Feliz Año Nuevo!

12-30-13 Week #14
Hey Everyone!!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your families! 

This week was pretty awesome! Although the missionary work really slows down during this time of the year, mainly because all the people are on vacation, we had some fun times! 

On Tuesday night before Christmas we went to some other elders pensions house and we stayed the night there with two other elders! Its a tradition here to eat at midnight so we all stayed up and helped make the food and told stories and that was fun! We didn't end up eating at 12 but it was still pretty late when we ate. Then at 12 we went on the roof and people started to light off fireworks everyone and although fireworks aren't legal here they sell them all over the place and everyone buys them! So there a ton of fireworks! We ended up going to bed at like 2 30 in the morning which was not good because we had to get up early the next morning to travel to the mission office. All the 8 zones within Chiclayo all met together at the office for a Christmas activity of the 25th. First there was a soccer tournament and although we didn't win it was still pretty fun, we also played some volleyball too! Then we went into the chapel and every zone had organized their own little talent shows and we all performed and our zone, Chiclayo Central, was the best out of all of them and it was pretty funny too! After the talent show the people who are from the different parts of the world in our mission got into groups and did a little culture presentation in front of the mission. For example there people in our mission that are from Colombia got up and told us about their country and then Chile, and Honduras, and Bolivia, and Uruguay and so on and so forth and that was really cool to see some of the pictures from the other places. A lot of them had their songs to sing from their country and some of the songs were so cool! After that we ate lunch and for lunch we had Pollo a la brasa which is like fried chicken with french fries! After that we watched a movie called The Rescue of Ephraim which is a movie like 17 miracles and it was super good. Oh and we had ice cream during the movie! Then after that we had a gift exchange and got some cool little things from the mission. Then we went home and were scrambling to try to skype with our families. We went to our pensions house to try to skype but we just encountered problem after problem until we finally got it to work like three hours after we had set up to skype. So i ended up skyping my family at like 11 00 here in Peru! We had stayed up till like 2 30 the night before and now till like 12 00 the next night too but it was so worth talking with my family! The next day we were so tired we didnt really do much but some baptismal interviews. Then on Saturday after Christmas we had a baptism of three kids which went pretty well although we realized that after we had filled up the font that the water was draining and we didn't have any way to shut the drain so we just ended up doing the baptism with the water filling the font at the same time!

This week should be pretty awesome too with the New Year!! Were not sure whose house were going to go to yet but i think were going to go to a members house and have a little party and just hang out for a while!

Not much else to report down here in Peru other than that i might get to email tomorrow too so if you guys want, send me an email before tomorrow and hopefully i get the chance to respond! Hope you guys have a wonderful New Year and try to keep your new years resolutions for at least two weeks before you break them ;) Feliz Año Nuevo!

Con Amor,

Elder Jarman

Our Christmas Skype!

The work is progressing in La Pradera!

12-16-13 Week #13
Hey Everyone!

Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the weather because it is getting really hot here and were just sweating all the time now! Christmas is in a week and a half!

Well this week was pretty good i guess! The numbers don't reflect out efforts but that's not what matters. We actually have been having some success, we have two for sure dates for baptisms the 28 and we have two that are tentative for the 28th as well! This week were going to challenge two more to the 28th so if best case scenario we could have 6 baptisms on the 28th and on top of the 3 we already had early this month that would be 9 baptisms for the month of December! We are helping one of our investigators get married and i think its kind of funny because 18, 19, and 20 year old kids are giving advice on why people should get married and were not married. I could just see the investigator being like "what do you know about marriage". But yeah we are working on organizing an activity do hermano Julio can get married and get baptized and if he does get baptized then the whole family will be members and they can put the goal to go to the temple! We have hermana Graciela who is just awesome! She just needs to talk to her husband and let him know but she wants to wait until he comes home from Lima to talk to him because she is hard of hearing and cant really talk on the phone! The two set dates that we have are two little girls, Noemi and Shantal, and they live with their grandmas because their parents died. We are going to invite their cousins to be baptized too this week! The work is progressing in La Pradera! 

