts so on the 8th we get to go to the temple with them to see their SEALING!! We are super excited about that but we have to make that our pday so it might mess up email that week and also our sector conference this change is on the 6th I think. So email might not be quite as regular but I will still get one to you each week, just don´t get worried if it doesn´t come on Monday.

On Saturday Uruguay beat Korea in the World Cup, didn´t see the game but all of the sudden all of the houses erupted and there were sounds of fireworks or guns, and people came running out of their houses with flags and jumped on their motos with their flags and all sorts of craziness was going on. I just don´t want to know what happens when they lose!

I tried to get some pictures attached to this email but for some reason it was not working today, so I will try to send another one after this, otherwise you´ll have to wait till next week. But I´m out of time so I gotta finish up. Thank you again for the packages, oh and mom I don´t think I did ever get the second one with knee highs and granola bars, but maybe it will still come. But thank you so much, I love you all and I really miss you! Keep up the letters and emails, I love hearing from you! Dad I haven´t heard from you for a while...But I´ll try and get some letters off to you tomorrow!

Love, Jessica

Holy PACKAGE

Hi mom and everyone! Mom, last week I got your cake-pan package! WHOA BABY! Twix, reeses, cakes, soups, RAINBOW CHIP FROSTING and more!! THank you so so much it was awesome! And really you don´t need to send a package this week unless you really want to, but of course I will be thrilled to get one if you do. Whatever you send I´m sure will be fabulous be if you want some ideas, craft stuff is always good. Like stickers, paper, markers etc. We make a lot of stuff like that for members and to make bday cards and stuff. Speaking of birthday cards I sent one to Paul but I accidently wrote happy 30th birthday instead of 29 and I am really embarrassed, sorry. also I made one for renita but it will be getting there late because I left it at the house last week so I couldnt send it and won´t be able to until thursday. I will also be sending bday cards to ryan and jennie so you can watch for those.

Sorry i didn´t email yesterday, I had forgotten to tell you that this week is changes so pday gets moved to tuesday so those who change will travel on that day. Hna Salisbury and i are staying here together! Yay! It will be her last change so I will ¨kill her¨as the mission saying goes.

I think Uruguay is playing in the World Cup today because there are some really excited people in here watching soccer and they just erupted a second ago and it is a little difficult to concentrate.

Well the conference. It was so great. I got to see hna crofts and smith and talked to them a lot and we got to pretty much just hang out at the church the whole day. The conference was really good too, it was the last one for our mission president, the new one will be coming in soon. For lunch they had some ice cream place come to the church and give out big ice cream waffle cones to all of us, it was super yummy. I think that hna crofts and hna smith have each had some normal missionary hardships this last change and it was nice for us all to be able to talk about things and listen to one another. Really good conference.

We have our baptism program this friday and we are excited about that. We have some really cool investigators that will be getting baptized. One of them is a man named fernando. He and his wife were taking the discussions but she hasnt been able to be there the last several times. We found out last night that there is another man and she is deciding whether of not she wants to stay with her husband. As he explained all of this to us he was so calm and peaceful and not even a little bit bitter. He said that he still loves her and that the gospel has given him so much strength to deal with this trial and he wants to continue with it whether she does or not. His faith is so impressive and it is really humbling to be teaching him.

Today being our last pday in this change we are going to make a chocolate cake with rainbowchip frosting and eat the whole thing ourselves!! And then next change we are giving up all sweet treats so that hna salisbury can go home skinny. Haha we´ll see how that goes.

Amy I just skimmed a little bit through your email. DARK HAIR?! Ahh, pictures puh-lease. What else is going on with everyone? Everyone doing good? Happy Father´s day to dad and Grandpa! I love you and I am out of time but I hope you like the pictures and I will send another email to attach more.

Love, Jessica

Another Week

Hello hello, thanks for your email mom! Also last week I just printed it the other off at the cyber to read and I´m glad I did because for some reason it didn´t come through from the mission one, so just always make sure that you put my name in the subject line. Same with Amy´s it didn´t come through, so I am going to print it today.

