I´m really following Mosiah 4:9 right now

Hello everyone what is going on. Another week has come and gone as well as another transfer as I said last week. So to give you all a heads-up on what happened. I got transferred from Sapé and I am in a brand new OLD area called Altiplano... AGAIN! Seriously now I know that there is something for me to do in this area because this is the third time that I have come back to this rich piece of land. Pun intended on the rich part as I have said in the past, this area is the richest area that we have in the mission and is always a challenge, but I have never passed here without leaving converts. This will probably be my last area in the mission.

Also another thing that happened is my President has a lot of confidence in me and has called me to be a District Leader. Well it´s been a very interesting experience until now. I certaintly am more stressed than I have been. But things should go well. I´ll do my best with this.

So I also received a new companion, his name is Elder Oliveira. He has been in the mission, about as long as I have, he got here just a transfer after I did in the mission. He´s a Brazilian. He is a super excited missionary but at times he can´t keep his mouth shut. But He´s great, he gives a lot of excitment, so it´s fun to get out and work with him. We were able to teach a lot of people this week, but we ended up just cutting all of them because none wanted us to visit anymore. But we do have someone preparing to be baptized this week. He will be baptized most likely this week. We´ll be seeing him on Wednesday. But that´s about it for the week. I got a lot of stuff to do, for this week. A lot of divisions and blitzes are coming up this week. I´m going to be all over the place. But that´s all. Until next week!

Elder Jacklin

Sorry for no photos, I didn´t take any this week.

Another Week and another Transfer Done!

What a week, this week was different from my last week. I don´t know if I said in my last email, but we had a change in our area. Unfortunately my companion was sent home last Monday. It was sad, because we tried everything to get him to stay, but we then realized that it was a good thing for him to go home. So to answer any questions about what happened after, I didn´t get a new companion, I got two new companions. So with only one week left in the transfer they just decided to leave me with the other two missionaries in our house, so now I am companions with Elder Degel and Elder Affonso. Or at least until tomorrow, because we have transfers. Why President wants to do it on a Tuesday, no one really knows and a lot of us aren´t very happy about it, because they won´t tell us where we are going and who our companions are, and they want all of us to go with our bags whether we are being transferred or not. But as we all know God works in mysterious ways and we should just follow what he says, even if sometimes we don´t understand why. (Mosiah 4:9).

But anyways let´s get down to the week.

So because of our late Elder Larson, we are now, or were in a trio. Which means we combined my work and the work of Elder Affonso and Degel. So we were running all over the place, the one thing though that I like about trios is that you feel really really confident with three people. So we were just going all out this week. We were able to teach a lot of people, but they turned out to be soft in the end, so we cut them all.

L and S are still going great though, they have been giving us references of people they knew back when they were going to God´s Assembly, they really want us to convert everyone at that church for some reason. But we are still having troubles converting them. They are dead set on having there other family member here for their baptism and he won´t be coming until the end of the month. So we are just going to wait until then with them.

Other than that, there wasn´t much else that happened during the week. Well that´s all for this transfer, we are excited, stressed, and even more stressed for the next one, because we have no idea what is happening. But I´ll let you all know next week. That´s all until next week!

Elder Jacklin

Well let´s get on with the new Week!

Well another week has come and gone. The time is going by so fast, I can´t believe that I only have less than 3 months left until I get home.

So let´s get on to the week shall we.

So we did a lot of traveling this week. We had interviews with our President this week. He is a super great man, a very, very small great man. At some points I can´t take talking to him seriously at times because he is like half my size. But I can definetely see that his spirit is very large, it only took a few seconds to see that he receives revelation from God. He´s such a great person.

So we also had Zone Conference this week, it´s been a while. But that was really great, there were some great trainings and we got to meet the family of our new President. They are all great, President as well has a two year old daughter who is the cutests thing I have ever seen! My goodness and she is very small, she barely reaches my knee, just out of my eyesight! I can´t see her when she gets up close to me. Unless if I look down. So I have to be extra careful when I am around the president´s family.

But other than that, we were able to finally get an answer from L and S, we will be talking with them about all the details for their baptism this coming week. So we will finally be able to get them baptized, but other than them we have been trying to find some other people that are interested but our luck isn´t doing so well for this week, but next week will be better. L is wrapping up referrals for us that we will be visiting this week. She is such a great person and even though her baptism is taking a long time, she is a faithful follower of the gospel.

Well that´s about all for this week. I´ll be sending some photos for these past few weeks. But hope all of you are doing great, have a fantastic week and until the next letter!