We are looking for another capilla for our branch because we have so many people that on Sundays there's like 30 people standing because we don't have enough chairs! We have more people attending than almost every single ward in this stake but yet were still a branch! Soon they will build a capilla here though and that will be awesome for this branch!

The food is sometimes hard to eat... For breakfast sometimes we get tuna with onions and bread. Thats what we had this morning and its not really the great thing to eat on the morning, or at all for that matter. We eat sooooo much rice! Two meals a day everyday we have rice! Although today for lunch we had pizza! Every Monday from now till the end of the change in January we are going to my comps old areas to say goodbye to the people nd one of his old pensionistas made us some pizza and it was so good!! We eat rice with everything and we actually have lomo saltado a lot but its not nearly as good as it is in the U.S. 

My companion is really funny! He likes to give massages to but he gives really really hard massages and they hurt!! He also likes to sing too! He knows quite a bit of English too! Sometimes he'll tell me things in English about the people were teaching and its pretty funny. He sounds really funny when he speaks English and i wonder if i sound as weird as he does when i talk in Spanish! Its kind of nice that he knows a lot of English because i can ask him about words in Spanish and he knows what they are in English!

Hope everyone's doing super well! Have a great week and if i don't get to email this next week than i hope you all have a merry Christmas!!

Love,

Elder Jarman

I will be in La Pradera at least until March

12-9-13 Week #12
Hey everyone!!

This keyboard that im using doesn't have any of the letters on it and is very dumb  so i hope that you guys can understand me! Well this week i got a new companion  and his name is  Elder Quilpatay from Argentina! Hes actually really cool and hrs a funny guy! He goes home at the end of this transfer which means that i will be in La Pradera at least until march which is cool because i like my area. 

Since Elder Bunker left i have had to speak so much spanish its ridiculous but it has made me realize how much spanish i have learned in such a short amount   of time which is awesome! This change is going to be really fun because were going t try to plan a Christmas activity in our branch and were also going to have an activity with all the missionaries who are close to us and that should be really  fun! My comp says Christmas in the mission is the best so im stoked  for Christmas!  

Stories for this week aren't to interesting but  there was thus little kid who ran by us crying   when we were walking towards one of our visits and then he turned around and came up behind us and hr grabbed  my hand and just started walking  with us and so we started talking to him and we were trying to find out why he was crying and finally he told us that he was scared of a dog. so he kept walking with us for a while   and then he freaked out and pointed at this dog and said that's the dog and it was this tiny little dog that this little kid was freaking out about so that was pretty funny. 

Nothing much more to report. Sorry for the little amount its  super hard to type on this keyboard.

Love,

Elder Jarman

We had a new record...

12-2-13 Week #11

Hey Everyone!

This week has been pretty awesome!! The three baptisms went well and we had a new record of 112 people in the chapel and it was crazy because there were like 30 people standing up who didnt have seats! We also just got a podium and a speaker and microphone for our capilla and its pretty awesome, although were in the process of looking for a new chapel and were going to have to move rooms too. The one thing thats kind of a bummer is that we have transfers tomorrow and Elder Bunker got transferred but we dont know where yet. Its kind of a bummer because everythings just starting to take off and then he got transferred. We find out tomorrow where hes going and who my new comp will be. Elder Bunker will probably be a zone leader somewhere. The thing that im most scared about is that i have to lead my area for the first couple of weeks because my companions not going to know the area! So im going to be the senior comp in a way for the first couple of months even though ive only been out for 3 months! Its going to be a good experience though and everything should go fine. So today were going to go around to everyone and say goodbye.

