Week 13

Buenos Dias!

Hey everyone! How are you all? I've been doing well, getting used to training a sister fresh from the MTC. We get by except for that one time that I couldn't understand anything this one lady was saying. In my defense she was old and Dominican! It's really hard to understand them. But other than that we are doing well. I don't really have much new stuff to share. It was the first time at church for one of our investigators yesterday! He has been progressing so much! The first time I saw him, he wouldn't even pray with us. But now he is reading the book of mormon and prays with us (he still wont say it though) and yesterday he took the sacrament. It was very cool to see. He is in a part member family who is less active so it also got all of them there too. We are still working on getting theresa baptized, but she is doing great and still not smoking! I love hearing her pray, it really is a conversation with her Heavenly Father. There is so much work to do here with less actives and we have been trying to get the branch more involved in reactivating them. In Preach My Gospel it actually says that less actives are the responsibility of the branch, but right now the members don't understand that. They just tell us hey I have a less active for you to go visit. That is not how it works! They need a friend that can help them progress in the church. There is a reason why we have home teaching and visiting teaching, to take care of everyone, not just temporally but spiritually also. In Utah it may not see as important but everyone has spiritual needs, everyone still needs to progress and come closer to Christ. So the moral of the story is do your visiting teaching. :D Well I'd better get going but I love you all! 

Les quiero mucho! 

Con Amor y un embraso fuerte,

Hermana Jacobsen

oh and by the way yesterday was my 5 month mark! I can't believe how fast time has gone!

Week 12

Hello Everyone!

Well today is my first day of transfer 3 here in Lynn. My companion/trainer went home on friday and that is like the most depressing thing ever, I miss her a lot. But my new companion Sister Brown is really nice and I'm sure we will get along just fine. She is a little quiet like me though. I can't believe I am already training a greeny fresh from the MTC. Her Spanish is a lot better than mine when I first got out here though and that helps a lot. I'm surprised how much I can actually understand without Sister Lopez there helping me out. Theresa's baptism date got pushed back again to the 7th of April because even though her husband is at home, he can't leave the house for a couple weeks. But she is still doing really well and not smoking (knock on wood). We have another baptism date for the most awesome 12 year old boy ever! His name is Jeffrey and he is the son of a less active and one day he just told his mom that they were going to go to church and that he wanted to get baptized! He is such a good kid and an great example to everyone around him. His date is set for April 28. Elder Ballard came and spoke to us on saturday. I shook an apostle's hand! His words were very encouraging. He was with Elder Eyring (from the 70) and Elder Christensen (also from the 70). There were some missionaries from the New Hampshire mission there too. It was really weird because one of them was someone I went to elementary school with. haha I didn't even know he was out there. Well I love you all and hope you have a great week! 

Con Amor,

Hermana Jacobsen 

Week 11

Hola familia mia! ¿Como están? Esta es la última simana de mi segunda transferencia! Mi compañera va a salir mañana y estoy muy triste. Theresa is doing well, the best I have ever seen her, and she has been really good about not smoking. As far as we know she has only had 1 since she got home. She still wont be baptized for another couple weeks though because her husband is just coming home from the hospital and won't be able to leave the house for a couple weeks. So he wouldn't even be able to be there, let alone baptize her. Did I tell you guys that I am going to be training a new missionary? Tomorrow I get my greeny, that will be very interesting if she isn't fluent in Spanish already. I don't know yet who she will be. Sister Payano from the branch gave us a big lunch today with a bunch of Elders to say goodbye to Sister Lopez and a couple elders who are leaving. We went out and saw the sunset at the beach in salem this morning, it was very pretty, I will have to send pictures. I really like salem, it has a lot of interesting stuff and would be a pretty nice place to live. 

As always I don't remember anything I was going to tell you. I feel like a missionary's mind is always on hyper drive and I cant remember anything if I don't write it down. I now know why the first thing Sheila did when she got home was take a nap haha. I get so tired during our 4 hours of studies we have every day. Especially if we have something to do in the morning and we end up having to do them after lunch. But I'm good once we get out and going. Now that I understand most of what people say I'm not wanting to fall asleep in lessons anymore haha. Did anyone read that talk I sent? What are your thoughts/impressions? I love you all and hope you are doing great! Les quiero mucho! 

Con Amor,

Hermana Jacobsen

Week 10 (email sent 3/4)

Hey everyone!

I don't have a lot of time because I had to take this forever long questionnaire about preach my gospel because brother Watson is coming to tour our mission. Everything has been good! Next week is actually the last week of the transfer, so my next p-day will be on wednesday. My companion is "dying" meaning this is her last transfer, so she has been very depressed. We have been going down to boston almost every p-day so I don't usually have time to write hand-written letters. Right now we are in the Copley Library in boston and it is huge! 

