It's PDAY!!

Hey everyone! I love you and I miss you!!

Well this week was a little odd because all of the zl´s and dl´s had a 3 day conference in t-bo so our district meeting was moved to friday and the mission wants us to start doing our big planning day on sunday after church instead of on fridays so things feel a little out of sync. And this week will be a little off too because we have SECTOR CONFERENCE on wednesday!!! I´m so excited. We are going to Mercedes this time and we will be seeing the hermanas from paysandu (hna crofts!!) and from fraybentos, (hna flores from artigas!) So It should be pretty fun and the area president is going to be speaking to us.

Brahian Marichal was baptized on Friday night and it was a really nice baptism. His dad baptized him and it was really special for both of them. It is so awesome to see Javier, who didn´t know the church two months ago, baptize his son and then get up and bear his testimony and get so emotional about his love for the gospel. The big lug. We sometimes call him pica piedra-fred flinstone. Yesterday in church Miriam was moved from rs secretary to second counselor and hna de mattos was made the new president-i know hna sol i was confused too. hna de mattos will be good though and blanca was put into primary. Miriam also gave a talk in church yesterday on repentance and she did a good job. Working has been kind of slow. We are trying to find news still so not that much has changed. It has been a really humbling change because I think I am really a lot more aware of my weaknesses in teaching and actually doing missionary work. It just hits me sometimes how much I need to improve.

Today for pday we went bowling with hna vogel and hna humphries. It was...fun. Bowling is pretty lame though when you cant dance and sing along to the music though in between your turns. Judy I took the mickey mouse picture just for you, as well as the picture of daniella with her hlj ring. thanks a ton!

I tried to print all of your letters earlier but the printer in the cyber didn´t end up working so I will try to respond to them later. I skimmed some of them and jennie your trip sounds so FUN!! And the pictures were darling. I do remember when we when to jackson hole and i tried to eat all of the ice cream and then later we stopped and got ice cream cones. I don´t think I ever lost the weight i gained that trip! Good times and great memories.

Mom I am making good use of the craft supplies you sent me. For every conference I try to make something for each of the hermanas. One time I gave them a "blessing" by wrapping a twix and crystal light in a little paper. another time i taped a gold wrapper candy to a paper saying you are a missionary of gold. this time it is, a pen with a paper tied to it that says, "una lapicera para una misionera" it ryhmes in spanish but means a pen for a missionary.

How has your birthday been mom? Did you get my card yet? What have you done to celebrate? How was school? I'm really really excited for you to meet hna salisbury. maybe you can have her over for or take her out to dinner. I think she would love to drive the corvette wink wink!

I hope you all have a great week, enjoy the pics! I Love you so much!!!

Mom you said you like to think about me safe under the covers before you go to bed at night so I sent you a picture to help you imagine! Also there is one with a cool crown i made for jeans birthday. enjoy, all my love

Made it to Agosto

Hey there! How is everyone? I made it passed my 5 month birthday and am on to number 6! Amy, it sounds like you had a fun weekend with Carrie, and mom I guess you can kiss summer break goodbye!

Well this week was a liiiittle bit better. Although Hna Halladay has a lot of weird quirks we are getting along just fine for the most part. I still feel like we need to be working harder though. Yesterday she wanted to go to the zoo to do contacts, it is in our area and it was dia del nino so there were tons of families going there. Maybe it wasn´t a bad idea but I didn´t think it was super effective. We had Andrea, a youth from another ward, accompanying us but all we were able to do there was a ton of basic contacting and a lot of the people didn´t even live in our area. I just didn´t think it was a great use of time so I finally tried to nicely suggest that we should go door knocking a pass by some addresses of contacts we had made in weeks past. I think it kind of offended her or hurt her feelings or something, but I just felt like we were doing a lot of fruitless contacting when we could be getting lessons with member and looking for news. We did end up knocking a lot and got 2 lessons with member and 3 others later on. Sometimes I just feel like both she and I are willing to work hard but neither of us know how to do it effectively. It is frustrating but I guess it is part of the experience and you learn as you go and just have to trust in Heavenly Father to make weak things become strong unto you.

