Jesse Email - July 24, 2013

Hello momma! i finally had some time to come on here and email you all! i am doing great! definatly really busy! everything around here is planned out my the minute.  my companion is Elder Brown, he is also from Arizona, payson. so we really get along well no fights yet haha and the spanish was rough tthe first few days but its starting to click a little more each day!  i see diana here every so often , we saw each other at the devotional that had all the missionariesthere. about 6000 i think they said but we were in th choir and took a picture! i have gained 5 pounds but i think i will lose that soon because we started our workouts so im crossing my fingers. letters from home are amazing i dont know if it costs you anything but this dear elder thing is awesome and letters are printed off that day and sent to us, theres alot of bragging about letters! but overall the spirit here is strong and i love the feeling that is here 24-7. our class tacher is cute and our whole district agreed she shouldnt be teaching a class of just Elders haha but i hope you got my letters! i love you and have a fun time! because i know i will be having the best time doing the lords work. and i got the girls letters yesterday! Love  You!

i have a few minutes but i wanted to share with you a story! the 2nd day we had to teach josue a lesson in spanish! it was one of the most frustrating things ive done yet! the 2nd lesson with him went the same way, but the 3rd me and my companion decided to take a different approach. we just turned the lesson over to the spirit, and it went by sooo much better! we were trying to just teach the lesson and not the person. we were just reading what was in the books and not really teaching. but the 3rd time we started with a prayer(in spanish) and basically let the spirit tell us what to do. we spoke our hearts and bore our testimonys more and really felt the spirit. we are realizing this isnt our church its the lords and we have to preach it the way he wants it done, and let the spirit take over:) love you dad!

Our first letter from Jesse came Snail Mail.  We should get an e-mail to share tomorrow as his P-day is on Wednesday.  But I will share a few thoughts from the letter he sent home as I know there are people waiting to hear from him.

Today was the first day of finally being a Missionary!  The flight was amazing, the acceleration of the plane and the view was great.  We even saw the Grand Canyon like Papa said.  Seeing the Sheltons was really great too.  We went to lunch with them and we even went to some of the church sites around the temple.
Let me tell you one thing about the church, there is absolutely NO time to waste!  As soon as we got here we put our luggage in our rooms went and got our books and went straight to class.  Tonight we got to teach 3 different people as a group of about 80 missionaries (including Diana) and the spirit there was wonderful, there is not doubt I'm supposed to be here right now.  Dinner wasn't too bad.  It was actually really good!  Then we got a run down about how everything here runs.  My first companion for the next 6 weeks is Elder Brown, he is from Payson, Arizona.  He's a pretty cool guy!  Overall today was a great start to my mission.