Thanks amy and jennie for getting the pictures sent. I don´t think I really told you why, but I just have seen other missionaries pull out there pictures as time fillers with investigators sometimes and the people always really like it and it helps them get to know you better and see more where you are from. So anything that you think would be good for that will work, but I do think that Mexico and San Francisco pics would be interesting to people so I would like some of those for sure. And mom that cake pan idea is SO GOOD! I am really excited about that. In my letter last week I did put a few ideas of things that you might stick in packages in the future, but nothing big or very important and just to give you an idea of what things I could use for your information. OH! but one thing that i do need to ask you about is contact solution. Here a bottle of contact solution is like $35. So I don´t know if you would be able send me some, if you even can send liquids or what. Maybe you could check into that though, or maybe I will just have to start wearing glasses a lot more. I do still have about a bottle and a half, but I don´t know what I will do after that runs out which won´t be for a while, but I just thought I would give you the heads up.

Things here are going well as far as missionary work goes. I think we will be having some baptisms on the 25th for a couple named Miriam and Javier. They have several children and have come to church twice and are really strong investigators and keep saying that they are getting ready for the 25th, so they seem pretty excited about it. Javier is a really big guy and we call him pica-piedra, or flinstone because he looks like fred flinstone. He is really funny too and for while we weren´t sure if he was even taking us seriously because he always making jokes, but the gospel is really changing him, it is amazing. I really respect him to, his first wife died and left him with two kids and I think he went through a really hard time and really had to open himself up to receive our message. He said he had talked to other missionaries but didnt want to really get into it but with time decided if he had another chance he would really start to listen. Then we came along! As the saying goes, the Lord really does prepare people.

This week we had interviews with the President. It went good and I think they are sad to be leaving but also ready. We half a sector conference this wednesday in Paysandu and that will probably be the last time we see him. I´m really excited for the conference because i will get to see Hermana Crofts AND Hermana Smith. And her birthday is the 19th so I´m going to make her a card and stuff.

How is Sally doing? I haven´t heard much about her lately. It is really weird here because I don´t really like dogs in Uruguay. They always bark at us and run at us like they are going to attack us, I told you how one bit me once. And everytime we knock on houses they just go nuts and bark like crazy. What´s weird though is that people ask us sometimes if we like dogs and you know what my normal response is to that, but here I don´t really like them.

This last week I have been studying in the Pearl of Great Price. It is so awesome. I feel like I have learned so much already just from the hour of study time we get every morning. I read the scriptures before but I really feel like I am rediscovering them now. Personal study is one of my favorite things that we do as missionaries. One thing I thought was really cool was in Moses it talks about how Adam was baptized. Maybe I´m ignorant but I didn´t even know that the scriptures gave an account of his baptism. Amazing. Also Hna Salisbury and I have been reading the Liahona together. Did you read the talk by Elder Bednar about second life and stuff? I remember hearing it when he gave it. Its really interesting.

The world cup started this week so people here are glued to their television sets whenever Uruguay plays. Also we hear the World Cup theme song all the time. Have you heard it? Oh oh whoa oh oh, when I get older I will be stronger, oh oh whoah oh oh! It is getting pretty old.

I didn´t tell you this last week but when I opened my email I was shocked to find an email from Elier! Do you remember who that is? That kid I told you about from Mexico? He is on his mission in some other part of Mexico and I have no idea how he got my email address or anything. It was a pretty normal email though just saying hi, but i didn´t write him back. I thought it was pretty funny though that he emailed me. I´ll copy and paste it and you can have Paul translate it.

