June 17, 2013

This is Jason's email from today.

I've had to do some explaining so you can understand his letter.

"Well, this time I feel bombarded with love"

[He titled this email because I think I sent him five or six emails this week to make up for no emails last week. My email time got messed up with a few family emergencies.]

I don't think I will be able to comment on everything there is so much!!! well here I go.

[I have numbered my cards I send in the mail and he told me a few he was missing and I told him of the one that was returned from the Dallas Mission]

Ya I figured I would miss a few cards with all the travailing. I probably left before it got there because they gave me one right when I left so if it had come before I left I would have got it.

Cool good luck with figuring out the new computer. Now y'all just need to save up to get me a laptop when I get home so I can have one for school :) JK (But seriously I will need a computer for school especially because I want to go into computer programing.)

Please tell Gwenaelle I'm happy for her and that we should be getting home about the same time.

it is so weird how fast time can fly. I wasn't expecting seminary to end this soon but then again it is June so I guess it just feels to soon. Good luck with the summer and finding time to do everything you need. BUT DON'T FORGET ABOUT ME!!!! I still want to feel loved during your crazy summer.

Thanks but actually it is my mouth that needs the prayers. All this spicy food will kill me one of these days. [I commented on how much food I have at the end of the week.] Actually that is just what happens when you lose a teenager in the house. If you don't change the amount of food you buy with one less person you are going to have more food than you used to (something I like to call "logic"). We don't actually eat snacks because we always get fed. The main meal here is called "la comida" and it is what we would call a late lunch. It is at about 2 or 3 and it is usually bigger than our dinners. We hardly eat breakfast (maybe a bowl of cereal) and almost never eat dinner (usual just some bread we get given by a family that owns a bakery). Oh and the bread here is different, while they have normal sliced bread the majority isn't. I don't really know how to describe it but most of it is really good.and I have no idea what sister Montiel could be talking about.

We eat with members every day except for Monday. They always feed us la comida and there is usually a lot of food.

Well my day consists of shower, breakfast and study in the morning then we go out for about an hour or two before la comida at around 2. After la comida we visit less actives, actives and any references/investigators we have. There isn't a lot of work with investigators here because we aren't allowed to knock doors or plan to do contacting activities (we can still contact but we are told not to go out of our way to do it). We get back between 9 and 9:30 and then plan the next day. After that it is what ever we want to do around the house until 10:30 when we go to bed. There is my day. Oh and Sundays we have church at 12 and have to be home by 8 so we can call in our numbers.

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PR!!!!!! That is so cool that you did that!! Every time you run another marathon or half marathon you just confirm the fact that you are crazy. Also I hope the LYTTS conference went well and that you manage to find more free time.

Yes you do look AWESOME!!! 

Cool I bet Matt (and you) did a great job and that the teachers can now go and beat the USA men's team. (not hard) [Matt and I taught soccer to the young men.]

I think I have everything I need and I think that I can download music and what not right onto my MP3 player so maybe you could include one song as an attachment to the next E-mail so I can try. 

Well I think that out of all of us Jessie is the one that can be responsible enough to have a phone before 14 (I probably wouldn't have been).

[He asked me why I sent him a little stuffed monkey.]

I figured it was just because. Cool now you need to let me help decide what to get for the rest of the boys. I wouldn't have objected to a unicorn but I think the monkey was a better choice.

[About his release date]

It might change but I don't think so. the only reason it might is if I get asked if I want to ether extend or shorten my mission and I don't think they will.

I miss that view:( where is that picture from? [I sent a picture of Mt. Rainier.]

[I asked what mountain he sent in the last email.]

I have no idea what mountain it is I just thought it looked cool so I took the picture. 

Well now I start the E-Mail proper.

First off, 2 OF OUR INVESTIGATORS WENT TO CHURCH THIS WEEK!!! One was even a surprise because Saturday they had a lot of family (some are actually members we didn't know this when we first met them) but she went to the 8am sacrament meeting so that was great. The other had been once before in fact that was where we contacted her. Getting them to church is always the hardest part of missionary work. It is also the most frustrating because you can't do anything other than invite them half a billion times and they really have to make a commitment to go because it takes time out of their day and lots of people work on Sunday. 

I also have a request to make... please send me "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" for Christmas this year. I need my own to continue the tradition. Also if you could send me some pictures of things to put on the front and back of my planners that would be awesome the dimensions are 6in.*3 3/8in. or 16 3/10 cm.* 8 9/10 cm. and if they are bigger no big deal because I can always trim them right now I am using pictures out of old Liahonas to make planers. Oh and I will make 15 more so if you could send like 30 pictures that would be great. (If you don't want to don't worry I just thought it would be cool to be able to put pictures of my family and friends on there. 

Speaking of friends can you post on my facebook that it is getting lonely out here and get them to E-Mail me!! 

Well I was reading in the Liahona the other day and I came across a few articles that I thought you might want to share with the rest of the family. They are in the January 2013 issue. they are the articles on pages 54 and 56. I was mostly thinking the first one for Kray and Mike but who ever else you think might like them can read them too. The first one is titled Education I think and I can't remember the second one. Also there is in the same issue an article about the wisdom of the world vs the wisdom of God that I think you might like but I can't remember the page number.

