3/26/12

Hola.

This week has been pretty good. We've found a few more people to teach, and we even got a reference from a member, and Valentín finally got baptized. It was great. It was pretty funny, we were trying to fill the font so that we could have the baptism, but first, we couldn't get keys to get to the boiler to turn it on. Apparently our bishop doesn't have the key, and the other bishop left them in his car at home, so we had to wait for his family to get there. Then once we got the boiler on and the water heated up, for some reason, the hot water wouldn't come out of the spout to fill the font. So in the end Valentín just ended up getting baptized in cold water haha. This week, I was super surprised, we had a guy come to church who we met on Saturday afternoon knocking doors who told us that he would come to church, but wouldn't let us set up an appointment to go to his house and teach him, which actually happens quite a bit, but usually, people just say that so we'll go away and they don't actually come, but he showed up. I was really surprised. Especially since he said he works at the airport, and he gets off work at 7am, and the ward starts at 9:30. It was really cool.

Our transfers are every six weeks, and last week was the transfer. I think the next one is the first week of May, but I'm not sure.

It was pretty funny when the earthquake happened. We were in a lesson with a less active's son who isn't a member. And we were sitting there talking and then it felt like I was just rocking side to side slowly. It was super weird. At first I thought I was just going crazy, but then someone said they felt it too haha. The kid we were teaching lives in the second story of an apartment complex, and so we went and looked out the window and a bunch of people had gone outside and were all freaking out and crying and hugging each other like it was a big deal haha it was funny. I saw on a newspaper I think it said it was a 7.8, but I'm not sure if that was what it was here or at the epicenter. Then the whole rest of the week, in almost every lesson, they asked us where we were and if we felt the earthquake and such. It was funny.

Camping sounds like it was a lot of fun. I'm jealous. I miss going camping and stuff like that.

I'm not exactly sure what we do for conference. Our ward goes to one of the stake centers to watch it. I'm not sure if we'll go there to watch it, or if they'll have all the gringo missionaries go somewhere to watch it in English. I don't know.

So as for my house, I was going to email some pictures, but the computer isn't letting me, so I might just have to send them next week.

The food here is good. Missionaries from the states are always whining about wanting to eat food from the states like pizza and hamburgers, but I'd rather eat the food here. I think when I get home, I'll probably miss the food, more than I miss American food.

My ward is pretty cool. There are a lot of great members. They feed us every single day, and quite often, we end up getting fed twice because we'll go to a members house for a lesson and then they'll just make us food. Almost always, the gringo missionaries lose weight when they come to Mexico, but I don't feel like I'm losing any weight. I'm definitely eating more than before, but I'm also walking a lot more than I did before. So who knows?

I've been hearing a lot about the pope coming, we've even had people ask us what we think about him coming, and one person even asked us if we worship the pope haha, but he's farther north in Mexico, but a lot of people when we went over were watching his arrival on TV.

I do read a lot, but I don't need any more books or anything. I just started reading the Old Testament last week, because I've never actually read all of it before, and that'll probably take me a while, and then I have some more books to read.

Thanks. I love you and I hope you have a great week. Elder Janda

( I know I am over protective but does anyone else feel concern that the iron is plugged in setting in a bucket of water?)