Today my first zone leader Elder Esquivel is going home and i sent some letters with him for hm to put in the mail when he gets home so there should be some letters there soon within this week! The weeks are going by so fast i cant believe it although when i think that i still have 21 months left it feels like an eternity! We have been getting a lot of references lately from the members and so hopefully we should be able to see some more baptisms in the ward and maybe soon they be able to build a chapel in La Pradera. We have 200 members now but only about half of them are attending church so if we can reactivate a lot of them then we can get a chapel here soon. We only need more priesthood holders and we need people to pay there tithing and thats about it. We have been working tons with the members and things are going well so we should keep getting more and more references of people we can help. We have 4 people who are ready and want to get baptized but they need to get married, so were going to try to help them get married for christmas time!

Nothing much more happened this week, except now that my comp is getting changed im going to have to do a ton more talking!! That will be good for me though! Hope all of you are doing spectacular and that you all have a fantastic week! Love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Jarman

Thanks for all the pics and the emails!! I love them!

Love you guys so much!!!

Conference with Elder Russel M. Nelson

11-25-13 Week #10

Hola!

Hope everyone's doing fantastic! This past week was super awesome!!

We had Elder Russel M. Nelson and his wife and Elder Waddell and his wife come speak to us!! We all got to the chapel super early to get good seats because the whole Chiclayo mission and the whole Piura mission was there for this talk. Anyways we got there like 2 and a half hours early and i so we just started talking with friends from the CCM and such and then i also saw Elder Harper!! That was cool and we got to catch up on some things and talk about how mission life is! There were 420 missionaries at this conference and it was super cool because when Elder Nelson walked in everyone stood up and then we all got to go shake his hand along with Elder Waddell! It was such a cool experience! All of their talks were super good! A main theme was about how there are people on the other side of the veil praying for us a missionaries and as members of the church to find their ancestors and teach them the gospel because they are waiting to receive the ordinances but they cant. When we help people find the church we are not only helping them but we are also helping people on the other side of the veil too! Also something cool that Sister Nelson said is that not only do we have 15,000,000 people on this side of the veil praying for us, we have tons more on the other side praying for us too! The Conference was super awesome!

This week we have been seeing some of the fruits of our labor! We have three baptismal dates set for this Saturday. We have Jonathon a 9 year old, Livia whos living with our pension now, and this girl named tathiana whos been taking the discussions or charlas as we call them in Peru for a couple months now and shes finally getting baptized so were stoked! This week also we have another conference with an area seventy which should be pretty cool! 

Christmas is just beginning to emerge here. They are putting up this giant christmas tree right now in a plaza in the center and thats going to be awesome! The main food here fro christmas time is called Paneton. Its this bread with red and green gummy things and raisins in it. It comes in a package almost like a cake and they eat sooo much of it here during christmas time! Weve already eaten a lot and it istn even December yet. Elder Bunker and I put up the christmas tree and somewhat decorated it!! There are a couple of houses that have lights already and so things are starting to look like christmas although it doesn't feel like it because here were just entering summer and its hot!

Not much else to say for now! Hope you guys have a fantastic week!! Love you all!

 

Elder, Jarman

It makes me want to be a better missionary!

11-18-13 Week #9
Hey Everyone!
 

This week was pretty good in general! It seems like it went by super duper fast! Ive almost been in my area for a month already! Christmas is coming up soon and im stoked for that!

This week i did a work visit with one of the zone leaders for a day and that was pretty cool! Hes fluent in Spanish and English and so he helped with some Spanish while i was there. While i was there we had a really good day, we had 6 lessons with a member present! Nothing else too interesting this week, although we did have a seminar with all the gringos in the closer parts of the mission which was cool. It was a seminar on how to adjust to missionary life and how to deal with stress and we watched a video about how when were doing missionary work we are bringing to pass the salvation of souls and how sometimes its not easy and it was never easy to bring to pass the salvation of souls and it wasn't easy for Christ! We watched a video and in it Elder Holland said that when people yell at us spit on us slam doors on us that we are standing shoulder to shoulder with Christ, that we are walking a very small part of the path that he walked to bring to pass the salvation of our souls and i thought that was so awesome and it makes me want to be a better missionary! That seminar was also cool because i got to see all of the people in my district from the CCM!

