Letter back to Guzman

The sisters in Guzman asked Ben to write to a family he taught when he was there.  He sent us a copy, Jodi says it's good stuff :)

Bueno, pues espero que usted y su familia esten bien. Disculpenme por no haberles escrito antes. Siento que no los he visto por mucho tiempo, aparte de Juan Pablo. Las hermanas misioneras me contaron que estaban pasando por tiempos dificiles. Espero que ya esten mejor. Ustedes son una familia muy especial, nunca me olvidare de ustedes y tampoco me olvidare de todos los tiempos muy buenos que pasamos juntos. Todavia recuerdo el primer dia cuando que nos conocimos. Hermana Escobar nos llevo a su casa porque sabia que su mama era miembro de la iglesia y no estaba asistiendo. Recuerdo el dia cuando vimos los videos de los templos en la casa de la hna. escobar y Valeria decidio que queria bautizarse. Recuerdo cuando Daniela compartio su testimonio despues de su confirmacion. Recuerdo cuando Juan Pablo y Emmanuel repartian la Santa Cena juntos. Recuerdo cuando comimos con ustedes un lunes, cuando yo y Elder De La Mora nos invitamos. Recuerdo cuando Juan Pablo discurso sobre el Arrepentimiento y cuando Daniela discurso sobre La Palabra de Sabiduria. Recuerdo cuando nos ayudaron a vaciar la pila bautismal despues del bautismo de Mariel. Recuerdo cuando vimos el video de los testamentos en la capilla. Recuerdo cuando yo golpee a Elder De La Mora durante la leccion que tuvimos con ustedes. Ustedes son los futuros lideres de la iglesia en Ciudad Guzman y son mis mejores amigos, los quiero mucho aunque no siempre pueda expresarme muy bien en espanol. Fue un privilegio haberles conocido.

Espero que entiendan esta carta porque se que todavia me falta aprender mucho de espanol, pero quiero que sepan que la escribi con amor y que les amo mucho. 

Good bye Tuxpan picture, Good Week San Blas

This  photo is me when I left Tuxpan. In this picture I am with the Castolo Family. They are some of my favorite people. They are the strongest members of the church in Tuxpan, they are the strongest. I felt like with them, The Lord knew that the church were going to go through some major trials in Tuxpan, and for that reason put a family there who He knew would be strong in the church and they are that family

This is a picture of Aristeo and his wife Francia and their baby Dario. Last Monday we went with them and a few other members up to a cool place where you can see all of San Blas and the beach and everything and it was pretty cool. They have both been members for about all of their lives, but when they got married they both went inactive and have just recently begun to come to church again, just a little while ago. He fishes oysters for his job, the majority of the people here fish for a living. I tried a plain oyster one day at their house and did not like it too much, but of course ate it.

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This is a picture of me and Elder Martinez with the sun setting in San Blas behind us. In the picture I am wearing a long sleeve Steelers shirt, I do not know where Elder Martinez got it, but it was the only shirt that he had that fit me, and my shirts were dirty at the time. We are sitting on a cannon. The members who we went with were, Aristeo and Francia, Angeles and her brother Ulises, Angeles´s daughter and the girlfriend of UIises.   The view is really cool from up there, it was a way fun trip.

Zone conference was cool this week.  Elder Webb is one of our zone leaders now, he has the same time as me in the mission and is a really cool guy, really charismatic, and black, reminds me of Zack in some ways. My companion is doing well, he knows a lot about the scriptures especially the Bible. One of the families we are working with is Bere and her husband Silvestre. They are great. We were able to gain their confidence in the first lesson, and they are not married, that is the only thing that is holding her back from being baptized.  Once we were talking well with them and I called her his future wife, instead of wife, and he took it well and thought it was funny and everything.

Supposedly, 93 people came to church yesterday, (that is what the branch president counted) although in reality I think we were about 80. We had a good week though.   I did 1615 push ups  in total, it is harder to do them here with the heat and humidity but it is alright. I had a fun experience in one of our lessons this week, with a less active member that I will tell you about later.

Conference Week, and Bugs!

I have felt a little bit sick this week, I got a sore throat, but overall it has been a good week. It is hot and humid. I still managed to exercise every day even though it was difficult. I went running 3 times with my companion and 3 days did pushups. My companion knows how to run, like, he could possibly beat me in a long distance race, maybe.

It is a nice fun area though, the people seem to be less catholic and the members are awesome, they are very humble people, there are a lot of bugs. I have big shoes to fill, Elder Webb, whose shoes I am filling speaks great spanish and has a lot of charisma. 

Elder Webb (the big shoes to fill), and Ben's companion Elder Martinez from Veracruz

I was richly blessed with the gift of tongues this week, as in, by far the best spanish of my life. I even am beginning to be able to say the double r´s.

