December 16, 2013

Mom,

That's so cool to hear about the new car! I'm super excited to see it and ride in it. It does sound like a very luxury car.

I did get those two packages this last week. I was pleasantly surprised to receive that smaller package from Julia. I thought that the thing she had sent me was the two things of Hi-Chews when you sent me the CD's. So it was pretty fun to get it and I really enjoyed her little letter that she sent me as well.

Yay for Kyle and braces!

Q of the W:

1.  Do you know the latest count of how many missionaries in your mission lately?

I think it was just below 250 missionaries. Probably about a hundred more missionaries than when I first arrived in the mission.

2.  So after almost 2 years of waking up early every single day....Can you honestly say that you are used to it?

I think that I am officially used to it. We use our cell phone as the alarm every morning. Sometimes we'll forget it in another room in our apartment or we'll forget to turn up the volume so we won't wake up to it. We always have it set to a few minutes before 6:30 am. When that does happen, I'm always awake before 6:45. Still tired! But awake nonetheless.

3.  Have you noticed that the members who do have cars are willing and offer to drive those to church who do not have cars?

Yes. They're usually very willing.

Big news that I forgot to tell you about last week. Last Thursday we went to the temple again! I'll send you some pictures. Very fun as always. All the missionaries were super excited to see the new temple movie. Well, when we were about to start the session there was a lady who only spoke French. They gave her a translator, but the new video hasn't been translated into French so we watch the old one... We were all super disappointed. I really was. President Jeppson told us that the new video is phenomenal and that he loved it. We were all super excited for it. Unfortunately, most of the missionaries that went have to wait all the way until next summer to go to the temple again. I will have a departing missionaries temple trip with all the other departing missionaries and President and Sister Jeppson. That'll be right at the beginning of the year, I think. Plus I'll be able to go to the temple as much as I want once I get home. NYC was fun. It seems to get more and more worldly every time I go there. Kind of sad, but I'm excited to go there when I'm not a missionary anymore to go to fun restaurants and do other things. I'm definitely not excited to not be a missionary anymore though.

On Saturday we were going to have the New Brunswick ward Christmas party. That was also the day of the ''snow storm''. I don't think that New Jersey is very used to snow. Which is weird because they should be. It snowed pretty good on Saturday night; only about three inches fell though. They cancelled the ward Christmas party because of it and nobody was told until Saturday so we had nothing planned for that night. We did get one appointment in later on that night, but we really just walked around trying to find people. From what it looks like they're not going to reschedule the Christmas party. I don't know why, but I think that they're just not going to have one this year. Pretty sad, but there's not much we can do.

Our Sunday was pretty packed. We weren't able to get out and work. Right after church ended there was a special program for a young man that's leaving on his mission this week. His name is Roger Sarabia. He's going to be the first missionary in his family since his parents are both converts. He's super excited. He's going to serve in the Nebraska Omaha mission, Spanish-speaking. He came out with us to help us teach every once in a while. He lives a little far away from us and his whole family shares a car so it was hard for him to get out to us a lot. He's going to be a great missionary! He has a very strong testimony. After that program we went home and an hour later we rode with some other missionaries up to Union City for the member/missionary Christmas fireside. I was SUPER excited to go back to Union City for the night! I saw many people from former areas that I've served in: Dover, Patterson, Plainfield, and Union City. I had one really good friend named Edwin in Dover that I saw. I asked him about a nine-year old Dominican kid that I helped baptize name Ivan. Edwin says that he's still doing great! I saw the branch president from the Patterson Spanish branch. He found out that I only have three weeks left and he told me that if I come back to visit NJ that he'll feed us Seviche. Ask Uncle Conrad about that Ecuadorian dish. I'm not too sure that I'll enjoy it... The branch president and a hand full of members from the Plainfield branch also showed up. I was surprised to find out that they still remember how to properly pronounce my name! I was really happy to see them. I also got to see several people from the Union City ward. I had a good friend named Alan in Union City from Mexico City. I also made good friends with some investigators named Claudia and Jose when I was working there. Claudia is Honduran and Jose is Dominican. They started to really enjoy our visits when I was in Union City. A few months after I had left Union City I found out that they had gotten married and were baptized!! They were very excited to see me and tell me the progress they have made. They thanked me many times for me having helped them. It's the best thing in the world to see the fruits of your labors. Even though I wasn't the one there baptizing them, they still remember me by name and were super happy to see me. I'll send a picture of me with them as well. They're happy and active at church! The Christmas fireside at Union City went super well. We had many musical numbers and all the Spanish missionaries sung the song "This is the Christ" in Spanish. It was a very powerful moment. It was definitely a highlight of my mission to talk to so many people from all my areas. There were a lot more people that weren't there at the fireside that I was hoping to see there. I think that it would have just been so overwhelming if everyone had shown up. I guess I'll see them when I return to NJ later on.

It was a good week. We didn't get too much done work wise because of all those crazy events that went on this past week. This week won't be as packed, but I'm thinking that people are going to be pretty busy with preparing for the holidays and everything. Hopefully people will still let us visit them. This Friday we will be having our all-mission Christmas activity. Alex Boye will be the guest star. I don't know if I told you before but he is the son-in-law of President and Sister Jeppson. It'll be a fun Christmas activity.

Love you mom!

Talk to you soon!

-Justin