Surprises! August 24, 2015

We had an awesome week this week! We were in lessons most of the time, so we didn't meet anyone too crazy this week, but it was good to teach as much as we did! The best lesson of the week by far though was with a guy Elder Hebertson found while on exchange with another missionary and this guy is awesome. He's not someone you'd think would be too interested in the message at first glance, he appears more or less, for lack of a better word, like a thug. Upon meeting him though he was a super cool guy! His name is Domingo and he's interested in what we do and really friendly. We walked with him to a little restaurant and got some drinks and I was expecting for it to be a pretty regular 1st lesson, talking about the Book of Mormon, but we started talking and had one of the most spiritual lessons I've had out here. He started talking about his life and was just humbly asking for our help to know what he can do. What's sad though is that he doesn't feel ready, he thinks something needs to change before he can commit to anything, but he's got it backwards! It's the commitment to act that makes the change. He's a super cool guy though, and we're excited to get him on his way. We were also able to find a lady that has talked with the missionaries before out of the blue! We went to try someone after dropping off some food we were given and after they didn't we started making our way home and as we were walking Elder Hebertson said, "lets try this house!" We give it a knock and a ring and sure enough, a lady, whose name is Rocio, came to the door from doing laundry downstairs. She told us she was busy, but that she had talked to missionaries like us before. "Elder, I think was one of their names ..." she said. Haha! Maybe! We're gonna go see her on Tuesday so stay tuned for that. One of my favorites from this week though was this older guy sitting on a metal chair out on the sidewalk, Juan, who was just super smiley! He seemed really happy to see us, so naturally we stopped to talk to him. As we get talking he had some serious trouble remembering words and would get really frustrated with himself for a little bit, even hit himself on the head, then would forget about and go right back to smiling! He was too awesome! He told us he has Alzheimer's, or something like unto it, and that's why he was having trouble remembering, but he still chose to be super happy! It was pretty awesome talking to a guy who was just happy to talk to us. 

We had a rockin' week over here! Got to see a couple of guys taking a leak right out in public, middle of the day even, so that was cool! We're having fun over here and I hope that you're all doing awesome! Let the good times roll my friends. Love you all! 

Elder Jordan 

2nd Dates August 17, 2015

Hey everyone! 
I hope everyone is all doing awesome wherever you may be reading this from. Things have been rolling right along over here and we've had a couple of second dates! There's an interesting situation we face as missionaries when it comes to the second lesson. Between working around peoples schedules and whether people actually want to see you for a second time, it gets hard to meet with people. We had some luck during an exchange this week though! So exchanges are when another companionship and your own companionship swap one person each, so one person stays in their area and another person goes to a different area with a different companion just for the day. So we exchanged with some missionaries that are getting ready to go home this Tuesday and my companion stayed in our area with a different missionary and they had a few great experiences with seeing some people for the second time. One family they saw for the second time after not being able to see them for over a month and from what I've been told it was spectacular! Celiclia, the mom, and her children were excited to hear about the plan of salvation and see the necessity of baptism. We're hoping to put them on date this coming week! 

So we definitely had some excellent lessons, but this week I felt like my spanish had digressed a little. I don't know why, I was just feeling tired a couple of the days and my brain could not process spanish. There was one instance we talked to this lady on her front porch and I was trying to ask if we could get her number to see if we could come see her some other time and I couldn't even muster the spanish to say, "I can't speak spanish right now." It usually loosens 'em up a little when you say that then buys me some time to think through what I need to say. But I couldn't even manage that! It's all good fun though, the awkwardness gets pretty thick some times with some of the people we talk to because spanish can still be a bit of a barrier depending on how fast they talk or what kind of accent they have. We had a pretty good week though! Lots of laughs and as always a couple of drunks and some drug paraphernalia here and there. I love this place! I hope you all have an excellent week and are living it up back at home. 

Love ya! 

Elder Jordan

Skyline from the roof of our building, may or may not have been legal
for us to be up there ...

Gracias a Dios August 10,2015

Hello everybody! 

