Hello, 12 June 2013
Well, Sorry I had to send off the last letter really quick just to let you know that I was okay, and you were expecting something.
Hooray, I was able to get into my email account this week. I really have no idea why it wouldn´t let me in last week!! This has definitely been an interesting week. A week ago I went to San Jose to fill out and submit paperwork at the embassy. And I told you about getting there, but not the reason.
Our district doesn´t go to zone conferences because the rest of our zone is 5 hours away from us. So tomorrow our zone leaders will be coming here to visit.
So as I am sure you could tell from the most recent note I sent we had to head out to San Jose once again on P-day. This time it is because my companion’s ankle has been hurting her for the last couple of weeks and so she called the mission nurse who told her to take some pain relief meds for about a week and then call back if it didn´t get better. It was starting to get better when Monday night almost a week after she started the pain relievers she twisted her ankle really bad on some rocks. So we called the nurse and she told Hermana Romero that she needed to take a couple of days off so that it could heal.
While she stayed in a member’s house I went on splits with 3 different members of the Branch. The first member was Angi, a 19 year old who is thinking about a mission. She was fun to go with, but she too sprained her ankle. The next day I went out with Naomi, a 13 year old who wants to eventually serve a mission. This was an interesting day because we didn´t really have any appointments set up, so we were basically contacting. The first family we met was an Seventh-Day Adventist family, 2 of whom were visiting from the states, it was very interesting because they were rude in both English and Spanish. One attacked us for worshipping on Sunday and not on Saturday. The ‘lesson’ finally ended. I really didn´t let them bug me though. We gave our message and then left. At the end of all our lessons we always invite a member of the family to say the closing prayer. Well, one of them was very excited to offer the prayer and in the middle of it he asked God to show us the truth. He really kind of reminded me of the Jews during the time of Christ. I have been reading Jesus the Christ by Talmage and I absolutely love it! It really gives a good look into the spiritual and historical look at His life and in the order it occurred. The next woman we found was really nice and invited us right in. We taught, well, I taught about the restoration of the gospel, gave her a Book of Mormon, and Naomi bore her testimony. In her prayer at the end of the lesson, Naomi said that she had thanked God for giving her an answer. I didn´t hear this part so I didn´t find out until after we had left. We are going to go back a visit her again. She is supposed to start working soon and so she didn´t know when she would be able to have us come back. The 3rd Branch member I went out with was Clarita, a 17 year old who is really sweet and trying to decide if she should go on a mission. We had a hard day with no luck on finding anyone.
There was one day when we couldn´t find anyone to go on splits with me so I stayed in our apartment all day with Hermana Romero. Right now everyone is doing finals so it is really hard to find anyone to go with me. I am not sure why we don´t ask the older members of the Branch to go with us. This was definitely a learning experience for me because I ended up doing pretty much all the talking and teaching and I really had to listen super hard to make sure I understood what they were saying.
We have a branch here with about 100 members who are active. There are about 3 or 4 families who make up the core of the ward and end up helping us out a lot. I am not sure how many members are less active. The main reasons I’ve seen for inactivity in the church is because someone had offended them or they are too sick to participate. I have found that our branch area covers an hour and a half by bus ride from the church!! We have mostly been working close to the church because it is fairly expensive to go far out and would be hard to bring these people to the church. We have been having good experience close in so far.
In our neighborhood we have running water, electricity, and telephone service. There is a wide variety as far as wealth goes and they are all kind of mixed in together. In my apartment we have a kitchen with a sink, fridge, microwave and stove type thing. We are lucky because not many of the missionaries have microwaves or a blender and we have both!!
Well after all the rest Hermana Romero had given her ankle it was still hurting a lot so we called the nurse and she told us she would talk to a doctor. Monday morning she called us and told us that she had an appointment in San Jose for Hermana Romero in like three hours so we rushed around got out the door and rode the 3 hour bus ride to San Jose. The diagnosis was a bad sprain. A boot would be needed to immobilize the foot. Oh, I had had some sports tape in my first aid kit so I had been taping her ankle to try and help. When we arrived the office the doctor said that the tape job was good and mentioned that it was something generally seen in American Sports team medicine. I felt very happy with my taping job. We were in the Doctor’s office too late to return back to Perez so we stayed the night in San Jose. Hermana Wilkinson (mission prez wife), picked us up in the morning to go buy the boot. Anyway, back to Hermana Wilkinson, she had to take her daughter to graduation practice right after so I got to see more of San Jose. She also bought us some yummy food!! It was a fun day. She then drove us to the bus station to go back to Perez. My companion is about ready to die with embarrassment with the boot. Even having the Tape was embarrassing for her so this is, like, terrible!
Thank-you for the picture of gabby, she looks beautiful! So the other week I showed my district a picture of our family, to show that I really am the shortest. Elder Castellanos saw Gabby and was like, who is that!!! Just so you know, Gabby, there is a Honduran over here who thinks you are really cute.
Well I love you all. I am going to try and send you some pics. Love you all.
PS: yes I feel safe out here. There are just certain streets that we are wise to stay away from during the night because they are really empty and have that creep factor.
Love Hermana Jenkinson
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