Dear mom,

Yes. I did get the package! Great tie! I love it. I wore it at church yesterday. Thanks for all the candy and stuff. I like it all.

For Easter, we only had two dinner appointments. They weren't too big. I don't think the Hispanic culture is the same as the American culture during Easter. I didn't hear of anything doing anything special. We did have those two dinner appointments, but I think that we would have eaten even if it hadn't been Easter. Last night, we went to a members house. The mom is from Peru, and the dad is from Guatemala. He made us his famous hamburgers. They were pretty good! It's been a while since I've had a good hamburger. It kind of reminded me of a nicer restaurant!

We also had an Easter baptism. President Jeppson was really busy with several other baptisms yesterday that he and Sister Jeppson weren't able to make it. He did call later on yesterday and talked to us about the baptism. Yes, I did baptize her. Cool experience! She's one of those golden investigators. We didn't do very much to get her baptized. With so many other people, we try and try to get them to come to church and they don't know about getting baptized. Jenny was pretty fast though. She already had some friends in the Church, a couple of them less-active. Now they're starting to come back. I think that those are the people we should be looking for. Those that come to church because they already know that it's something that they have to do. I think as soon as we taught the Restoration of the Gospel, she realized the importance of coming to church. She's quick to understand. As missionaries, we really helped her out a lot and we answered a lot of her questions. We're good friends with her now. At the baptism, we had Bishop Chavez give the welcoming to the ward for her. He said something really cool. He told her that she's the pioneer for her family. The Gospel in her family starts with her now. She now has to work with her mom and her sister and with her cousins. He then asked her how old she was. She's 18. He then said in a year we'll talk about serving a mission and he started laughing! Haha! Our Bishop is amazing! Jenny laughed too. I really think that Jenny has potential to serve a mission. She'll get confirmed in two weeks, since this next week is General Conference.

This last week has been pretty tough. For some reason, a lot of people have been setting appointments and then they don't show up. It's really frustrating. A lot of them are members too. I don't understand that. I was talking with another missionary a couple days ago, and he's been running into the same problem lately too. People just put us on the bottom of their priority list a lot. Sad, but true. I think that for some reason, people have been more busy these past couple days because of Easter, so they're not home as often. So that's been pretty frustrating. Hopefully this week will improve since there isn't much going on any time soon.

Last Friday we had a youth come out with us for a day. The Stake that we're in did something called Ammon Academy. They took all the youth from 16-18, and set them apart as full-time missionaries for a day. Then they sent them with us missionaries to see what real missionary work is like. It was kind of a weird set up. We got a youth that goes to the Union City Ward, but he lives in the area of the other Elders. So when we saw a couple members, he was just visiting members in his same ward, so it wasn't anything too weird for him. I heard that other youth missionaries went a little farther than that. It was cool though. His name was Oscar Salomon. We got to know him better. Now when we see him at chuch, we know him a little better. That's cool.

Well, the rest of this week has been pretty boring. Nothing out of the usual. I'm glad that the weather is finally starting to be better. I don't have to wear my heavy coats anymore, which is really nice. Yesterday, I just had a light sweater on. I loved it!
 
I do know Angel Cordova! He's a member in West New York. West New York is just north of Union City. We'll do exchanges with missionaries in West New York every once in a while, so I've met some members from there. Angel is cool. He reminds me of someone, but I can't remember exactly who. Angel just recently got his mission call to Madrid, Spain. I think he's leaving end of July or August, something like that. He's cool though!

Oh man. If Kyle is going to PG, try and get him to take German!!! Or at least get him a class with Mr. Embley! Mr. Embley will recognize that name immediately. I remember when Kelsie had started to sign up for her Junior year, maybe, at PG and she had signed up for a history class or something with Mr. Embley. I remember Mr. Embley asked me one day if I had a younger sister that went to PG. So he'll know our name! It'd be way cool if Kyle talked to him and let him know how I'm doing. But Spanish would be cool too. I wonder if any other teachers will recognize that name. There were a couple other teachers who know our name now at PG.


Q of the W:
1. Will you be watching General Conference at somebody's house?
They should broadcast General Conference to the Union City chapel in Spanish and in English. We'll just watch it there.
2. Time to ask again....Do you need more Diovan or contacts?
More contacts in the next couple months.
3. Have you ever had a companion that got sick where you had to stay home all day?
Not too often. Usually we'll tough out a cold for a couple days. I think one time I had to stay home. I just read a little more in the scriptures and relaxed. It wasn't too fun. I couldn't go outside or do anything.


Love you mom! I'll talk to you in a month or so!

-Justin