In two days Elder Nelson is coming to speak to us!!! Thats going to be so cool! Also the night before we have four more missionaries that are coming to stay with us in our chapel house which is going to be pretty sweet!

Me and Elder Bunker are working well with each other, were meeting most of our goals and getting the new branch here started off right! They just organized a lot more stuff and they called a bunch of people to new callings on Sunday and that was really cool to hear all of those people getting called to positions. Some of the people are starting to come back to church too which is awesome! We have a baptismal date for a nine year old named jonathan for the 30th of November and we should have a couple more dates soon too because we have a couple people that only need one more little thing and then they can get baptized so were working with the president of the branch to help them resolve their problems and then we should be able to help them get baptized pretty soon.

Some days are better than others with the Spanish. Some days i feel like i just cant understand anything and the words get all mixed up in my mouth and then other days i feel like i can understand almost everything and I will use words and sentences that i didn't know i knew how to say! Its really cool when that happens! Elder Bunker said i know so much more than he did and he read me some of his journal entries from when he had about one month on the mission and he said that it was so hard for him to understand people so hes helping me learn faster.

We think that Elder Bunker got fleas in his bed which really is a bummer cause hes gotten bit so much and Ive gotten bit a couple times but hes washing all of his stuff today so hopefully the flea problem will go away soon. Its getting hotter and windier which is crazy because it was already pretty windy before! The wind stinks because then all the dust is blowing everywhere. In the morning well see people out sweeping their dirt and watering their dirt so its not flying everywhere.

Today were going to teach our pension how to make breakfast burritos! After that were going to play some volleyball with some of our investigators which should be a blast! Other than that everything's all good down here in Peru! Hope all of you have a fantastic week! Love you guys

Love,

Elder Jarman

The second picture is of some of the church members at our game night that we do every Friday.

Things are great here in Peru

11-11-13 Week #8

Hey Everyone!

Things are great here in Peru. Its starting to get hotter here which is gonna stink but its all part of the adventure!

On the 20th Elder Nelson will be visiting the Chiclayo mission and all of the missionaries will be in the same place so hopefully i will get to see baylor! Also it will be the first time in the history of the mission that every missionary in chiclayo will be in the same place! Some of the places are 10 hours away so all the missionaries in the whole mission haven't all been in the same spot at the same time so that's kind of cool.

Today is p-day and we went to the institute building to play soccer for a little while. We were going to go play soccer on the beach but not everyone wanted to. After we played for a while we went to one of the pensions houses whos pretty wealthy for Peru and we had a birthday party for one of the sisters and we had hamburgers and tons of candy and cake! When we sang and the girl blew out the candles its a tradition in Peru that the birthday person has to take a bite out of the cake so she went to take a bite out of the cake and people shoved her face in the cake! After that we went to take a big group photo on the roof and i guess its another tradition in Peru too but while we were taking pics the zone leaders took eggs and flour and smashed the eggs on her head and then poured flour on her hear too! It was really funny but i got flour and egg on me too!

We are starting to work more with the members in the ward because we feel like there are some people who are so close but they just need more friends in the church so were working with five member families and each of them have their own mission plan with names of people so we think the work is about to take off in this area. We have an investigator named Graciela who wants to get baptized but she needs to get the okay from her husband but thats taking a while because he works in Lima and only visits once a month so soon she should get baptized. We have another investigator named Aurora who wants to get baptized too but she needs to get permission too. Another one named Veronica who is practically a member but she cant get baptized until she gets married so were working on that. We have another one whos named Tathiana whos progressing really well she just has loads and loads of questions but things are going well with her. Another one is Palma who needs to get married too and then he can get baptized. The biggest problem here is that people aren't married! If people were married we would have so many more baptisms in this area. Anyways were teaching about 17 lessons a week and we try to get 9 with members every week. This week we made almost every single one of our goals so were doing well and were starting to work well with each other and soon we should see some more growth in this area.

