buenas tardes!
hello mother! (and who ever else reads this) this week has been so crazy geeting used to the schedule here. i want to describe this place to you, but it seems impossible hahah. i sent a letter to you guys, not sure when it will reach you, but i hope it gets to you soon. to answer your questions mom, yes i have made new friends haha, the weather reminds me of california where it looks like it is going to rain, but never does. as for anything i need, i dont really need it but i would like some pictures of our family, my friends maybe some of me playing football and basketball or of my surfboard and skateboard! not sure how if that is possible, i would just like to show the others elders! to be honest the shoes are actually growing on me and i think they are semi stylish haha! i havent gotten any letters, but word on the street is mail takes forever to get here! i think what i am going to do as far as emails is send one great big one like this and afterwords send more personalized ones to people who write me!
i will now try to describe what it is like here. its pretty much the craziest thing ever. i dont think anything will top this experience in my life. elder bradley and i have a dorm room that we share with 4 latin american elders that dont speak any english hahah. we all have so much fun together even though we cant fully communicate. my spanish is improving quickly here, im still definitely a gringo, but i can communicate with most of the latino elders. they are so much fun and really brighten our days and i have become friends with a lot of them. if i have time to send pictures of all of us i will! elder jarman and elder ruiz are companions which is kind of lame, but probably good because i need to focus and learn a lot here haha. we are in different districts too, because we are going to different missions, but we hang out a bunch! the other elders are interesting but we all get along great! there are two from canada! if you could let me know where elden lives that would be much appreciated. i was feeling pretty homesick the first couple days, but im fine now. hermano tello (one of our teachers) told us that we need to think of our families and friends and things we miss and let them motivate us to work harder and i think that is awesome advice for us elders! another crazy thing here is the classes, the teachers can barely speak english! i was shocked when we went to our first class, but i am getting more used to it and learning a lot! we also practice teaching lessons only in spanish which can be extremely frustrating. it teaches us a lot thoufgh. elder bradley cant speak much spanish so it is usually up to me to talk the whole time hahah. i think god is trying to show me what it will be like when i have a latino companion and i cANT SPEAK MUCH. we had this fireside thing for everyone in the ccm and there was an oppurtunity to read something in spanish and one of my latino friends said i should stand up and read it, so i did haha. the speaker was impressed because i couldnt even understand what i was reading, just doing my best to pronounce everything correctly. he then gave an execelent lesson on faith and how if we dont think we can do something, we cant. but if we believe in ourselves and have faith that the lord will help us we can do anything! i found this inspiring because there are times whern i think there is no way i can learn spanish! our schedule consists of breakfast lunch and dinner with a lot of tudying and classes in between. i also have been practicing my soccer skills here because we get an hour of physical activity a day and elder bradely and i play soccer with the latinos! i scored a goal the other day, im kind of a big deal hahah. i am trying to think of everything we do here but its alot.
i just wanted to close with the story of my day today! craziest day so far! every thursday wer get to go out into the actual city of peru! (we joke that we are still in the united states because we are so protected here hahah) we had breakfast and then made our way to the gates where we got on a bus that they literally just stuff as many people as possible on to haha i couldnt even stand up straight and was struggling to stand up hahah. the driving here is crazy just like evryone says haha. we went to the temple and then to some stores and then had to get back. it was awesome. thursday is my pday just throwing that out there.i have an hour to email so i am trying to do it really quickly. sorry for the errors. we are going prostilting on saturday. no clue how to spell that word, but we get to go teach less active members. the older elders say its a huge culture shock so i am extremely excited haha!!! i dont have much else to say so i hope you enjoy these words! if you could maybe post my email somewhere that would be cool if not no worries i only really need to hear from you guys! (=
love and miss you guys a bunch,
elder zundel
ps keep me updated on whats going on! pretty please
---This is me--Jake's mom--Just so you know in the first paragraph he is answering a few questions I had asked him in an email....
His email address is:
You can email him at any time, he will get to read and respond to emails on Thursdays--for the next four weeks he only gets an hour so he is doing his best. I know he would love to hear from you all!
love, jen
