Week 91

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 91 (2/29/16)

And there goes the first week of the transfer, still here in San Pedro de Lloc! And also enjoying a wonderful leap day, February 29th.

Well, I did have some good pictures to send right now, including one with my old companion and one with my new companion, but as I was getting the pics on the computer, a virus got on it and destroyed everything on the memory in an instant. I had backed up all of my pictures last week, so I only lost a few, but I lost all of them that I took this week. Sorry mom.

Well this week has been amazing. After having a few difficulties with my last comp, it was amazing to see how great things are in the mission again. So I am now with Elder Gubler from Saint George and he is pretty awesome. He is just as experienced as I am and is going to finish just one transfer after me and he is probably going to be my last comp. We are really similar personality wise, which gives us both some thing that we can improve here. This week especially, we have seen many miracles in our area and it is amazing to see how much the Lord trusts in his faithful servants.

Also, we are both district leaders here and share all of the responsabilities. As district leaders we do many things. We work with normally about 6 missionaries and to close follow up to the people they are teaching and how they are working. We call our district at least 3 times a week to report their work, and we also give a class in our weekly district meetings. We also report directly to the zone leaders everything that's going on in our districe. Some of the cooler responsabilities are that we are able to do work visits with the Elders inside of our district, which means to change companions for a day to get to work with them close up, and we also get to do the baptismal interviews with the investigators that the missionaries in our district have taught. Those are some of the main responsabilities and I have learned so much to be able to help and encourage closely other missionaries here.

Well we got a lot of work to do and with my birthday coming up, I am really going to enjoy it with the members here. Until next week!

Elder Terry

Week 90

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 90 (2/21/16)

Another week completed in the mission, and also finishing of my 15th transfer. Wow. It's one of those moments where you feel like the time has flown and only a little bit of time remains.

Well to start, here are some pictures from these last 2 weeks.

Here is one of our zone popping water balloons to figure out our goal for baptisms and rescues for February:

They took a continuous shot of about 50 pictures and this was the best.

Also this week, we had a baptism in our branch. The sisters that are in our branch taught a girl named Ana Karina who was baptized by our Branch President last Saturday:

As you can see in this picture, we now have a missionary couple assigned to our zone, which is the Guadalupe District. They are going to be helping every one in all of the branches to go to the temple and are going to be giving a temple class for all of those people. It is exactly what our district needs right now.

Well this has honestly been a really difficult transfer for me, but I am really grateful for having gone through it. I was able to recognize a lot of my weaknesses and improve a lot of them. We had some ups and downs with my companion, but we were able to learn a lot from eachother and it helped me reflect a lot about my personal progress that I have had as a missionary.

Well, there are transfers. It looks like after only being here for 6 weeks, my companion is heading out back to Trujillo. But the really interesting part is that my companion is going to be Elder Gubler, who finishes the mission only one transfer after me. This means that we are going to be co-district leaders here in San Pedro, and it is going to be awesome! I already know him and I am looking forward to this next transfer. Also, this transfer is 2 weeks longer, making it a total of 8 weeks due to some changes in the MTC. I'm looking forward to it!

Elder Terry

Week 89

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 89 (2/15/16)

Well, the days just keep counting down, and the time remaining keeps getting shorter and shorter.

Well this has been a really interesting week and probably a week where I have learned the most in a while. I have been able to overcome many difficulties in this time and I am proud to be where I am right now.

Well my time has run super short this week, and I also left my camara in one of our meetings so I wasn't able to take any pictures the whole week. But I am doing fine over here and finishing up the last week of the transfers.

We did have a really nice Valentine's day activity in our branch on Saturday. It was a couples night and every one gathered to watch videos, sing karaoke, play games, eat, and dance. We helped out with all of the investigators and less-actives that went and it had a good turn out. Other than that, not too much to celebrate for Valentine's day.

Sorry for keeping it short, but I will make up for it next week!

Elder Terry

Week 88

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 88 (2/8/16)

There goes another week in the mission!

So this week actually went pretty well and we were able to work a lot of things out with my companion so we are going to get some work done here!

This past Monday was pretty awesome though. As a zone, we all went to this place called Cañoncillo (Canyon-see-yo), which is like a hiking area that is like this weird swamp/desert/forest mix. We did a day hike, climbed a sand hill, and took a lot of pictures:

Here was the laguna that we hiked to. It's not normally this ugly:

We climbed a sand hill on the side of the trail and found this secret sandy plain:

It was probably one of the coolest P-days that I have had and I'm really enjoying taking a lot of pictures :).