Not much more to share about this week! Hope all of you have a wonderful week! Love you all! Thanks for all your support! Ill try to get some more pics but were not really supposed to take pictures because well most likely get our cameras stolen. But yeah ill try to get some more.

Love,
Elder Jarman

Time to get to work!

11-4-13 Week #7

Hey Everyone!

Hope everyones doing fantastic! I think im starting to get used to it out here. Showering with cold water isnt too bad anymore and im used to it when theres like 15 mosquitos in the bathroom in the morning. Im still not used to all the dust though! There is so much dust and it always gets in my eyes. Other than that and getting used to the food its kind of cool out here. 

The culture is a little weird though. For the most part they have really basic houses which look really small from the outside and then you walk inside and there's a bunch of different rooms and then out of nowhere you'll see a fairly nice TV with a big sound system attached to it. Also they sometimes have some pretty nice phones. Their priorities are not focused on their houses. I don't know its just kinda weird.

The weeks are going by really fast out here. We have like three investigators that are ready to be baptized but they need to get married first. Sometimes its hard to talk during the lessons because i dont really know what theyre talking about because they talk super fast and slur their words but after a while i should be able to start to understand what they are saying. So sometimes ill only say a couple things to the investigators the entire lesson. Some of the lessons though i can understand almost everything and there will be stuff that i want to say but i dont know how to say it yet. 

Im not sure if elder bunker will be with me all the way through my training but i hope he is. Our little family branch in La Pradera just became a rama, so now were officially a ward and we have our own bishop and everything now. Only 50 more members and we become a barrio. Time to get to work.

Im not sure if the pictures wroked because the computers here are a little funky, and the keyboards stink which is why everythings all messed up, but if the pictures worked then they are of my first zone and my room and the view from my room window. 

Thats all i have for now. Hope you all have a good week!

Love, 

Elder Jarman

First email from the field and a baptism!!!

10-28-13 Week #6

Hey Everyone!

I don't have much time to email anymore because i have to send a letter to the mission president but ill try to explain everything and there probably wont be pictures this week, sorry.

Okay so well start with the worst and then get better. The worst thing that happened this week is that i ended up getting food poisoning on Friday night at like 1 30 in the morning and it was just down hill from there. So i rested until like 12 30 on Saturday and then we had to go somewhere. My stomach still feels a little funky but i think i just need to get accustomed to the food. Then a day and a half later my comp ( Elder Isaac Bunker) started feeling funny and now hes sick too so it had to be something that we both ate. 

My Spanish has got a long way to go.. I got out here and could understand so much less than i thought i was going to be able to understand, But my comp says i know a lot more than he did when he came out here and hes been out here for 17 months and hes fluent so its cool to think that im going to be like that in a couple of months. Whats hard for me now with the Spanish is that i hear the words in Spanish and translate it into English in my head which takes a lot of time and so i miss the next couple of words so when i start to think in Spanish then ill be doing a lot better. Plus i need to learn all the slang and different words in their dialect of Spanish which they call casteano.

Now were getting to the better stuff. The flight to chiclayo wasn't bad but we had to get up at like three in the morning to get on the plane so the next day i was super tired. We got to chiclayo and then met our mission president and our mission presidents wife who are really cool. Then we had a couple of meetings and we heard the changes and then finally we got our areas and our comps. So right now I am in the Chiclayo Central zone and my area of proselyting is called La Pradera. Its a small place outside of the city so everythings really small and poor and there's trash everywhere and it smell all the time. We live in a chapel house so we have our tiny little room up stairs where me and my companion sleep and study and then all throughout the house is a couple other rooms for church and downstairs is their version of a chapel. Ill try to send pics next week cause i dont have time this week. Apparently there are some scary stories about our chapel house which is kind of creepy but i try not to think about that. There is this spot in the house where the tile is cracked and its hollow underneath there so thats a little creepy and all throughout the night it sounds like somebody is opening the door to our room because of the wind. Oh and the bathroom is tiny and the shower is heated by electricity but its not really heated so we take cold showers every morning. The CCM was luxury compared to here Other than that my area is awesome and our pension is super cool and very understanding too. We haven't had too many weird things yet, the weirdest thing was probably a full fish without the head.I got one of the bones stuck in my throat which was a little scary but i got it out. The one thing that i don't like very much is that we give our laundry to her once a week but then get it back three days later so its like our laundry gets done once every ten days so im going to need to buy some more socks somewhere. Me and Elder Peabody are in the same dstrict so we see each other like once a week. My comp is the district leader so im going to have to go on day changes with other people which will be pretty cool. 