Elder Jacklin

Well let´s get on with the new Week!

Another Week, more Stories

Another week has come and gone. The time is just flying by so fast, I have so many things that I need to do and I am getting so stressed out. So this week was not as grand as the other weeks we have had here but let us get into it.

So let us start off with what happened with Elder Larson this week. So we had a guy come into our house to fix our hot water so that we will not freeze to death everytime we take a shower. He fixed the water, but it still has a bit of a problem, you have to know how to turn it on, and we were trying to figure out how to do that, and Elder Larson kept walking from the bathroom to the electric box, with wet feet, on a tile floor. So I will let you guys think a little bit on what might have happened. So his feet were wet, he was walking really fast, and was not paying very much attention to the floor... Yeah he fell. It was like watching one of those cartoons when the person slips on a banana. Luckily he did not fall on his head, he did hurt his back though, which made the week a relaxed week for him, and stressed for us. But worry not, he is all better now. But he was in his bed the whole week which means that I was doing a lot of divisions with the other two missionaries. So all of the work that I will talk about has to do with me and Elder Degel and Affonso.

But moving on from that. So a little sad thing that happened this week was that our baptism fell. They still want to be baptized. But L wanted to tell her brother about her baptism and when he heard about it, he put a bunch of stuff inside her head that she should wait a while before she gets baptized. She was ready, but now she wants to wait now because she wants her brother to come and see it, but he lives really far away and we have no idea when his next visit is going to be, but we will talk to her this week about marking for Saturday, and we will try and get her brother to come this Saturday.

So this Saturday we found some new people to teach. Wow, I have never seen so many receptive people in my life. This is really going to excite me for this next week when we can get out and talk to more of these people. We found a lot of people that said they would go to church, but in the end did not come. But we will go in the faith and mark a lot of people this week.

Well, that is all that I have for the week. Not much else happened, but we will have a better week next week. But I hope that everyone has a good week. Love you all! Until the next one!

Elder Jacklin

Another Week, Came and is Gone like the Wind!

Hello once again everyone, one week has come and gone and I am actually really surprised at how fast it went. This week was a more relaxed week, we didn´t have much going on. We did go running around the District this week. We had to go do a bunch of baptismal interviews this week for our district. But anyways, let´s get started for the week.

So as always the start of the week we had our Zone Counsel. That went well, we had to do something very interesting at the counsel as well. We had to make a very special video for Presidente and Sister Dias. As some of you might not know, but this was their last week here in the mission. Yep, we have a new President now, Presidente Albuquerque. That name is just fun to say. He got here on Saturday, we still haven´t had any contact with him yet, so it kind of feels like that Presidente Dias still hasn´t left yet. But he left Sunday morning. I´m going to miss him a lot. But it should be good with this new one.

So now let´s get on to the investigators for this week. So this week we were not able to baptize S and L this week. They had to travel on Saturday and wouldn´t be able to. But they asked us if it could be this next week, so we are going to plan for that day. But they are doing really well. They are loving the church a lot and want to follow the path of the Gospel.

So we didn´t have much more with investigators this week. We were able to find some new people to teach this week. We will be visiting with them this next week. A lot of them seem like they will progress really well. We have two men that have already accepted to be baptized, we just need to return to their houses and teach them and mark a date. Our Branch President is pushing us with bribes (promotions) and such for us to baptize 6 men in the next two weeks. So we are going to try our best for that. It looks pretty hard, but I feel that we can accomplish it.

Well, that´s about it for the week. I hope everyone is doing well back home. Have a great week everyone! Love you all! Until the next one!

Elder Jacklin

The Weather Forcast for this Week was... Water from Baptisms and Fire from the Holy Ghost

Wow what another fantastic week here in Sape! We had so many great things happen, many miracles, highlights, and other great stuff happened this week.

So let~s get started shall we.

So let~s start on Tuesday. So Tuesday we had our Zone Counsel again. This counsel was finally a counsel for once. We were able to all give ideas on how we could help the Zone. After all of our talking and discussion we came to the conclusion that we should do a Zone Fast every week. So that started on Tuesday, and I have to say that it helped out a lot at least in our area. We were able to help 3 investigators that were super hard to teach. They all had hard hearts on the doctrine, but that day they were all different, every single one of them said that for some reason that day, they had a change of attitude. Which the interesting part is, they said that it happened right around the time that we all started our fasts. So it was awesome to gain another testimony of just how powerful fasts really are. We were so grateful for that experience because 2 of these people went to church this week, one that has been marked for this Saturday. Actually both of them are marked for this Saturday.