que tal hermana casebolt como esta?? espero y me recuerde soy Elier Gamboa el amigo que siempre estaba con Helaman cuando tuviste tu visita en Merida bueno espero y si te acuerdes, que tal como le va en la mision hermana ami la verdad muy bien lo estoy disfrutando grandemente y sabe me siento feliz de servirle al señor, yo estoy en la mision mexico oeste bueno dentro un mes va a ser la noroeste por que se divide mi mision pero aqui estamos, mi area actual es una que esta cerca del benemerito de las americas, es una escuela muy grande en mexico de la iglesia, ya tengo 5 meses aqui jaja se pasa el tiempo muy rapido no lo cree?? bueno hermana cuidese mucho y espero que podamos estar en contacto va?? nos vemos y exito

I´m glad that you were able to find Hna Salisbury´s blog and that her family found mine. Salisbury family, if you are reading this, your daughter/sister is sooooo wonderful! She is a great missionary and a great person and I´m so lucky to be with her! You have a lot to be proud of.

Well time is up so I´m gonna end now, but I love you all so much! Say hi to the ward for me and everyone and Thomas. Also, can you send me Sharon´s address? Thanks. Ok well i will talk to you on monday.

LOVE, Jessica

Choripan

Mom, I hope there is a good excuse for the absence of your email from my inbox today. I will assume that there is and not be mad. I received your package last week with my medication! Yay! I also got the brown sugar and more crystal light and breathsavers and holy NUTTERBUTTERS! Those were amazing! Thank you so much! I really mean it when I say I have the BEST family. It is totally true and probably why I am homesick.

For breakfast in the morning I make oatmeal a lot with cinnamon sugar and then I mash up banana in it so it is banana oatmeal, so I think Emma and I are alike because Jennie told me she likes that flavor of baby food. But now I put brown sugar on my oatmeal and it is even better. Speaking of food. The other night Hna Salisbury and I were on our way home and on the side of the street there was a guy with a grill thing that had a fire in it and chorizo roasting on top. CHORIPAN! Chorizo is like sausage and the guy made it so good. He had real buns and put them on the fire to toast then cut the chorizo in half and put it on the bun with lettuce and tomato and some good sauces-unheard of here! And it was only 25 pesos each! That is like a dollar and ten cents and it was delicious. He does it every fri and sat night, so we went back the next night and it was just as good. So now we are doing weekends with Mario for choripan.

Another good treat we had this week was monday night we got a bag of chocolate milk and had frozen some bananas and we got some chocolate cookies and hna salisbury threw them in the blender and made a really delicious banana chocolate smoothie. So so so good. And today we broke our fast which we started late, by having an actual, real, deli sandwich that we bought at a grocery store in the centro. Haven`t had a real deli sandwich since i left, and you know how i eat a lot of those. It was great.

Well now that I have told you everything i ate this week, yesterday we had four investigators at church, finally! So that was pretty good since we haven´t had any this whole change. And we have some people with baptismal dates too. This week we did divisions which I was really nervous about and not looking forward to and can´t say that I loved. I went with an older lady from the ward but the first places we went no one was home and then the third we found, she was an older lady also that the last hnas worked with. I got really lucky because the two of them chatted it up and I didn´t really have to do anything. My partner even talked to her about church stuff and then at the end I pulled out a pamphlet and talked about baptism and gave her a baptism date for the end of the month. By the time we finally got out of there, divisions were over. Hallelujiah!

Yesterday at testimony meeting, this one lady got up towards the end and pretty much shouted the whole time. WE HAVE TO BE OBEDIENT!! It was hilarious and I am ashamed to say I could not really contain my laughter. I just looked at my lap the whole time and pretended I was coughing. I was so embarrassed but it was so funny and I only lost control because I looked up at the stand and made eye contact with the bishops daughter who was also trying not to laugh and we both broke into a big grin and that´s when I just looked down for the rest of the time.

Do you really tomorrow is Emmas six month birthday!! Ahh, I can´t believe it. Give her a kiss for me and tell her happy birthday.

So I have another request. Could you please send me some of my pictures from mexico and some from our san fran trip? I am out of time and will explain why in a letter.

I love you all so much! Jessica

Pic Stolen from Companion's Blog

You can find her blog here:  http://www.sistersuswha.blogspot.com/.