So it really end up being a pretty long week and not super productive, but hopefully things will keep getting better. I find myself thinking way to much about how much longer I have left, whick is still a lot, but I like to think that since I will probably leave one change early to go to school, I have less than a year left, which means that after this change is over I only have two left to hit my halfway mark. It is starting to sink in with me that you never do stop missing home.

Today for pday we got up and cleaned the house then we went to centro and ate breakfast, playes soccer at the stake center, and now we are doing email. Last week on tuesday I sent nine letters so hopefully you will being getting them in a week or so. Mom I will keep my eye out for my premarin package. Thanks, and if you have another one ready the only request i have is more stickers. I dont know if you would find them at deseret book or where but I would like some temple stickers to put on peoples hymnbooks or boms, and then basic flowers and stars and stuff like that are really useful. But you all really need to stop spoiling me so much with so many packages!

I know this is short but this computer is being slow and I am going to try and send another email with pictures and i will write more if i have time. I love you!

Jessica

Starting of the change

Hey there! I have so many things to tell you today I really don´t where to begin...as usual. Well first of all I got to packages last week at district and they were the BIGGEST packages I´ve gotten! Thanks mom and Judy it was AMAZING!!! I loved all of the treats and soup/pasta mixes and the stickers, paper, markers, pictures and all. I must have some really amazing luck because I seem to always get my packages, they come fast, and they are never opened or stolen from.

In other news, I cried like a little girl when Hna Salisbury left. For two days. It has been really weird being here without her and having a new person living in the house and walking the streets that I came to know with Hna Salisbury. Hermana Halladay is...interesting...to say the least. Let´s be honest, she and I are really different and she is kind of...weird for lack of a better word. She kind of gets on my nerves but I´m sure we will still get along. What I am worried about more than anything is that she doesn´t seem to be a very hard worker. Of course it is probably hard to tell since she has been sick, but our first day she would walk so slowly everywhere we would go and then her contacts were pretty bare-bones ´´heres an invitation and chau´´ kind of a thing, hna sol you would be proud of me though, I wouldn´t let them walk away without pulling out a folleto and really talking to them. After a while of that hna Halladay said something along the lines of, ´´not all of the contacts have to be super-salisbury contacts´´. I took it as a compliment.

Then on Saturday she started complaining about not feeling well and so she had to walk slower. It would take us a half hour to walk somewhere that should have only taken 10 minutes. It was really ridiculous. Then on Sunday when we woke up she said she couldn´t go to church. She said her stomach was hurting and she had a fever. I let the bishop know that we wouldn´t be there because she was sick so then he and his wife came to check on her later and as most people here do, they made a fuss about her temperature being high and needing to go to the doctor. It was really nice of them to come over though. So she was in bed all Sunday and yesterday and then today we left to go to district. She says she is feels fine until she starts walking. I´m sure she does feel sick but I think she is kind of being a little bit over-dramatic and she should still be able to work. We will see how the rest of the week goes but I have a feeling I will be doing a lot of divisions.

It has definitley not been easy and I had way too much time to think about home the last couple of days, but as Hna Sol said I would, I have really felt a new strength and support that I did not feel as much before. I was able to lean on her a lot and let her do most of the work, but now even though I am compañera menor I think I will be carrying a lot of the load this change. I almost wish I was senior comp though because I feel like hna halladay´s spanish and method of teaching are a little bit lacking. People react to her differently because she is kind of socially akward and doesn´t really know how to approach people and when she does they just seem to get annoyed be the way she talks to them and stuff. I´m being really judgemental and critical though and I really have no room to talk.