I  am district leader now, we are 6 elders in our district. 4 of us are here in San Blas and 2 are in Villa Hidalgo. I enjoyed the parts of conference that I understood. I understood more than 90 percent of the saturday morning session, and not quite so much in the other sessions. There are many awesome less active members and recent converts here.

It gets dark early here, like at 7 at night and that is when the bugs really start to come out, so we try to be in lessons during that time. We had some good lessons this week, one in particular when we were teaching  several investigators, we spent the first part of the lesson with them just talking and gaining their confidence, upon doing so we then began to teach very directly, I have found that that is one of the best tactics. If you get to that point, you can tell the people exactly what they have to do and they take it the right way.

The branch president and his family are awesome and she did make the cake for us Tuesday, for all of us and not just for me sadly. I ate bread and jam this week and the members gave us a lot of food. This is my first area where the members feed us every day, even on Mondays.

We are going to go an climb up a hill with a couple of members today.

I ran 3 times with my companion this week. The first time, he really wanted to run on the sand at the beach, and I do not think that we can do that, and I did not know where we were going, but I felt like we were running towards the beach. We ended up running parallel to the beach, but far away from it and not on the sand, when, all of the sudden we were running on the sand. We eventually got back, and I was just a little bit irritated. But, overall, we had a good week, and the heat and humidity was not as bad as I thought it would be, and the members are great.

We eat a lot of seafood here, the majority of which tastes good, and some of which, such as oysters does not taste so good. Actually, I have loved everything that we have eaten other than plain oysters, which we normally eat with chile or lime. I ate a lot of chile this week just because I can and the members like it and think that it is cool. We go and run around a soccer field right next to a school in the morning.

Oh,  and we are on the same time schedule as you guys here, just so that you know. And I think my favorite conference talk was Elder Uchtdorf´s Saturday morning one, because it was the one that I understood best.

Tuxpan to San Blas!

I have very little time to write right now and so i am going to try to get all of the important details in.

I was transferred, I am now in San Blas, Nayarit.

It is hot and humid here, you can imagine how much i sweat doing my pushups in the morning.    I set my record doing 607 pushups in half an hour last week on Saturday.

My companion is Elder Martinez, he is from Veracruz, Mexico and only has 1 transfer in the mission.   My companion is younger and has less time in the mission than Nate. I am kinda training him, his trainer, Elder Webb has the same time in the mission as I do and he is now one of our zone leaders, and so I am going to finish training Elder Martinez. He is an awesome guy, he seems confident for a missionary who only has 1 transfer, but at the same time, not cocky.

We had district conference with the Wagner´s and it was awesome. Montze came to the saturday and Sunday sessions. President Wagner told us that all of us were in the pre earth life for at least 6,000 years, to more than 600,000 years.  

District Conference in Guzman, Ben is in the very basck

The branch president and his family are awesome. His wife is going to make me a cake because she asked me how old I thought she was and I said 35, she is 53. We ate with them yesterday, are writing in their ciber right now, and we wash our clothes here as well.

Several people yesterday told me that I speak spanish very well and they were also impressed with how much chile I ate.  We have to go and eat now and hitch a ride to get there.

I am safe and sound, and Mom, so that you know, nothing has happened to me like what happened to Nate, you know I would have told you about it, I am not a small person, and rarely feel like I am in danger, knock on wood. I felt a little bit scared one time with E. Robertson and that was it.

I was able to say good bye to all of my buddies in Tuxpan, and me and Garcia really got along well, we just had 2 incidents, but i think in 6 weeks that is pretty good. I am safe and sound and looking forward to working here. Something funny that happened this morning was that, I guess one elder who left San Blas this transfer was saying good bye to an older sister in the branch and he told her, “pero no se preocupe, va a llegar un guero con ojos azules, y despues, ella le dijo, o entonces no le voy a extranar por mucho tiempo, haha.”  Pretty funny, Mom can explain, sorry but I have got to go, Love you guys!

Love, Elder Jarvis

Plenty of rain in Tuxpan!

TODAY

TODAY   |  September 20, 2013

Mexico battered by storms, at least 97 dead

Authorities in Mexico say this morning that the storms battering both of their coasts have caused the heaviest rains on record and have affected more than 1 million people, with at least 97 people dead.

Monday, September 23

I am good, except for the rain. The rain was fun at first, it was a nice change of pace, but now I am just sick of it. I do not like feeling wet all of the time. 

Yesterday me and my companion worked just like we normally do, he had to buy some medicine after church and then went to a "doctor" to be injected. I have little trust in the medical services here, but it seems like they did it well. The alternative, would have been to go with a member who knows how to inject or to do it himself. He says that he know how to inject himself, because he used to inject his Dad, but I did not think that was a good idea, and luckily he had someone else do it for him.

