Important Stuff

Dearest Children,
Last night and today was our Stake Conference. Our Stake President, Jack Hamblin, gave the most wonderful talk last night and I wanted to share it with you as best I can from the notes that I took.
It was about being good parents and even all of you aren’t parents yet, you all will be one day. The first part of his talk he gave 3 quotes from 3 prophets that said in a nutshell, that not 1 in a 100 children will go astray if we have Family Home Evening. Teaching the gospel in our home through the scriptures, prayer and FHE will practically assure us as parents that our children will stay true to the gospel. Then he gave counsel to fathers and mothers.

Fathers:
1.Provide homes where love and the Spirit can reside. Do our children feel our love and acceptance. Never speak in anger. Use no lash and no violence. Compliment, use courtesy and listen. Fatherhood is the supreme opportunity of life.
2.Teach principles of truth and help your children to understand those principles. Take time to find out what your children are learning and correct it if necessary.
3.Set in order your own households by keeping the commandments, have family prayer, both husband and wife holding Temple Recommends. Be free from debt, pay all your tithes and offerings.  Be determined to see your family exalted.  No other success can compensate for failure in the home.  Remember President Hinckley’s story of “No Vacant Chairs” when we all sit down together in heaven.

Mothers:
1. Be at the crossroads - when children leave and return from school, dates, activities, with friends. Daycare cannot substitute for a mother.
2.Be a real friend - listen, laugh, joke, sing, cry with your children
3. Take time to read to your children, from the time they are tiny on up. Plan a love for great literature and the scriptures.
4. Take time to pray with your children under the husbands direction
5. Have FHE every week.
6. Be together at mealtimes
7. Read the scriptures daily together - VITAL. Reading the Book of Mormon will change their lives. He read several quotes by prophets about FHE and scripture study
8. Do things together - attend events, church, games, vacation, etc. Spend time having fun together
9. Take time to teach your children the gospel in the home. Sunday school, Primary, YM/YW can’t do this for you.  Children will remember your teaching.
 10.Love your children

If we could see into the future and see the results and consequences of our decisions to do these things or not, in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations we would double our efforts to raise a righteous family.

I just really loved this talk. I can see that Dad and I did some things right, but we could have done better. You all have turned out pretty darn good in spite of our shortcomings! Much of this is commonsense and just obeying basic gospel principles, but when President Hamblin said it last night he said that if we felt rebuked as he talked to us the perhaps we need to repent and consider it an invitation to do better. It's a little too late for Dad and I to go back and redo the things we did wrong, but it's not too late for all of you to commit to living these principles of the gospel in your home and improve on the last generation. You all are living in a world that is much less righteous than it was 30 years ago when Dad and I started our family. I think these things are even more critical now to save your children in the Celestial Kingdom than they were for Dad and I. FHE should be a part of all of our lives, every week, regardless of whether we have children or not. Dad and I certainly need to do better at this. Just because Jessie has left doesn't mean we shouldn't still be doing this. Daily prayer, scripture study, etc., are all principles that all of us need to have in our personal lives and in our families.

I love you all so much. I feel so grateful for all of you. Dad and I often talk about how wonderful you all are and how blessed we are to have children (by blood and marriage) like you. The older I get the more I know that President McKay's statement about no success can compensate for failure in the home is true. That's what really matters - saving ourselves and our children so we can all sit down in heaven together.

jessie's letter 4/14/2012

Hey mom!
thanks so much for sending the package! Im sorry it was so heavy! I shouldnt have asked you to send so much. I hope it wasnt super expensive.

All I know about leaving is that I leave on Tuesday, and there is a huge group going to my mission of both nortes and latinos, so i dont know how we get there or what we do or anything really. sorry I cant give you more info! Oh and I have only had one companion so far. Hermana Bates, and she is from wyoming. she isnt going to my mission though.

And yes, for exercise we are with elders and latinos. about half of the people in the CCM work out at the same time as me and my district.