The lady I was telling you about last week, Theresa has a baptism date for this sunday. We just have to keep her from smoking until then. She is the greatest lady and really fun to talk to. She has an awesome boston accent. Apparently Ben Affleck used to play ball with her son so she tells us all these stories about him haha. It would be awesome if he was in town this week and she invited him to his baptism! She said he is pretty atheist though. 

I'm pretty sure I will be staying in the same area, and I think I am going to train a greeny. I will find out for sure on saturday though. Well I love you all lots and will talk to you next wednesday! 

Con Amor,

Hermana Jacobsen 

Week 9 Pictures

The prayer pillow they made for Stacy. 

Week 9 (email sent 2/25)

Hi Everyone!

Yesterday was awesome! We had 2 baptisms! José Antonio and Stacy. It was amazing and they were both so happy. Stacy's baptism almost didn't happen because it was supposed to snow yesterday and her mom was worried that if she made a bunch of food, it wouldn't get eaten. We had to go over to their house Sunday morning to convince her that the baptism is more important than the food. I'm very glad she came around. We made stacy a prayer pillow the other day to help her to remember to say her prayers at night, and she loved it. It was a great experience seeing them both get baptized. José was the one who I extended the invitation to be baptized one of my first days here. 

So my mp3 player I have is stupid and only decides to work every once and a while, and recently it deleted all the songs except for the christmas ones haha. Soooo if any of you happen to be putting together a package for me, it wouldn't mind there being some CDs in there ;) 

Last week I met 2 sisters that were 19 years old! It was crazy, they were so little and doe-eyed, but there were excited to be here. It's a big difference to see them compared to my companion who is 25 and also goes home in a couple weeks. She has been sad and afraid to return the civilian life, so I've been trying to keep her spirits up. 

I found this talk by Elder Bendar in and Ensign and I loved it. I didn't have a change to finish it but I wanted to share it with you. I love the way he puts things that makes it very clear. It talks about the enabling power of the atonement, it mentions how when nephi was bound with rope by his brothers he didn't pray to change his circumstance, he prayed for the strength to change his circumstance. This is a very important thing for us to remember. The atonement doesn't make our trails disappear, it gives us the strength to overcome them.

http://www.lds.org/ensign/2012/04/the-atonement-and-the-journey-of-mortality?lang=eng&query=atonement+journey+mortality 

Anyway I love you all and hope you are doing great! Remember to do missionary work! All it takes is to invite someone to come closer to Christ, even if it is just something small they can do.

Con Amor,

Hermana Jacobsen

Week 8 (email sent 2/20)

Hola! 

Como estan? So I wrote down things all week to write to you guys in a little notebook so I could remember and it's in my backpack, which is in the car... So I will try and remember. Monday was another holiday so the library was closed again. It's so hard to find another time during the week to do emails. Monday's really are so important, if you don't get something done then you wont have to do it another time. We had zone conference yesterday where there were 3 zones all together and spent most of the day in more trainings from the mission presidency. It was really good, I always love hearing from President Packard, and we also got to hear from President Christensen who wrote that book about member missionary work.

So we've had this investigator who is married to a member and wants to get baptized but she needs to quit smoking first. That has been a real struggle for her. She has the desire but she has been smoking for like 40 years and her son smokes so every time she quits it doesn't last very long because her son is sitting there smoking in front of her. We have talked to him about helping her and he doesn't seem very optimistic about her quitting. She has just been through the ringer the past couple months. First of all she can't see very well (which doesn't help with keeping her reading the scriptures) so she has been trying to get a surgery done to fix her sight, and she wants to do that before she gets baptized because she wants to be able to see everything. But every time she has an appointment for her surgery, she ends up sick in the hospital. She has had all sorts of sickness the past few months. And she has been depressed and not wanting to see anyone, which makes her smoke. We would be the only people she would see during the week except for her family. Her husband has been loving, but it's also not very good because he does everything for her so she doesn't have to and that doesn't help her depression. Well right now her husband is in the hospital in Boston, he had a swollen knee and it became septic, so he will be there for a few weeks. She is in the hospital in Salem because she has gall stones. The funny thing is that she got her gall bladder out 34 years ago, so there was one that developed in one of the ducts, which is very rare. Even though they are both in the hospital there are 2 blessings that come from it. 1) her husband can't pamper her 2) she isn't smoking. She is going to have to reschedule her surgery for her eyes because of course it was supposed to be this week. And hopefully we can help keep her from smoking when she gets home. Satan is working very hard to keep her from getting baptized. Not just her too there is supposed to be another storm this weekend, not as bad but still might cause us to reschedule stacy's and jose antonio's baptisms again. Pray for us!

Well I need to get going we have to get to an appointment but I love you all. Thanks for all your prayers, I get strength from them every day! 

