Belgium Newscast with Missionaries

http://www.rtbf.be/video/detail_les-mormons-de-belgique?id=1773125

The following is a link to the news report that talks about our church.  He and his companion and the district leader (?) are in it.  It's in French so if you speak French you might understand what is being said.

Halloween in Belgium - Week 2

Bonjour! 

It was great to get all of your emails this week.  I have a little bit more time now that i'm out of the MTC to do emails.  Elder Bequette is chill so we generally take an hour and a half or 2 hours to do email :) But things are going really well here... I'll just start to tell you what is going on. 

So we currently have about 6 progressing investigators and we are finding new ones everyday.  There is a man named Boris who is having troubles getting legality here in Belgium so he is having to go back and forth between Brussels and Liège.  He is super nice and he has been taught by the missionaries before us and we are still teaching him. But he is ready to be baptized, and he really wants to be baptized.  So he told us this week that he is going to have all the legality figured out on the 16 of Nov.  So he said he wants to be baptized the week after that. So we have 1 baptism coming up soon. :)  We have another guy we just taught the first lesson to this week, he was a referral from the other Liege companionship, and he is super interested and looks promising.  His name is Patrick and he is from Africa I think.  We also went knocking doors the other night and we had some pretty good success (of course got a lot of people not interested).  We actually have a couple Rendez-vous set up for this week with a family and a few other people.  So hopefully this family still wants to talk to us by the end of this week.  The mission goal is to baptize a family before Christmas.  So things are going well here. Hopefully going to see a couple of baptisms in my first transfers. 

Funny story (well I have a ton I could tell you), but we were porting last night and I told the guy that we were missionaries for the church.... yada yada.. and he was like, "Is this a joke?" haha and my comp just started laughing cause I didn't realize that I had spoken part English and part French. So the guy thought that we were crazy Americans and just told us to go away. LOL :) 

We have family home evening on Monday nights, and that is when we carved pumpkins.  This lady made us pumpkin soup and it was so good. I had like 4 bowls and it was awesome.  She is cooking again tonight... crossing my fingers for no fruit ;) But yeah its family home evening with all the single people in the branch.  So like pretty much all the old people.  None of the young people come. But its all good.  

Our apartment is on the 10th floor so we have a really good view of parts of the city.  I took some photos from the apartment and posted them to FB.  I am in process of uploading photos since I finally guessed the password to the Churchs wifi.  But I am going to be uploading a lot more tonight when we go there.  But yeah, Liège is supposedly known for its bridges. So that blue glowing thing in the photo is the bridge.  All of the main bridges that cross the large river light up at nightime and its pretty sweet.  There are a lot better pictures on the internet. But we are going shopping today after we do email and stuff.  Im holding off until soldes to buy anything expensive.  But i'm just looking for stuff to buy when soldes happen (Suits ;) ).

 

http://www.colorkinetics.com/showcase/installs/PontDAtlas/

 

http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/bts/archives/transportation/10_TGV_Railway_Station/default.asp

Its pretty cold here but I have my softshell that I put over my suitcoat and I do pretty well. It was like -4 degrees C the other night and it wasn't bad. The branch presidents wife gave me a scarf to wear, but im buying some today to use so im giving it back to her sometime.  But yeah, it rains a lot here and it just sucks... its kinda dark and dreary all the time, but we make our own fun.  Haha we love to speak english with a French accent.  We do it at every bus stop :)  

But yeah, things are going well here, sounds like everything is going well at home too.  Look for some more photos later on and what not. I wish I could explain all the photos and what its about, but i guess thats what stories are for ;)  Oh the massive space ship looking thing, that is the train station.  Its giant! Just if you were confused. 

Sorry if I forgot something, its hard to type really fast on the french keyboard, but i'm getting better.  Oh and a little surprise... for Christmas, we usually do a pretty long call home... none of that 40 min deal.  Elder Bequette likes to use up about 2 hours or so for phone calls home and so does the other Liège companionship.  So I should be able to skype for a few hours on Christmas :)

Love,

Jason

Woot Woot! We're In Belgium!