So on Wednesday we had more of a relaxed day. We didn~t have to run around as much as we did on Tuesday. But we passed in L again that day. He is getting better with smoking, but still hasn~t quit. We are trying to help him, but he has a lack of faith and is being very difficult. Which ended up on Friday with us cutting him, because he said that he wanted to stop, but that he will start smoking again after we leave. So we won~t be visiting him anymore.

We have been visiting with L and S more often, they are progressing really well. S is one of these difficult people that I was talking about earlier, but after working with them this week we were finally able to mark their baptisms for this Saturday. They liked the church a lot in the past, it~s just that they faulted an answer to be baptized, but after they read Mosiah 18 and went to church this week, they said that they had found their answers and that they wanted to be baptized this weekend. So we are super excited for that. They are such great people. S is a very funny and humble person and L is the same. So we are very happy that they want to progress, because we know that they will add a great force to the church here in Sape.

Another cool thing that happened this week was. Is that we had an integration night. We normally have these every week. This one was about marriage. That~s a fantastic subject to make a missionary trunky right!... Ok but I wasn~t trunky. But it was fun, there were a lot of members there and non-members as well and everyone had a good time. We talked a lot, had food, and Elder Larson danced with a cup of Coca Cola because he said it was the only thing he could love in the mission... yeah... I got a video of him doing that. But we~ll see if I post it or not. Yeah, I don~t think I will...yet.

But anyways. Moving on.

So now onto the best thing that happened this week. We had a BAPTISM on Saturday! A older woman and her granddaughter have been receiving the lessons from the missionaries and have been coming to church for about a month and were finally baptized. The name of the older lady is S and her granddaughter~s name is L. What was also great is their entire family came to watch the baptism, now everyone in the family wants to be baptized as well. So it was a super great experience, and they were confirmed on Sunday as well as another person as well, who was baptized about a month ago. Her name is G. So yeah we baptized this week!!!

So this week was a fantastic week. It has been a while since I have had a week like this. I love it here in Sape. It~s such a great place, and I am super blessed to be able to serve here. Well that about raps everything up for the week. I love all of you. I hope you all have a fantastic week and are happy! Until next week everyone!

Elder Jacklin

Rainy week with lots of work!!!

What a Week!

Wow, I have never felt so tired in all of my mission. Branchs are really hard to work with, its because everyone is new in the church and we have to do everything, but it was still an amazing week.

So to start things off, we had our Zone Meeting this week. Were thinking about calling the zone the Zone of Giants or something like that, because we have the three tallest Elders in the mission, which is first, me of course, then Elder Kump, that other really tall american, and then our Zone Leader Elder Medeiros. So we literally have high spirits here in our Zone if you get my point. Well we do have high spirits as well. But we have a super awesome Zone and it is going to be super hyped this transfer.

So I thought that I would take this moment really fast to talk a little bit about my area, since I didnt really say anything last week. So for those of you who dont know, Sape is a city in the middle of our mission. Like it is dead-center in the mission. Its not a big city like Joao Pessoa or Campina Grande, but its more of a country city, or its more of a town really. It is full of super receptive people. The people here are super awesome, it is really easy to start up a conversation with someone here. Its a town that needs the gospel of Jesus Christ in it. This place is where all the missionaries in the mission dream of going and I am very lucky to be able to be here. This will probably be my last area in the mission, I dont know, but I will enjoy my time here in the area.

So some things that happened this week, lets count them down.

So we are teaching a lot of people right now. So many people, we are running around everywhere, it is super tiring. One person that we are teaching right now. He has a problem with smoking. His name is L. We are trying to help him stop with his addiction, but he loves the church, he wants to follow the teachings of the church, but he is a little lazy in going and keeping committments. But we will try to work with that.

Next we have two boys that we are working with right now. We might be cutting them this week. They were baptized, but were not confirmed, and we have been trying to get them to come to chruch so we can confirm them, but they keep on trying to get away from us everytime we visit. So well see what happens with them.

We are teaching a recent-convert right now. His name is F Jr. He was baptized in the church, but he hasnt been coming for a little while. He believes that the church is the only true church here on the earth, but he still wants to go to the other church that he was visiting before. So we are trying to get him to pray about what church he needs to go to and which one he needs to leave behind. So we will see what will happen with him this week.

