Dear Mom,

I think that those 5 families that Bishop asked you to choose are part of the Perry Push Plan. It's a reactivation/retention effort. I don't think that it's in Preach My Gospel. It'd be interesting to hear about that plan from Elder Perry himself. I've only heard about it. Our Bishop right now in our ward has assigned each companionship in the Union City ward with five families with which we will focus our less-active work. It seems to be working. We're starting to see a less-active family coming back to church. It's a very gradual process, but it's starting to work. The ward is going hard on home teachers and visiting teachers. The Bishop is visiting them and the missionaries (me) are going over there weekly with members from the ward. It's a big effort but they all came to church last week for the first time in a LONG time. Pretty great!

I'm a little sad to hear about Kameron as well. I remember he was in my German class during my senior year in high school and I remember that he would say that he hopes that he can go to Germany on his mission to learn German more easily. Oh well..

You should take a picture of the Called to Serve calendar. I'm getting to the point now that when people ask me how long I've been out their response is, "Wow! You've been out for a while. When do you go home?" It's been an interesting experience. Weird though. I still have to go through another fall and the beginning winter before I go home, but it's right around the corner. It's scary!! Then I have to start life...

This week we said goodbye to one of our investigators. Her name was Mabel. Her grandma lives just at the edge of our area. Her name is Rocio. She's from Columbia. She joined the church a few years back. She's the only member of the church in her family. When her granddaughter came to visit her for a month, we picked her up as an investigator. The lessons went great and she said that she believes that the Book of Mormon is true and she wants to eventually be baptized. However, we had one problem. She was going to move back to Spain where she was living previously. So this last Tuesday, she left to go back to Spain. We got her address in Spain and we had the Mission Office here send the information over to  one of the missions in Spain. I haven't heard anything yet as to if the missionaries have contacted her or not. But she's pretty much a guaranteed baptism! We prepared her well.

Also on Tuesday, I had lasagna for the second time on my mission. We went to a members house from the Dominican Republic. She cooked it very well! Still not as good as yours. I miss lasagna and other foods like that. But I don't know how I'm going to get hispanic food back in Utah, haha! Bitter sweet like always.

If you remember me mentioning Antonio Gonzalez, our ward mission leader. He had to go to the hospital the end of last week. He got pnemonia. He's doing alright, but he needs just a couple days in the hospital. A couple of us went to visit him on Saturday, and the rest of us went on Sunday after church to go visit him. He's an excellent ward mission leader and really helps us out a lot. He's a good friend of all the missionaries. He keeps in contact with almost all the missionaries. He doesn't have much family because of what happened to him when he was little. It's a crazy story, but all of it happened so that he could eventually get away to the United States and a few months later run into the missionaries! He's awesome!

Then yesterday for our preparation day, we went down into Hoboken. We went to the piers down there and I finally got the pictures that I wanted. I'll send some pictures to you. I'll have to do it one email at a time because the email can't send multiple of them because it makes the file too big... I don't know. I took a bunch of pictures for a panoramic view of the NYC skyline. Next time I'm at walmart, I'll print them off and put them together and see how it turns out. We spent some time just chilling at the pier just talking about life and gazing at the NYC skyline. It was a pretty awesome experience! I really want to do it again. Hopefully next time I can do it, I'll actually be able to go into New York. We also walked around Hoboken a little bit and went to some stores. We went into a pizza shop called Benny's and got pizza slices as big as a baby and also went to a 7-11 and I got a slurpee. It was probably one of the best pdays! It was very relaxing and wonderful. It'd be awesome to be able to spend a lot more time there, but eventually we had to walk back to the car and get back to work. That night, we found a less-active guy that hasn't been to church in many years. He welcomed us right in and agreed to letting us come back and teach him more. He knows about us missionaries and asked us a little bit about our missions. He's from Ecuador and I told him that my uncle Conrad served in Ecuador and said that he loves his country! He asked which part he served in, but I don't remember what part of Ecuador Uncle Conrad served in.

Great week this week! This week should be pretty good as well. Transfers are coming up not this weekend but the next. I'm probably going to get transfered. I'm going to miss this area!

Q of the W:

1.  I was watching the Today Show and they were at the Jersey Shore.  Apparently they have rebuilt that area and were celebrating.  Have you heard of anymore places that have overcome the hurricane?

I've just heard of the Jersey Shore. I also heard of Seaside Heights being completely destroyed. I don't know if that's up and running yet, but I heard that it's going to take another year or so to build it back up.

2.  On pday do you hang out with just your companion? or as a group?

Usually as a group. It makes it more exciting that way.

3.  Are there any huge water-parks where you are?  like our Seven Peaks?

Not that I heard of.

I forgot my PIN for my credit card..