Well I can't wait to see you all again when I get home in about 20 months (ya it really is that short) 

Love you all: 

Elder Blanding

Blessings:

-I am grateful that English is my first language and not my second because now that I am learning another language I realized just how weird English really is. Also watching other people try to learn English is sad because they try so hard but English just doesn't like people to learn it. Also along the same lines I am grateful that I don't need to have movies translated to understand them because here if they want to see a movie opening night all they get is subtitles and if they want a voice over they have to wait like 3 months to get one.

-Also I am grateful that I had such a great house back home. The houses here are tiny. If our house were here in Mexico, it would be a mansion. Also again with carpet.

[He sent two photos but you will have to go to his blog to see them.]

His companion during study time.

The Bishop, his family, Elder Blanding & companion

June 10, 2013

Don't feel loved :( (no letter from home)

Well even though you didn't send me anything I will be nice and send you a letter anyways.

First off I know when my release date is... wait for it............. The 18th of February 2015!!! And yes that is a few weeks earlier than exactly 2 years. (I think they are sending me home exactly on the transfer date instead of in the middle of one.)

Well things are going great here we have been having a lot of success with the less actives in our area and have had more than 10 less actives (individuals) at church the last 2 weeks. The only problem we are having right now is getting our investigators to church. Then again that is always the hardest thing. At least they have a legitimate excuse in that the dad/grandfather of the investigators is really sick right now and they keep having to go to help take care of him but it is still frustrating that they haven't come to church yet. One nice thing is that we put on a ward activity on Saturday and they came to that and had a great time. 

Well I do have some comments/questions for you... first I only have cards 1-6,8,11 & 12 so if you sent any others I haven't got them. Second I have been wondering why you sent me the monkey and if it was for any reason other than you could.

The attachment is how nice Puebla can look on a clear day. (Time would be more precise because it is almost always clear at some time of the day and then rains like no other sometime in the afternoon/evening.)

June 3, 2013

First I asked him last week where Alamos 2 (his district) was because we are trying to find him on the map and he replied:
“Actually they changed it to Alamos 1 right before Transfers. It is in the city of Puebla and it is near the border between the north mission and the south mission. Maybe if you search for the Colonia Alamos you will be able to find it.”

I did and this is what I found:

  [link won't post right now--I'll have my computer geek work on it]

I  put in “puebla mexico Alamos” in google maps search. It also gave me a few other options, so I still don’t know where Jason is except in the hands of the Lord, doing his work and all is well.

Jason's email:

“3 months down 21 to go (not that I’m counting)”

[He actually titled his email this time!]

I am actually not counting down I'm just counting how long I have been out by the number of transfers that I have (or would have) been though. One transfer is 6 weeks so counting the MTC I have been through 2 and am just starting my third and there are 17.3 transfers in a mission counting the MTC so there are about 16 in the field and you go home at the end of the 16th I think. It is really easy to count transfers because you use one planer per transfer so all I have to do is keep them all and whenever I want to know how many transfers I have been out for I just count my planners so I have one transfer in the Field and so I have one old planner. 

Well Elder Swenson is now district leader and almost certainly will be for this transfer and the next. This is because training is 2 transfers so neither of us are getting transferred next transfer unless for some reason they want me to train with 6 weeks in the mission (or him). 

This week was both awesome and terrible at the same time. I'll go with the bad news first so that you can be lifted up by the good after. 

We weren't very productive this week and our numbers show it. We barely had 5 lessons all week :( the work with investigators is very slow here. We don't do finding activities. We don't knock doors. We don't do much street contacting. All of our work basically has to come through the members and that can be very hard when they don't give you many referrals. Also I wish that I didn't have to learn a language to help these people and they all just spoke English. But enough of my complaining now I'm going to move on to why this week has been AWESOME!! 

We have been meeting with part of this family named Es* and a friend of theirs who lives with them and this week the 15 year old daughter basically asked to be baptized!!! So we set a date and are working to see if we can get the rest to have the same date so they can all be baptized together. It will be so cool if we are able to do it!! The only problem is that she works on Sunday and even worse is that she works during Church (Church is from 12-3 and she works from 10-3 on Sunday) so we don't know how hard it will be to get her to church and this week was even harder because they had a family emergency Saturday night when we had an appointment with them and so we were unable to invite them to church this week so we will have to move the baptism date because they need to come to church 3 times before they can be baptized ;(  The other good news is actually in the numbers I said were bad earlier. Here we track something called "MARS" which stands for "Menos Activos Reunión Sacramental" which means Less-Actives in Sacrament Meeting. The good news is that we had 10!! this week (that's a lot). The chapel was the fullest I have ever seen it. It actually looked like enough people to be a ward (it is one there are just a lot of less actives here).

Well I thought that I would send this picture to show off Mexican architecture and ingenuity... Yes that is what you think it is. They didn't like where the door was so they put a wall behind it.

-Elder Blanding

"The way not to go"