Also on Tuesday, the rest of all of the Christmas package arrived!

The things that are in the plastic bags had something wrong with them and I think that's why it took so long to arrive.

There was also a present inside that made a hole in the package so they put it in the bag.

Thank you so much family, and Merry Christmas in February!
Also with the package were the two letters from my sister, and from all of the primary kids. I just love reading those letters!

In these times we are working a lot with all of the leaders in our branch. We are trying to get every one on a monthly habit of going to the temple to help strengthen their testimonies, now that the temple is so close (about 2 hours away)

I also am still messing around with the cool settings on the camara:

Well that's all to report on for this week, and the work continues on!

Elder Terry

Week 87

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 87 (2/1/16)

Well that was a pretty nice week here in San Pedro. We attended the worldwide missionary conference and were well trained. Here is a picture of our Guadalupe Zone:

Honestly, there's not too much to report on; it was a pretty typical week here in the mission.

Well this week we have been doing a lot of work searching out all of the less-active members here in San Pedro. We've been going through the records here and looking for all of the members in our branch and updating all of their information. It's super interesting meeting all of the old members and finding out how long they have been members and getting to know them more.

This week hasn't been one of the easiest weeks ever though. We are having a little bit of problems between companions and I am helping him out a lot get into the missionary work that we have to do. We are resolving conflicts and figuring out how to work here. He reminds me of myself when I had less time in the mission and I realize how much I have learned in these past few months.

I have also had a lot of fun taking some pictures this week.
There was a power outage in San Pedro at like 4 am and my companion woke me up to check it out. I was able to take this sweet pic with the new camera and some editing functions it has:

I haven't seen that many stars in a while.
I also got some pretty sweet sunset pictures:

Well that's all I got for this week, and I'm looking forward to the month of February!

Elder Terry

Week 86

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 86 (1/25/16)

Well there's a lot to write about in such a little amount of time!

So I finally got a camera again, so we're going to have some pretty cool pictures in these emails again.

My Christmas package finally arrived! But it looks like I only got half of everything and I hope that the rest is going to be coming soon.

I was super happy opening this package and thinking about everyone in my family. The green/blue tie is amazing and I loved the pin and keychain a lot! Thank you all so much and Merry late Christmas! haha

I also got a few more letters to add to the collection. I love reading these!

So I also had said that Elder Smith, mijito, had come up to the same zone with me one transfer later, and it is really interesting to stay close by one of my past companions.

Also, to try out the new camera, I was able to take some cool pictures of the area.

Also, in our area, there are a whole bunch of mosquitos so one night sleeping with the window open because of the heat, this happened:

Thank goodness my parents sent me with anti-itch cream and bug repellant, so this is never going to happen again.

Well in all of the pictures, I wasn't able to get one with my companion and I, but we did have a surprise visit by President Marler and Hermana Marler so they got a picture of us in our district meeting:

Elder Chacon is the one directly above me on the left with the blue tie.
Also Hermana Marler went specifically in the district meeting class that I taught and really helped all of our district with our lesson.

Well sorry for being a little short of words today, but I guess the pictures make up for it in part. haha
One other announcement is that President and Hermana Marler are finishing up their 3rd year in the mission which means it's almost time for a President change! The new President will be President William Marble and Sister Sandy Marble:

They will be serving starting the 1st of July, so I will already be home by then. They are from Woodland, California and are really looking forward to their missionary service.

Well that's all the time I have, until next week!

Elder Terry

Week 85

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 85 (1/18/16)

Well that was a very interesting week here in San Pedro starting off this new transfer.

So my new companion is Elder Chacón and he is from Chile, Peru's biggest rival. He is from the southern part of Chile in a town called Valdivia where it's pretty cold. He is 18 years old, a convert of 3 years, and he has about 8 months in the mission. He has only been in one area so far which was in Trujillo in a part called Porvenir which is the super dangerous part of Trujillo. He mentioned that everything is so nice and calm here in San Pedro compared to Trujillo. Next week I will attach a photo, because I was finally able to buy a new camara today.

It was kind of a difficult week after only being here 6 weeks and now having to direct the area, but we have found some new people to teach and we helped some others go to church for the first time in a while, which I guess was a successful week.

Another weird thing about the transfers was that more than half of the missionaries in the zone changed to different areas, including one of the zone leaders and the two other district leaders. And the weirdest part was that my hijo, Elder Smith, came up to the zone too, so I get to see him more than once a week.

Well, that's about it until the next week! (here is a picture that Sister Marler took of me last week)

Elder Terry