So... my goodness there are a lot of people. So someone I was able to meet on Saturday is actually two people. Lu and S. So these people have been really interested in the church. Unfortunately they didnt get out to church yesterday, because of the rain we have been having, but they are amazing. Lu has so many questions and it is super awesome to talk with her and see what the knowledge of the gospel does to her. We were able to teach the Plan of Salvation to her as well as part of the Ordinances and she loved the fact that she can help her ancestors with their ordinances. I think she will progress immensely.

One more person we got to meet this week is a woman named N. She is super interested in the church and was able to visit yesterday. She loved it a lot. She was so excited to see the church and she told us that she will come more to visit and learn. She is probably going to progress a lot in the gospel.

So another cool thing that happend this week was that I had the opportunity on my first sunday in the branch to give a talk. My talk was on Sacrifices and the blessings that come from them, and how it is necessary for us to make sacrifices, because if we dont have the will to make sacrifices we wont be able to show our faith to Christ. If we were not required to make sacrifices, we would not be able to have the faith to enter into the kingdom of God. So that is just a little bit about my talk. But yeah, so that was a cool experience. We had 12 investigators at church which was another win as well.

So that about raps up with my investigators and these are the ones that I was able to visit this week. But there are still a lot more out there in the area that I need to visit. But it is going to be hyped this next week!

So I also will take the time to talk a little more in depth about my companion. So as you all know from my last email, his name is Elder Larson. He has 9 months in the mission. Hes one of the Elders that I have always wanted to be companions with. He and I have many similar attributes, we love to do many of the same things. Hes a super funny guy and is always super hyper and exciting. We laugh a lot here in the house. We also have two other Elders with us here in our area. Elder Alfonso, who has 21 months in the mission. He will probably end his mission here in Sape, he only has one more transfer after this one. He is super awesome and a legend in the mission, so I am super excited to be with him. Then we have my nephew Elder Degel he is the son of my brother Elder Hansen who was also trained by Elder Goodwin. Elder Degel only has 5 months in the mission, but the way he works makes him look like he has way more time than that. He is super awesome as well. All of us in the house have the same likes, so we all get along pretty well. This will probably be the best house I have passed in the mission.

Well everyone, that about does it for the week. I dont have much else to say. I love you all and hope you all have a great week! Until next week everyone! Falou!

Elder Jacklin

Saudades Prosind... Bem Vindos Sapé!!!

Hello everyone it was an amazing week this week. We were able to do so much work this past week. Allow me to share a few honorable moments!

So this week we were able to do a lot of work with a less active that we are teaching, or that Elder Poyfair is teaching, because I don´t know if you guys noticed, but I got transferred to a new area, but I will get to that in a minute. This less active has been less active for 7 years and no one has been able to get him to come back to church, but after working with him for a while we were able to get him to return, now they will start to work on teaching this less active´s wife and see if they can baptize her.

So next highlight we have is we had a party in the ward and we were able to find a lot of new investigators there. It was a fun activity and it was great way to end my service in the ward. It was really hard to leave Prosind, I am going to miss the members a lot. But I am happy to be here in Sapé now. With my new companion Elder Larson. He´s a stud and I am going to enjoy being his companion. Elder Poyfair lives in the same stake as him, so I already know a lot about him. So I´m super excited for this transfer. But that´s all I have for this week. I unfortunately don´t have any new pictures to post, or because I forgot my camera at my new apartment. But that´s all. Have a great week everyone!

Elder Jacklin

This Week was Full!

Wow, what a tiring week. I don´t think I have ever had such a rushed week, in my entire mission! I´ve never seen my planner full of visits everyday, there wasn´t a single white spot on my schedule. We were running all over the place. Things have been going really well for us this transfer. We have been receiving so much help from the members and everything is going fantastic.

So to start things off, we were able to receive many new references this week from the members. As I said before they are helping out a lot. We have been receiving at least 3 new references per day this week, and we have found a lot of new people to teach because of this. We have met up with a woman, who is a less active member. She loves the church, but her only reason for leaving was because she got a little lazy with going, like she lost the will to go to church. But after talking with her a little we are starting to get her to come back. We are also wanting to talk to her family because 3 of her kids have the age for baptism, they are all super great people. I think we will move forward with them.

We had a visit with F and he was talking with his brother who is living in Canada. It was really interesting because he was speaking in english. He talked a lot about the Money Mafia or something like that which made absolutely no sense to me. But the talk with F went well. He is starting to get very lazy in doing commitments. We might be cutting him this week, because this is the third time he has said he was going to come to church and it is the third time that he hasn´t come. So we´ll see what happens there.

