Happy Easters! March 28, 2016

Happy Easter Everybody!! 
Hope you all had a good time with family and whatnot remembering the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. It was a pretty cool week to be a missionary! 99% of the people we talked to this week on the street and whatnot were super grateful for what we were sharing and seemed happy to talk to us. That being said, it's been a week of moving on from those that we have been teaching. That's something that's rather hard about what we do, we meet these people, get to know them as we teach, see a desire grow in them to change and come closer to God, but then they don't do it. If we could force people to do things it'd be a lot easier! But it's all about their choice and it's pretty hard when people choose not to act. We did meet some good people this week though! Looking to get them going and the hope is that they'll decide to act.
We had a real good week with crazies! We had a day where some other missionaries borrowed the car so we had to walk and just in that one day we had our picture taken by some random photographer, and as we were walking through a park to an appointment, we some homeless lady squatted next to a tree taking a dump no more than 40 yards away from the street running through the park. Fantastic. Probably the most gnarly thing I've seen so far.
Good news for the week though is that our man Sergio decided to get baptized! It's been awesome to hear him talk about how he's changed and whatnot. Love that guy a lot and am super grateful to have been able to teach him. Pretty cool he got to be baptized on Easter too!
Love you guys and hope you all had a great week! Take it easy!
Elder Jordan

Curve balls March 21, 2016

Hello everybody! 
So, background to the week, after observing a few crazies this week, Elder Gates proceeded to say "God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy." I don't know how many of you know the Billy Currington song, but it sums up most of our experiences pretty well. To start off the week we had some pig ear tacos at a Mexican family's house. That was interesting. Not too bad at all though! There was really just a bunch of little things this week that inspired the bringing up of "God is great."
Really one of the most eventful things this week was that we helped some other missionaries move into a new apartment. The curve ball of the week though was when Sergio, our investigator, was in an FHE with some other members and after talking about repentance for a bit he just drops this bomb that he doesn't feel the need to be baptized again because he's already been baptized twice as an adult and doesn't think it's necessary. So we had a little chat with him on Sunday and now we're gonna go back through the Restoration with him and try to help him see why. He'll be good to go for next week though. That's pretty much about it though! Plugging right along and we're gonna have to work to start getting some new investigators rolling. Hope all is going well for all you though! Love you guys!
Elder Jordan

Smokin' March 14, 2016

Hello everybody! 
Pretty regular week, we did have some fun taking out the member of our ward who is the leader of the missionary work. He came out with us twice to visit a couple of people and in the first one we went to visit an investigator family, a younger couple from Ecuador with two adorable little daughters, the Lazos. We went in there planning on teaching the Plan of Salvation, and got up to our life on earth, but then Juan, the dad, mentioned something about overcoming issues and repenting in this life and then his wife jumped on him for his smoking problem. She even beckoned the littlest daughter into the room, who is like 5, and had her tell about how he smokes. I felt bad for the man! Hermano Vallejo, the member who came out with us, turned out to have smoked liked 70 cigarettes a day in a past life, so it was pretty good to have him there, Juan was just getting attacked by these people though! So we tried to encourage him a little, just hoping he didn't get offended with how intense the lesson was. Let's just say Hermano Vallejo ended up walking outta there with a pretty new pack of cigarettes.
Well, I was gonna write more, but the time passed me by ... Love you guys!

Crazies from a Distance March 7, 2016

Hello everybody! 
Yet another solid week out in the hood! The only bad part is that it's hard to have so many wonderful experiences with all the crazy people when you're rolling in a van the entire time. That's not to say that we still don't get to enjoy them though! First one for the week was when we were coming out of a lesson with a kinda less active lady, Luz Mary, she has these black guys that are living in the second floor of her house and they like to chill out on the front porch, so whenever we come by they're always there to talk to us. So this time as we came outside and were walking towards our van one of them stood up from his chair and said, "Hey, I don't know where you guys parked, but if ANYBODY messes with you they mess with ME!" We're pretty positive that he was drunk, but I don't really care because I've been waiting for someone to tell me that my entire mission. Sweet victory! On top of that, there is this recent convert family that we go visit and for some reason outside of their house there's always this guy who's getting down with his bad self and dancing as he walks down the street, it's classic.
Aside from seeing crazy people we had a really good week of teaching as well! I'm not sure whether I told you or not, but Sergio, a Mexican we've been teaching for a while now, is getting a new job will finally be able to come to church this week! So that's exciting. But also, Sergio and Debbi, El Salvadorians that are related to the recent convert family, are loosening up quite a bit too. We had a very interesting lesson with them this past Saturday. So we picked up the recent convert family to go visit them with us and do a family home evening little dealio and things were going really great! The kids we're running around torturing their poor cat but we were trying to share a short message/activity thing. Time rolls around for us to go home, and her youngest son, Noah, just starts puking all over the place! So we tried to keep the other kids from running through the barf while it was getting cleaned up, but the little guy didn't stop puking! There was a lot of food in that little belly of his. So after it's all cleaned up and Debbi is in the bathroom washing him up, we grab the food they had bought for us and headed out because it was getting to be close to our curfew. The next day we texted Rocio, one of the recent converts that came with us that night, and asked her how the rest of the night went. She said everything calmed down and that it went well up until the cat got up on the table, crawled into a bag and took a leak right on the Daggum table. Sergio was having none of that and was so done for the night that he took the cat and chucked it right out the window! (They live on the first floor) but yeah! That pretty much sums up the week! Things are still going super awesome and we're getting more food than we know what to do with, but despite that the members say I look like I've been losing weight! Yeehaw. Hope everything is going awesome for everyone back home!  Love you guys!
Take it easy
Elder Jordan

February 29, 2016

Hey everybody! Elder Gates and I are over here still getting wrecked with food. For some forsaken reason our ward thought we weren't getting fed and organized a meal calendar, so now our ridge is chock full of leftovers and meals that were just given to us. We do our best to make sure nothing goes to waste, but you know, sometimes circumstances arise. Speaking of food, Sergio, our investigator, has been giving us a lot of fruit at the appointments we have with him and so with the fruit we have stashed up in the van we are feeding the beggars. They get food and we don't feel like heartless wretches, it's a win win! Well, we driving by a spot where we had given a guy some fruit and there, sitting on the concrete wall, was the apple and 2 oranges we had given this guy ... That irritated me a little, but we'll keep on giving out fruit.
We had a couple of appointments with Sergio this week and were very happy to find out that he'll be quitting his job and moving on to construction in another week and a half so his Sunday's will be free! We won't be able to get us quite as much fruit, because he's leaving the supermarket, but we'll take the trade off. He's doing really awesome and plans on getting baptized in March once he can come to church consistently. His roommate was pretty stoked about the activity night too! He said he's gonna be coming back next week and he even told my companion during the activity, "I'm not a Mormon, but I'm gonna be!" Haha! Just got to get him to switch work too now. Things have been going really good though! We're keeping really busy and seeing a lot of good people, it's just a matter of getting them to church.
Aside from them, we were going around some certain apartment buildings looking for some people to teach. We met some good people to teach, and especially these two guys from Honduras that happened to be getting into the elevator at the same time as us. We were going to the same floor and once we got out of the elevator we just talked to them about life and stuff for a good 10 minutes. The whole time I was just thinking how many things had to go right and had to happen in a certain order and at a certain time for us to be able to meet them. Stoked to get to teach them some more. Things are warming up over here and lots of good things are happening throughout the entire mission.
Thanks for the prayers and the love! I'm doing great and hope you guys are too, take it easy! Love ya!
Elder Jordan

Mabissa, she is awesome!

Elder Gates