February 22, 2016

Hey everyone! Pretty cool week! I was out of our area on exchange quite a bit, so I feel a little like I didn't see a whole lot of the people that we usually teach. In spite of that, with just walking back to the van from an appointment, a black man was able to stop us, ask us for a pamphlet, then invite us to go smoke some weed. So there's that! 
Something that's super cool that happened this week though was that Elder Mendez, my past companion, and I along with his current companion got to go back to Passaic to see a lady that we all taught be baptized. It was sweet! Not only to see those from the Branch back there, but to see her get baptized was sweet man. Other than that we were busy in lessons. Rocked and rolled this week. That's about it though.
Love you guys! Take it easy!

Beautiful day in Newark

Happy Valentines! February 15, 2016

Hello everybody!
Had another beautiful week, not a whole lot of time, but it got super cold this week, just down to 1. My come and I are both bad about taking pictures, so that's a bummer deal. We're still meeting with Sergio the atheist and his wife, they're doing pretty good! Just had a really cool Q&A session with them. Other Sergio couldn't make it to church.
Saw some prostitutes in the freezing cold weather, I felt bad for them. Lots of homeless people have been wandering around the intersections too, so we bought some granola bars for them today.
Things are awesome though! Still rolling in the mini van!

Still in Newark! February 8, 2016

Man people, I'm really just loving it up over here. I'm super grateful to be back in Newark. On Tuesday night a younger guy, Ronald, who's been working on his papers for a while got his call and invited us and a bunch of other members to the chapel to see him open it. We showed up a little late coming from an appointment and when we walked up to the group of members around Ronald they started to realize who I was and it felt like coming home. I wanted to hug every single one of em! Some of them didn't even believe me when I told them I was back for good in the area. It's been a super good week of seeing some old friends too, even though some of them weren't actually in my area last time, we worked pretty close with a lot of them and just going to church was super awesome to see how the ward as changed for the better. Happiness. I just feel super blessed to be in such a busy area! There's a ton of people over here that we can visit and a lot of members are telling us about their friends and family to go visit, so really it's not hard at all to keep ourselves busy. This week was pretty intense lesson wise. We talked to the cousin of a guy who was just baptized, he was raised Christian, but is now atheist, his name is Sergio. When I first came out I honestly never thought that an atheist would be one  of the people that I care for as much as I do right now. We had an awesome lesson just about praying and getting started. He didn't end up praying at the end of the lesson, but it was a really cool experience to just straight up talk to him about it all. 
We haven't seen anything too crazy so far, we have a sweet minivan that we roll in, so I think that'll keep the crazies away a little just because we're not outside 100% of the time. It the newest vehicle I've ever driven in my life though! Except for motorcycles and stuff. It had less than 500 miles on that puppy! Pulls like a champ too. I love that thing. All is well over here, stoked to be over here. Hope you guys are doing just fine. Love yas Take it easy!
Elder Jordan

Back to Newark!! February 1, 2016

I got some fantastic news this morning. So every six weeks they do transfers, and this Tuesday is when they're going to be switching a bunch of missionaries up with new missionaries coming in and the ones that finish go home.  So this morning, we got a call from the mission president and after he let me know that his computer was being slow and a nice long pause, he told me I'm going back to NEWARK!!! I'm gonna have the same area I had when I was brand spankin new with some add ons too. I'm Daggum Stoked!! Super happy to be going back! So that's definitely the highlight of this week. We went sledding last week and had a ball doing that, but a lot of the week was gearing up my companion for heading home. He had some serious packing and last rites to run through. It was cool to say goodbye to some people that he's taught and getting to see how he's touched their lives. I'm really looking forward to getting to see some of the people that I've come to love. Gonna be getting pretty good coming up here! Love you guys! Hope you're all doing just fine. Take it easy!
Elder Jordan

Fermin and family