One year down...

Year Mark ...  December 5, 2011

 Dear Family and Friends,

So there was alot of things that happened this week. so first off, i have now been on my mission for over a year. It is crazy to think how fast it has flown by. So on the year mark The 3 of us elders that were in the MTC together all went out to chilis, it was really fun. i always love being with just them 2. Then also this week we had a culture night. so we got tickets to go to an operreta, whatever that meens. So we went there and the title was the Bat. So it wasnt bad. . . if you understood everything. They were singing in opera style and i couldnt understand it. it was boring at some parts but it was pretty good. Also this week we were able to set a baptismal date with a lady that was taught a long time ago but came back from a long trip in canada and we met with her and set a baptismal date for the 14th of january. So we are excited for that. Me and my comp are hoping we will stay together another transfer but he has been in the area for 6 transfers now. So we will see. everything else seems to be going good. Church has gone pretty well, i am in a smaller branch and we only have 2 hours of church. besides that not to much going on. I hope all of you are having a good week. i love you

 

Love Jordan

Thanksgiving (November 28, 2011)

Dear family and friends,

I hope everyone had a great thanks giving. I know i did. My district was able to go to presidents house and spend the day there. It was great we played a game or two and then we drew letters and we went around and had to say what we were thankful for that started with that letter. so my letter was H, so i said i was thankful for a home because we just got kicked out of ours. it made everyone laughed. We all had to bring something to eat also so my comp and i decided to make no bake cookies, well we didnt have tin foil so we decided to make a no bake cake. We also triple sized the batch and just put it in a pan. That thing weighed over 10 pounds. it was so heavy. i called it the brick when i brought it to presidents house.  Everything else this week has been a little slow. We have been calling people and trying to meet with people but they dont answer or just cant meet. I Did happen to find the old olympic swimming pool here in moscow. Its one metro stop away from where i live and i really wanted to go swimming. Hope everything for everyone is going good. i love you all.

Love Jordan

Thrown out...(November 21, 2011)

Hey Family and Friends,

This week was pretty crazy. so we had some good lessons and hoping some good things out of it. But we had to move out of our apartment this week and so we packed most of our stuff and moved it out we only had a few things left to pack and take to our new apartment. So we were heading back to our apartment after we had interveiws with president and come home and find most of our stuff out in the hall way. We open up the door and there is our land lady yelling at the office elders and then starts yelling at us. I think i got lucky that my head was hurting pretty bad so i didnt start talking back to her. she was way mad because she said we were suppose to be moved out but we werent when really we paid for the apartment till the end of the month. So it was a big mess and she started making us clean her dishes that we already cleaned and everything it was crazy. We finally got all our stuff and it was about 10:30 at night and then we had a lot of stuff to carry over a mile away. but luckly about 3 minutes after we started carrying everything we found a random shopping cart so we were able to put everything in there and push that to our new apartment. That was a big blessing just finding that cart to push everything. Now we are in our new apartment it is alot nicer and way more convenient for us. I hope everything is going great for all of you and that you all have a good thanks giving. i love you all and thank you for everything.

Love Jordan

It's Dine (November 13, 2011)

Hello Family and Friends,

Not to much exciting here happend this week we had some good meetings and i have been speaking alot more russian which i enjoy. We have this one girl that loves to come to english club and speak english. She isnt the best at it but she tries and she comes to family nights and everything. So before i came she was taught the 1st lesson so we met with her and wanted to teach her the 2nd lesson and she was weirded out that we wanted to have a meeting with her and she said she read stuff on the internet and i was like ok what did you read? and she brought up all the things that are possible to read bad about us. so i spent and hour trying to answer every one of her questions the best i could in russian. and she seemed like she was some what fine with what we had to say but then met with some other missionaries and i guess did the same thing and freaked out a little bit on them. Then she said she was going to come to church but she didnt come so we are a little bummed about it. So last week our english club was cancelled until further notice because a girl called president and said that one of the missionaries was trying to rape a girl at english club but actually they told a girl to go hide so they could have a meeting with her once this other girl left but the one girl flipped out and then some not nice things were said so they cancelled it for a while. it sucks but there is nothing we can do. Well that is about it for thiss week i hope all of you have a good week and a good thanksgiving. i love you all.

