Jon's Missionary Letters

  Hey kids!! Loved hearing about your Halloween! It brought back a lot of memories of Halloweens in elementary, middle and high school for me.  Dan: Obi Wan is an awesome costume! I was obi wan one year for Halloween, probably when I was about your age if not a little younger. We'll definitely have to do that when I get back, airsofting is the best! Also, did you know my mission is famous for having Jaguars in it? I haven't seen any, and I probably won't ever, but out in the jungles in "Los altos", a different area than mine, a bunch are roaming around. Where I am in the coast theres just a lot of Iguanas and loud blackbirds. Ems: That sounds like a blast! Trick or Treating with friends always is a good time. And yes, I have eaten some of the food we tried with Brother Guest. I had pig head tacos yesterday, which were pretty good, but took some getting used to (it was really fatty). I also had some of the best fish I've ever eaten, called Mojarro, it's fri...

  ¡Hola mi amigos! It's been a wild week, that's for sure. I left the MTC, came to Mexico and have begun the real deal. For starters, our flight got changed last minute. We ended up having a red eye flight into Atlanta and from there to Mexico City, and finally, into Tuxtla Gutierrez. It was a good time, not crazy eventful though, i was way tired after the fact tho. In Tuxtla we met our trainers! My companions name is Elder Garcia and he's from North Central Mexico and doesn't speak english, so that's been fun. Like legit, it's been super fun trying to communicate with each other in what little bit we know of each other's languages. Let's just say Google translate is our best friend (other than Jesus of course), siri always has my back. I'll have to put in a lot of work to learn Spanish if I want to survive out here haha. Hence the title, no nesecitamos Ingles.  My zone I got put in with my comp is La Zona de Costa, the costal zone. The city I'm ...

  Hey all, or as we say here in the MTC, Hola, mi Español es muy mal. It's been a good week, a lot of Spanish and a lot of classtime. It's actually surprised me how well I'm grasping the concepts we're learning, especially considering how well I did in remembering high school Spanish. It's tiring for sure, but I'm learning a lot. Reassignments came in this week, and there were a lot of changes. In our district we have 10 guys going to Mexico and 5 going to the DR. 8 got reassignments. Out of the 10 Mexican missionaries, 7 of them got reassignments due to visa issues and things. I was one of the 3 who managed to squeeze through. So that is kinda exciting. I guess the Lord really needs me in Tuxtla Gutierrez. There was a Solar Eclipse here in Utah, so that was kinda cool. One of our teachers gave us all some glasses to watch it, and we kinda had a photoshoot, it was pretty sweet. I have some pictures attached below. We also had a really good devotional with Elder ...

  Thank you all! I love these emails, hearing your stories and lives and things, keep them up!  Thomas: That game sounds pretty awesome, I remember making up games just like that with Darra and you and the other neighbors, I love that you still know how to have fun! And yes, I've heard that theory before, that Palpatine set up Fox to kill Fives, I think it's over explaining things, but it's a fun idea. I just like to imagine that Fox was doing his duty as a trooper and eliminating dangerous hostiles like Fives when he was crazy. Your orchestra sounds like it's doing well! Keep up the practice and good work on that. As a missionary, the most important part of it is how you prepare yourself. That means that practice is the most important part of being a missionary. These past few weeks I have been learning Spanish, and it has been hard. There are many Elders in my district who do not want to practice outside of class and would rather watch sports or scroll through social ...

 Hey all! It's already been a week! And with that, that means I'm a full month into the mission today. I started on September 11th, and today is October 11th. This week hasn't been crazy eventful, but it's been good. Here all the days fade a little bit into one day. The schedule basically goes wake up, eat, go to class, eat, study, eat, go to class, go to bed, eat snacks cuz Im still hungry, repeat. So yeah, we eat a lot here. We also go to class a lot too, but typing that out I realized how often we eat here... Yesterday my companion and I did a simulation teaching lesson in Spanish for the first time! It was terrible. Neither of us knew Spanish very well, but we went in with what we knew, shared a scripture, and struggled to connect with the person. Even though it was bad, it's all good, because there is no learning without error. Plus, once you hit rock bottom, there's only one direction to go, up! Arriba Arriba! I could look at it and get down about how far ...

  Hey all! This week is my halfway week through MTC, I've been here in provo for 2 weeks and then I had a week and a half online before that. So that makes me a little more that halfway through my 6 week experience. It's flown by! Everyone says that, but it's true, the days are long but the weeks are short. Also! I got my visa and I'm officially going to Mexico!  We started full immersion spanish lessons, meaning we go do all our classes here en Español. So it ends up being a little over 7 hours of full Spanish a day and plus whatever else we say to each other throughout the day. So that can get a little tiring to a brain like mine with little to no Spanish experience. But hey, it's how you learn. Overall though I've done a lot better than I thought I would. We're not even a week into full immersion and Im already able to communicate with others fully in Spanish fairly decently. Of course it's not proper or professional by any means, but I can say words ...

  Hey all! It's been a good week, it's crazy it's flown by so fast already. I've definitely gotten far more in tune with the Spirit since I've gotten here, I do my best to be obedient, despite a lot of other craziness and chaos around me here. I do this because obedience and humility in following God's commandments and blessings leads to being more able to keep the Spirit in your life. And that's the whole purpose of being on a mission: to convey the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ into other people's lives through serving, sharing, loving and caring for others, and testifying of this gospels truth in the way Christ would. Each day I work to be more like Him. The MTC in provo is a good place, there are a lot of people, the most there's been since the age change for missionaries to go out a few years ago. My district is great, and my companion and I are learning a lot about how to work in unity, and how to be more exact in what we do.  Other than the ...

  I hope I did this right, I didn't wanna put all the emails together again, so I just hit reply all and renamed it. It's coming at a whacky time of the day too, cuz its been a whacky day. Well it's been a day, that's for sure, this onell be quick. I woke up at 2:30 am to drive up to the Portland Airport to ship out to SLC and have been awake ever since. From there I toom a shuttle with a few other missionaries in the same position as me. Once I got to the MTC it was go go go, doing all these devotionals, tours and whatnot. I ended up seeing way more familiar faces than I thought I would, which was cool. Shout out to Elder Miller and Sister Harris, some good college friends.  Overall today was good, I've already learned so much, and finishing my home MTC experience was an amazing testimony builder. The main point I've learned so far is that teaching like Christ means showing care for others more than you care for yourself. It means showing unconditional love and...

  Hey all! P-days (preparation days) are Wednesdays for me in the MTC, so my emails will be sent out then, I can also reply to emails sent to me until 6 o clock today.  So far it's been a lot of zoom and online work, for those of you who don't know, the Missionary Training Center standard is to send missionaries to their in person MTC after a week of at-home learning via zoom. My assumption for them doing this is to help us new missionaries get adjusted to the new life of devoted study to Jesus Christ 24/7 before we're sent out to the real thing. Either way, it's a lot of zoom calls.  If any of you know me well I am not a huge fan of online meetings since my entire Junior year of high school was comprised almost solely of them. So going into this I wasn't the most excited. I prayed a lot during the first day that I could be more excited about being on zoom all day and trying to have a companion who lives across the state. As always, God answered my prayers, and I ha...