Stake Conference, a visit from Elder Christensen of the Seventy, and first mission council

February 17, 2014

Muchas gracias por la carta que me escribiste. Esta semana nos fue bien. Cada semana tengo experiencias buenas, y otras que no son tan buenas. El punto es que quiero enfocarme en las cosas buenas que pasaron esta semana. Fui al consejo (council) de la mision por la primera vez y aprendi mucho. El dia siguiente tuvimos una conferencia con Elder Christensen de los setenta. Al estar en la conferencia tuve la oportunidad de ver a muchos de mis mejores amigos de la mision. Platique por un rato con Elder De la Mora, mi companero preferido. Aprendi mucho en la conferencia tambien. La mejor experiencia de la semana fue esta, fuimos a la casa de una hermana, menos activa para cambiar carpetas de area con las misioneras. Cuando llegamos a la casa de la hermana me dijo, "Elder Jarvis, tenia muchas ganas de conocerlo." Me hizo sentir un poco incomodo, pero despues me dijo porque. Entonces, estabamos sentados en la mesa, los cuatro misioneros, y la hermana me dijo que queria hablar conmigo. La semana anterior, habiamos hablado con el esposo de esa hermana, los dos fueron misioneros y el ha sido inactivo por 5 o 6 anos y tambien fuma. Solo hablamos con el por 5 o 10 minutos y no recuerdo mucho de lo que le dije. Lo que si recuerdo, es que mas temprano en ese mismo dia habiamos pasado a visitar a otros miembros, algunos activos, otros menos activos, y en casi todos los casos yo pude saber solo al ver a los miembros si eran activos o menos activos. Yo pense, que el esposo de esa hermana era un miembro activo, lo senti, y al final de la conversacion con el, nos dijo, " ustedes si saben que no soy activo verdad? Y le dijimos que no sabiamos. Cuando nos fuimos, yo lo abrace, como casi siempre hacemos con los hombres. 

Entonces la esposa de el me pregunta, "que dijo a mi esposo?" y le dije "no se disculpeme si le ofendi, y mi dijo, no "lo que dijo fue algo bueno." Cuando su esposo me vio, el sintio que ya me conocia, desde la vida preterrenal. El no quiere hablar con los misioneros ni con el Obispo tampoco, pero si hablaria conmigo. Me hizo sentir muy bien. 

I wrote letters yesterday night to Lola, the Diaz Lopez family, Magda, Carmen, Montserrat, and Lupita, from Tuxpan, and to the Alcaraz family from Guzman. 

The new apartment is nice, it is really big, 2 stories, the only thing I don´t like about it, is that we are separated sometimes, for instance, the bathroom is downstairs and we sleep and study upstairs, and I don´t like that, but the house is nice.  We have beds and bed stands and a table, we don´t have chairs yet, we took two from the church to use. We have an electric stove, and we have a microwave, we have one very little fan, and are planning on buying another one or two this week, we want to buy a fridge, but the only gave us 2,000 pesos to buy it with, and that is not very much. 

It is getting a little bit easier being around sisters. Elder Calixto and I cleaned the house for a long time, studied for Zone Conference tomorrow and ate some good food. We ate quesadillas and tortas and I had a milkshake. It has been a fun day, Elder Webb and his comp. called and sang me the mananitas. We also found a less active family of 5 yesterday that we are going to visit tonight, and one of our investigators Pedro came to church yesterday, so that was pretty awesome.

 Mananitas is the happy birthday song. Tortas are sandwiches, or something parecido. I don´t know the other word for sandwich. Did you read the article by president Eyring in the Liahona of January? I really liked it. It was kind of funny when we visited the large family because the three kids were there, 16, 12, and 7 years old, and the 7 year old was scared to death of me, I think because of my larger than the average Mexican size. Their parents were both sleeping. Zone Conference is here tomorrow, combined with the other Colima zone, we are going to buy Subway sandwiches, and my companion and I have to teach for 30 minutes. 

My companion and I get along fine, not too great, and not too bad. He gave me a blessing one night this week, I woke up screaming and had apparently punched the metal door as well, I do not remember doing that, but he says I did. But, after the blessing I was fine. We finally got our beds and bed stands this week as well.   I was dreaming that I was shouting, and  Elder Calixto as well, but turns out I was the only one shouting.

We are the Centenario Ward, in the Colima Stake. Our stake president served his mission in Salt Lake, was an A.P. and his wife was serving in Temple Square and that is where they knew each other. 

I was also able to get some weights set up this week that actually weigh quite a bit, and also set my record for jumping rope, I did it for 3 minutes and 45 seconds consecutively. 

Sorry I've got to go.  Thanks for the letters, have a good week.