3/12/12

(Letter to Mom)
Hey,
This week was basically the same as last week. We've been trying to find new investigators still, so we've been knocking a lot of doors and contacting people in the streets. A lot of people won't listen to us, and it seems like the people that do are always only here in our area working, and live somewhere else. It's also weird because a lot of people here won't just say that they aren't interested. They always just say that they're in a hurry, or they busy, or tell us to come back another day, but you can always tell that they are lying. We tried to contact this lady while we were walking to an appointment on Saturday, and she said she was busy, so we told her we could walk with her, but you could totally tell she wasn't in a hurry, she just wanted us to go away. A lot of times, when we knock doors, people will say ''not right now, come back another day'', so we ask them what day, and they say ''well the thing is, I work every day and I'm never home, so I can't really say a day'' or they just say again ''I'm busy right now come back another day''. I think since I've got here, I've only had three people straight up tell me they aren't interested.
I haven't got any letters yet, but they could just be sitting at the offices.
Did you talk to the missionaries or have them over for dinner or something? I hope so. So in my mission, the mission president has taught us a way to teach members how to share the gospel that is super simple. Basically, it consists of two visits. The first visit, you basically tell you friend or whoever about some of the blessings that you have received from the gospel and that you want them to be able to experience those blessings as well, then you give them the pamphlet or whatever you got from the missionaries to them and commit them to reading it and set up a time when you will be able to check up with them about. Then, the second visit, the one that you set up with them, you follow up with them, you see if they read it and if they had any questions or what they thought or whatever, and then you tell them that if they would like you could come over with the missionaries and they would be able to teach them more or answer any questions or whatever, and then set up an appointment that you can go by with the missionaries. It's super simple, and you don't even have to teach them anything. So that's what I want all of you to do this week. I know it will work and you'll be glad you did. And if you feel worried or scared of what your friend or whoever will think if you share the gospel with them, then don't worry. Even if they aren't interested or don't listen, they will still be your friend and they won't think anything bad about you. A lot of people here reject us, but tell us that they appreciate what we are doing as missionaries, and they respect us and think better of us even though they don't agree with what we are teaching.
Well, I hope you all take the opportunity to share the gospel with someone.
I hope you have a great week. I love you and am grateful for everything you do for me.
Elder Janda
(Letter to Dad)
Hey, I'm glad to hear you had a good week. I haven't really eaten many weird things, just intestines and stomach. At least that's all I know of haha. We eat at members houses every day, and most of the time I don't even know what I'm eating haha. I had sushi again this week. One of the members we ate with is a chef, and we ate with him three times this week. One day he made shrimp tacos, another sushi, and then another he was going to make pizza, but he didn't have time to get all the ingredients and everything, so he just made some tacos. The food was good, but the bad thing was that we were there for forever every time cuz he usually didn't even start making the food until we got there. I've had tacos al pastor a few times. They're always on the street selling it at taco stands. They're really good. The area I'm living in is pretty poor. It reminds me a lot of the poorer parts of Mesa only more poor haha. And it's pretty dirty, there are stray dogs all over and they just poop wherever they want, and no one cleans it up, so there's always poop on the sidewalks and there aren't really any people who clean up garbage in the street and stuff, so there's garbage everywhere. The most they do, is sweep it into piles on the side of the road.
Valentin didn't get baptized yet, but he's going to either this week or next week. He has to quit smoking, and he won't just quit straight up, he's doing it slowly, but he finally came to church this last week and he says he wants to get baptized and everything. With the Orozco Soto family, we haven't gotten to teach them this week. They haven't been home almost every time we've passed by.
And yeah Dulce means either sweet if it's an adjective, or if it's used as a noun it means candy. Her daughter's name is Dulce too haha. For our clothes, we usually take them to a laundromat that a less active owns, or ever once in a while, a member will offer to wash them for us. And for email, there is an Internet cafe like two or three doors down from our house, so we usually go there. There are Internet cafes all over though.
I haven't gotten to play any fútbol since I've gotten here yet which stinks, but I'm sure I'll get to play eventually haha.
Thanks. I love you and I hope you have a great week.
Elder Janda

So in my mission, we work a lot with the members trying to help them share the gospel, and so I decided to invite all of you to this week get to know the missionaries in your ward. Have them over for dinner, or talk to them at church or something, and ask them if you can have a pamphlet or something that you can give to one of your friends, then read the pamphlet, and then give it to your friend. We have a great, very simple way that we teach members to share the gospel with people, and I´ll have to tell you more about it next week, cuz I don´t have much time. But I want to invite all of you to talk to the missionaries this week. You won´t regret it.
I love you all. Elder Janda

