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