Ankeny

What's up friends and fam, I'm writing to you from my new home, Ankeny, Iowa! (Every time I try and type it, auto correct tries to change it to Kenya.. yeah not that cool.) But it Ankeny is a great place. It's basically the "Eagle" of Iowa it's a really wealthy suburb of Des Monies. I was kind of sad when I found out cause I thought Ankeny was like only rich neighborhoods and all that jazz. But luckily our area actually has a ton of North Des Monies in it so it's super ghetto there. So I'm way happy ;)

My new comp is Elder McCain, he came out with my son Elder Esplin so I'm "Breaking" him. He's a stud! He's a really solid missionary and he loves the work. I'm really excited work with him. It's funny he's like 6'5 so when we show up at all the tiny African doors they are always like "Ohhh Mormons, always so tall! Like giants!" it's hilarious. 

So I don't have a ton of stuff to write about because I've only been in this area a few days but I'll just make a list of some cool stuff that's happened. 

- We set a date with our Investigator Madi! She's awesome she's 15 and wants to be baptized soooo bad! I've only met her once but I just love her to death, she's so brave. Her mom does not want her to get baptized at all but we are working with members in the ward to help fellowship the mom. We had a super intense lesson with her after Church when we extended her baptismal date and I was so drained afterward, it was arguably one of the most spiritual lessons I've had on my Mission so far. 

- My investigator in CR Jasmine is all set to be baptized on Oct. 29th! So I should be able to go back and be there to baptize her I'm way pumped!!

- We taught this crazy drunk guy who was in the Military and the night before, he had to clowns try and break in his house and he shot one of them in the arm! Iowa is insane.

- Back in CR Esplin and I met a less active who wanted us too help him move (classic.) and he showed us his Machete he keeps by his bed and his loaded pistols he keeps under his pillow. "It's all just for protection though don't worry!"

Well that's all I got guys. I hope you all have a great week. PLEASE PRAY FOR MADI'S MOM TO SOFTEN HER HEART! 

I love you guys! 

Jake

#ClownSpotted

This past week was pretty solid, kind of slow but it picked up towards the end. The week before transfers always seems to drag on way long especially if you pretty much know you're leaving. But Elder Esplin and I have been staying pretty motivated and we got a lot of good work done this week. We have been working with Jasmine and her Aunt Arielle and Arielle's three kids. They are looking real good to be baptized on October 29, they have been trying really hard to come to Church but their car is broken down and they don't have a ton of money. All of that combined with the fact we aren't allowed to ask members to give people rides to Church, makes it tough to get them to Sacrament meeting. But they should be coming this weekend. I'll probably have to find a way to come back for their baptism though because transfers are Thursday! My boy Elder Eslpin is all done training and it's time for him to leave the nest! (technically it's more like me leaving him in the nest) but I'm going to miss my son and this awesome area if I do end up getting the boot. 

This past weekend was Stake Conference which was pretty awesome. All the Elders from our zone needed a place to stay cause the ones up north live like 3 hours away and they had to be at both sessions so we had 11 Elders in our house for a night... It was a party. I'll just leave it at that. 

President and Sister Badger came and spoke at our Stake Conference and it was awesome! They spoke a lot about member Missionary work which was really awesome. Then the Stake Prez got up and spoke about Parenting and Marriage and all that stuff. I'm glad I'm a missionary. 

So this past week we have been teaching all of our "Chicago Refugees" and they keep telling us to be careful about the "Clowns" and we've been like "What the heck, why is everyone talking about clowns?" Turns out, (I don't know if this is going on in the west at all, I guess it started in Chicago) there are people dressing up as clowns and going out and attacking people at night and there's been people getting attacked in Cedar Rapids as well. So our AP's texted us and told us to be careful and if we see any clowns we are supposed to text them #ClownSpotted it's pretty funny. It's kind of messed up I know, but I just get a kick out of how crazy people around here are. 

Alright well as all of our investigators would say "I'm finna dip out now".