This morning I woke up and I usually have to wake up my companion, but this morning, knowing that he was sick, I just let him keep sleeping and I got up and exercised and studied and did everything that I normally do. Then I cleaned much of the house, but felt hopeless doing it, knowing that water is going to come in again, and thus, the house will soon be dirty again. Bet you know how I feel! haha. Today is Mexican Independence day, but because of the rain, they have not done anything.

I did not have to do all of the cleaning, but it was nice to be able to serve a little bit. I do not know what type of injection he had to have. He is not diabetic. He eats a lot of salsa, really spice salsa, and also drinks a lot of soda. He has gastritis, I am not sure what that is in English. But, even though he can eat a lot of hot stuff, I can keep up with him, at times. One time at lunch, he ate a really hot chile and everyone was amazed, and then I ate one too. It is kinda fun, he has realized that I can do math in my head really fast, and is often asking me to add things up in my head. Our clothes are in the washing machine a the munoz house right now. oh, and my Elder Garcia fixed my camera! Gordon Reid wrote to me again, that was awesome, I am excited and nervous for Nate!

42 people came to church yesterday including hna. Munoz and Magda and her sister Lupita. We had a conference this week with Elder Johnson, an area seventy. It was really good, but every time we have a conference, I am reminded that President Wagner is not just an ordinary mission president. I feel the spirit as strongly when he talks as when anyone else talks, even not more strongly. Sometimes, he looks like he is almost glowing, it is pretty crazy.

Hna. Munoz knows that you are thinking about and praying for her and she asks about you as well, the rain gets in the house through various places, the house needs a lot of repairs, I think that it gets in mostly through the bottom of the windows,

Highlights of the week.......

• Trip to colima for the conference with the Seventy, stayed in the big house in Guzman and me and my comp. bought a big huge pizza.
• Doing a ton of pushups, 576 one day and 575 another.
• Having a good meeting with president zamora, who....... did not come to church again yesterday.
• Reading all of your emails, some of which I could not read last week
• The rain,,,,,,,,,,,, not!
• 3 of the 4 people who talked yesterday have been reactivated in my time here in Tuxpan.
• The family of a less active member here came from Guadalajara, he is a counselor in a stake presidency there and has 2 little kids who passed the sacrament, how awesome it was to see 2 brothers passing the sacrament together.
• Having a good lesson with Oscar, a less active member, about the restoration.

All of the rest was a pretty normal week, we had a tough time finding members to accompany us for our lessons, and I don´t feel very in touch with the spirit now, but oh well, what do ya do.  

45 at Church, Alicia and Cristian

Cristian did not come to church because he had to work, it was difficult to find him this week as well because he hurt his knee and other reasons. We had a good week overall.   I had a little bit of an argument with my comp, but we quickly got over it, and had some really good lessons on Monday.

We played soccer for a few minutes today and washed our clothes in Ariel Munoz´s sisters house and then it rained and all of the clothes that were hanging up got soaked, I love washing machines!

We had 2 really good lessons on Monday.   The branch president here asked to be released.  Only 45 people came to church on Sunday. I have decided that I am not going to eat sugar for a while.

Alicia a less active member and her 2 kids who we are teaching came to church on Sunday. Hna. Baltazar, a member who I helped to reactivate talked in church yesterday. Our recent converts Magda and Carmen were not able to make it to church yesterday, and the kids of Alicia were the only investigators who came. Christian's brother and sister in law came to church and we are going to have a lesson with their whole family tomorrow. We made an awesome contact, but when we go to teach the man, he hides from us, and another girl who we contacted does the same. Accepting our visit here would be like one of our neighbors accepting a visit from the Jehovah Witnesses so you can understand why it would be kinda hard.

Love you guys, have a great week!

Love,
Elder Jarvis

E Garcia, Teaching Christian, Zone and District Conference

This is a picture of the baptism of Carmen and Magda. Carmen is Magda's mom and the other girl in the picture is Lupita,  Magdas sister. If I look fat in the picture it is because I am.  Lupita is not a member. Lupita is 17 and Magda is 27

(from the mission blog we found these pictures and captions from zone conference)

Everyone is supposed to learn a new language. Spanish speakers are to learn English and of course English speakers are to learn Spanish. So we had a couple activities to encourage them in their learning, which they could also do in their companionships or as districts if both are native Spanish speakers.

In these pictures each person is taking turns reading the Book of Mormon in the language they are learning and the person they are reading with, corrects them on their pronunciation, It was a fun activity and I think we all learned something new.

The food:

We had these great hamburgers made by the wife of the branch president. They were really good!

And then Hermana Wagner (Hija) topped off the meal with these very cute cupcakes!

