Jake trained by Mercenaries...

We got our weekly e-mail from Jake. First off we would like to thanks the Erickson's, Moss's and others who have supported Jake and thought of him. Now to give a little back ground on Jake's comment about being trained by Mercenaries. He has actually been trained by Mercenaries. A few years ago we flew some Professional Trackers in to teach some of us how to Man/Bigfoot track. Two of them are Special Ops Tracker/Counter Trackers among many other qualifications. Well one of them has also done Mercenary work all over the world. So that is why Jake always make that comment that we were trained by Mercenaries. Anyway here is his e-mail. Thanks again to everyone for your support it is greatly appreciated!! John...

hola ya'll! this wewek has been like all of the others. it seems like there all the same now. but this week something wierd happened. one of the cooks told me that i got a package and i was super pumped and i was so excited to open it on p day. but then later that day he hands me the package. it was a plastic bag with a box of alfajores, a box of bons bons, a t shirt and some wristbands. i was so confused. the chef said he found it out on the basketball court and it was just sitting there in the rain. when i looked closer i found a not that said " hope these goodies help" or something like that and at the bottom was signed the erickson family. how the heck did they get it here? if you can give me details that would be way nice. how is your thanksgiving today? mines going pretty good. tell all of the cousins and stuff i said hi and that i miss them all. have you told anyone the apostle story yet? oh and before i forget. in uruguay its the opposite. they dont recieve padded envelopes ONLY BOXES. i dont know why but hermana george told me. and it has to be less than $40. so just incase you want to send me stuff while im there (wink wink). and also todqay im supost to be getting a argentina fútbol jersy from my teacher. i hope he comes thru on it. it costs about 90 pesos. which is 20 bucks in american money. im excited. i wonder if i would get shot in uruguay for wearing it? and did i ever tell you the story of Elder Mcdaniels and Eldwer De hoyos? well they were in the last transfer and the very first time the went out proseylting they got off the bus and there was a big group of poeple and there was a dead body 20 feet in front of them. scary huh? good thing ive been trained by mercenaries.....they have some rules down here like never waer your back pack with both staps on your shoulders because it takes longer to take off during a robbery. fun stuff. and also we got a new area in prosyliting. its alot less busier than our last one but we still got 12 contacts and two men with their shirst off offered us some weed. great!!!! too bad i had to turn it down...just kidding. but it is a cool story though. and we almost died too because we were walking and we passed this dumpster full of bricks. but right as we passed some bricks were tossed out from above and missed my head by about a foot. that why the dumpster was there. i almost peed my pants. but it got my adrenaline going so i could be more energized. and also we invented a new verb in the spanish language. its "fiestar" it means to party. its so funny because it makes all of the teachers mad because its not a real word, but we think it is now. and we also conjugated it in all tenses and even in command form. its pretty much the best word ever. also thank the mosses for me because he gave me a letter and it was nice. did i also tell you that hermana flake told me to write her sister? im gonna marry her!!!! her name is crystal flake ;) ....well bye

Yo amo ustedes, jake........ or in other words ¡El Guapo!

Jake and Elder Christoferson...

I am a late but here is Jake's e-mail he sent on Thursday...

hola! there is a couple of things this letter is going to be about. one thing is that Elder Christoferson came here to the CCM. an actual apostle came here and talked with us. that day started out great but then at about 12 every body was cleaning and organizing. and everyone had the nervousness of an apostle comming here. and so we had to be in siuits all day and go up and down a certain flight of stairs just wierd stuff like that. but then dinner came and the missionaries had to eat outside because the dinning room was all fancied up. and it was yummy food. it was papas fritas and chicken. then the chef came out with ice cream. it was foodgasmic. so we had to be in the conference room at 5:45 and we just sat there and waited for the apostle and president jensen to come in. and the north americans had translators because they both speack perfect spanish. well when they came in everybady stood and he greated us and wanted everyone to come forward and shake his ahd and tell him where your from and where your going. so i was in line being all nervous when suddenly it was my turn. i went up and shook his had and elder Christoferson said "elder sa... sa..." and i responded "salmond like the fish" and it was probably the stupidest thing i could have ever said to a living apostle. then i said im from clearfield utah and what my mission was. the positive side is that he will never forget the kid who said "like the fish". so if you ever hear him say something like that in one of talks just to let you know its me. anyways they talked about missions of corse. but Elder Christoferson´s talk was amazing he talked about the Book of Mormon and how we should use it in teaching. it was in spanish but i still undertood what he was saying. after he was done we stood up and he left. and hermana aponte, who is my teacher and a translator that night, really wanted to shake the apostels hand but she didnnt get the chace. she was really devestated. so she went out in the hall and right as she did Elder christoferson came out of the office right next to her and he said hello and shook her hand. she was smiling and came back and told our district. she was as giddy as a school girl. i think she even cried a little too. and i told her never to wash that hand agian. it made me feel so good that she was able to meet an apostle . she deserved it. then we were preparing for our movie that night, which was the testimant movie and i think you should buy it, the apostle shouwed up with a present and gave it to hermana flake, a missionary in my district. when she opended it it was 3 boxes full of fancy alfajores!!!!!!!!! they were delicious. so that my cool story for this week. it was such an amazing and spiritual experience. just shakling his hand strengthened my tesimony. the other cool thing that i wanted to tell you is that i used the bidet as couple of weeks ago! it was scary at first but now im not going back to toilet paper ever agian. i wish i had more time to write my email so i could tell you about my prosltyting experience but i dont. cho...

