Pig Tongue

Hola! I hope everyone is doing great! I hear things that are just blowin my mind! Justine married, Chase engaged! everyone moving up in school or graduating!  This is crazy! But im happy that everything seems to be going great back home! Well, got new teachers this past week. One of them who is our night teacher is awesome and we call him papi and our morning teacher teaches us how to never teach! Im sure she is a great lady and i dont want her to sound evil but i straight up had a nightmare about her a few nights ago. She is so mean to us and treats us like 5 year olds. I think we have here to teach us patience so that we cant deal with much more a difficult person on the mission. she will be tough to beat. Its tough to feel the spirit with her so its good practice to learn how to keep the spirit with you when you have so many reasons not to. Anyway enough bout that. Not important. There are 3 Ecuadorians here and 2 of them are Black! I love it it and miss black people so much. And not even being bias, they are by far the coolest latinos here. Haha, so cool! Cant wait to go to ecuador! My companion Elder Quispe is such a nice guy! he couldnt harm a fly. He is a 1 year convert and hardly knows anything! Haha, so funny experience. We knows like no scriptures and asked me for a scripture on faith. I told him Alma 32. Anyway, were teaching a lesson later that night and its great. Im understanding and talking quite a bit. It was about the sacrement and the importance of it and i look at Elder Quispe to see if he wanted to share anything and he hands here the scriptures and i look and its Alma 32. In my head i was like no no no, what are you doing! Our investigador looked up at us like what in the world does this have to do with anything. Quispe looked at me and i realized he wanted me to explain and i just laughed and said faith is really important and continued on with attending chruch and what we were talking about. But after the lesson he was really excited that he used a scripture and i was happy. Hes trying and will be so great throughout the mission! It will be so great to see-talk to all these elders in a couple years and just see how much everyone has grown and this great gospel. I dont know if i mentioned this but i love Elder Holland so much! He is the most inspiration speaker ever. MTC devotionals in general are the greatest! Im determined to go the the mtc after the mish and steel all the recordings. They are some of the best talks i have ever heard in my life. Everytime i hear them i am on a huge spiritual high. I just want to mantain the spiritual high forever but its difficult. I try to remember to remember the spiritual highs when you have the daily lows. It has helped. Well i dont know much more to say. we didnt go proselyting this week because the new group came in... I guess ill finish with the finale of what i unintentionally ate last night. So they gave us the option of carne or this wierd looking meat and what i thought was ham in the middle. I decided to take a break from carne and go with the other thing. As im almost done eating it a latino elder across from me says "te gusta lengua". I like choked and was hoping i didnt hear him right. Becuase lengua is toungue. I asked around and found out that i had just had my first pig toungue. Hahaa! I wasnt horrible to be honest. Well I love you all so much! Thank you for all your love and support!

Elder Jacobsen

She Went!

Big week! So many things that i wish i had time to tell you! started off with an earth quake but nothing to big. Similar to CA ones! All the gringos were going nuts though. It was funny!  Well we went back to Rimac and we found out that Alejandrina went to church! I was so happy! And so was elder Flores! It gives you a boost and helps you realize that we really are here to help people! So i dont know if i told you but when we go in Rimac we have to go with a member. Our member is Edwuardo! He is the best! We went to his sisters house because she has been an inactive for three years and he said he felt the random urge to have us go talk to her. A couple people didnt answer the door so we had time to. Her name was Nadia and she is a single mother but has a boyfriend. Anyway, we went through an awesome lesson with her! I could tell she totally felt the spirit! I asked her if she would please go to church with here brother this past sunday. She said she definitly wants to go and wants to change her life. That she knows its time to trust in god. She bore her testimony and it just got better and better! I looked over at edwuardo and he had nothing but smiles on his face. I got so emotional and realized what was going on. I cant express how cool it is to see the gospel fill others with joy. I miss you all so much. But it is so worth it being a missionary and leaving my family for two years so others can be with their families for eternity. Anyway, edwardo asked if he could stop by his house. we said yes of course and he rushed in side and came out and gave us a tie and cookies. He said how thankful he was and that his sister said she would never go to church again but now she will. It was awesome! Oh so we were in a house teaching and this nice lady brought out a pitcher of water and mixed some juice mix into or somthing. Anyway before i realized i cant drink the water her she gave me a huge glass full and said drink. I couldnt say no. Haha. I was like oh no. My only choice was to pray like crazy that i wouldnt die from it. I might have over reacted because im alive and doing great! Ive just heared some stories! Anyway Elder flores and all the latinos left! It was the hardest part of the mission so far! I never thought i would get so attached in 3 weeks but i truley came to love all those guys! Me and elder flores were saying our last companionship prayer togeather the night before he left and when i finished he just started balling. It was crazy! We hugged for like 5 minutes! Im gonna miss him and all the other latinos! They will be great! Got my new companion last night! Elder Quispe. Dont know him to well but he seems like a nice guy. well today was awesome! Other than waking up. I jump of my bunk into 2 inches of water. One of the new elders messed up a washer and it had been leaking all night. The whole hallway and everything is flooded. But besides that we went on a tour today with president cardon! It was sweet! Saw the city of lima! And we went to a little market and there was a section for jerseys. Me elder magil, randall, and christiansen looked all over for a ecuador jersey but they dont like ecuador over here to much! Haha, there like rivals. we checked one last rack and found some! Stoked! Se we got a peru jersey and ecuador cuz as much as were loving Peru, we gotta represent Ecuador somtimes. haha. Anyway, Im loving it here! The spirit is strong, people are great, work is hard, tons to learn, the gospel is true! Im loving it and hope everyone is doing great back home! starting next week please send anything to my mission home in ecuador. Thanks everyone! Hope to hear from you all soon! I have the best family and friends in the world!

