Marvin talked in church!!!

So we do have changes.  I'm not really surprised.  The other thing is that they are going to put another district here so I won't have to call as many people at night. and writing won't be such a pain. Finding a place for nine missionaries to write isn't a lot of fun.  It will be interesting to see who the new missionaries are.

   

The people that I was taking about that came to church are the recent converts. 1t would be a lot of investigators.  We visit everyone that's been baptized in the last year and keep track of who came to church.  So almost all of the new members came last week.  Speaking of new members, Marvin spoke in church and crushed it like a freaking boss!  He gave a really good talk about the way we dress and our appearance.  So that was super cool.  Also, Erick, another recent convert gave a talk too.  He talked about keeping the sabath day holy.

   

When Grandpa Walker wrote that Gordon's mission president's name is Lam it made me laugh. There is a guy in our ward who is Hermano (brother)  Lam.  His grandpa is from Hong Kong.  We always call him Chinito Taiwan.  Chino is like Chinese and in word they put it before the O to make it something smaller.  It's kind of funny, he is a realy dorky guy.

   

Hey, well I'm out of time.  Thanks for the pictures.

I love you all and I'll talk to you all next week.

-Elder Jarvie

Beans & Pigs

 Sorting beans with the Pineda family in Los Pinos

 

 A place in our area called Nacahuil.  There are a lot of pigs there.

Hey everybody!

 

So this week was fun.  One day we went to Nacahuil.  It's part of our area but it's like half an hour in bus to get there.  A lot of the people there speak Kekchi, one of the Mayan languages, so that's neat. Luckily, everyone speaks Spanish too.  There are a lot of animals and people wear different clothes.

   

On the way back we stopped by a place called Los Pinos.  Pinos are pine trees.  They told me it's named that for the Pineda family, who were the first people who lived there.  Like 70% of the people there have the last name Pineda, including the family we visited.  They do a lot of farming stuff so when we got there they were separating beans from some of the plant that came with it.  They gave us food too.  The fun thing there is that they always say if you want peppers there are some on the bush over there.  One thing I've gotten used to is eating peppers.

   

One really cool thing is that almost all the recent converts came to church this Sunday.  One of ten didn't come and only because he was sick.  So that was legit.

   

Reading your letter I thought of two things.  I've never had a companion that speaks English, and I've never had one younger than me.  Also I've never trained, so those are a few new things that could happen.

   

This time around there will definitely be changes because I already have three with Elder Barrera.

    

The house is looking amazing.  Make sure you guys have a laptop for Christmas so I can see it all. Y'all have a rich people house.  Well I guess you are grandparents now.

 

Well I'm pretty much out of time.  I love you all and I'll talk to you next week.

 

-Elder Jarvie

Baptism Interview

It sounds like you guys had a fun week.....mixed with a boat load of traveling... lucky dogs! I want to go to the coast. I miss swiming, though I don't miss cold water.  I get that every morning when I shower.  The beach is a ton of fun.  We will have to go there one day when I get back.

   

It's fun to hear that Moroni and Gordon are in the MTC now, or CCM and who knows how to say MTC in Cantonese.  Throwing in wrong words for me is mostly if I pray out loud in English.  The MTC is a struggle sometimes.  Though I guess there are struggles everywhere you go (they are just a little worse there).  Right now I would say my biggest struggle has been my companion.  My companion is the devil.  The good thing is that we have changes in two weeks.  I've been with him four and a half months already so we will definitely have changes.  That and I've learned a lot of patience.

   

This week we had divisions with the zone leaders.  We did it after weekly planing, and it ended really late so it was a short division, but it was good.  I got to interview someone for their baptism, so that was neat.  It was the first time I had done it. 

   

Things here are honestly going alright - there are a few things that drive me crazy sometimes, but there are good things too.  I really like the area I'm in right now.  It's really big and sometimes we take buses to visit people, but it is a great place.  And our house is good too.  The only down side is the shower.  Saturday I got to take a hot shower when we had divisions with the zone leaders.

   

Anyway, that's what's up over here.  I love you guys!  And I'll talk to you next week.

-Elder Jarvie

Conference & UNO

The last four days have been some of the most legit ever.

  

Number one:

Conference, I enjoyed it a lot.  There are a few ideas that I liked, and plan to apply.  The talk about ponderizing really stuck out for me.  I like the idea.

   

There is an elder in my district called Elder Hocket and when the guy started talking about the super long dark tunnel he started yelling that his family goes there every year. (When we watch conference there is a separate room for the people who speak English, so there were only like three of us there. So it's not like he was talking in the main room with everybody.)  But he told us a lot about it and it sounds like a really cool place.  Definitely somewhere I want to go when I get back.  Maybe I'll convince him to come with me.

   

That is super cool that you guys got to go there to see the conference.  It was a really good one. The weird thing is that this time around people only talked in English.

   

As missionaries we pretty much stayed in the stake center all day.  We would watch two hours.  Eat something and play UNO for two hours and repeat until the end when we went home right when the day ended.  Us especially, because we live far away.

 

Number two:

We went to the temple today!  That was great though there isn't too much to describe about it.  We also bought a few things at the distribution center there.  And we ate Taco Bell before coming back to write.  I bought a Book of Mormon en English, because I wanted to mark scriptures and mine is pretty well marked.  We also bought scriptures for some of the members here who don't have them.

   

Things 3 and 4 could be getting emails today and not dying in a mud slide.

 

We were talking with a one of our investigators who mentioned that where the slide happened was a mountain that was mostly mud or sand, which isn't the ideal place to build.  It's a better idea to build in a stony place.  Which made me think of the wise man and the foolish man.  And that in some choices we make you can loose a lot more than your house.

   

It's also exiting to hear that Moroni is on his way.  There are now a ton of missionaries from our ward.  And a lot of us are speaking Spanish too, though Moroni is going to come home speaking a Spanish a lot different then Jared´s and mine.  From what I've heard they talk in vosotros which is like using thou.  So that will be fun.

   

So I'm pretty much out of time.  This week I had a little more time to write. Thanks for the letters and pictures. I love you guys!

bye!

-Elder Jarvie