So, we had a pretty darn good week over here in Jersey. On Tuesday we had a little miracle day of finding people, we found 5 people in the span of less than an hour! One of them was a member of 30 years whose husband is against the church, so she hasn't been in a long time. It was cool to get to talk to her though! And the rest were lovely people who were willing to see us again! So the rest of the week we worked on seeing them. Something that all of these Latinos always say when we talk to them though is "Gracias a Dios." Which literally means thanks to God. And they say it for everything! 99% of the time if we ask how someone is doing and they speak Spanish, the response is, "Good! Thanks to God!" Pretty nifty. I like it. We had a good week this week, and it's thanks to God. That's not to say we didn't meet some more characters! This week I think I've talked to more drunk people and more Jehovah's Witnesses than the rest of my mission combined! (not that that is very long, but still) There was one guy who ran up to us in broad daylight, squeegee in hand, yelling at us at the top of his lungs to give us money. Once he got up in front of us though he dropped a knee and demanded a blessing, all the while using very colorful language. We said a prayer as he knelt and asked that God would help him in his life, and afterward he stood up, crying, and demanded money again. We stood there, didn't say anything, then he laughed, got solemn, and began to cry and talk about how he misses his mom and kids. At the end of it all he said that he was our best brother and gave us a hug to say goodbye. Definitely the most confused I'd been out here was in that moment. I was a little scared after the prayer, I thought he was gonna come at us with his squeegee, but man ... Good stuff! He didn't smell drunk when we hugged him either, so we're thinking he's just nuts. The rest of the encounters for the week were rather pleasant though! A drunk guy bought us some soda and another drunk guy just talked to us about life. Pretty dang exciting. I hope you guys are doing great back home! I'm alive and well and feeling good, gracias a Dios! I'll talk to ya in another week! Love ya! 

Elder Alan Jordan

local cathedral

Not Catholic yet ... August 3,2015

Hey Guys! Had a pretty good week this go around, gave some blessing and got some people into the chapel on Sunday, which always makes my heart sing! But my favorite crazy person story of the week is pretty good too. So! Elder Hebertson and I were walking home for dinner or something and had were walking by a bus stop that is no more than 50 yards from our door and as we walked by this lady waiting at the stops says to us, "Are you Catholic yet? When are you gonna be Catholic?" And repeated to say it a couple of times as we looked over and stopped to pay her attention. She then proceeded to tell us how the catholic church is true because of some bible scriptures and because Satan is trying to destroy the catholic church, but only that church, so it has to be true. At the end of it all she invited us to write a letter to God to know if it was true and told us about this website we could go to to become a member of the catholic church only after reading a couple of paragraphs on a webpage. Sounds fantastic to me! So that interchange was pleasant enough, but then, she happened to get on the bus with us and despite our efforts to look busy talking about random nothingness and pointing to a ward list, she politely interrupted to talk to us about birth control and animal neutering and all of her cats. Anywho, it ended up getting kind of weird with everyone on the bus looking our way as we tried to tell her that we aren't supposed to discuss political matters and such, which seemed to kind of offend her. At the end of it all she was nice enough to say God Bless though! But yeah, some crazy peoples.

The rest of the week we saw a lot of less active members and found some new people to teach the gospel and stuff. There's some super nice people out here believe it or not! and it was a good week for getting to know a couple of em! Well, I hope you all had a splendid time last week and are enjoying life as it should be. Vayan con Dios! Love yas!

Elder Jordan

Old train bridge over Broadway

Summer Avenue

Doing Some Finding July 27, 2015

Hey all! It's been a splendid week full of some good people over here in Jersey! This week one of the highlights was definitely a primary activity that the missionaries were able to take part in, we were practiced a little for it last week and one more time this week, then finally on Saturday was the big day. It was a stake activity, so we performed the story the Mulekites and how they met up with the Nephites for 3 groups of kids and their parents. We killed it no doubt, I got to be Zarahemla, pretty sweet. 

The rest of the week was a lot of walking again, we met some good people though! We talked to some drunks and a guy that was sweating profusely on a pretty mild day, he was pretty wide eyed to, so our guess is that he was on something. One of the crazy guys we talk to every once in a while happened to be on a bus we got on to and he was in a super good mood! He talked a little about how he was just being himself and then asked us if we could explain the meaning of life in one word. (He really likes simplicity/one word answers) So our answer was joy! And he was very happy with that and I am too, really we're out here spreading joy. If the Gospel does nothing else it sure does bring us joy. 

It's pretty incredible how opposition works and how much joy a little thing can bring after some sorrow. We were struggling on saturday after the primary activity, just both really tired of walking, and we were close to home. We knew we couldn't call it though. We had ourselves a little prayer, walked around the block, and made our way up an apartment building trying to teach some people. It's pretty funny sometimes, we've been introducing ourselves as representatives of Jesus Christ and some people will just talk to us through the door and say things like "No!" and that's it. One guy told us to go next door. But anywho! We made our way up this building and on the 4th floor this nice lady opened the door right up and we got ourselves a new person to teach! And that one lady made all the walking and all the people that are "too busy" and all the people that aren't ready worth it. Good stuff. 

Well, I hope you all had a great week! I'm living it up out here and am figuring out how to teach people through the door. Love you all!

Elder Jordan

A school that looks like a prison.