Love,

Hermana Jacobsen

This lady wouldn't let Emily and her companion help her. 

Week 7 (email sent 2/11)

Hey Everyone,

I'm alive!! The storm "Nemo" hit and we were stuck inside our apartment for 2 days. This is a picture of our car after we were finally okayed to go outside on saturday, but the city still had a restriction on driving. It was a $500 fine and if you caused an accident it was a year in jail. We just went around the complex and helped people dig out their cars. A lot of people wouldn't accept our help though. Some thought we were expecting money. That is just really sad to me. Can't someone do a good deed anymore without expecting money? My poor Puerto Rican companion just about froze though. She had never seen more than a few inches of snow. We were finally okayed to drive yesterday morning but church had been cancelled. So we went around trying to visit everyone we knew but only got in to 2 houses, it was a little frustrating. Also, because of the storm Jose Antonio's baptism had been moved to next week. And stacy's baptism is being moved to 2 weeks. So I don't have any pictures to show you yet but I do have a picture of the guy who was baptized last week. He still isn't confirmed yet since church was cancelled yesterday. There is always something that I think of during the week that I want to tell you guys but by the time I get here I don't remember it so I'm going to go now. Love you!

Con Amor,
Hermana Jacobsen

Boston Week 6 (email sent 2/6)

Hello everyone!

This week has been awesome! The sister's training was amazing. It started at 9 AM and we didn't get home until 11 PM. We were exhausted. We just had a bunch of different trainings on stuff like studies, planning, health, just different aspects of the mission and then we went and had dinner at president's house and he announced to us all the new areas for sisters this next transfer. We have a lot of history making stuff going on. He opened Nantucket and is sending sisters there. It only has 5 members on the whole island, and it takes 2 hours to get there by boat. Since they don't have enough for a branch yet they are called a group. Who knew that you could be too small to be a branch? They are also opening the first ever area for Portuguese sisters We have only ever had Portuguese elders here, but now they are starting to call sisters too. I don't know if I ever told you but we have english, spanish, portuguese, and haitian creole missions here. We used  to have cambodian too but that kind of died out. It is a very diverse place here. We had a baptism this week! Technically the Elders were teaching him but he is the husband of a member we see every week for dinner. He just got out of prison and had read the entire bible in the 6 months he was there. He came to us and said he wanted to be baptized. It was awesome. He is getting confirmed this sunday. Also this sunday is the baptism of Jose Antonio who I've told you about before and next wednesday we have one for a girl named stacy who is a 9 year old of a less active member. So this week is going to be great! I hope you are all doing well! I'll talk to you soon! 

Con Amor,

Hermana Jacobsen 

Boston Week 5 Pictures

"This book is awesome, Clayton Christanson is in our mission presidency and he wrote this book about member missionary work and gave it to all of us. You should get one and read it :D"

"I love all the different colors of the houses here"

They found this in Chinatown 

"this is that crazy intersection I was telling you about. None of those roads are overpasses, they all intersect."

Visiting the Aquarium

The hat she almost bought from the aquarium

The jellyfish were Emily's favorite! 

Boston Week 5 (email sent 1/28)

Hello Everyone!

How is everybody doing? So I met with president last week and he said that I'm not training someone in February (wheww) but I am training in march! There is only one sister coming in that is native spanish but he wants me to try to be ready as much as I can in case the Lord doesn't want her as my companion. That will be fun if I get a greeny and neither of us can communicate very well : / Since we have so many sisters coming in over the next few months we are having a special sisters training this week with all the sisters in the mission. I look forward to that!

So my story of the week is we were teaching this girl (who is getting baptized at the end of february woot woot) and her grandma who is a member. And I had had a headache all day, and in the middle of the lesson I was not feeling well at all. I was getting really hot and my stomach was upset and then my mouth started watering. So I, a little abruptly, asked my companion where the bathroom was and casually walked in there and threw up. I didn't get a chance to close the door all the way but the bathroom was far enough where they had no idea. I rinsed my mouth out and wiped the sweat off my face and returned to the lesson. Afterwards she offered to make us food and my companion said "sure!" I took 2 bites and couldn't eat any more. The grandma turned to my companion and said "she doesn't eat very much does she?" Apparently she didn't think I understood Spanish. I told her that I ate before. Luckily we didn't stay long after that and when we left my companion went to get in the car and I went straight to the bushes. It was a good thing that it was our last appointment of the night, but I still had to drive about 20 mins to get home. That poor lady probably thinks I'm so rude though. I'm still recovering, my stomach is still a little sensitive but I got a blessing and I'm doing fine. It's a good journal story! Well I hope you are all doing well, and staying healthy. I love you!

Con Amor,
Hna Jacobsen