Bonjour Tout Le Monde,

Well, as you all know, we're in Belgium.  Its crazy here, as is all of Europe. But no, its going good and im liking it here. It wasnt very strange to be in Europe again since i've been here already.  Im typing on a French keyboard, so I can only type like 20 WPM. UGH!!! I hate the French keyboard.  Anyways, We got to Paris and we got picked up by the mission President and did all that dealio stuff.... And then we went out to eat with them and stuff... And then we slept at the mission home for a night until transfer day. We woke up in the morning and went into Paris.  I got to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and walk around the streets of Paris for a while.  Then we went down to the church in downtown Paris and met up with our trainers.  I'm with Elder Bequette and he is super awesome!  We are both super chill and get along really well. He is from Maryland but he speaks French really well.  He is the reason I've survived my last few days here.  But we are assigned to Liege, Belgium.  Liege is one of the larger cities here.  There are 2 companionships here and we are Liege 1.  We actually went today for PDay, to the Battle of the Bulge area with a member from Liege 2.  He took us to see a bunch of the stuff from WW2 and it was sweet.  Its nice to finally be out in the real world and doing real missionary work.  Here, we have about 8 Investigators and they just had a couple baptisms the weekend before I got here.  But I got to stand in on the confirmation for a man named Dora this Sunday.  But the mission as a whole had 32 baptisms the week before I got here.  They say things are on fire right now in Europe. They say its probably the best time to come into the mission.  But Its going good here in Liege.  IT IS FREEZING. Haha its really cold.  Lots of humidity and so the cold gets colder.  It rained here the first 2 days I was here, so thank you so much for the umbrella Miss Shanna, saved my life.  But yeah we had church yesterday and its a fairly large branch.  I'm in the process of uploading photos still. I havent been able to find wifi when I have time to send stuff.  But I have some pretty cool photos :)

 
So comps train was late when he came to paris to pick me up, so when they announced who people were with and where people were going, I was all alone and dubbed "The Orphan"  Haha but he showed up some time later and it was all good.  We caught a train from Paris to Liege and its about a 2 hour train ride.  It was cool to see all the countryside of France and Belgium with the sunset.  We got here at about 9 pm.  The next day we just got started on the daily routine and here I am.  I am surprised at how much I can actually understand and speak.  My comp said that people were surprised at how well I spoke for only being here a couple days.  I still dont think I speak that well, but its coming pretty fast.  Its just super weird to walk out your door and just hear French everywhere.  Actually the Belge have a different accent and its sometimes hard to understand.  But the member that took us to the Battle of the Bulge place today was from France and I could understand him a lot better.  The real French speak faster, but its easier to understand.  But yeah, my trainer thinks I'll be able to understand most of the stuff happening after my first transfer, and I hope he's right.

Overall its good to be back in Europe and I love the culture here.  Everyone is nice here and I havent had any super mean people talk to me yet, lol.  We dont have a car but thats ok.  There is a pretty good bus system in Liege so that is nice.  We also have a big train station, so we take the train a lot (photos on the way).  Since Liege is fairly big, we have a GIANT shopping mall :) Its like 4 stories tall :)  and my comp says theres a ton of stores for suits, he needs one too, so we are waiting til soldes (sales in January) to pick some up.  But yeah, doing well.

Oh and I guess packages are fairly expensive to mail here... Comp got a package from parents that costed 70 bucks.. so maybe a flat rate international if you plan to mail something.  But yeah, doing well here, I wish that I could type faster so i could type more.  I'll try to improve my french keyboard skills.

PS - Thanks for all the stuff you gave me at the airport, it was so nice to read all the letters and stuff on the plane.  I ate some of the stuff but loved the "green" theme :)

Last Week at MTC

Hi Everyone! 

Well, its been a long (but seemingly short) journey here at the MTC.  I am super glad that I will be leaving this place and moving on to France.  Thank you everyone who wrote me letters over the weekend. I got about 9 letters total :) Thank you especially to both the Grandparents for sending me a letter! :) I loved each letter and they made me smile :)  

As you know, nothing too special happened again this week, but things are starting to calm down.  The teachers are getting more laxed and we are starting to get stuff ready to go for the long haul to Paris.  Its crazy how fast the time goes here, and i've been told that it goes even faster once you are in the field, so I guess we'll see.   

