7/2/12

This week was good. We have a new family that we're going to start teaching. There are three kids and the two parents. They seems really interested. The whole reason they got interested in the church was because of the youth programs. They want a church that will help they're kids grow up right, which is basically the whole purpose of all of our youth programs and everything haha, so I think they'll probably get baptized. I hope you all have fun up in Utah. Tell everyone I say hi and that I love them all. That's too bad about the forest fires. Especially since you can't have fireworks. haha Yeah they watch the world cup down here, but I haven't heard much about it. My companion won't be happy that Spain won. He said he wanted anyone to win but them haha. Yesterday was the elections here for president and everything. We've heard that Peña Nieto won, but we're not sure. My companion doesn't think the whole count has gone in yet. He didn't want Peña to win. Apparently he's really corrupt. That's about all that's going on here. I found in our apartment a bag with a ton of Liahonas in it, so I've been reading those. Every once in a while they have really good talks from past prophets or apostles. There was one by Heber J. Grant, and another by Bruce R. McConkie. Those are always cool to read. I read a really good talk from Bruce R. McConkie about the Atonement. It's called ''the Purifying Power of Gethsemane''. I hope you have a great week and have fun in Utah with everyone. I´m going to send another email with some pictures in it. I love you. Elder Janda

6/18/12

6/18/12
Happy Father's day! This week went alright. We need to find more people to
teach, but when it comes to knocking doors and contacting, my companion
always get lazy. I'm glad you had fun in Portland. That's great that you
are all going to go out with the missionaries. It's going to be a great
experience. I wish the bishop here would help us out some more. He's always
busy though. He doesn't get home til 8 or later every night from work, and
by then we usually are already teaching our last lesson of the day. Sounds
like everyone is doing great. Hopefully you and Mom can find some fun
things to do this week so you don't get too bored haha. This week, we went
to go visit one of the less actives in our ward, and usually when we go
teach, his wife isn't there, but this time she was. So we were talking to
her and she said that a lady that lives in the apartment across the hall
wanted us to go visit her, because she's been having trouble with alcohol
and wants to quit, but alcoholics anonymous didn't help her. So the next
day, we went and talked with her. It went really well. I think she'll
progress, and she said the guy she lives with is interested too. And that's
not even the best part. She's from Prague in the Czech Republic. It was
funny when we went and were teaching her, because we taught her in Spanish,
but you can tell that even though she speaks Spanish really well, it's not
her native language, but since neither of us speak Czech it was the best we
could do. Haha She has two little kids. A 7-year old boy and a 5-year old
girl. We didn't see her son, he was in the other room watching tv, but we
saw her daughter. She reminded me of a younger Courtney haha. She had the
similar facial characteristics and the same hair haha. It was weird. Well,
I hope you have a great week. I love you. Elder Janda

6/16/12

Finally I got the package you sent me haha. It was great, I've already read about all of the stories twice haha. Which grandma was it that we used to go visit in Blanding that always had those really good cookies that she kept in the freezer? I think it was Grandma Black, but I'm not sure. I love reading all their stories and everything. (Morgan asked for family history's so I made copies of what I had, if anyone has more he would love them.) Every time it makes me more excited to meet them someday. Haha
Good job killing the scorpion haha.  (I killed my first scorpion this week-YUCK!!!)
I can't wait to go up to Utah after my mission and get to visit everyone again. I decided that after my mission I'm going to go up and live with Grandma for a few weeks so she can teach me all about family history and everything.
Don't worry about Courtney, I'm sure she'll be fine. It'll be good for her to go to camp by herself, it'll help her to become more independent, and probably to make even more friends. (Court's first girl's camp without Mom, you all know she doesn't sleep anywhere without me.  That all ends this week., Pray for her and her leaders.)
This past week, the weather has been really cloudy and rainy. It was nice. It rained Friday a lot, then it sprinkled all day Saturday and on and off Sunday. It was a nice change, and it hasn't been as hot. 
We need to find more people to teach, but when it comes to knocking doors and contacting, my companion always get lazy.
That's great that you are all going to go out with the missionaries. (Eric and the bishopric)  It's going to be a great experience. I wish the bishop here would help us out some more. He's always busy though. He doesn't get home til 8 or later every night from work, and by then we usually are already teaching out last lesson of the day.
Sounds like everyone is doing great. Hopefully you and Mom can find some fun things to do this week so you don't get too bored haha.   (Kyle at EFY Court at girl's camp)
This week, we went to go visit one of the less actives in our ward, and usually when we go teach, his wife isn't there, but this time she was. So we were talking to her and she said that a lady that lives in the apartment across the hall wanted us to go visit her, because she's been having trouble with alcohol and wants to quit, but alcoholics anonymous didn't help her. So the next day, we went and talked with her. It went really well. I think she'll progress, and she said the guy she lives with is interested too. And that's not even the best part. She's from Prague in the Czech Republic. It was funny when we went and were teaching her, because we taught her in Spanish, but you can tell that even though she speaks Spanish really well, it's not her native language, but since neither of us speak Czech it was the best we could do. Haha She has two little kids. A 7-year old boy and a 5-year old girl. We didn't see her son, he was in the other room watching tv, but we saw her daughter. She reminded me of a younger courtney haha. She had the similar facial characteristics and the same hair haha. It was weird. (Eric's grandfather was born in Czech)
Well, I hope you have a great week. I love you. Elder Janda