Con amor, Jake =)

p.s. i need some u.s. stamps for the MTC and iternational ones for my actual mission. thanks and i also got 3 letters from you all. and bishop tompson sent me one too. tell him thanks for me. bye

Jake... a little rough but still doing well...

This is par for the course so we need to step up our prayers for Jake to make it easier when he has those tough days. We are going to send another package soon so that should hopefully help. So here is his update....

hola! im doing great. it sems that everyone here is dying of allergies and im not. and thank you for the packeage. i got the dice and all of the goddies inside of it too. it was all gone in a matter of days too. but being nice guy that i am i shared it too. your lucky it started to snow. because here it gets to be like 80 degrees and really humid. yesturday it said it was at 81% humidity. it sucked really bad. especially with the salmond sweat geans. and you wont believe this but im losing a ton of wieght. my watch and belt are alot losser and the white coller around my neck is too. and i can tell that im loosing wieght around my belly and my peck areas. and i really havent been doing much. i think ive been sweating it all out. and we got a new load of missionaries today!! its so funny to see their scared faces. and we only got 4 north americans and one of them is hispanic and already speacks spanish. so she dosent count. and they are putting the other 3 in our district which dosent make sence because we are 3 weeks in. i guess we will find out tomorrow. something cool happened yesturday. Brother Allen came in and talked with us missionaries. he is in charge of the whole missionary thing in the world. and hes also part of the area of the seventy. he gave a short 10 minuet talk about missionary work and his experiences. it was fantastic. it also made it so we could miss 3 hours of class too. he was really late so we waited for him in the sacrament room. this week though has been supwer tough though. i lost it about twice this week. because our teacher hermano cruz told my companion ship that we werent very good at spanish and he is so sad because he thinks he is a bad teacher. and for some reason i took it very personally. but im doing better now. but thats life here in the CCM. thats what its called here. you pronounce it like ce ce eme. thaqts how the spanish alphabet is. and right now in class we are learning how to do past tense conjegations and regular and irregular forms. its all cofusing. and last saturday we went out proyseliting again and we had better succsses. we contacted 5 people and we have 2 return apointmens. one appointment was from the guy in the store. he gave us his number too but told us that he was only free during saturday. so i think other missionaries might have to take that one. and the other appointment was odd. this lady stopped us ont the street and told us that we needed to follow her back to her casa. and along the way there she told use she had a pamphlet about joseph smith that she eanted to give back so we were puzzled. when we reached the end of our zone we stopped and she went and got the pamphlet and from what im guessing is that she thought of it like a library book. so she returned it and told us that she would like to meet us next week at that smae spot. wierd huh? and another story is that we went up to this guy and started a conversations and he ended up sayind "you guys have poor spanish, is there a pamphlet i can read". so we gave him it and he seemed really happy. so we did our job. and my companion Elder Webster, and yes hes the guy from st. george that you know, anyways he went up to a guy and started to talk to him and then he asked for his name and the guy said por que? which means why? and Elder webstet thought that was his name. so he continued and said " thats a good name" "por que would you like to hear more about eternal families". the guy just walked away. and elder webster could nt figure it out be i was laughing so hard. he also called our teacher fat once too. that was also hilarious. well i wish i had more time but i gotta go!!

con amor!...jake

Jake's first letter...

Well we got our first letter from Jake. Here you go. He keeps asking us in his letters to send more news. I think he misses the everyday conversations we use to have with just the everyday stuff. So we are going to just start including more of that. Well here is the letter...

Jake out in the town...

The latest update from Jake...

yes i have been getting the emails but i havent figured how to do it all yet. so sorry if im confusing. alright so i told you last time that i went prosyliting an saturday and it was amazing. me and our district went to the middle of bunos aries and it was diffrent. it was half city and half resident. and some of the houses were really nice even compared to the standards of the US. but it would be 4 ghetto houses then a nice one and then 4 more ghetto ones. anyways we went and we talked to this little old lady and she went off in spanish and the only part that i understood was that "we sucked at spanish and no one will understand us" so that was amazing. then see said "me gusta" and pointed at her dog then she left. so in total we talked to 4 people and two were in english and one of them invited us to go back on saturday. we go prosyling form11:30 to 5. it was so cool. argentina is beautiful. i cant believe were are going back out in 2 days. and the food situation is diffrent here. its not all you can eat except the fruit. but they give you enough food. and its alot diffrent too. its alot more bland so i use salt and pepper alot. and im getting used to the heat. so halloween was really good then? thats great. the oldest group of misionaries are going out tomorrow and there is only going be 13 poeple here. lonely huh? any new news latetly? im starting to get cabin fever here too. and its only been 2 weeks. im starting to understand even more spanish. its amazing if the lord is involved with something how great things happen. oh and by the wqy i traded my english hymn book to one of my latino companions and he gave me his spanish one with a sweet cover on it. and we also traded a tie with each other. hes like a little child. thats how small he is. all my classes are in spanish now. the teachers are refusing to speak english anymore. well hermana aponte is a little more flexable but hermano cruz is all spanish with mabey 2 sentences of english. it makes it so i have to learn spanish even faster now. they just handed me a package and its dated the 22 of october so it takes about 20 days to get here. so thats good to know. oh and if i may ask you to send me some ear plugs that would be awesome. because i snore soooooooo loud that my companions cant sleep and they are getting mad at me (in a joking way). so that would be great if you could but if you dont then i understand. oh and hermana flake, a missionary in our district, told me to write her sister and i think i will. it will be funny. ill probably creep her out. it will be hilarious. well until next thursday. cho...