PS. That's also super sad to hear about Channing. I became pretty good friends with him. He wanted to teach me how to ride motorcycles. He would always tell me how dangerous motorcycles were too... He kept asking me if I was going to buy a motorcycle or not. I kept telling him that for sure after the mission I was going to get one. I still want one, but I don't know if Channing will continue to ride them..

Love you mom! Talk to you soon!

-Justin

Dear Mom,

First of all, sorry for getting back to you on Wednesday. I thought that we were going to have P-Day on Tuesday, but we were informed late last week that we were going to do P-Day on Wednesday. Also, before I forget, next Monday is a holiday, so the libraries will probably be closed. We might be able to find a place to email on Monday, but we're not sure quite yet. Just so you know!

That's cool to hear about 24. I'll be home for that so we can watch that together! Woah, I think that that's the first thing that I've said that I'll be home for when it comes out. I'm coming up on 7 months left. That's not very long at all. Summer has started and then it's the holiday season and I'm home. Crazy..
 
So to start out, the meeting we had with Elder Koelliker was great! I've actually already met him. Last fall, when I was working in Plainfield in the Scotch Plains Stake, he came to talk to the Scotch Plains Stake about family history. So after the Stake Conference, I went up to shake his hand and to talk to him for just a second. I don't think he remembers at all about our encounter a couple months back. Haha! This time, he talked to us missionaries about using the ward more in our missionary work. The wards and branches in which we serve should be a huge part of our work. He also talked about the role of the Stake President. He has the keys and responsibilities for missionary work in his stake, not the Mission President. President Jeppson has the keys to preside over us as missionaries and convert baptisms. That makes sense because the members should be doing plenty of missionary work. He also talked to us about a calling that I've only heard about on my mission. It's the Ward Mission Leader. He's is the assistant to the Bishop on missionary work in the ward. He works closely with the missionaries who are assigned to that ward. In my past areas, the Ward Mission Leader hasn't really helped us out a whole lot. In Union City, the Ward Mission Leader is Antonio. He's great. He helps out a lot. So now all the missionaries know that we need to have a functioning Ward Mission Leader that is willing to help us out. It was a great meeting! We met at the Paterson Chapel for that meeting, then the Paterson members fed us lunch. The next day, I woke up with some stomach and digestional issues. It turns out that pretty much all the missionaries got more or less sick. Some sisters got pretty bad and had to stay home. I just had to make a running trip to the bathroom a few times that night. I'm all better now though. Haha! It was terrible.

On Sunday we had an interesting Stake Conference. They called it a regional conference. We had President Packer and Elder Perry speak to all the stakes in New Jersey and New York from a room in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. We just watched a broadcast just like everyone else in these two states. It was really good and Elder Perry straight up told all the members that they aren't doing enough to help the missionaries and that a prophet of God is telling them to do a lot better and teach with the missionaries and give them people to teach. He also talked about how the members can do that better. He talked a lot about Preach My Gospel. Hopefully the members will step it up. Utah is so different! It just makes me feel so grateful that our neighbors on all sides are endowed, sealed, active families. It's going to be pretty cool to be able to think of how nice my neighborhood is going to be. That's cool. I just don't know how I'm going to continue to do missionary work when I get home...

 
Q of the W:

1. When someone is baptized, do a bunch of missionaries come or just the 2?

Usually all the missionaries that are working in that Ward or Branch come. Sometimes, if a missionary helped that person get baptized and they live close, they'll come too. Our zone leaders come to almost all the baptisms just as support from the zone.

2. Are you ready for the hot and humid weather?

Actually, these last couple days have been very humid. It's not very fun at all. That little weather station thing you sent me for my birthday said that it was about 80% humidity yesterday. I felt like I had just taken a shower and didn't make any attempt to dry myself before putting clothes on. It was a horrible sensation. Next three months, here we go...

3. Did Alan Castro leave on his mission? I saw a picture of Facebook of him with a badge on?

No, and I don't think he'll leave for a while. He just plays around sometimes. He doesn't take much seriously, and he doesn't have a job. He doesn't really want to get a job either. Haha, the Bishop isn't very happy with him right now, because if Alan does leave on a mission soon, the ward is going to be completely supporting him. Alan hasn't saved up any money and any money he does get, he spends super fast. He's a good teacher though. He helps out a lot when he comes out with us.


Love you mom! Talk to you next week!

Dear Mom,

Tell grandma that she still needs to do one next year too. I want to go to that thing again and help out and be in the Norwegian culture.