Love you guys

My Chain is too Loose, My Pants are too Tight....

What's up fam, this week has kind of been all over the place (fifteen miles between Cedar Rapids and Ely to be exact) but it's been really good. I feel like last Monday was forever ago, we started this week out living in Ely cause of the mini Armageddon happening in Cedar Rapids, but now we are back in our house safe and sound. So the flood ended up not being quite as bad as predicted the city built a ton of dykes and sand barriers to try and keep the water back and it worked pretty well actually. It was a pretty well done project for being run and funded by the Government... anyways the dykes kept the water away from our street but a few of them broke and a lot of people got flooded on both sides of the river which was sad. We'll probably spend a ton of time doing service the next few week helping get rid of sand bags and muck out peoples house. But luckily our house wasn't even touched #blessings. 

So we spent the first half of the week living with the Checketts family out in Ely, Iowa. Ely is kind of like the Eagle of Cedar Rapids. Except imagine Eagle is a 25 minute drive from Boise and you can only get there via freeway or dirt back roads that are underwater. But it's super nice, the Checketts are from Nampa and turns out my sister knows their son, the Church is such a small world. But we lived there till Thursday, then we got the okay to move back in to our house. It was fun while it lasted though, it was nice living in a first world neighborhood for a bit. But Missionary work isn't so hot there ;)

So we actually got to do Missionary stuff this week which was fun, we didn't have the truck so we broke out the bikes for the first time in my mission lol. I never realized how big of a lie the whole "Iowa is flat" thing is until we had to ride our crappy bikes up the massive hills in CR. But it was fun, I felt like I finally go the full missionary experience of having to ride a bike in the rain. My "Hipster missionary" pants as Prez. Badger calls them got pretty wrecked though lol. We had a great week, we have been teaching this household of ladies that are all related in different ways. One of them is Jasmine (the one who lost her leg) we started teaching her aunt Arielle and Arielle's 5 kids 3 of which are above the age of 8! :) We also had our new Investigator Deloras come and watch GC at the Church on Sunday morning it was sick, we set a date with her and she's excited to learn more. Also Bro. Dawson is getting interviewed by President Badger this weekend FINALLY. But yeah it twas a good week I suppose. 

Oh and GC don't  even get me started on GC that stuff was BOMB. Dallin H. Oaks is the man, Member Missionary work lets go fam! Get Pumped! 

I really loved every talk so I'm just goona leave it at that, I liked GC a lot.

Alright love you guys!

Craziest Week of My Life

Alright this week was straight up insane. By far the craziest week of my mission, probably my life too. There's so many things that happened this week I probably won't be able to write about them all without this turning into a novel. But I'll try and sum up everything that has happened this week accurately. I'm just goona jump into it. 

#1 

So on Tuesday it was a pretty fun day we worked a ton and found a really solid guy named Nathan Gapo, he's from the Congo. We are going to teach him with our Recent Convert Tresure who's also from the Congo and speaks French fluently. I'm excite, Trey is a great member missionary, and he's only been a member since June! But anyways we got a call from a member who is from Sierra Leon, he invited us over to have African food... Safe to say we were kind of nervous, I personally felt kind of cheated I thought I was safe getting called to Iowa. But since I've been in CR the only people I talk to are Africans it's crazy haha. But we had a nice meal of Cassava Leaves (Peanut Butter, Potato Leaves, Goat, Pork, Jalapenos, Habaneros, Sardines, Bones, Some kind of sticks and Rice. We ate it all though, I'm not sure how I just took a bite and drank their African Soda and repeated about 30x. Heavenly Father Knows how to challenge us :) 

#2

So Elder Madsen and I were on exchanges and we were teaching our new Investigator Tauheed. He is a cool kid, he's in college and plays basketball. We also found out he deals. Like drugs. So we were teaching the Plan of Salvation and he kept getting texts and stuff and was super distracted. So he gets up and excuses himself for a second and starts rummaging around with this plastic bag and he sits back down and says "Y'all ain't cops righ?" and I'm just like "haha..no?..." and he's like "Y'all act like it some times...haha just playin mahn!" and I'm just like nervous laughing looking at Madsen like what the heck is going on. Then his friend came in and took the baggie and left "Something" on the counter for him. So I got to see a live drug deal up close and personal this week! Stay tuned next to hear about our Word of Wisdom lesson this Tuesday at 3:00! :)