We finally had P-Day today after a super long time and we had a zone activity and played games and then ate a really good meal of steak and beans and rice and fried bananas. 

Santa came exactly two months early with three packages!!! Thanks! 

But now for the best part of the week! We had a baptism!! I didn't really help much with teaching them because i just got to the area but me and my companion baptized and 11 and an 8 year old. My first baptism was Pedro Alexander and it was in Spanish! 

Hopefully there will be some more baptisms soon! Hope you are all doing well. Sorry again for the lack of pictures and sorry if i don't get to responding to your emails.

Love and miss you all!

Love,

Elder Jarman

This is the last time I will write from the CCM!

10-17-13 Week #5

Alls good in Peru! This is the last time that ill write from the CCM. On tuesday we ship off to chiclayo which im super excited for! Im not sure when ill get to write next because the paper we read was really wierd but we might not get to write for a little while. Anyways, ive gotten so close to all the people in my district that its gonna be pretty sad to leave but thank goodness that all the guys in my ditrsict are going to chiclayo too, only the hermanas are going to a different mission.

 

This week has been pretty awesome! Our teachers are starting to pile on the studying because we leave in a couple of days, but other than that soccers been fun and the days have been flying by. We challenged some of the latinos in the CCM to soccer and whoever lost had to give massages to the winner and we won 4 to 1! There are some latinos here that are pretty good but i think our district is the best at soccer and volleyball!

 

Elder Ruiz my companion got a package but its at a post office in Lima so were gonna have to take a Taxi tomorrow, just the two of us with the little spanish we know, through Lima to try to get his package from the post office so that should be an interesting experience. The latino room mates in our room have been staying up late at night and they talk quietly but that only lasts for like 10 minutes and then they start talking loud again so havent really been sleeping well the past few nights but its whatever.

 

Were supposed to prepare a talk every sunday on a specific topic and during sacrament meeting the branch president calls some people to speak and so i had to speak last sunday on the book of mormon and were supposed to do as much as we can in spanish. So i got up and gave a five minute talk in only spanish!! So the spanish is coming along pretty well i guess. Even then mission president said that my talk was really good and the branch president asked me how many years of spanish i took because my accent was spot on! Thats was pretty cool!

 

Not much else happened this week, but im sure that there will be lots of stuff ot talk about next week!

 

Hope all of you are doing fantastic!

 

 

The first picture is of me and my district with our night teacher, and the second one i tried to recreate the one of baylor in the same spot but i dont know how well i did with that

 

Love you all!

 

Love,

Elder Jarman

I have been out for 1 Month already!

 10-10-13 Week#4

Hey Everyone!

Everything's going great up here! Ive been out for 1 Month already and its feels like its only been a couple of days!! Were are now the advanced group in the CCM! Only two more weeks and then im out in the field! Just when i feel like im starting to get used to the CCM im about to go out into the field and then it will be a whole new experience!

Conference was awesome! It was a little hard to stay awake for all of the sessions but i managed to do it! 80,000 missionaries!! And im one of them! Thats pretty crazy how many there are now, the work really is hastening!

Last week my hair was getting a little long and i didnt really want to wait another week till the guy came to the CCM to get it cut so me and my room mate got our haircut by one of the latinos in their dorm room!! It was a pretty funny experience! There were a whole bunch of people in there taking pictures and laughing!