It was a lot of fun for me to skype as well. I'm really thankful for the Quezada family for letting us come over and using their ipads. We actually ended up talking to them for a little bit afterwards. They're all from Chile. There aren't very many Chileans over here, so it was a cool oportunity to be able to talk to them a little bit more about their country. Brother Quezada is from a city called Valparaiso. It got that name because it is known to many people as a city of paradise. If you pull apart that name: Valparaiso, you get 'va al paraiso' which translates as 'go to paradise'. He says that it's a very beautiful place. But then he said that basically the whole country is very beautiful. I found out that Chile and Argentina are very different from other hispanic countries. Many Hispanics aren't exactly super clean and neat and organized in their homes. However, Chileans have a lot of European culture in them. The Quezada's house is a lot different than most of the houses I go to. It had nice furniture and it was clean and everything was nice. It was a really cool family.

This last week we were able to teach Jenny, the girl that just got baptized, a little more about the Priesthood. We weren't really planning on teaching her about that, but we just ended up teaching her about it. We were talking a little bit before the lesson. Her boyfriend Josh, who is a little less-active, was with us as well. We taught her in the chapel because that was the easiest place to meet for us. We got on the topic of horror movies and creepy things happening after watching them. Haha! Jenny said that she gets scared of watching horror movies because of that. I told her what you said that grandma told you: If you watch movies like that, you're inviting Satan to sit right next to you. But, I told her that we do have more power than Satan, and that if we don't do anything to invite him, but he comes anyways, we can tell him to go away. I told her about the experience that grandma in Bountiful had when she heard the bang above her and then grandpa came in and commanded it in the name of Jesus Christ to leave, and it left. Then I related that to the story in the Bible when Jesus is on the boat with his disciples during a giant storm. Then his disciples ask him why he doesn't care. Then Jesus wakes up from his nap and commands the storm, "Peace, be still." -Mark 4:39. Then the storm immediately stops. Then I learned something new. As children of God, we are the only thing in the universe that has the ability to choose. Satan and his followers do not have free agency. Neither did the storm that was going on when Jesus and His disciples were on the sea. Neither do the trees or the mountains (Jacob 4:6). We can tell a person to leave all day long and they can still choose to stay there. However, as soon as it be the will of God, Satan and his followers have absolutely no choice whatsoever. No agency. They lose it and they are not allowed to stay. The storm in Mark 4 had to obey Jesus. It had no choice. It had no agency. It followed and obeyed Him. As children of God and those that followed His plan, we have inherited the ability to choose. I learned this while I was teaching Jennifer. Pretty cool experience. Then we talked about how we should surround ourselves with the Priesthood and remain worthy to be able to call upon the blessings of the Priesthood. It was an awesome lesson!

Great week this week. I really enjoyed talking to everyone. Next week I probably won't email on Monday, because we're going to have a zone conference with Elder Koellicker, or something like that, of the Seventy. The missionaries that are working in Zones 1,2, & 3 are going to meet with him on Monday, so we're switching our p-day to Tuesday probably. I'll let you know how that meeting goes with him. It should be pretty good!

Love you mom! Miss ya!

Q of the W:

1.  Do you go to the same ward/branch every Sunday?

Yes. The Union City Spanish Ward

2.  How was your dinner on Sunday night?  Yummy?  I should learn how to make it whatever it was called...

They are called baleadas. I don't know how to make the tortillas. But it's scrambled eggs with like cut up ham/turkey bits in it (or if you want to be fancy, steak strips), refried black beans, a creamy cheese that I don't know if you would be able to find at Walmart, and avocado. WAY GOOD! I'll pay attention to the cheese next time and maybe I'll ask her to write down how to make the tortillas. Pretty simple.

3.  How long are you able to practice piano on p-days?

Depends on the pday. Usually about an hour or so.

Dear Mom,

So for next week's call, I'm pretty sure that we're going to be doing it around 5:30 pm ~ 6:00 pm our time, so around 3:30 pm ~ 4:00 pm your time. We have already asked a member in our ward if they have Skype and they said yes. We're going to confirm with them in the next couple days. So we should be good with that. President Jeppson has asked us to keep this call to about an hour. Just so you know! :) I'm looking forward to it!

It's great to hear that everything is going well!

This week has been a crazy week. There was a lot that happened. To start off, on Tuesday, we ended up teaching Alan Castro and his mom at McDonald's. They love the missionaries! Every single time we go over to their house, whether it's just to pick up Alan to come out with us, or to see how they're doing, they ask us if we want to eat. Most of the time we say no. We don't want them to always be cooking for us. Anyway, they wanted to take us to McDonald's to feed us and we wanted to teach Alan a little bit out of Preach My Gospel so that he can be more prepared when he leaves on his mission. He's working on his papers right now. Some legal issues and some GED problems are keeping him from going right now. But he's going to be an excellent missionary! We figured out that Alan is doing what I did before my mission. He's staying up to about 3:00 am and sleeping in to about 11:00 or 12:00. I found a scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants that says that you're supposed to take care of your bodies by forming good sleeping habits. (D&C 88:124) There is also a talk that dad referred me to by Elder David A. Bednar in which he says that the Spirit cannot work through us if we have bad sleeping habits. ("Ye Are the Temple of God"). So we shared that with Alan. He realized that he should be doing better, so he said that he's going to try harder now to follow a better sleep schedule. My sleeping habit was so fun, but it's not good! Haha! It's funny how I'm teaching that now!