Love Jordan

Night in Kiev (November 7, 2011)

Dear Family and Friends,

So this week has been kind of crazy. so i got transfered on thursday and spent the night not in my apartment and then friday i met up with elder wininger and goddard becaus we had to stay at the office elders because we flew out saturday morning to go to kiev for our visa trip. So we were on the plane and were flying when they said that they couldnt land in kiev so they had to turn down to a city called donyetsk. so we flew down there and had to wait there for a few hours while they figured everything out. us three were so excited we thought we were going to get to stay in that city and go see a different city of ukraine. but then they flew us back to kiev. so we get to kiev and we were trying to make our flight back to moscow and the gates were closed when we got there so we had to go find another flight but they didnt have any that night. so we called our office elders and they found us a flight for sunday morning so we had to find a hotel. So we found a hotel and it was my first ever hotel rental ever and i didnt even have to be over 21. so we got our room and then went and got some food because we hadnt eaten all day. then we got on the plane sunday morning and tried to make it back to the first ever stake conference in the moscow stake. the took us to the office and we saw the last half of conference and all the area presidency was there and we hadnt saved in a few days so all of us had some facial hair and probably didnt look the cleanest for the area presidency. but it was fun. So tomorrow will be my first day in my new area and i am really excited for that. i got a new companion named elder whitimore he is from texas. i like him alot. well i hope you guys have a good week. i love you all

Love Jordan

клин  (October 31,  2011)

Family and friends, this week was a good week. So i went on a split with elder palmer and we went to a city and hour outside of the city we are in so we were 2 hours outside of moscow, its called kleen. It was really fun we went and spent the day there and we had a kid take us around and show us some sites and showed us around. Then he left and we decided to walk around and contact a little bit before we needed to go back and i had to go to the bathroom really bad, so palmer was like we could probably find some trees over that way so we started walking that way and we see a guy and he is moving a rock so palmer asks him if he needs help and he was like no what orginazation are you with? and we say the church and he asks us where we are from and we say america and he starts speeking to us in english and we got to know him a little bit and he gave us his number and invited us over when we go back there. it was way cool to find him because i just had to go to the bathroom. then earlier up there we were walking on the train tracks and they police saw us and came and told us to come over to them and and they say let us see your passport and documents. so i decided to play dumb and act like i know 0 russian and we just acted like idiots and they just got fed up with us and and told us to leave. it was way funny. We have transfers this week and i will be getting trasnfered. i am going to miss this area i love the ward. there are alot of cool people up here too. well i think that is about it for the week. it was a good week. i hope everything is good with you guys and hope you have a good week.

Love Jordan

MRI (October 24, 2011)

Hello Family and Friends, it wasnt to long ago since i wrote you but i got a story for you guys. so thursday there is a guy that is doing a remodle for a members apartment and we were able to go help him and then we asked him if we could come talk to him again some time and he was like sure. so we went over and talked to him on thursday and opened up to us alot. he wants to stop smoking but is addicted. But we talked a little about why we are here and asked him if he would be interested in listening and we can try to help him stop smoking. he said yeah call me anytime. so that was good we now have someone we can meet with and talk with.

Ok so everyone knows i have been having headaches and i have had them for about 3 weeks now. So they sad that i needed to get an MRI. so saturday i went in to get my MRI and it was an experience. so first the gave me a hospital dress. which i really wanted to keep i tried to take it after i used it but they wouldnt let me. But the laid me down on the bed and then got me situated then put like a Halo mask on me and lifted me up and slip me back in. but as they were sliding me back, turns out my shoulders were a little bit so i was packed into the MRI. I had no idea ho long i was going to be in there for but i was in there for over an hour and i couldnt move or do anything. But i found out that everything is good inside my head but we still dont know why i am having headaches. so i have more test this week. That is about it i guess. i hope all of you have a good week. i love you

Love Jordan

Change (October 19, 2011)

Family and Friends.

