You even put in wired ribbon!!

Hey! Well if you didn´t get it from the subject line I got packages this week! TWO! Thank you thank you thank you! I got the one with a CHRISTMAS TREE and gingerbread house with lots of decorations including lights and pretty wired ribbon that I already made bows out of, I loved it thank you so much! I also received the one with lots of goodies, cute socks, sticky notes, and sour balls. You all really are too good to me. Thank you so much Renita, Judy, Grandma, and Grandpa! I loved loved loved it all! I already wrote you a card that will be sent tomorrow.


It seems a lot longer ago, but last Tuesday we had our zone conference. It was pretty good and president heaton talked about gathering sheep and brought a big bell that you would tie around a sheeps neck and kept ringing it, then later he grabbed hna heaton around the neck with a sheperd´s staff. We also did a three legged race. It was pretty good.

We had a really good thanksgiving day actually. We had a really awesome day of work, tiring, but awesome. Everyone we talked to was really receptive. We had seven lessons and found six new investigators just in that one day. I asked Hna Gardner if she was fasting without telling me or what she had said in her morning prayers because the Lord was blessing us! Hopefully we can get these people to progress! That night we ate Thanksgiving dinner with the Heaths, the senior couple in our ward. The hermana went all out with mashed potatoes and gravy, a big beautiful chicken since there is no turkey to be found here, delicious yams, stuffing, rolls, and a really good carrot pie that tasted like pumpkin pie. It was so nice of them to have us over and we really enjoyed talking with them and spending the holiday there. It sounds like you all had good thanksgiving days too. And now we have less than a month until the Christmas phone call. YAY!

Yesterday was our ward´s primary program. There aren´t that many kids, maybe 12-15, which I guess isn´t too small, but they realy did a good job. They sang loud, said there lines, and just looked cute. There were these two Americans that came to Sacrament meeting that have just been traveling around South America. The guy didn´t speak Spanish and the girl just barely did so he asked Hermana Gardner to transalte for him. It was funny and kind of weird for some reason, I guess just because they were so obviously americans but not missionaries, maybe it just made me realize how out of place we probably look. It also made me think of Amy and Paul because they were carrying big packs, you know amazing race style.

Later yesterday we were walking own the street and Hna Gardner had a little outburst. We were passing by these guys and as always they started to say things to us that we hear a billion times a day and Hna Gardner just lost it. It was so funny because she has never even come close to doing this before but she just wheeled around and said ´´can we we just have a little bit of respect please?´´ It wasn´t really all that bad, mostly just funny because it came out of nowhere. The guy looked pretty taken back and sheepishly pointed at his buddy as if he had said it. I wonder if he will ever say anything to sister missionaries again or if he will just be worse than ever. It was pretty hilarious though.

This morning we played soccer with the zone, it was fun but I am super out of shape. It is time for me to diet! Did you happen to make the Christmas treats low fat? Haha, oh well I´ll just have to make it a new years resolution. Next week is changes and I really don´t know what will happen so I will let you know, cross your fingers that I don´t have to be a senior comp!

Talk to you later!

All my love, Jessica

5 weeks to Christmas phone call!!

Hey everyone! Thanks for the great letters and emails I´ve been gettting from you! Dad and Ryan...I´m waiting! I really really liked Amy and Paul´s emails about their missions, Amy there are tons of testigos here, jehova´s witness, and they do missionary work too and a lot of times people think we are them. It is annoying and I am just like you, when they say they are testigos i say bueno chau. they always want to argue and even if you make a good point they just pretend that they don´t understand or something. I actually get really annoyed when my companions even try to talk to them, it literally is pointless because they just won´t listen even though they often times realize that what you are saying makes sense and what they are saying makes no sense at all. But i got to hand it to them, they know their bible, although it must be a lot easier to learn since they have crossed out a lot of the verses that don´t correspond with what they believe.

I´m glad you have gotten a lot of letters from me, I really hope you know that I try to write regularly, I´m sorry that come so sporadically. What are your plans for thanksgiving? Yesterday we had lunch with the Heath´s, the senior missionary couple, and they invited us to have thanksgiving dinner with them, yay! I would say my big news for the week would have to be my eyes. Hear me out. Since my second change I´ve had really dry skin on my eyelids, which I have had multiple times before in my life. But the last month it has been worse and worse. I tried vaseline but my eyes had an allergic reaction and I woke up with them swollen and puffy and flaky. then at the training this week I asked hna heaton for any tips and she came the next day with a cream for me to try which was way to strong and on saturday i just wanted to cry because my eyes were like red leather. The skin had no elasticity, i looked dumb and it hurt to blink. So I called hna heaton which i really didn´t want to do since she always gets a billion calls a day about stupid things like cold sores and elders who are craving sweets and therefore must have a parasite. But anyways she told me to go to a pharmacy and get a hydrocortisone cream which seems to be helping and then she told me to send a picture to the doctor today. I have also been having spring allergies which is pretty annoying, mostly just sneezy and runny nose.

Well, the good news is Martin has fecha! He should be getting baptized on November 28th if all goes well. ´We are have high hopes though. What else is new at home? What are all your holdiday plans looking like? I don´t think it will even feel like Christmas to me. It seems so weird that it is november and summer is just starting.

I hope you all have a great week and that I hear from each of you next week! or tomorrow i guess. Love you lots and miss you tons, I am counting down to my nine month mark-I will be the first to confess that I am a trunky, unfocused missionary. Keep on keepin on!