Im so glad things are going good with Reesy and Dave! Im sad though cuz I wish I could know more about him. I will admit its a lot harder then i thought to be away, i just feel like im missing everything! But I am happy for her.

Thats crazy about all the stuff happening at the store! Im sorry its been so hard mom! that is really terrible. I hope that you will be able to find some good employees soon. And im sorry you had to fire that lady, that would be hard. what is going on with the hardware store! have you found someone to manage it or do you know what you are going to do?

oh and I did get one letter from dad, i dont know what happened to the other one. i missed one from reesy once too. sometimes i think some get lost when they print them off when i have so many, just because when you guys send a talk or something it will take up 5 or 6 letters sometimes. im not sure if thats the reason or not, it might just be the unorganized latinos around here. anyways, i did get  one so let him know. and thanks dad :)

I have no idea how the money thing works either. i was wondering about that, but i guess i will just have to wait until tuesday for my mission president to tell us. so im pretty sure all my bites turned out to be mosquito bites. apparently i just have a really bad reaction to them here, cuz ive gotten some more since then. i am just going to have to be really careful while i am here, cuz they get really itchy and kinda swell, but dont worry if i wear bug spray and stuff i will be fine.

So Cody is there now? How is he? I hope he will be ok in Sidney for the summer! Tell him hi for me! Whats it like having him the house?

So, this week. Lets see, well I got a dearelder from Matt, so that was great. It wasnt very long though cuz he said he is sending me a real letter in the mail, so i just have to be patient haha. but im nervous cuz i dont know if it will get here before i leave, but they said they will forward our mail to our missions so i might just have to wait an extra long time but i guess thats ok. But it was really great to hear from him.  We went proselyting again this week, but without latinos. it was definitely better then last time, but i still cant understand what people are saying when they start to talk a lot. it also made me nervous cuz we only did it for 2 hours, but it felt like a long time, so im nervous about having to do it all the time in the field and that it will go by slow. im all done with classes now, we had infield orientation all day yesterday, and im not sure what we are doing on monday. But i am definitely starting to get really nervous about leaving. I know i am not ready and im just scared about my companion and not being able to talk to anybody or even know what the heck is going on. so im trying to prepare myself for it so i wont freak out when i get there. i almost got to meet my mission president this week cuz they were all coming for a conference thing and they were going to talk to us while they were here. everyone got so excited, but then at the last minute they told us the presidents wouldnt have time, so we were all so sad! but is ok, i get to meet him in a couple days. Anyways, everything is pretty good. i just need to try to pack and get ready to go in the next couple days. I am just getting really nervous about everything. I hope i can learn to love it for real, cuz right now i dont really understand why everyone loves their mission so much, but i just hope that once i am actually in the field i will love it as much as everyone else.

Anyways, I love you mom. I miss you guys so much! Im excited that I get to leave the CCM but I am just so nervous, but I am trying not to be and to just have faith that it will be ok. Thanks for all your prayers! I am praying for all of you guys too. I love you all so much! And dont worry I promise I am doing good. Love You!

Jessie

 