This week was a little crazy, we didnt really have very many meetings but we ended up doing alot of service. we are helping everyone get ready for the winter. So we piled wood and clean up around their place and fix things, it has been fun. We have been having alot of problem with our shower and our land lady calls us mad saying that we need to do something about it or not shower. I guess water leaks to the people underneath us. They should have fixed it when they redid our whole apartment. We had a mission conference yesterday and they decided to change our p-day, so i will be writing on mondays now. So next monday i will be on. they decided it would be better so that we work all week working towards sunday and getting people there on sundays. so we will see how it goes. Crazy things happen around our apartment this week. One night our phone didnt really work and we work at midnight because we heard what we thought were gun shots, but turns out they were fireworks, and then our phone said that we missed about 20 calls and after the fireworks we heard people racing in their cars close to our place and then some people yelling and screaming. kind of crazy things like that have been happening almost everynight. Well i hope all of you are having a good week. for some reason i am way excited for halloween, i just want to do something for it. have a good week i love you

Love Jordan

Conference (October 12, 2011)

Family and Friends,

Another week gone and as of yesterday we are back into our apartment! I havent slept on a real bed for over 2 weeks. The apartment looks alot better but is still pretty ghetto. So this last weekend we got to watch conference which was really good. the missionaries in my area all went to the branch building and watched it together, so it was pretty good. That took up alot of our time this weekend though. The girl who was just baptized told the sisters that all her friends want to come to church now. so that is awesome that through her maybe many more will be brought into the church. The rest of the week not much else happened i did go bargaining for some winter boots because i have walked right out of my shoes that i have been wearing but 10 months everyday all day, yeah i think i got some good use out of them. I got the boots for about 30 dollars off so that was good i only paid about 55 dollars, not bad when everyone wanted double that. I think that is about it for this week hope all of you are doing good. i love you all. 

Love Jordan.

Baptism  (October 5, 2011)

Family and Friends,

This week was good. We had that baptism from the sisters which the girl asked me to baptize her so it was awesome. Her name is ksusha. She is awesome, she use to be athiest and then found the book of mormon when we were chalk drawing and now she is a champ at the gosple. But The day of the baptism i had to go early and clean out the font and make sure everything was good. So we cleaned it out and everything was good but then we tried draining the dirty water and it wouldnt drain. we were freaking out and we didnt know what to do because we didnt want dirty water it was gross. So we said a prayer and still nothing. We didnt know what to do then sisters came and on suggested that we pray and we were like we already did then she does this thing with her hand and tells it to work and then it starts draining. We were blown away and didnt know what to think. But we were just happy the dirty water was gone. so we started filling it up and turns out that in our building we dont have hot water. so my comp elder hayes goes and finds all the pots and pans to start boiling water to pour into the font. Well the water was still way cold when we got in. it took my breath away and she said she had a hard time breathing when she came out of the water. Then that night we weent back home and i was exhausted, and i had no idea why? I had no energy and didnt want to do anything and all we did that day was the baptism and went out to eat and watched legacy with the girl. I was the most tired i have been on my mission that day. We were trying to figure out why i was so tired and we decided that i was exhausted from the spirit because that day was probably the most spiritual experience i have had in my life. It was a good day. Then I was able to be apart of giving her the gift of the holy ghost, it was the 2nd counselor and then the guy who gave her the holy ghost and then me and that was it. i think people were kind of blown away that i was baptising her and was part of that. but oh well. Everything else is going great here. i hope all of you are having a good week. i love you all

Love Jordan

Splat  (September 28, 2011)

Hello friends and Family,

This week has been great! to start off, we have been staying at the other elders apartment because ours a mess and we cant really sleep there. so whenever we come over to their apartment they always throw water balloons at us so we were there waiting for them to come for lunch and we decided to throw some at them. but we only had 2 balloons. so we both had one. but they decided they would just walk and dodge the ballloons, well that didnt work for them. my comp throws his and completely misses. and i am looking for the other guy and he is walking and is almost under a little part of the building, so i lobbed it (might i add we are 7 stories up) and it is falling and i was aiming just to hit right around him to get him wet. NOPE it hit him right dead on the head! it was such a perfect throw. it was so funny. 

 This Saturday there will be a baptism from the sisters in our district and i will be the one baptizing her. i am way excited for that. The girl is just the most perfect investigator ever. We havent had much luck with finding people but this week we have been doing alot of service so that is good too i guess. 

This past sunday i had to give a talk. it was on service. so as you all know me and know how i love to write papers and talks i waiting till the last minute to do it. so saturday night i was up late wrighting it. then sunday morning i translated it, with a little help. then i decided once i got to church i had a few scriptures i wanted to read. so i decided to call one of the other missionaries up and read it for me and to thank him for his service. everyone started laughing it was pretty funny. its alot harder to give a talk in a different language and trying to read what you wrote, so at times i waqs just winging it but everyone liked it. 

So that is the week and i hope all of you have a good week. i love you all.

Love Jordan