Loving Peru

Hey everyone! I hope everyone is doing well back home! Hope to hear from all of you through mail!  I made it through the first week of the Peru CCM (mtc)! It has been awesome! Where to start! I will probly only be able to say like a tenth of what i want to but oh well. ill start with the food. It is not to bad at all! In fact im really enjoying itd! Definitly different thats for sure! And definitly some things i do not need to try again. and this is only in the mtc. haha. out in the field is going to be a whole new level. Lots of fruit and lots of rice! And then lots of other stuff that i have no idea whats it is called. but its honesty not bad! Some of the worst stuff to eat is the things that is "american" food. i think they try to do it for the americans and it is not what they were trying to make. but its all good! Oh and the coolest thing ever! 845 every night is FRUIT TIME! its awesome! Coolest thing ever. we all run around yelling tiempo de fruit and its great! I am definitly planning on making that a tradition in my life! well lets just say that every north american here has gotten sick! EVERY! more than half have got whats called the double dragon. its when you clean your body out through both ends at the same time if you know what i mean. wont say any more. haha. luckily for me i havnt had that. my stomach has been good to me. but i have had some crazy headaches and a runny and stuffed head all week. Oh and ive already 5 pounds. not good! Soccer is awesome! Got the first goal last thursday for our zone and all the latinos went nuts. Its way competative and way fun! It hit me when i was playing one day that i am in Peru playing soccer. I just looked around and took it in. It was awesome! Oh and humor is not the same here. At all! haha. for example. when you stop them from scoring and say no en mi casa or not in my house they just look at you like what the heck are you saying. but the latinos natives are awesome! I already love them! They are so patient with us and always try to help us! Pretty much every other sentence we say the just laugh at us. They laugh at us probly a thousand times a day for things we say or do. its hilarious. Well the language is the language. It is easy to get down but i just have to tell myself it will come. poco a poco. I pray every night that i will get it. Grammer is starting to make a little more sense. But it is still impossible to understand what there saying (they talk a hundred miles per hour). I get like one word, try to translate it, and by that time theyve said like 20 more. haha. its crazy! But i know god will help me, and some day it will come. Just like the provo mtc, the spirit is way strong here! I love it. In sacrament meeting (fast sunday last sunder here) we couldnt understand nada but when the latinos shared their testimonies you can feel the spirit so strong. You knew that they knew the gospel is true. It doesnt matter what language or if you cant understand the language. They gospel of Jesus Christ will still be true and have the spirit with it wherever you go! I love it! I love this place! Ecuador has high expectations now. haha. There is a lot of rules here. You thought provo was strict, this is even stricter. But all for good reasons. we cant take pictures except on Pdays for a couple hours so that stinks but today is pday and has been awesome. This morning we took a little bus (like 30 people crammed into like a 10 person bus!) haha. and went to the Lima Temple. It was great! Then we were allowed to go do some shoppin near the temple. It was awesome! It was the first bit of freedom! Haha. I wish we didnt have a time limit because i wanted to just go up to people and talk to them about the gospel. I can hardly speak but ive been working on my testimony and cant wait to go share it and share the gospel. And saturday we get to go out! Cant wait! This gospel is so true and so great! If i can feel the love of my father in heaven and the spirit this strong in a language and place i dont understand then this gospel of Christ cannot be denied. I love it! Wish i could talk for another 2 hours but cant. Love you all! God Bless!

Elder Jacobsen