We got new latino room mates today and they seem pretty cool so far, they dont speak any english so that will be interesting for the next two weeks but it will be a good way to learn more spanish! They are both going to Chiclayo too! Me and elder Ruiz and my other two roomates were gonna play a joke on the incoming room mates but we decided not to. We were gonna wrap up one of out room mates, Elder Passey, like in the picture i attached and then put duct tape on his mouth and lay him on the floor so that when the latinos came in the room they would freak out! They didnt end up coming in at night so its a good thing that we didnt do that!

We get to go out proselyting again this saturday which will be awesome and hopefully i will know a little more about what they are talking about than last time! I can wait to get out into the field!

Thats about it for now, nothing new is happening in the CCM.

Love,

Elder Jarman

The temple today was as always really awesome!

10-3-13 Week #3

Hey Everyone!!

Everythings all good here! I miss all you guys! Its getting harder to wake up every morning and to stay awake during all the studying, but its definitely awesome! Nothing really interesting happened this week, except for some people came down from chiclayo and we taught them some lessons about the gospel and talked to them a little bit about chiclayo! Everyone says its really hot there! Here at the CCM is overcast quite a bit of the time and its basically the perfect temp outside!

The latinos in the CCM only stay for two weeks and the North Americans stay for six weeks and its been pretty cool to get to know some of the other people, nobody that i know of is from california except for the two others in my district. The two weeks in between the mini transfers fly by. It feels like they just got here yesterday and now all the latinos are leaving in a couple of days and then well be the veterans here at the CCM. Im sure that time will fly by too and then ill be in the field!!

The temple today was as always really awesome! We went to the temple store again and i got some scriptures in spanish and a spanish hymn book. My spanish is coming along pretty well, i can almost teach a whole lesson in spanish and say all that i want to in spanish! I feel like im finally starting to get the hang of teaching also.

Last sunday we had fast sunday because general conference is this week and its was a pretty tough fast sunday. Im super excited for general conference this week because it means a whole bunch of english this weekend!! Whenever we have firesides as a whole group the North Americans all have to wear headphones to translate it in english which kind of stinks. So yeah im really looking forward to general conference.

Nothing else interesting here. The foods a whole lot of chicken and rice. They are doing some construction at the CCM or something and there are these really deep holes all over the place so we cant play volleyball. This week one time when we were playing soccer i got kneed in the calf and i got a huge dead leg and i was limping around for a couple days and that was pretty painful.

Everyday is just studying and the some more studying and then some teaching and then some more studying and then repeat. All this studying is so awesome! I did not know you could learn so much in such a short amount of time!

Hope all is well back at home! Love you and Miss you!!

Elder Jarman

It was really humbling...

9-26-2013 Week #2

Hey Everyone!

I apologize in advance but the emails while im in the CCM will start to get boring and shorter because we literally do almost the same exact thing everyday! Hours on end of language study and companion study and personal study and yeah lots of studying!

One cool thing we did get to do this week was we got to go out proseliting!! It was a really neat and humbling experience! We went to a place in Lima called Canto Rey and we went out with lation companions and a member and went to members house who were inactive to try to reactivate them. Altough we didnt actually get to talk to any members because all the addresses were wrong, oh and the addresses here are written in chalk and they are super confusing and so its like impossible to find someones house, but it was still cool! It was really humbling in two ways, one becuase i thought i was starting to get the hang of spanish and then i heard the natives talk... and two, the people here are really poor! There was trash all over the place, there were marks on the walls where you could tell people had peed and the houses were super small and very poor! There are actually quite a bit of people that know the elders because everywhere we go there are poeple that say hey elders and also when were on our P-day in Lima a lot of people will honk at us and say elderes out their windows! All in all presliting was a good experience!