Jessie's first week in the field 4/25/12

Hey mom,

so first of all, i will try to find out how mothers day works, im not really sure but i will let you know. i want to find out as well so we dont have to have problems either. im excited to talk to you too! oh and i actually know about pres brough and president hamblin, he told me about it yesterday at a training meeting, so that is kinda crazy. so we talked about it for a minute. anyways, i am in a place called san lucas. it is in the mountains, so it actually gets cold here at night. my companion is named hermana cevallos and is from ecuador. this is her last month of the mission so i will be here last companion. she doesnt know a lot of english so sometimes communicating is difficult, but it hasnt been too bad. the area we are in is new, it hasnt had missionaries for like three years i think, so my companion doesnt know anything about the area either cuz she is new here as well. we didnt even know where the bishop lived and stuff, but we know a little more now. the ward here is huge! there were like 270 some people on sunday. we are the first sister missionaries here ever. There are also some new elders in our area too, so that has been good to have them there cuz one of them is from provo so i can actually to him in english which is really nice. so far we have just been going around and tracting or meeting members and meeting with the bishop and trying to figure things out here, so we havent done a lot of teaching or anything yet. its just kinda frustrating because when we are just talking or visiting with people, i cant say anything cuz i dont really know whats going on. I need to learn normal words! i only know gospel stuff. Its just hard to understand people cuz they talk so fast. anyways, my companion is really nice. she is very kind and patient so that is good. so our house. our house is so weird! its basically just a big concrete cinderblock. there is a bedroom, a kitchen, but we only have a fridge and a little plug in stove thing, and a study room. the shower is like this weird thing in the wall with a door that opens into it. luckily we do have warm water to shower. not hot, but warm. um but yeah the rooms have flooring in them, but all the walls and the floor in the hall and the stairs is just concrete, and theres not even a complete roof on the top, only the rooms are all fully covered. its so weird and hard to explain, i will send you pictures if i can. oh ps, so im not going to get mail very often here, like every few weeks when we have a meeting. i dont really have an address, you just have to send it to the mission office, so keep doing that. even dearelders i wont get everyweek. also i still havent gotten your package or matts letter, maybe a week from friday when we have another trainging meeting, i dont know. its so weird here, like some people are really rich and have super nice cars and nice houses and cell phones, and other ppl are literally dirt poor and have nothing. they live in like little shacks of metal with dirt floors. im definitely gonna go through a lot of shoes, cuz sometimes its like im hiking through a forest of something. dont worry, most of the city isnt lilke that and most of our area is more normal with streets. i just cant believe people live like that and its normal. i will admit i get scared a lot when people give me food cuz i know it doesnt follow the rules of what we are supposed to eat. we can only drink clean water and disinfected fruits and vegetable and stuff, and i know these poor people arent always giving us clean food, but i dont know what we are supposed to do. i got super scared about it, but when we met the bishop he gave the four of us, with the elders, a blessing, and mine said i would be healthy and be able to eat the food. at least i think thats what it said, i mean it was in spanish so i cant exaclty be sure. also i get really nervous about all the dogs everywhere cuz they are so dirty and scary and run around everywhere. but i guess if i was blessed with health i probably wont get rabies, so hopefully i will be ok. luckily in the mountains there are less bugs and stuff, so we dont have cockroaches in our house or anything like the people in the city do, so thats good. um so lets see, eat breakfast at our house, at lunch we have a cook, and she is a lady in the ward, and we dont even get to eat dinner, we just eat when we get home at night if we want. we also have a lady who does our laundry, its they same lady who cooks for us. i dont think my clothes are going to survive for very long, i mean when i saw how they get washed, they got through a beating! anyways, i will admit that things have been really rough. i have been struggling and scared and upset a lot this week. but yesterday we had a training meeting in the capital, so i got to see all my friends from the ccm so that was super great, and the other girls were struggling as well so i wasnt the only one. then president brough talked to the four of us north american girls cuz he could tell that we were all really upset and frustrated and having a hard time, so i feel a little better now and i am just trying really hard to be ok. but dont worry im ok a lot of the time, its just so hard to never know whats going on. i just feel like i never know what we are doing, but it will get better. also pres. brough told us that he wasnt going to let any of us go home, so i guess i am stuck here! haha anyways right now i am in antigua, which is a city like 10 to 15 miles from my city, we had a district meeting. so tuesday is when i get to email, mondays are our p days, but we didnt really get one yesterday because of the meeting. so i thought my area was like a kinda smaller town, but really it is huge! it is so so big. i cant believe how far we have walked somedays. its really hard for me to figure out where we are and stuff, but i will have to learn eventually, cuz since my trainer is leaving next transfer, i will get a new one and i will have to show her where everything is. anyways, so yeah you guys dont need to send dearelders every week cuz i wont get them, you can email, but i wont always have time to email you back, sorry. i can write letters though.