I'll be leaving the MTC at 1:30 PM for the airport with a scheduled flight from SLC to Paris (direct) leaving here at 4:50 PM.  I'm going to try to call most of you that I can.  Since mom and dad will be there, we may even be able to Facetime and you can talk to me then.  If not, I'm sorry, I wish that I could call everyone and talk to you, but they dont give us that much time.  I will be Skyping from France on Christmas, so make sure you're at my house or wherever so you can talk to me then.  I am sending a tape home this week for you guys to listen to, and yes it will have a lot of French on it (spoken) but you cant make fun of my crappy accent, ok? Deal.  

I'll be arriving in France at 11:00 AM their time (so like 4 AM here).  I am going to be snapping a ton of photos and will be posting most of them to Facebook once I have the chance so that everyone can see them.  I'll be uploading the same ones to my SkyDrive (for higher resolution) and you can access them from there, mom, if you want to use them somewhere else.  I can only email 6 photos at a time, so its faster to just upload as many as I want (at a time) to FB and then do a back-up to the SkyDrive (9 photos at a time, with high-res).  So look for some photos hopefully on Tuesday or Wednesday.  I'll be emailing you my address once I figure that stuff out and you guys can email me back or write me a letter or whatever you want to do.  

Other than that, nothing else too exciting going on here.  Still learning French and practicing it.  It will start to improve once I get in country and what not.   Glad to hear Dad's ankle is getting better really fast.  I hope you are still taking care of my Macbook as well as I did. No scratches, please!  

Yeah, just excited to get out of prison.  Looking forward to some casual Fall golf with members maybe? IDK, we'll see :) Hopefully someone there likes to play golf. Its time to get out and do something fun.  

Anyways, let me know if you want any other specific info before I go.  Last time I will be able to use the computer will be Thursday or Friday. ;) 

Love, Jason

 

New Missionary Announcement - Same Old MTC

Salut!  

Another week has come and gone. Time warp at the MTC has really taken hold and I'm assuming its only going to get faster once I hit the field... hopefully someone can confirm that. Nothing really exciting happened this week in my everyday life, but conference was a shocker, as many of you indicated in DearElders. We got to watch conference in the big devotional room in 19M and it was cool to watch it among all the missionaries.  When Pres Monson announced the new age limit, everyone in the audience went crazy.  The MTC Presidency didn't look shocked, assuming they already knew about this.  I could hear all the Sisters being like.... "Seriously? I could be home right now.." haha I was just laughing. I'm just glad that I wasn't born a year earlier, cause I would not have been ready for this a year ago.  Its exciting to hear that Michael and Hillary are putting their papers in asap and Syd is still contemplating...  

Some inside info from the MTC... they are starting to build some new buildings here, and renovating some.  We found out that since the Hong Kong treaty thingy is going to be up soon, China will either have to give Hong Kong up, or adopt their system, making it possible for missionaries to enter into China. So, supposedly, anyone from US going to china will be coming here, and they are supposedly getting ready to build a China MTC. Just the word on the street at the MTC. 

It was exciting to hear the new change and it opens the door for all the younger guys and girls.  Girls that leave now will still beat me home... which isn't cool... haha.  Overall, conference was pretty good.  That was probably the first time I have ever sat down and watched all 5 sessions actually paying attention. LOL ;)  But it was good. Saturday was probably the best of the days. I really enjoyed the priesthood session talks and the morning session. 

Today, we switched things up for P-day and it was really nice.  We got up at 6:30... then hung out with the district just chilling til like 7:20 ish. Then we got ready, ate breakfast, and went to the temple.  We decided not to do a  normal session and we did sealing today.  That was really really cool.  We got to be witnesses and children and it was awesome! I like it way more than a normal session :P  It is way shorter too! We got done an hour and a half earlier than the rest of the district so we got our laundry done and ate by the time they got back :) Then we took a 2 and a half hour nap :) so we're pretty happy right now. :)  

Language is still coming along, we have learned pretty much everything there is to know about the grammar, just mastering vocabulary and practicing.  Its crazy to think that the new missionaries coming in after January are going to have a 6 week language program! I would die if I had to leave a few weeks ago! I kinda want a native companion at first, but it is scary to think that I wouldn't be able to communicate for like 6 weeks... that would be hard. 