#3

So I don't know if word travels all the way to the West but Cedar Rapids is actually flooding. So we have been evacuated out of our area and are living south of Cedar Rapids in a town called Ely. So the rest of this transfer will be interesting to say the least. The members are really cool, they just moved from Nampa and they are super familiar with Eagle. It's kind of like being home it's weird. But we spent the last few days Sandbagging houses and doing service for people in our neighborhood. The River is supposed to be 31 ft higher than what it normally holds, so that means our house will probably have about 5 ft of standing water in it when it crests tomorrow morning. So yeah it should be crazy but we are safe! Our city was on ABC breaking news though! 

#4

Ok last Crazy thing, we got in a car wreck. Elder Madsen and I were up front and Esplin and Jackson were in the back. But we were at an intersection and we had the green and a guy ran a red light going like 40 and we T-boned him and he spun out and hit another lady who was turning so he took out 3 cars in all. The ZL's truck is wrecked pretty bad. But we're happy he didn't T-bone us or else Jackson and I might have gotten pretty messed up lol. But once again we're safe and grateful no one was seriously hurt.

So that's all the crazy stories in short form. We had Zone Conference this week that was pretty cool! Our investigator Alex is still wanting to be baptized, but his brother is trying to block it so we will have to figure things out with him. 

I hope you all have a great and safe week! Love you guys!

Hey Man, you gonna get baptized?

Hey Everyone! 

This past week has been a roller coaster but it ended on a high note so I'm grateful for that! We have been meeting with some pretty solid people recently and they are all progressing very nicely. The week started off pretty rough, I got pretty sick and the Mission Nurse made me go into the urgent care and I found out I had another sinus infection like the 3rd one I've had on the mish lol. Then the Walmart Pharmacy refused to give me the prescription. So for a majority of the week I was pretty dead. But we still got out and worked and we received a ton of blessings from it! We taught our investigator Jasmine and committed her sister to baptism as well. She lives with her 3 sisters and all their kids in this tiny apartment, hopefully we will be teaching all of the sisters and their kids that are 8 or older. 

The biggest blessing we recieved this week was our new investigator Alex! Alex is 12 and he's the cousin of one of our Recent Converts Ettiene. He's a way nice kid, he asked his cousin to bring him to Church so he could learn more. After sacrament I went up and started talking to him, and I knew we had to invite him to baptism so I was just like "Hey Man you goona get baptized?!" and he was like "Haha...yeah!!" so we are going to teach him and his date is for October 8th :) 

Along with that it was a pretty good week, we found some new people that seem genuinely interested which is cool. I don't really have any funny stories from the HOUSE because whenever we're home I'm usually asleep within 5 minutes haha. 

I love you guys! I just realized I opened my call over a year ago! That threw me threw a loop haha. God Bless guys!

Jake 

The Legs Feed The Wolf

This week was a pretty good week for us here in CR. We have been working with a lot of people this week who actually want to learn and change their lives which is always exciting! We have been walking a ton now that we are back in a car share, and despite the fact that walking takes up so much time and can be super annoying it's actually really a useful finding tool. We always have a ton more lessons and new investigators when we walk and just street contact people. 

The work last week was good we found like 5 solid people (2 were found by the Sisters, filthy poachers) but I'm excited to work with all of them. My favorite people to teach are Jasmine and Ashondi. Jasmine is a lady from Chicago who drives taxis, she lost her leg back when she lived in the hood. She's super humble and she has a bunch of cute little kids. Ashondi is another "Chicago Refugee" and she's really open and loves the BOM and is really awesome about keeping in contact with us. We also met this 17 year old girl named Elizabeth, her and her family are from Tanzania! They have like 11 kids in their family and her parents only speak Curundi. So we will hopefully be using our recent convert Louis to translate and work with them. He doesn't speak great English either though lol...