Hey, sorry I´m writing so late. This week has been super busy, and today wasn´t any different. Today, we had a zone activity where we went to this place called funcentral. It was cool, but it was like all the way on the other side of the DF. It was fun though. We ice skated, bowled. did mini golf, and they had a couple little rides. And all for 70 pesos. It was fun. It took all day though. We left our house at about 8:30 this morning, and have only been home just long enough to grab some money. This week has been super busy. We had divisions for Wednesday and Thursday, so I was with the District leader´s companion and on Wednesday, we were in my area, and Thursday, we were in his. Then Thursday night I had to be at the offices at 8 because on Friday we went to the immigration place and got our visas. It was cool because all of the missionaries that came down with me were there, so I got to see all of them again. It was awesome. It's amazing how well you can bond with someone after only a few weeks out here. Also, on Thursday night, two of the secretaries took my companion and I to a sushi place by the offices. It was pretty good. I got two rolls. One of crab, and one of shrimp. And they only cost the equivalent of about 3.50 USD.
Saturday was just a regular day, and then Sunday was supposed to be really busy, but all of our appointments fell through except for one with a recent convert. That happens a lot here. People say they will be somewhere and they aren´t, but oh well. That´s their choice. Right now we have some pretty good investigators. There´s this one family where the wife was baptized earlier by my companion and his trainer, then the daughter was baptized my first week here, and now we´re working with the husband. His name is Valentín. He´s really cool except he hasn´t gone to church because he got in an accident at work a while ago and his back hurts him a lot, and he has to walk to church, but we´re supposed to baptize him this Sunday, so hopefully it goes through. We´re also teaching this other family, who we found knocking doors a little while ago. I´m pretty sure that they will get baptized and that I told you about them last week. They are the Orozco Soto family. They´re only problems are that they need to get married and that with their schedule, they are not home a lot of the time, and because of the fathers work, it´s difficult to plan with them, because their schedule is pretty unpredictable. They´re really cool they. They have a son, Lalo, who is nine and he is super interested. We passed by Saturday because they had some family in town and had to cancel our appointment, so we passed by to set a new one and invite them to church. But while we were waiting for Dulce, the mother, we were talking to Lalo and asking if he had read in the Book of Mormon, and he said no, but had us come inside and he went and got his book of Mormon and we started reading it together while we waited. It was awesome. It was totally his idea too. And then when his mom came, he was all sad, cuz it was his turn to read haha. They´re supposed to get baptized to 18th, but that depends on whether or not they get married first. We´re gonna go talk to them about that this week, probably tomorrow or Wednesday. My companion is alright. He´s starting to get on my nerves sometimes though. They are a lot of the missionaries in my mission from the states, that just don´t like Mexico for whatever reason. Sometimes he is like that. He´s also a little frito sometimes. (That´s when missionaries are a little lazy or just don´t follow all the rules) And it seems like he´s not very smart with his money. He´s always wanting to go buy tacos or a drink or something, and we don´t have money to do that all the time. But it´s ok. We teach well together I think, and he knows all the people in the ward and remembers names and faces well which is something I´ve been trying to work on, cuz I can never remember people haha, but oh well.
And about the whole Katie thing. It sucks, but there´s not really anything I can do about it. I knew when I came out that that would probably happen. I always hoped it wouldn´t, but it did. I just will have to go forward with faith, and know that God has a plan for me and in the end I will be in the Celestial Kingdom. It´s like either said as his final words. essentially, he said it doesn´t matter if I die or if I´m translated as long I end up in the Celestial Kingdom. It´s the same for us. It doesn´t matter what path the Lord has planned out for us. In the end we will be in the celestial kingdom and in the end we will be happy. I love you all and am grateful for all the support that you have all given me over the years. I love you. Elder Janda

2/27/12

Hola,
Tell everyone thanks for their messages and that I love them all. This week was alright, we did a lot of walking, and not a lot of teaching, but that´s ok, we´ve got some people we´re gonna work with this next week, and hopefully have a baptism. I´m glad to hear everything is going well at home.
That´s crazy about the guy in the drive through. I wonder what people think when they do stuff like that, it just doesn´t make sense. (Eric was hit by a drunk driver in the a drive thru but luckily all was good, no injuries.)
I´m glad to hear you had a good week. My week wasn´t as good as last week, but it was still good.
Last monday, we received a bunch of references, because the whole zone came and walked around and contacted people in our three of the areas up here including ours, so most of the week consisted of walking around and trying to find those references. In the end we only ended up contacting one, and we still have yet to teach her. She works at a hair salon and she works all the time. The two times that we have gone over to teach her, she either wasn´t there or she was cutting someone´s hair. It´s frustrating, but we have an appointment to meet with her later this week, so hopefully she´s their.
We also had one of our investigators decide that he wasn´t interested anymore, which was super weird, because at the last lesson we had with him, he was really interested. I´m not sure what happened there, but we have a member in our ward who had been working with him and going to the lessons with us and stuff, and he´s gonna keep passing by and checking up on him.
We also found a family while we were knocking doors about a week ago and finally got to teach them, they have 4 kids and are expecting another. They seemed interested and everything, the only problem is they aren´t married by the state, only by the catholic church. I think it´s crazy how many people are members of the catholic church down here even though most of the ones that we talk to say that they don´t believe the catholic church or that they know that it´s corrupt or that they know that there were doctrines lost or changed. We also found this old man knocking doors on saturday. He´s 82 and lives alone and apparently he gets super lonely, but he has really strong faith in Christ, the whole time we were talking with him he kept saying things like that he prays all the time and always is reading his bible and books about christ and stuff. It was cool. Except the Jehovahs witnesses apparently have been passing by and meeting with him and confusing him about stuff. I was surprised that the jehovah´s witnesses are so big down here. There´s churches for them all over. But yeah that guy was cool except he talked for forever, we were there for like about an hour and a half and he would´ve let us stay longer, but we were already late for our lunch appointment.
Other than that this week just consisted of a lot of walking. That map you´ve got of my area is right. I was wondering how big it actually is, That´s crazy that it´s only about 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile. Anyway, I love you, I hope all is well at home, and that you have a great week.
Love Elder Janda