All my love, Jessica

Good letter week

Hi there! How´s it going? I am so glad that you got my tape and so fast! I hope that you liked it and since amy isn´t close and cant listen to it I have one that I am going to send to her and another that I will send to you hopefully for Christmas. It is really nice that Hna Gardner has a tape player and I´m going to try and take advantage of it while I can. I have seen some here but that kind of stuff is expensive here, $50 for just a basic tape recorder. I haven´t tried to get any money out because last time i took out enough to last me for a while but I can try again and let you know next week. So as it says in the subject line this week was a really good letter week. I got a really cute Halloween card from Jennie, several emails from hna salisbury that the offices hadn´t been printing, a written letter from hna salisbury (so weird to hear about her being on my old stomping grounds at byu), and a letter from Becca Lane!!!!! Her letter was so good too. She is a really good letter writer and always so uplifting. If you will recall she is serving in Russia and all of her companions have been Russian, only her trainer spoke english, she said her president is from the ukraine and the only english is knows is ´´Big Problem´´. It sounds like she is in a really hard mission but taking the challenge like a champ. I really have appreciated how our friendship is growing through sharing our missionary experience together. I can remember the night I got my call she had received hers that same day and I called her and we were so excited to tell eachother where we were going. She also told me about the excitement the Russian church members felt as the Ukraine temple was dedicated and they participated by satelite. ´´It´s practically on Russian ground´´ they kept saying. She aslo has told me that because of the history in Russia just how the culture is and it´s general attitude toward religion. It is really interesting and as the church has only been there since 1991 she really has to do a lot of work to just strengthen what they already have and work with less active members as much as looking for new ones. I cant wait to hook up with her when i get home and exchange stories. And judy i sent her the article you sent me from the deseret news about 1 nephi 4:1 and she said she really liked it and made laminated it onto the from of her missionary planner for one of her changes. Thanks again.

So some happenings from this week, we went to a ward activity one night for one of the elder´s wards and taught CPR, my lifeguard training came in handy. Last monday we went to an artisan market that had a bunch of really awesomehand made things and pottery type stuff. I bought a pretty candle holder that has a little hallow in the top to put scented oil in with a tea candle underneath. It is actually the first souvenier type thing that I have bought here. I also made some pretty good baking powder biscuits this week, so nice to have an oven. And one night I almost couldn´t sleep when I realized that I get to call you next month!! Six weeks....

So I do have some questions...for dad...who I haven´t heard from for a while. wink. I never knew before what to ask you about your mission but now I do have some questions. I would also be interested to hear responses from Ryan, Amy and Paul. So I was wondering if you ever had any companions that were not american, like from austria or germany and didn´t speak english. I know you had an office job that you liked, were you ever a district leader or any thing like that? Did you have any really memorable baptism experiences? Did you do most of your contacting in the street or knocking? And Ryan how did you find people where you were in a sign language mission, did you work mostly through references? How often did you have conferences or interviews, what was your president like and where from? Did the members work well with you, did you have a lot of member lessons each week? What change did you move to senior comp? Did you do divisions a lot, did you live with other companionships? What was it like for you to learn a new language (ps for all who have asked, my spanish is not perfect but I personally think i am rocking it) And anything else you would like to tell me. I am just asking all of this out of curiousity, don´t get me wrong when I ask if you were ever a district or zone leader or when you became senior comp. Our district meeting this week was changed to thursday because tomorrow and wednesday we are going to a training, just found out today. So if you (all four of you) hurry and email me back before wednesday I should get it and that would make be a very happy hermana.

Mom I am very much looking forward to your Christmas packages, you need not worry because I know you and I am sure it´s going to be awesome regardless! I love you so much, all of you! Talk to you next week...

All my love, Jessica

Happy Halloween

Hey everyone, i am going to tell you now that i got stuck with a not so great keyboard so punctuation will not be great. Thanks for all your emailsª Jennie I tried to look at the pics but they wont come through, i think it is the computer so i will just try again next week. sounds like the party was a big successª yay, good work. and mom i just cant wait to see you dressed up as the queen of hearts, what made you decide to use that costume+

Well I dont have much to tell this week, it was kind of a dull downer week but no big deal. I dont know if i told you already but we made some little halloween baggies to send to some of the other hnas. hna gardner had some cellophane bags with ghosts and pumpkins and then we filled them with some halloween pencils, glowsticks=thanks amyª, some candies including eyeballs and teeth, and a cute halloween card with pumpkin stickers from judy and renita. ´They turned out so so cute. we also took some extra teeth to district and put them on. Also for district i made a yellow cake with a recipe amy sent me at the beginning of my mission. it turned out really good and i made chocolate frosting and sprinkled the fall leaf sprinkles from renita and judy on top. our district was very happy and i was too because it was so fun to be able to make a cake and have an oven in our apartment. plus it turned out super delicious and cute. halloween is kind of a new thing here. some people think it is evil but we did see some little kids trick or treating last night. amy i also gave some glowstick bracelets to the little barcia girls, they really liked them and hna sol if you are reading they are starting the temple prep class. whoo hooª

so in other news yesterday right before sacrament the first counselor asked me to speak or share my testimony. Luckily I carry some fotocopias of talks that i like to use and so i pulled one of those out and took up my scriptures. i assumed that someone who was supposed to speak had not come so i tried to take up some time. they said about five minutes. i was super nervous but i felt like i did okay and probably spoke for about 8 minutes. everyone gave me very sincere compliments and thanks and said they really liked my talk but what surprised me the most is that hna garnder says i spoke for over 15 minutes, some said 20, others 45. so i am not sure how long i really spoke but i thought that was kind of funny. the talk i used was from a conference a couple of years ago, in english i think it is called joseph smith prophet of the restoration.

I hope you all have a great week, les quiero muchoª

all my love, jessica