The Zone

We did not have time to do anything fun today, but it is funny how much you change while on a mission, I do not really care about doing a ton of fun things on p day now, I just want to wash, clean, and write to you guys. Cristian came to church yesterday, as did Carmen, and Magda, our recent converts. Angelica, Magdas friend could not come yesterday, and has been really sick, this week. We had a fun conference in Guzman yesterday and Juan Pablo and Emmanuel were there and I had a fun time talking to them. I had a wonderful time fasting this weekend as I have had many times lately. 

Cristian is a stud. He is first person I have taught in my mission that is about my age, and has similar interests, he is the kinda guy that I would have been friends with before my mission. He is related to Juan Manuel somehow and was a referral from him. We taught him the restauration this week and had a very spiritual lesson. He asked very good, very intelligent questions and understands very well. He has a speech problem, but only when he reads.   I can understand how he feels, seeing as I have to read in Spanish. He arrived at church at about 10 55 right at the end of sacrament meeting, and I was so happy when I saw him enter. 55 people came to church today, but many more stayed for the 2nd and 3rd hours than that normally do, that was totally awesome. We had way more people in Elders quorum than we ever had before, as well as in Gospel Principles class.

I bore my testimony, again, mostly on fasting. As much as I hated and refused to fast before my mission I love doing it now. It is so much easier to do it, when you are doing it for a specific purpose. I know that I am preaching to the choir telling you guys things that you already know, but for me I am just learning them. I fasted so that Cristian would come to church and for Angelica. Angelica is a friend of Magda. They work together at the Pharmacy, but rarely work together because they are always chatting. We taught her several times in the church this week and she has been really sick. She has colitis, some sort of stomach problem that she has had for 15 years, she is 30 years old, but could pass for 20. Hermana Munoz came to church and her husband did not. She shared her testimony and it was quite discouraging and startling what she said. Apparently she has dreamed that she is going to die while delivering her baby. She delivered Sol early and has had other stomach problems as well. We are going to visit her tonight. The conference in Guzman was a conference for all of the priesthood holder in Guzman.

The highlights of the conference were seeing my Guzman converts, the good, necessary, and ever direct talk of the district president, president Torres. It was the best talk that he has given in my time in this zone. As is his custom he chewed out he members.  We as missionaries, are protected from these direct comments except for the occasions when President Wagner is there ( the other members consider us to be angels, and President Wagner knows the truth, haha.)  President Torres talked about the oath and covenant of the priesthood and about paying fast offerings. About 140 or 150 people came to church yesterday in Guzman and the branch received 660 pesos of fast offering money, (like  4 or 5 pesos for each member, or in other words, like nothing)

The other highlight was Elder Turley, he is from Idaho, finishes his mission in December and is the President of the Sayula Branch in Sayula. His spanish is better than half of the latin people. His talk was easier to understand than the closing prayer. I have never heard an American speak spanish like him, other than President Wagner, who was born in Mexico. Elder Turley is a boy among men. I was not able to see hardly any Guzman members other than the Diaz Lopez family.

Zone conference went well, the test was really easy. I felt like my spanish was ok at times this week and bad at others. It rained like crazy this week and I have continued to do pushups like an absolute mad man. I read Nates letter and am not sure if it was really written by him. 

This is a picture of the baptism of Carmen and Magda. Carmen is Magdas mom and the other girl in the picture is Lupita, Magdas sister. If I look fat in the picture it is because I am. Thanks for the letters, they were very awesome and encouraging.

Cristian works in his family's store. Which is kinda funny, they sell catholic stuff. His brother and sister in law are really interested in the church as well, the other elders here in Tuxpan are teaching them. About Cheryl, I do not know for sure. Actually, the rule here is that you have to live the word of wisdom for one week before being baptized as well, but Carmen drank coffee less than a week before her baptism and did not tell us, but told Elder Mills in her baptismal interview, but elder mills felt like she was ready to be baptized and so he let her pass the interview, he said he has failed people before, so that was not the issue. Hna. Munoz is due in a little less than 2 months.

Lupita is not a member. Lupita is 17 and Magda is 27

My toes are great! I loved hearing about the Polynesian Elders in Nates letter, sounds like they are the exact same people as they were when I left. Do you remember the time when the fire alarm went off when I was in the MTC because a polynesian elder tried to iron his hair! It was totally awesome, I also remember seeing them at the vending machines rather frequently. O, and when they questioned him about the hair ironing incident, he pretended to not be able to speak english! haha. 

Everyone here is Catholic, 105 percent, it just does not mean much. We have been eating hamburgers fairly frequently with the neighbors of the other elders, haha, that is the good food that we have been eating. Oh, and for your information, during zone conference, my companion told pres. Wagner about a cool investigator that we found while hitchiking a ride and President Wagner took advantage of the situation to make it clear that we will never travel in a rides again, just so that you are not worried about that now, haha.