May 24, 2010

Dear Family,

This week has been pretty great! I love Hermana Ellsworth. She is a great missionary and a fantastic trainer. I feel like I might actually have a chance at learning this language now that I have her. She is SOOOOOOOO good at spanish, and she is a great teacher! She is helping learn how to be an effective missionary. She is very devoted to the work and she is very smart. We get along great and I am so happy that I have this chance to be her companion! I just hope that she doesn't get transfered in 2 weeks, because I would love to at least get another transfer with her since we only have 2 weeks left in this transfer. It would kinda suck to only have half a tranfer with her, but I have no idea what will happen. We never do. And she may need a change from this area she has been here for like 10 months and that means that I would have to take over the area. She is really alot like me in many ways. We are both really driven and she really loves school just like me. She is very into politics in her life at home. She is going into Political Science and possibly wants to do law school after she graduates. She attends BYU, and has one year left until she graduates. She is very focused and a very hard worker and very dedicated. She has really helped me alot with the language since I have been here.

I also LOVE this area! It is really small. The branch is smaller than Tampa. I feel like a more integral part of the work here. The members are great and the work is fun. I am enjoying learning more and more spanish. I really love spanish when I get to speak it a bit. It is really fun and as I understand more and more as it comes together kinda like a puzzle. The grammer is the most challenging. Pray for me to get it! :)

The problem is this. I have BED BUGS!!!! No joke. It has been a big problem for us this week. I noticed that on my sheets I was seeing little blood spots and then long blood streaks. It really grossed me out so I started to search my body for bites, but I could only find the plethora of mosquito bites that we obtain every day. But it was getting worse and worse each night. Then I started to notice blood smears on the outside of my pjs. So, I figured that I had bugs in my bed and that I was smashing them as I slept at night. So, we pulled up my mattress and all over on the box spring and on the bottom of the mattress were little black bugs. SUPER GROSS!!!!! We pulled the mattresses out on Saturday night and slept in the family room..... probably making the problem worse by spreading it....but we had no other options. Then yesterday at church we asked a really smart lady in the branch about it and she said that it perfectly fits the description of the bed bugs called chin-chas but that those bugs really bite you alot and it makes it really hard to sleep. However, we really have not had much of a problem with getting bitten. (at least that we know of...and I am guessing that we would know) So it seems as though the Lord has been protecting us from the bites of these annoying little bugs and I am very grateful for that! VERY GRATEFUL! The lady said that they are very hard to get rid of and that you had to throw away the beds and move to another apartment. Well, that is completely out of our control and I doubt that it will happen. So, pray for us about this. Who knows what is going to happen. It is really weird and making it hard for us kinda. Especially with all of the problems that Hermana Ellsworth has already had with her other comp, and then her leaving, and then all the members asking about it.
Anyways, everything is great and the gospel is true. Bugs are annoying. The members here are great! Except in this branch we only have like 5 worthy preisthood holders, so pray for us to find more family men for the church! I love a recent convert named Luz...she is awesome and comes tracting with us alot. She is from Honduras ans she is hilarious! I also love Hermana Montanez, who is a member from Puerto Rico and she says and does the most hilarious things! She is about 55 or 60 I would guess and she is a blast to do splits with. I am loving life and learning alot.

Love Forever, Jenna

May 17, 2010

My Dearest Family, So this week was kinda hard in one way and really AMAZING in another. The great thing was that Elder Anderson came to talk to us on Saturday....it was truly amazing and I goty to shake his hand. HE was great and it was really uplifting. I really enjoyed it. The hard thing is that I am getting transfered today, away from My Hermanas and away from Tampa. It is right in the middle of this transfer so it is weird and unexpected. There was a sister who had to go home for some reason I think it was depression of some sort. Anyways, she had to leave, so Thursday night we got a call from Pres. and he said that I would be transfered down to Bradenton today and serving with Sister Ellsworth. I was so sad to be leaving my hermanas right in the middle of the transfer like this. It was really hard.

On Saturday I got to meet all the Spanish Sisters at the conference with Elder Anderson. They ALL seem super awesome! I met Sister Ellsworth and she seemed really great. So, it made me even more excited. And she trained Sister Kortsen and she told me that she owes all her spanish to Sis Ellsworth because she is so great at it... and also that she (Sis Ellsworth) is really fun. And so now I am already with Sis Ellsworth, and she was crying because her companion had to leave... but now we are here e-mailing and I am so happy to be with her...and hopefully cheer her up in some way. It has to be hard having a comp go home.... So anyways, hopefully this will be great! And in addition, I will get to drive by the OCEAN today!!!!! Yippee!!!! I have not seen it once since I have been here in Tampa. That will be great!

So that is my week in a nut shell....pretty cool how the Lord helps us and uses our weaknesses to make us stronger. Oh, and one more thing.....there was a very spiritual moment with Elder Anderson when he was bearing his testimony of our Savior and of the Atomement, and since I was front row and center... he was looking straight at me the entire time and we made eye contact and it was aweseome.... But I want to share with you all that I KNOW that our Savior lives....and I KNOW that we can all have a very personal relationship with Him. It is up to us. VERY PERSONAL. I am just beginning to understand the magnitude of this statement, but I hope that you all can understand it too, and work your very hardest to learn more and work at this. It really is CRUCIAL to our eternal salvation.

I love you all! Love Forever, Jenna