I am worried about the work though and our members. I could almost feel things come to a halt when Salisbury left and halladay came in. Susie, digo Hermana Salisbury, I know you will be reading this off my blog so here is something for your benefit:

Elisabeth did not come to church yesterday. I tried to call her but couldnt get a hold of her. Lourdes tampoco. We passed by her house several times fri and sat but never could find her. We went by alexi and valeria too and the moto was there and we heard music but no one would come to the door. Buuut, Brahian is actually pretty excited about the thirteenth although we still have a lot to teach him. I will be sure to send you pics. Everyone misses you a lot and when I got to Silvias house to take her your scarf we just hugged and I cried and cried. Thanks again for being an amazing comp and for teaching me how missionary work should get done! And thank you for telling me about the Vietnamese lady that had the misfortune of waxing your legs. Amy make sure that gets posted online!!!

Oh!! And congrats Amy and Pablo on the house!!!!!!!! So exciting. And no we aren´t really running anymore. I did get hna halladay to go out on sat morning but we ran for maybe 5 minutes before she had to stop. I have been doing exercises and yoga in the morning though. I do think I lost wait the last couple of changes.

Judy I hope you had a happy birthday, I did send you a card but it probably won´t get there for at least another week.

Well I am about out of time and I am going to attach some pics. I love you all so so very much!!

Love Jessica

Ps Hna Salisbury is going to come visit you, Y hermana cualquier dia esta bien pero por las dudas, si vaya el veinte tres es el cumpleaños de mi mama entonces seria un buen regalo para ella, pero haga lo que le queda bien. Te quiero hermana!! Saludos de Javier y miriam y todos!!!!!

And the new companion is...

Hermana Halladay. I have met her once or twice and she seems very quiet but very nice and sweet, I believe she is from New York. And I am staying in Salto. I was actually kind of hoping to go somewhere else but it´s fine. I am not ready for a comp change though. I cried for probably an hour last night before I went to bed. I didn´t know serving a mission was going to be such an emotional rollercoaster.

Jennie! I got your package last week! THANKYOU!!!!! Oh my goodness, Emma does not look like the same baby that I said goodbye too. I love the family picture of the three of you. It turned out so so good. Thank you for the nutter butters, mnms, starbursts, and holy peach-raspberry crystal light! You are awesome, love you!

Last week was actually a really eventful letter week. I got a wedding announcement from colson, whoo whoo! A letter from Judy with a really good article, an amazing letter from becca lane who is serving in st. petersburg russia. her letter actually had a huge impact on me. It sounds like she is in a really hard mission and that there are probably so many things to deal with but she sounds really positive and like she is staying strong. It was really impressive to read and helped me a lot. She says when they do their contacting people ignore them, yell at them glare at them, laugh at them. We literally have had people contact us. I don´t have anything to complain about. I also got an awesome letter from lanae who met uncle ezra in nauvoo. Can you try and get her address for me so i can write her? Hers was really newsy too. Katie watkins from mexico study abroad got her mission call to the phillipines! what? yeah the phillipines, go katie girl! Also mary got hers to detroit...and i think there was another but I don´t remember right now. And did I ever tell you that a while ago i got an announcement for sarah hermann´s wedding?

So that´s a lot of the recent news that I have to tell you. Oh! Hello, and the awesome baptism on Friday. It was so good and after they had all changed and there was time for testimonies they were the first to get up and share their experiences with how the gospel has already changed their lives. afterwards we had a party in the cultural hall to celebrate blanca and ricardo´s marriage, they got married so that they could get baptized. Miriam and Javier, who were baptized a few weeks ago made pizza and cake for it, they are soooo cool.

Well this week has been a little tough just because I don´t want a new companion and I can´t help but feel that Hermana Salisbury is going home and I am getting left behind. I still have so much longer to go and i feel a little jealous that this is her last day. And I am worried about this next change because like you said amy, after being with a good comp for two changes it will be weird to adjust to a new one. I guess I will be emailing on Monday and letting you know how it goes.

I love you all, mom and dad the pictures are of your trip are awesome, looks like you had fun.

All my love, Jessica