Hola, this week was pretty good. We finally had the baptisms. We baptized two people, Fernando and Gloria, who have a little girl who is about 5 years old. They're pretty cool. My companion and I each baptized one of them. I baptized Fernando which was good because his name was a lot shorter that Gloria's haha. Tomorrow is the transfers, but we don't have changes, so they don't affect us. I haven't gotten the package yet, but I assume it's probably just at the offices. I'll have to ask someone who is going to the transfer meeting to check and bring it for me. I wish I could go travel around haha. It's kinda lame being stuck in the same square mile for 4 and a half months haha but oh well. After my mission I'll have plenty of time to travel and go on vacations. We were going to go to the centro again today as a district, but we didn't get permission. It's alright though, apparently Justin Beiber is having some free concert tonight in el zocalo which is the main part of el centro and there a ton of people there that have been waiting since yesterday haha. I think it's even funnier because I'm pretty sure Justin Beiber doesn't speak Spanish and none of them speak English. They don't even know what his songs say haha. Well, sounds like you had a great week. Good luck with Courtney's Ipod. If you come to el centro you could buy a stolen one super cheap haha. Well I love you and hope you have a great week. Elder Janda

6/3/12
This week was a little better. We have four people that could possibly get baptized this next week. I'm pretty sure two of them will, the other two will probably be the next week, but we'll see. Three of them have their interviews set for tomorrow, and and we're going to try to talk to the other to set up an interview tomorrow as well. Today, we went to the Centro. It was cool. My companion's brother is serving in the Mexico City East mission, so we met him there, and someone from one of his old wards went as well. She goes to there all the time, so she knew where everything was and how to get around and stuff. It was cool. We went to a bunch of used book stores. They had so many books it was crazy. My companion found all the volumes of Doctrine of Salvation for only 90 pesos. I found a really old Spanish hymnal from 1942 which has a bunch of hymns that aren't in the Spanish hymnal anymore. I also bought a new backpack for only 40 pesos. Those popscicle things that you bought that are made with fruit are just the popscicles that they make here. They're super good. If you found a Michoacana, they will have them. I think there's one on Arizona Ave somewhere haha. That's crazy that everyone is getting there mission calls. It'll be interesting to see where everyone goes. Good luck with Courtney's ipod haha. I love you, and I hope you have a great week. Elder Janda

5/27/12
Sounds like you're all doing really well. I wish I could go camping haha. This week we ate with the relief society president. She gave us first this sea food soup which was basically just shrimp and clams and some fish in broth. It was interesting, but good. The shrimp were still whole with the heads and the exoskeletons and everything, and the fish still had all the bones and some of the skin on it haha. Then she gave us some more shrimp that she cooked with peppers and cheese and some sauce and we made tacos out of it. It was good, but it made me want to go fishing haha. It's so weird to think that Courtney is going into high school. Selene, the older of the two girls that we baptized about a month and a half ago reminds me of her, but she's only 11 haha. It's going to be weird when I get home and she's 16 haha. I haven't gotten the package yet, but I assume it's probably just in the offices. I haven't had an excuse to go there in a while, so I haven't been able to check. This week, we had an open house at the chapel. It went alright. It was frustrating though, because nobody helped us plan it at all except the relief society president, and then we wanted to have a little refreshment or something after, so we were trying to figure out how we would do it so that the ward would pay for it, because apparently the system for getting money wasn't working or something, so we were talking with the bishop and the ward mission leader and everyone trying to figure it out and nobody had a resolution. We talked to the ward mission leader, and he told us the bishop said he would figure it out, so we called the bishop, and he said his counselor, Roman, would buy all the stuff, so we called him, and he said the ward mission leader was going to buy everything. In the end, one of the members ended up paying for everything. His family and the relief society president are really the only people that help us out when we have problems. Even though he doesn't have a job, and his car broke down twice this week. I hope after my mission that I can be as good of a member of the church as he is. The rest of the week was pretty frustrating as well, it seemed like nobody was home or everyone was busy all week. We taught about half as many lessons as we normally do. I hope this next week goes better. Well, I hope you have a great week. I love you. Elder Janda