Love,

the elder Elder Jarvis

Busy first week in Colima

(from Sister Wagner) "Here we are!! 219 Missionaries with Elder and Sister Craig Christensen, Elder and Sister De Hoyos, and Elder Martinez (area authority). I LOVE this picture!!"



Also from Sister Wagner:  "We are now 54 sister missionaries strong!"

This week was a good week, and absolutely crazy one. I am here in Colima with Elder Calixto. He is from Monterrey and has 14 months in the mission. He has three sisters. He heard that he would be receiving a missionary who had 21 months in the mission and thought I would be dead, he was in for a surprise. He walks really fast, as fast as I do. I have slept on the floor every night since I got here. We stayed the first few days and nights with the other zone leaders, Elder Webb, who you already know, and Elder Armengol, who is in his last transfer, and is totally wild and crazy. There are 12 elders and sisters in our zone. We are going to have our zone conference together with the other Colima zone. It will be next week, the 18th of February. We are 6 elders and 6 sisters in the zone. What happened with our area, is that they divided the area that Elder Calixto was in into 2 areas. We are 4 missionaries in our ward, us two and two sisters, Sister Vargas and Sister Zamora. Sister Vargas if from the state of Mexico and has 6 months in the mission, and Sister Zamora is from Tamaulipas and this is her first area. All three of the other missionaries in our ward are converts. We spent a large part of the week showing the sisters their area and introducing them to their members. They are now living in the house that Elder Calixto was living in. We finally moved into our new house on Saturday, but have very little furniture. I got to know a few members this week, but we had very few lessons because we were extremely occupied all week long. I did a lot of exercise this week. 

One of the blessings I received this week, is that I was blessed with the gift of tongues, my companion said that I had a little bit of an accent like the people from D.F. (Mexico City) I felt really comfortable speaking, and everyone was understanding me, it was totally cool, I just did not worry about it, and just spoke, and everyone understood me. We finally moved into our new house, and it is pretty huge. It is 2 stories, just huge.  A nice older lady, member, fed us pancakes before church yesterday.

Thank you for your nice letters I really enjoyed them. We had a nice up and down week this week. Sounds like Nate had a pretty crazy week as well. One fun experience I had this week was looking for all the new stuff we have to buy for our house. We walked into the store and I asked for everything, did pretty much all of the talking and it was totally awesome, and the kid helping me hardly ever had to ask, "what was that, I did not understand you." It was pretty cool. It was also fun that my companion has expressed to me several times who impressed he is that I am not dead. He said that I am the only missionary that he has known that has had 21 months in the mission and is not dead. It is so nice that other people see that in me, I just wish I could see it in myself.

I guess there is a lot that I should be positive about though, it is hot and dry here and I like that, we walk so fast that I do not have time to think, that is nice, and I will try to be more positive and not so pessimistic. We are teaching Pedro. He has been to church a bunch of times, and the only thing that is impeding him from being baptized is that he smokes. We also taught Christopher this week, he has also been to church and is reading the BOM and praying, he lives with a member and they are not married so that is the challenge with them. Those are the only investigators I know. We did not have a lot of time to work in our area this week. None of our investigators were able to make it to church. I spoke in sacrament meeting.   Our bishop is great, he worked at the Benemerito school for a long time. We walked more this week than I had ever walked in a single week in my mission, so that was awesome. 

When you talked about being tired this week I get where you are coming from. In the mornings we do devotionals. We sing, pray two times and read a scripture, we did several of those devotionals together with the elders we were living with. After having slept on the floor the second night in a row, Elder Armengol asked us to go and get the scriptures, and I frustratedly said in English, "we slept on the floor last night." But, I did exercise every morning. When I am really tired in the mornings and do not want to exercise, I try to think, when I am 24 and married with a kid up all night, going to school, working, I am not going to want to exercise either, but I am going to, just something fun to think about. 

I loved seeing the picture of Elder De La Mora.  He is one of the most loving people I have ever met. 50 percent of the credit for me developing the love I felt for Lola is because of him, in my 2 transfers with him, I do not ever remember him getting mad at me, not once. 

Oh, and I am right across the volcano from Guzman

Transfer to Colima!

February 4, 2014

Hey! I was transferred to Colima for the first time in my mission. I am going to be serving with Elder Calixto. We are going to be zone leaders here. I did not have time to do my hair in the picture Hna. Wagner sent you. We slept on the floor last night. Elder Hernandez is in my zone, the one I trained. We are opening up a zone. There was only one zone in Colima and now there are two. 

Anyways, I am very happy to be here, and I hope I have more time to write to you guys tomorrow for a little bit. Veremos..... Bueno pues, estoy feliz por estar aqui, espero que se encuentren con bien, a ver cuando les escribo otra vez. Hasta luego!

Elder Jarvis