That same day, we met a pretty interesting guy named Edgar. He's a pretty muscular guy. We're not teaching him though. We were trying to get in contact with one of our investigators and we ran into Edgar. We started talking to him. He kept telling us how much he respects us and what we do. I'm pretty sure that this guy has been in gangs and stuff before. He also told us that he used to deal drugs and all that. Pretty cool guy though. He told us a story of when God helped him out. He said that his friend one time told him that he was going out for the night and he wanted him to go with him. He told his friend that he didn't have a good feeling and that he didn't want to go. He ended up staying home. Then Edgar told us that God had protected him because that night, his friend ''caught a body''. I was pretty sketched out by that phrase, but I asked him anyway. He said that it means that you killed someone. Yeah, he is a pretty sketchy guy. He just got out of prison like a year ago, and now he's under house arrest. He showed us the government bracelet on his ankle and everything and how much he hates it. He kept telling us how much he respects us. He told us that he's grown up in the ghetto of ghettos and no matter where it was or how bad it was, the Mormon Missionaries would always be walking down the street and nobody would ever touch them. He told us that we have some sort of special blessing on us. Then he said that he couldn't imagine how anyone could ever make fun of us. I told him that New York City already did. He didn't know about the Book of Mormon play. After that, he kept telling me, 'You gotta be kiddin' me dawg! You gotta be kiddin' me!' He was a pretty cool guy. I just don't think that I want to teach him. He practices Santaria, which I'm pretty sure is a mix between Catholicism, voodoo, native African religious practices, and Satanism. But I guess he's got our back! Haha!

Then on Friday, we had our interviews with President and Sister Jeppson again. I just love being able to talk to them! They are so much help always! President wanted me to see how much I've grown since the beginning of my mission. It's cool to see how far I've come. I still got a long road to go, but President helped me see that my mission has laid the foundation so far, and will continue to lay the foundation for the rest of my mission, for continuing to learn and grow for the rest of my life. I'm glad that I chose to go on a mission. It's been hard so far, but totally worth it!

So every month, we have a mission focus. This month is on prayer and repentance. So all the District Meetings that we do have a central focus on that topic. We also have more direction from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve that missionaries need to spend about half their time working with less-active members. I was kind of surprised by that at first, because I thought that missionaries are all about just teaching new people about the Gospel. But then I started to think about it more and it makes sense! Sometimes less-active members have a hard time listening to other members, but the missionaries are almost always completely trustworthy. Especially out here because missionaries have played such a big role in pretty much every member's life. Whether they were baptized by the missionaries or the missionaries helped their family, it doesn't matter, the missionaries are loved. Then I was also talking with a returned missionary in the ward. He's on break from BYU-I for the summer. His name is Danvirg, and he served in the Toronto, Canada mission a couple years ago. He told me that Elder Bednar came to his mission and helped to stop the 'knocking doors all day', by telling the missionaries that they are not finders, they are teachers. Totally true! Now the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve want us to start focusing WAY more on less-actives. Half our work should be finding and teaching 'the lost sheep'. I love it! Less-actives are an excellent way to find more people that are ready to receive the Gospel and to continue to change lives and seek for deep and lasting conversion. Sometimes, members I think need to fall away for a time in order to become more deeply converted; although it is better if they don't have to. But I think that that's why we're focusing so much more on our less-active brothers and sisters.

Q of the W:

1.  Right now on your mission, do you speak more in Spanish or English?

During a regular day, I would say that I speak more Spanish than English. Days like preparation day, I would say I speak more English.

2.  Are the people in Union City generally nice? (Any kind strangers out there?)

People are only nice if you're nice to them. They'll say hi back usually. There are people that won't say hi back. I don't know what their problem is, haha! Maybe they're afraid that we'll talk to them!

3.  Did you get your package? and I hope the Toffifay didn't melt.

I did! Thank you so much! Mom!!! Did you make a copy of "All of Me"?? That would be such a cool song to play. Did you try playing it? Also, do you still practice piano? What do you do to keep up on it?

Love you mom! Talk to you next week! For the last time! The next time I talk to the family it will be Christmas, and I'll be two weeks from going home.. Crazy thought, right?

-Justin