 um what else, food. mostly so far chicken, rice, and tortillas. the tortillas are really good. also they have really good bread here. and everyone drinks this weird coffee stuff, except they say its not coffee cuz they are all members, so i hope it really is safe cuz they always give it to us. i cant figure out what its called though.

all the people are really nice, even if they dont want to listen to you they will be really polite and friendly so that is good. i havent really met many rude people. even when we are knocking on doors they are nice. anyways, i think its about time to go. i dont know if i answered all you questions or not. but things are good, just super crazy and overwhelming. im trying really hard not to think about being gone for 18 months cuz that makes me discouraged. but i pray everyday to learn to love this and learn to love the people, so hopefully eventually i will. but  yeah, this beginning part is really hard and i hope it gets better. anyways, i love you all and hope you are doing great! keep telling me everything  thats going on at home, i love it. also thanks for the pictures! you could mail me some too if you wanted. i will let you know when i get your package. love you! miss you! hope everything is good!

Jessie

 

New experience at Work

Well, yesterday was certainly an interesting experience at work. Saturday afternoon the girls at the hardware store (Jennifer & Patti) sent home another employee - a new woman who had been there for a few weeks - because she was drunk. She had been drinking from a bottle of supposed energy drink but that obviously wasn't what was in it. She couldn't function and so about 4:00pm when they realized what was going on they sent her home. Dad came home from work and told me about it that evening. The day before on Friday, another male employee who has been with us for more than a year now, got mad and walked out. He had been having "behavior" problems - swearing, yelling, anger management issues(I think he may be bipolar) etc. Jennifer and Patti had caught him taking candy bars out of the last freight order from DIB and stuffing them in his pocket, also. On Friday he figured out that we knew about this and got mad and left, which was a blessing as it prevented us from having to fire him. Phil and Dad were planning on letting him go Saturday night after work.

On Monday morning we were wondering if the gal with the drinking problem would even show up. She did, and just like nothing was wrong. Phil was a big chicken to talk to her about this, Dad wasn't around, so guess who got this responbility? I called her up to the office and told her that we were concerned about the problem she had on Saturday.. She looked at me and said "What problem?". So I proceeded to tell her what happened and of course, she denied everything - that she was drinking, that she didn't know what was going on and couldn't function. I offered to get Patti and Jennifer to come over and tell her what happened. Then she said, well, she had had drink at lunch. Finally, after pressing her quite a big, she admitted she had a drinking problem and begged for a second chance. I told her no. Joy knew that she had been in treatment in Bismarck when Leith was there, so obviously, it didn't take. She cried, which made me feel bad, but not bad enough to relent. She has a back problem and is in pain a lot and is having surgery for this the beginning of May. She said that the alcohol was to mitigate the pain. I'm not buying that. I told her that that was an excuse for drinking and if she got help when she was recovered from her surgery and could prove she was getting sober we would take her back in a minute. It actually was theraputic for her I hope, as we hugged each other and I told her how sorry I was, but that her health and well-being was more important than anything else. I really hope she gets the help she needs. Joy was in the office at the time and made sure she knew who to call if she wants to get help.

I keep telling you all that our employee situation is just a total soap opera. I wasn't kidding.

Mom

Experience in Guatemala

Hi Family,

Jessie's mission presidents wife, Sister Brough has a blog. When I checked it there was a very inspiring story that I will put in my next letter to Jessie that I thought you would all like also. Perhaps Eric, you will have had similar experiences in Tijuana and can comment on this. I would like to read your thoughts. I was very touched by it and it gave me a lot of comfort that Jessie will be protected and will an angel (especially as a sister missionary) in the midst of the Guatemalan people. Here is her blog post:

Every day we see miracles in the mission field. Every missionary experiences these miracles during their service. What is really a great blessing for President is that when he reads the weekly letters of the missionaries he hears about these miracles. Some are very sacred that we could never fully explain adequately and some are just everyday occurances in the lives of obedient missionaries. One of the focuses we have had is "Abrir su boca", open your mouth. We have set some very high goals in our mission for contacting every single day. Some missionaries are great and attack the goal with complete obedience, faith and diligence. While others are not so believing....'it is to hard, what purpose does it serve, etc.... Of course as the missionaries obey other areas that they have goals in begin to happen and the faith begins to grow. Many miracles that happen are in the lives of members and especially in the lives of the investigators. I want to share one such story about the miracles of missionaries opening their mouths and doing what the Lord has asked. Being robbed here is a very common thing. The way of travel for all the missionaries is by 'chicken buses'. These buses are very very crowded and many times robbers come onto the bus and rob everyone including the driver. There is nothing they can do but give the men what they want because they are always armed and they travel in groups. Sometimes the miracles from being obedient are never seen by the missionary but they are always noticed by someone.

This experience was told to us by Elder Euteneier: "We have an investigator that was going on a bus to Escuintla one day. Four gang armed members entered the bus and everyone on the bus knew them and knew that they were going to assault the bus. Two of them stayed up front and sat down, two others went to the back of the bus. Everyone on the bus, including the investigators were all nervous and anxious when eight of our missionaries entered the bus. They began to contact the bus. Four Elders took the front of the bus and four Elders took the back of the bus. Unbeknowest to the missionaries they contacted all four of the gang members at the same time and gave them pamphlets. At the next stop, all four of the gang members got off the bus without a single threat. Our investigator told me that we are definitely sent by God to guide and protect the people here. So not only does contacting buses rid us of fear, help us find chosen people and spread the good word but it protects agains Satan's agents as well."

Jessie's will hopefully like this experience too. I hope it won't scare her but give her faith in the power of her call and that the Lord is with his missionaries. Love you all

Mom

Jessie's First Day as a Missionary

Dear Family,

I wanted to share with you all a little bit about yesterday as we took Jessie to get set apart by President Hamblin. I truly know the Lord knows his servants and He certainly knows Jessie. President Hamblin doesn't really know Jessie at all. Other than interviewing her for her Temple Recommend he hasn't had much contact with her, but he gave her the most beautiful blessing as he set her apart to be a missionary yesterday. The first words after he set her apart to be a missionary were the things that she has been most worried about the past few months. He told her that her that her worrys and anxiety would go away and she would be calm. I don't remember the exact wording but that was the feeling.

Then he told her that she would have a strong testimony and ability to communicate and have confidence in herself and in the Lord. I'm not giving the right wording, but this is what Jessie has been so worried about - that her testimony is not strong enough, that she can't explain things clearly, and that she knows she doesn't have the confidence necessary. All these things were addressed. He then told her very forcefully that she would have a "strong and immediate grasp of the language". I do believe those were pretty close to his exact words because it struck me pretty forcfully how he said it. Jessie's Patriarchal blessing says she has the gift of tongues and it reminded me of this. He also told her that she would be easily understood, both in word and in spirit. He also said something I thought was interesting right at the end - that she should speak loudly and clearly as she taught and testified.

He promised her that she would be a calming, peaceful influence in her district and zone and that she would be an example both to those she taught and to the other missionaries in her district and zone. He said something that I can't quite put into words about her relationship and testimony of the Savior and how it would be strengthened. She would have the ability to work without tiring, to be strong in mind and body and she will touch many people. She should be grateful for this opportunity. He also promised her that the Lord would grant her other blessings known only to her. He said the Lord was very pleased with her.

I wish you could have all been there. I'm not doing this justice by any means. It was a powerful blessing and I believe it was a comfort to her and did allievate her nervousness and fear and gave her confidence that she will have the words she needs. It was a testimony to me of how much the Lord knows each of us individually and is aware of us. President Hamblin couldn't have known all the fears of Jessie's heart, but the Lord sure did. As soon as he began to speak I felt the spirit in the room and the first words out of Pres. Hamblins mouth were all the things Jessie has been worried about. It was a great experience.

Love you all lots.

Mom