I accidentally sent the wrong video to you guys, haha.  The mic is located on the top of the camera and I put my finger over the mic on that video. The other one I didn't... sorry. But look forward to more videos when I get in France. Cause videos are always cool.   

But yeah, I also started packing my stuff up today and figuring out what I need and what I dont.  I finally tried on my UA stuff and found out that the pants dont work, so i'm sending those home.  Will you send me back the ones that are in my room that I set aside? Those ones fit me better and will be warmer. I guess I really didn't have that much stuff, just a lot of food... once I started digging through everything, my suitcase got a lot less packed and had more room after I took the food out.  These next 2 weeks are going to be a party in the residence. I have so much food and dr pepper left!  

I was thinking about sending the phone home, but you sounded like you didn't want to see  me in the airport?? Quote, "I'm worried that we may not see you in the airport..."  Really? Ouch.  HAHA, but seriously, you can't ditch out on me after you said you were going to be there.  I haven't told anyone and I'm holding up my end of the bargain, whats up with your end? Have you received my travel plans yet? I should be getting mine in a few days, so hopefully I can see what gate I will be at and what not and let you know. You better be there early too, cause I want to see you guys the whole time I can.. I dont want to be sitting at the gate, waiting, and finally see you 10 min before I have to board, how lame would that be?  I'll just keep the cell phone in case something goes wrong, just make sure you can activate it if I miss you or something. 

Nathan Merrill - Sorry man, I dont have MW3. I wish that I did! We'll be sure to play the latest and greatest when I get home! Thanks for sending me a DearElder! :) Look forward to some Parisian ties! :) :) :)  

Not sure what else to say... Same old same old at the MTC.... hasn't changed since I got here.  

Send me an email if I forgot something...

Love, Jason

New Residence Hall-BC Temple Dedication

Aight, 

So been a crazy week.... We were told on Sunday that we would be moving to a different residence hall on Thursday and then the ZL's came into our rooms today and said you have to be out of here by lights out tonight.... So we have like an hour to get packed and in the other residence hall before lights out tonight. What a mess and poor organization. Not impressed with our Branch Presidency. Anyways, other than that its been ok I guess.  Just a lot of stress with teaching 3 "investigators" and learning the language. I've really started to dig into the grammar and am learning all the tenses so that I dont have to talk in the present or past all the time.  But the language is coming, hopefully it will be easier as time goes on.

Last week was hard sitting in class knowing that Homecoming was going on. I could look at my watch and know exactly what was going on at home and it was awful.  But then our teacher Brother Smith (the one who just got back from France) made the weekend super fun and we talked a lot about things to do in France and he wore his French suit to class and told me where to pick one up.  Wow, those suits look awesome. Just gonna tell you now... I'm gonna pick up a couple when I get there :) Gonna start showing some real class.   

We had our whole district switched around this week, as part of the halfway mark.  Elder Ellis got put in as the new district leader (he is the one that loves apple, actually worked for apple before he came here) and I was happy about that.  He is this super fun person to be around and always liked to talk about Apple stuff and what not... sorta a friend.

Anyways, I've started to pull the "Jake" attitude out... I just laugh at a lot of things and try to be happy.  Me and my comp are doing pretty good at it. Us and another companionship (Elder Olsen & Elder Grant) are always together and laughing.

As for the camera... I'm not exactly positive what you meant by sending to multiple people all the time and not posting to FB??? I can send up to like 6 photos through email to 5 people.  But I can post as many photos at one time to FB as I want (much more convenient). I can also upload to my SkyDrive through Hotmail, so it saves a copy there as well.  I will probably backup all my photos through there as well.  