5/21/12

This week was pretty good. We went to the temple on Tuesday morning. We didn't get to go inside, we just went to the distribution center because my companion needed more garments. It was cool getting to go see it and everything though. Other than that, this week was pretty average. Tell everyone I said hi. It's going to be weird when I get home, and Cameron and David and everyone are gonna be two years older, and Courtney and Marlise will be driving and dating and everything. Weird haha.
My area is most of my ward. The secretaries are also in my ward. The ward boundaries are the two of our areas together, but my area is about twice the size of theirs. Sounds like you're going to have a busy summer like always haha. I'm sure it'll be fun though. Well sounds like you all had a great week.
Haha you know me too well. Haha I didn't hardly tell anyone about my birthday. The only people that knew were those that asked. And most of them forgot haha. It was basically just a normal day, which was totally fine with me. haha
I emailed Katie last week too haha, I hadn't heard from her since probably a week or so after she told me she was dating someone else.
She emailed me back, but I haven't opened it yet to see what she said. I always email all of you guys first and then, if I have time, I email other people haha. 
I'm excited to come back and visit after too haha. Good thing Mitch's mission and my mission are so close to each other haha. I'm interested to see what his mission is like. Even though I'm only about 2 hours from Puebla I'm sure there are a lot of differences haha. Well I hope
you have a great week.
I love you. Elder Janda

Hola, no worries about last week. This past week was pretty good. I don't know any details about the volcano or anything, in fact you probably know more about it than I do haha. It hasn't effected us at all. We're pretty far away from it. Well, I had some very interesting things happen this week. On Friday, we went to go to an appointment with a lady that we had set up an appointment with while knocking doors. We got to her house and right away we knew something was up. When we got there before we even knocked or anything some guy outside working on a car told us to just go in and then we walk in and in her living room, there were about 8 or 9 people sitting in there with their Bibles and there were a bunch of chair set up in the room. It was weird haha, I thought she must have either invited some friends to come listen to us, or (more likely) she invited a bunch of people to come and listen to us get told off by some preacher. It ended up being neither. Apparently, on Fridays at 5, a bunch of people meet and this preacher comes and basically gives a sermon and they have a little Bible study class. It was actually pretty cool. We only stayed for a little bit because we had another appointment after, but we before we left we gave them all pamphlets. There ended up being 13 people there all from various Christian churches. We're going to go back this next week and hopefully the preacher will let us share a little message or at least some of the people read the pamphlets and will be interested in letting us come teach them. I guess we'll have to wait and see. We also had an interesting experience knocking doors. I don't remember which day it was, I want to say Wednesday, but who knows. Anyway, we were early for our lunch appointment, so we decided to just knock doors around the member's house that was going to feed us. We knocked this one door, and this old guy and his wife come out, so we start talking to them, trying to set up an appointment with them to come back sometime this week, but they just kept talking and not listening or accepting an appointment or anything. So then we decided to just give them a pamphlet and leave, so we gave the guy the restoration pamphlet, and on the cover, is a picture of Jesus carrying a lamb. When we gave the guy the pamphlet, apparently it reminded him of a song that he likes, so he decided to sing it to us. It was actually a pretty cool song, it was about the parable of the shepherd who left the 99 and went to go look for the 1 lost sheep. It was pretty funny. The song was 3 verses or so, luckily, he actually sang decently compared to most of the people here, I don't know why, but hardly anyone here can sing very well. The Zavala kids finally got baptized this week. Only the older two though, the mother of the other two came last week and decided that she didn't want their grandmother taking care of them anymore and took the kids. I got to baptized the older of the two, it was pretty funny, we ended up having to use cold water, because apparently nobody has keys to the boiler, and when I baptized her, she kind of freaked out and kicked her legs and so I had to baptize her again. Manuel finally found his daughter, but she still hasn't come home. She staying with some other lady, and apparently the kid's lawyers are trying to get the kid to be able to go free, so Manuel has been super busy fighting that and dealing with everything. We finally found him and got to teach him though. He's doing super well, considering everything he is going through, and we're going to try to baptize him this Sunday. I know he's ready, we just need to teach him a bit more. I got the package that you sent yesterday. It's great having the secretaries' in my ward. We have lunch appointments together, so I get to see them everyday, and whenever I get mail or anything they bring it to me that day instead of making me wait until I go to the areas or there is a big meeting or something like the elders in all the other areas. The package was perfect. I was cracking up reading some of the letters I got. Especially the comics from Canaan and Tyler, and hearing about Tyler's Easter Bunny Conspiracy Theory haha. Oh another funny thing that happened this week. On Saturday, we went to an appointment with some members, and after we taught a little message and were just about the leave, the brother made us help him learn about how to emigrate to Canada. For some reason, everyone here wants to go to Canada. He said they want to go because he doesn't like Mexico and he wants to experience the cold haha. The only problem was that the website was all in English, so he could read it, so he basically made us sit down and translate everything for him and help him learn how to emigrate to Canada haha. It was hilarious. Apparently his son wants to go to some music school in Toronto, Ontario and so he made us help him look up how to get a student visa to go study there haha. At one point, we told him it looked like it would be pretty difficult to emigrate because he would have to learn English or French, so then he was like well if I can't go to Canada, then Germany, and then started trying to look up information to go to Germany haha. Well, I hope you have a great week. Thank you for the package, and please convey my appreciation to all those who contributed as well. I love you, Elder Janda