This week we had a Family Home Evening with my mom of the ward. We call her mom because she is always calling us her kids. But it went really well. We were able to leave a good message with some of her neighbors and get to know them a little better. We left a message that talked about the many distractions in life, and how that the gospel of Christ is the only way we can return to live with our Heavenly Father. They liked it a lot and we will be planning more of these Family Home Evenings more in our weeks to come. Or week to come because transfers are happening this next week. So we will see if I leave or stay.

Another cool thing that happened this week, was that my newly baptized convert I blessed the Sacrament yesterday. He is progressing so well and I love watching his progress. That was a super awesome moment.

But yep, that´s all for the week. Hope that all of you are doing well in your lives. Keep on moving on strong in your lives. Love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Jacklin

Another Week Full of Miracles, Happy Moments, and a Brand New Member of the Church

This week was amazing, the weeks just keep getting better with every passing day. I am sad that in 4 months it will come to a close, but the Mission has been such a great experience for me. Especially this week! Allow me to count a few of the moments of the week.

To start things off we were able to find some new people to teach last Tuesday. One of them is a friend of one of our investigators. He is really great, he loves to read and when we showed the Book of Mormon to him, he was really excited to read it. We invited him and his friend to church, but they couldn´t come yesterday, so we will try and work hard with them for next week. Our older investigator is being a little lazy on coming, so we will probably have to lift him to church this next week.

We had another cool thing happen this week. We were able to get a lot of new references this week. One member gave us a reference that has already received all of the lessons and only needs to be invited to be baptized, she has already been to church many times and her family likes the church as well. So we should be able to invite this person to be baptized this next week, once we meet her.

This week we were able to meet many new investigators at church. One is a husband of a less active who is trying to come back to church. He is really cool and liked the church a lot. He invited us to come and teach him in his house tomorrow so that will be super awesome. The other is dating one of the members in the ward. He is super cool and is really interested in the church. We will mark with him and talk to him more this week.

Then finally, we get to the best part of the week. Which comes back to our ex-investigator I. I was finally baptized last Saturday. He is such a great youth, one of the most spiritually strong I have ever seen here in the Mission. It was an awesome experience, especially because his parents came who aren´t members, they liked it a lot. We might have success now with teaching the rest of his family and baptizing them too, and he also has the Priesthood now, so he can help out with that too.

Well that about raps everything up for the week. Love all of you! I hope all of you are doing well, I pray for all of you. Everyone at home, keep doing well there and missionaries, keep serving with all your might, minds, and hearts to the Lord. That´s all from me. Have a great week everyone!

Elder Jacklin

Another Fantastic Week in the Bag!

What is up everyone! What another fantastic week it has been, with Elder Poyfair here in Prosind. We have had another amazing week, with many great, fantastic, and quite interesting experiences. There were a lot of ups, but as always there were some downs. Allow me now to share the week. So here we go!

So to start out the week, we were able to have interviews with our President again. It was his last interview with the missionaries so it was a very great experience. We had a great talk him and I. I am going to miss him a lot.

This week we were able to find some new people to teach, a lot of the older ones we found didn´t move forward much, but a lot of them did. One of these new people has met with us a lot. His name is F. He loves the church a lot. His mom isn´t a very big fan of us, but we were able to clear some stuff up with her and that was good. F has a lot of faith, but his mom has been blocking us from him. He wants to be baptized, he has already been to church a couple of times and the missionaries have taught him before and what happened when we talked about baptism was super awesome and a little funny. When we talked about it. He stood up straight, put his hands on his hips and looked us straight into the eyes, and said with a firm voice. When can I be baptized. That was such a cool moment. We marked for this saturday but we will have to wait another week, because he didn´t come to church yesterday. But he is super great.

So something interesting that happened during the week, was that one of our fans exploded. It was very interesting to see that. It was a funny moment for my companion and I, we got nervous trying to plug stuff into the walls after that moment. But it was very interesting.

So you all remember I. Well things are just going completely well for him. He is progressing so much. He loves the church a lot and his testimony is strengthened every time we talk to him or when he comes to church. This Sunday we were able to give him a white shirt and tie to wear and he surprised me at how excited he was to receive that. He is so great. I am so happy that we were able to find him. We have also talked with his parents and they have accepted that he can be baptized in the church. We have marked that for this Saturday.

Well that´s about all for the week. I hope all of you are having a great week. I love you all and hope that all of you are safe and happy all of this week to come. Have a very happy week. Love you all. I´ll send some photos in a seperate email. Tchau tchau!

Elder Jacklin