Uhm yeah, so for questions asked this week.... The kid standing with us in the map photo is Elder Brett Salisbury. He went to Logan High and he is going to the Tempe, Arizona misson.  The tall, dark kid standing with me in the hallway is Elder Brad Bennett.  He left for the Lyon, France mission about 3 weeks ago. He was in my French class for all 4 years and he was in my Zone. Crazy right?  My comp (Elder Randy Wright) is the one with the glasses on that I stood next to at the temple. He is going to Montreal, so he didn't come with us to San Fran. The other person I am standing next to at the temple is Elder Remmington Schultz.  Schultz is the one that golfed for BYU Hawaii and he is going to Paris as well.   

It sounds like Homecoming week was a success! We won the football game and, of course, Shanna's routine was the best.  I knew it would be!  And it sounds like she had a ton of fun on her day date, I wish I could go bungee jumping! Lucky! But the stepping in thorns doesn't sound so fun. Be careful! I wish I could have been there though! It was so much fun to go back to homecoming last year and I really wanted to be there this year. :( Oh well... I guess I'll have to wait a while.  

Oh and yes, we did get to watch the Brigham City Temple dedication. We went to the 3 PM time slot and it was pretty cool.. It was hard to see the places that we all walked together, brought back some homesickness, but its aight. I'm getting excited to get to France. I love hearing the stories from Bro. Smith. He is probably one of the coolest guys ever. Every time he tells a story it just makes me want to go to France. BTW, we are officially counting down with the word 3 weeks now. 3 weeks and 6 days exactly, which is crazy.... i'm gonna suck with the language for a little bit.

I went to the Travel Office today to ask about my International Driver's License... They said that France or Belgium doesn't require a IDL... just need your Utah drivers license.  If this isn't right, I can go talk to them again, or I can send you photos with signatures on the back. But thats just what they said... Oh and did you want me to give them a copy of my FBI clearance? Or did you already send that in? The sticky note on the copy said to give them a copy... and I was a little confused. 

If I left anything out, send me a quick reminder and I will look at it tomorrow.  

Love, Jason 

P.S. - Tell Alyssa Happy 16th Birthday! I wish I could be there to eat cake with you (make sure Shanna doesn't put a cup of salt in again). Hehe JK! :) You make the best cakes! 

San Francisco Trip!!

Bonjour Mes Amis! 

La samaine passe ete tres tres cool.  Le voyage a San Francisco ete le point fort de la samaine.  Il ete super cool regarder les tours dans la ville et les rues escarpe.  Je souhaite que vous auriez ete la avec moi.  Nous avons eu une experience fantastique! Nous avons vu le pont de Golden Gate et le Wharf.  Il ete tres cool regarder les expressions de les gens quand nous leur sommes passe.  Les gens n'ont regarde pas a notre visages, mais ils ont regarde a nos plaques.  Lorsque nous somes passe la ville chinois, nous tendions comme un pouce endolori.  Mais, vous ne comprenez pas probablement mes paroles en francais, alors je vais ecrire en Anglais pour vous.  

Well there you have it, some real French in an email. Hopefully google will do a good job for you guys, it usually messes it all up. 

This week was actually pretty cool, despite the fact that we had to return to the MTC.  The trip to San Fran was amazing and I would have to say its the best day at the MTC yet (cause we weren't at the MTC!) haha.  But I guess i'll just do the run through of the trip for you guys, it was quite a busy day, but we had tons of fun! 