We have baptismal dates for Elizabeth and another lady named Emoni for October 8th. So please pray that they'll make their dates! 

Our Recent Covert Kayla brought her friend to Church yesterday and she said she's really impressed with all the changes Kayla has made in her life and now she wants to be tought as well!

Well nothing too funny has happened lately. But here's a few stories.

#1 So I gave a talk on Tithing the other day in Church, and to be honest I didn't prepare very well. I wrote the thing in like 2 minutes and printed it off at the Public Library. So I'm up there at the pulpit and I go to turn the page and I realize the stupid printer printed the first two pages twice. So I was missing like 10 minutes worth of stuff. So I basically just improvised the whole thing. I think it went pretty well though. 

#2 So yesterday in Church we also had to teach a lesson in Primary. The STL's also had to teach part of the lesson. Funny thing about the STL's everything is always a competition for them. So they were talking all week about how their lesson was going to be way better than ours yada yada yada. So they get up and their teaching these jr. primary kids about the flipping tree of life and stuff! And I'm just like cmon man it's so dry in here! These kids don't care about that! So we got up and talked about Nehpi and handed out treats and coloring sheets. Safe to say we won. Having so many nieces and Nephews really pays off in teaching little kids haha. 

Well that's all I got fam. I love you guys. God Bless.

Bruh, You Wanna Peg

This past week was pretty busy which is always good! We were able to get a lot of work done and we found a few people that seem to be pretty solid, so things are starting to look up! We found quite a few people that have a ton of potential and are willing to schedule set appointments and not be super flakey which is always awesome. 

This was our first week without a car in about 7 weeks so it was a painful transition back lol, we walked probaly a good 20 miles this week. But I actually enjoy walking sometimes and having time to myself to just walk and think. It's also great for finding new people because everyone is out walking around. A perfect example of this is our new Investigator David. we were walking home Sunday night and we walked passed this Mexican restaurant and this guy came walking out and I just said Hi to him and he offered us a peppermint so we just started walking down the side of this road with him. The whole time we taught about the Restoration and how God has restored the Priesthood to the Earth, and David just ate it all up! He was a super nice and humble guy, then things got interesting. So we're finishing up the lesson with David, just grabbing his contact information and stuff. Then I see this long haired hippy guy j-walking across the street towards us (So since I've been on my Mission I can spot the bashers a mile away and I could tell from the start this guy was finna bash.) anyways this guy jumps into the conversation and tries to give David a card for his church and all this stuff. He introduced himself as a "Youth Pastor" (sounds like a cheap ripoff of Young Men's President if you ask me) for some random Grace Junkie church. But anways he basically tries to get David to come to his Church instead and tells him that we don't believe in Christ. But David basically told him to swerve to it was awesome, he told us he call us and gave us the bro handshake ;). But the poor pastor tried to bash and made himself look pretty silly. 

Altogether it was a fun week, we got a new ZL living with us, Elder Madsen he's really cool! So the house is lit every night now haha. I'll send some videos of our nightly adventures. 

some funny things that happened this week:

#1 We were walking after we talked to the basher and this guy is on a bike across the street and yells "Jehovah's Witnesses go home!" and I yell back "We're Not Jehovah's we're Mormons!" . I thought it'd be funny if we go talk to him. So we walk across the street and he is with some random lady and they see us coming and the guy is like "Oh (expletive) we gotta go" and the lady hops on his pegs and they rode off lol. It was pretty funny.

#2 We were walking around these ghetto apartments and we told these little kids we had to go cause we had to walk a long way. Then this little kid who can't be older then seven is sitting on his bike and he just looks at me and says "Bruh you wanna peg?" I started laughing so hard, the kid's bike was meant for like a 3 year old, that would of been a funny sight to see. 

Well I love you all, have a good week! Shout out to all my friends in the MTC!

Jake