2/20/12

Hola.
Yeah, my p-day is on Mondays.
Everything is going pretty well here. We had two baptisms this week, Ivonne and Elvira. I didn't do much of the teaching or preparing them or anything, but it was still cool.
I'm not sure what my address is, but it's in Distrito Federal, in the colony Pantitlan. I live on Calle Cinco between Calle Norte and Calle Zaragoza (I think that's how its spelled).
I live right across the street from a big Bimbo bread factory. Our area is pretty average I think for most of Mexico City, most people are pretty poor and work all the time. It's a pretty small area. If you find it on a map, it goes from Calle Uno to Calle Siete and from Calle Xochimilco to Calle Zaragoza. Our chapel is actually in a different area. It's on Calle seis and some other road I don't remember the name of. It's cool though.
We eat everyday with a different member for lunch, and every time they feed us, it's like they don't think we ever eat or something, cuz they always feed as way more than we could possibly eat. Every time, I leave feeling like I'm going to throw up just because I ate so much. The members are all really nice though.
The area here is pretty average for Mexico City, but it's a lot poorer than it is there. It's probably about the same as if you went into the poorest areas or downtown Chandler or Mesa. It's not too bad though.
We've had to walk a lot this last week. Since two of our investigators were getting baptized, we've been trying to find some new ones, so we've been doing a lot of knocking doors. We're also teaching a guy named Valentine Odiosola who is the father of Ivonne, one of the people that got baptized yesterday. His wife got baptized recently too, just a few weeks ago. Apparently he's never really been very interested in hearing the lessons, until last week. We were over there waiting for his daughter to come home from work, and he said he wanted to go to church and to hear more about our church and everything. Their whole family is really cool. We're also teaching a man named José Luis. He's supposed to get baptized this next Sunday, but he works a lot so it's tough to get all the lessons in and everything. We also are going to teach the son of Elvira I think. He's really interested in the church, but he has school, so we can only teach him on the weekends. I'm glad to hear everything there is going well.
I love you and am so grateful for everything that you do for me. Love, Elder Janda

Pictures of MTC life....

Elder Janda welcome to Mexico!!!

Hola!
So I got to Mexico fine and all is good. I was going to call when I got to Houston, but I ended up only having a couple minutes because our flight was a little late, then they changed the gate, and the card wouldn't work anyway, but that's ok. At least I got to talk to everyone a lot in Salt Lake. So Saturday night, we got here around 9. The secretaries picked us up and we all just went to the offices. Of the four secretaries, three are from Mexico, and one is from Alabama. The three from Mexico can all speak some English, but not much. And they can all usually understand pretty well. The one that's from Alabama is pretty cool. Anyway, so we got here Saturday night, then Sunday morning, we split into two groups and went to a few different wards. It was pretty cool. They didn't have anyone to play the piano, so I had to ha ha. I didn't understand everything that they said, but I understand quite a bit, I was surprised. ha ha Anyway, after church, some of us hung out at the chapel and some of the ward members fed us there. Their church building is very different from ours. They have two buildings with a little open walkway between. In one of the buildings is basically the chapel and the overflows, and then the other building is the classrooms. After we were done eating, we had to wait around for a bit because two missionaries had gone with this other companionship to go eat at a members house. After they got back, we just went to the offices and the assistants came and then a little later the president came. They basically just talked to us about specific rules and ways they do things in this missions. They are really focusing on members in this mission. Were supposed to go to a members house every day except Sunday and Monday and talk with them and teach them basically how to share the gospel. Then, they president started doing interviews with all of the missionaries. And that was basically what we did the whole day. Then, today, the president came over again to finish the interviews. Then we went to a chapel and talked some more about specific things about our mission and how they want us to do things. Then all the trainers came and the president talked with all of us and all the trainers about the new training program. Then we had our transfer meeting. I'm serving in the same area where we went to church yesterday. Its in Pantitlan which I believe is in the more northern part of my mission. My companion is Elder Rogers. He's most recently from Globe, AZ but before that he lived in Chile for about 7 years. He seems pretty cool. I had met him yesterday at the church. He's pretty new. Hes only been here for 3 months. But he already new Spanish before from living in Chile. I think my Spanish is pretty well, I can usually understand what people are saying. Like at church yesterday, I understand almost all of what the speakers and the teachers said. My only problem is being able to speak back. I'm sure that will just come with time though. Its weird thinking that I'm in Mexico right now. I like it though. The weather here is super nice right now, or at least it has been since I got here. Hopefully it continues ha ha. Well I hope everything is going well, and that you have a great week. I love you. Elder Janda