So we woke up at 3 am and had to be at the travel office by 3:30 am, which was super early.  There were 11 of us who went, 3 from our district and 8 from the district down the hall, the district with Jason Ollverson in it (guy from Smithfield). Elder Barr was the team leader, since his name came before mine! (whew!).  We boarded a white school bus and we left the MTC (glorious sight!).   It took us about an hour to get to the airport and once we got there, we divided up the passports and went and got our boarding passes.  Security was deserted, as it should be at 4 am, but it was a whole new ball game going through security with so many layers and clothes on, definitely easier in street clothes.  We got to our terminal with about an hour til we boarded, so we conveniently watched some morning news, he he he :) I got to see what was happening in the world and it was good to watch some TV.  Anyways, we boarded our flight and went off to San Fran. We got in San Fran at about 7:20 ish and we had to call our driver to come pick us up. He told us to meet him at Courtyard 1, which there are no signs that guide you to it, and the MTC directions were off by a mile. We finally found courtyard 1 and he was there so we hopped in. Our driver is from the Phillipines and moved here when he was younger. Really really nice guy, he was super helpful all day long. It only took about 30 min to drive from the airport to downtown San Fran, and the first stop light we hit, we realized that we had a flat tire. So we all had to get out, the driver pulled over on the left side of the road (idk why) so we had to j-walk on the railway tracks on hop on the platform where you get off the trolley things (eventful start to a trip, sounds about right).  We walked down to the corner and stopped at a corner breakfast thing (similar to einsteins or something) and we had REAL food, it was amazing.  As we were walking back, some guy ran off the train (he had to be crazy or drunk) and was like "I know ya'll, ya'll are the Jehovah's Witnesses!"  We were like, "Nope!" and he was like "Dont tell me, the Mormons!"  haha it was really funny, the first hour in San Fran and we had already been called Jehovah's Witnesses.  Anyways, the driver couldn't get the tire fixed in time to get us to the consulate in time, so he hailed down 3 taxis for us (first time in a taxi) and sent us on our way while he fixed it. so we got to the consulate, and we walked in through the security thing and sat down. Our appointments started at 9 and went til 10:30. Well... we were done within a half hour with everyone. So we walked out of the consulate at around 9:40 ish. Our flight out of San Fran isn't until 4:30 pm. So we had about 6 hours to kill (Suhweeet). So we began our journey walking through the famous square that has all the expensive shops (Gucci, etc.) and Elder Schultz was having a hard time restraining himself ( he wears stuff like that).  so we walked through there for a bit and took some photos. Then we started out trek towards China Town which was about 5 blocks away. We got to China Town, and its pretty nasty, people hanging up halves of pigs and fish everywhere. We stuck out like sore thumbs though, you wouldn't believe how much people looked at us, I thought it was funny.  So we walked through Chinatown and headed down to the Wharf, we passed Lombard Street and I took a quick photo. We took a bunch of photos with Alcatraz in the background and then we went and ate at Boudin (bread shop on the warf) I had a good italien sub, but it wasn't as good as real european bread.  When we were standing in line, a guy walked right next to me (seriously a foot away) and stared at my nametag for at least 15 seconds. It was so funny, just the look on his face. Like, "Who are these guys in suits, and what does that say ?(its in French remember)" And one of the Elders always was like "how are you today?" when people looked at his tag, and it was weird, they were surprised that he could talk, hahaha they would just run away. so after we ate at Boudin, we trekked our way to Golden Gate (we calculated that we walked about 6 miles in the day total).  We started walking to golden gate and got about halfway when Elder Barr ( team leader with phone) finally realized that our driver had been calling us... haha not the brightest leader, but oh well.  Our driver had been waiting at the Consulate for the past 3 hours for us to come out. So we told him we were halfway to Golden Gate and he was like "Woah, you guys can really walk" ahah so he was really chill.  He came and picked us up and took us to the Golden Gate parking lot where we got out for a couple minutes and took some more photos. There was a Russian woman there and she asked "So is there a conference going on in San Fran today?" ( at the sight of 11 people in suits) and we were like "No, we're missionaries for the LDS church" She was like, "Oh cool...." and she walked away. hahaha it was funny.  But yeah, we just took some photos and got back in the van to go back to the airport, we got to the airport at about 3:15 so we had some time to kill, most of us fell asleep and the rest of us sent out postcards (sorry mom, I sent it to Shanna :) hehe). While we were waiting a couple of people came up to us and were like, "coming or going?" we were like, "Staying?" haha they felt bad that we had to go back to the MTC, as did we :( But yeah, so we got on the plane and I sat next to Elder Barr, I guess this was his first time on an airliner, wow... so he was asking it the food tray was for you to sleep on... I was like... nope, you put your food on it. It was really funny. But we arrived back in SLC and were planning on calling you guys, but our driver was already waiting for us, so we didn't get the chance. We did snag some Cafe Rio though :) and it was amazing. We ate it when we got back to the MTC (around 9 pm) and people were like "WHAT??? Where did you get that!!???" so we felt pretty special. But the cooler story is that while in line for it at SLC airport, a lady came up to us and was like, "Are you missionaries all together?" we replied, "yeah..." She handed us a $100 bill and told us that dinner was on her. We told her we couldn't accept money, so she got mad and shoved it in our pocket... We told her thank you so much and told her to wait so we could get her change... but she just ran away leaving us with $10 in change, we gave it to fast offerings.  But yeah it was an awesome trip, It was soooooo nice to get out of jail and back in the world. We stopped and listened to some Techno by a street performer in San Fran and it was sooo nice to hear real music (we cant have ANY music in the MTC now). 

But yeah, it was really fun, we had a blast (the other district is way more chill than our district). So I try and hang out with them when we go on Temple walks and stuff.  

Did you get the photo that had my flight itinerary on it? It was in our visa papers, so we knew when we would be leaving.  October 22nd at 5 pm.  The direct flight from SLC to Paris ( thats going to be a long long long flight....).  I'll probably be making a couple calls around 3 ish, hopefully, so make plans to answer cause I want someone to talk to.  

I'm going to be sending the other camera back this week, along with the voice recording all of us did. Make sure everyone has a chance to hear it and that everyone can respond.  Nothing too important on there, just us being lame at the MTC. hahaha... I'll be sending a couple more miscellaneous items within the package: check from Dr Nilson that i need in my bank account, camera, Nathan Merrills clothes that trev accidentally sent, and the really old camera that I wont need. I'll be uploading a couple more photos to FB and emailing to you guys, make sure that you forward them to other people that want to see them too. Also, I need my checks cashed from cleaning and that stuff if you already havent done that. I didn't see anything when I logged into my Zions account, but idk. I'm also sending thank you cards to Gerzewski's and to Dr Nilson, maybe you can drop it off at their house or something... I would appreciate it ( either that or email me their address).  

Anyways, we're learning a lot of French and starting to get a grasp on it (as you can tell from the first paragraph).  We can start to form our own sentences without having a script during our lessons. Something funny that happened this week, during TRC, Elder Ellis asked a woman "how do you feel about death" instead of "How do you feel God's love" hahah and he pointed to his chest and said heart. She was like, "I'm still alive" as she felt her pulse. It was really really funny, they were like "Omg no thats not what we meant" hahahaha. 

I woke up feeling pretty crappy. I only got about 4 hours of sleep and I woke up at 2 am and coulnd't fall back to sleep.  Just feel really tired at achy. Hopefully it will go away later in the week, but we'll see.  I also got my haircut today, which was quite the experience. The ladies there don't have souls. I walk in and she's like.. sit here. So i sat in the chair. She asks, how short do you want it. and i was like 3 with a comb on the sides and not too short on the top. she instantly grabs the buzzer and goes to town... I lost all my hair in under 7 minutes, but I was slightly impressed at how it was after. I was expecting some weird shape all over my head, but it wasn't bad.  Definitely give a 2 thumbs up for Natalie though, she still rocks at haircuts, wish she was still cutting my hair.  But yeah, the lady didn't say a word during the whole haircut and got mad at me for having gel in my hair.  hahahaa i just laughed as was thinking "Must not be any style in the MTC..." which there isn't.   

All in all it was a pretty good week, definitely wish I was out of here, but I still got 4 weeks and 6 days to go :( 

I hope you are all doing well! I love to hear from you, especially DearElders at night, they make me smile so much! Definitely the highlight of the day.  Loralee, I hope you are already starting to plan the Europe trip, cause I'm going to be spotting out all the cool places to go while in France. Definitely going to be sick :)  

Thanks everyone! Hopefully i'll here from you soon!

Jason 

PS - Congratulations Arica! I wish I was there to hold the baby girl! I guess i'll have to wait for 2 years :(