I was in a trio companionship with Elder Peabody and Elder Ruiz, but then someone in our district went home and so now just Elder Ruiz is my companion. We got new people today in the CCM and new room mates who are north americans as well. We havent really talked to the them much yet becuase we went to the temple today, but they seem pretty cool! I think the next time that i go to the temple that i will be able to do the whole session in spanish! The last two times we went we had headphones and this time i listened more to it in spanish than i did in english and i could understand almost all of it so next time im going to try to do it in spanish!

Another cool thing that happened this week was and earthquake. Me and my companion were sitting in a room by ourselves preparing for a lesson and then i felt this little rumble and i told my companion and then it started to get stronger and we were all like earthquake!! The quake lasted for like 30 seconds but it wasnt very strong where we were. Im not sure but i think i heard someone say that it was a 7 in Areqiupa!

Nothing else exciting happened. If you have any questions about anything let me know!

Tupananchis Kama Wawa

or in other words Hasta la Vista Baby in ketchewan!

Love,

Elder Jarman

The CCM is awesome so far!

 9-19-2013 Week #1

Hey guys!! love you all and thanks so much for the emails and the letters! It was a weird feeling at the airport as soon as I got through security I waved once and then all you were just gone! Once we got to Peru immigration and customs didn’t take long at all which was awesome! We took a bus to the MTC which was like 20 minutes away from the airport and it was a pretty crazy bus ride! I heard more honking in an hour here than i do in like a year at home. On the way to the CCM we saw some fast food restaurants which was a relief and we also saw some really poor parts of town, but some of the people here say that what we saw is nothing compared to what well see when we go proseliting for the first time on Saturday. We got to the CCM at like 1 and got a packet with our schedule which is jam-packed everyday and we also got our companions. I’m in a trio companionship which is pretty neat, with Elder Ruiz and Elder Peabody. When we got to our room there was a not on our door from our roommates that was kind of intimidating but when we finally met them later the next day we found out that they were really cool!

The first couple of days were pretty tough just getting into the rhythm of things. We wake up at 6:30 and get ready for the day. The showers here are weird, they are either boiling hot or they’re freezing and once you find the happy medium it lasts for about 10 seconds before it gets really hot or rally cold again. Breakfast is at 7 and every morning we eat runny eggs yogurt and toast and that’s about it, sometimes well get lucky and get some pancakes which are super good but they’re better than yogurt and eggs. Then well have some language study and some gospel study and then well have lunch. For lunch we always have rice and something like fish or steak that is like leather it’s so tough or chicken or something like that. We have rice twice a day every day of the week so when i get back please don’t make any rice! After lunch well have personal study where we can study anything we want, and after that is my favorite part, Physical Activity!! For physical activity we play volleyball sometimes but we usually play soccer and its pretty funny when we play soccer because all you hear the whole time is Elder Elder Elder! After physical activity well have some more language or gospel classes and then towards dinner time we have been teaching lessons to teachers here and its almost all in Spanish! The Spanish is coming back to me much better than I thought it was going to but we went out for P-day today and it made me realize how much I have to learn! Then well have dinner which will be more rice and then some more fish or beef or once we had lomo saltado! They do have french fries quite a bit so that’s pretty good! After dinner we teach more and then have one or two more classes and then we do daily planning with our companions and then we get ready for bed and write in our journals and go to bed at 10:30 and then repeat it all over again.

My district has 11 people in it and they’re all really awesome! Everyone is really cool and funny and its fun to watch the people in my district learn Spanish so fast! It really shows how much the spirit plays a role in learning a language! My room is on the 3rd or top floor of the dorms and my room mates are super funny as is my whole floor! one of my room mates is full of stories and tells us stories every night while were getting ready for bed and people play jokes on each other and everyone’s laughing the whole time, its really awesome!

Adjusting to the food is not too bad. In the CCM the people say you either have the siempres, when you always have to go or the nuncas, when you never have to go and at some point everyone gets something. I have been doing well with the food, for now at least. One thing that’s weird is that some of the toilets here don’t have seats on them! Some of the food has been weird here and some of it has been really good! One of the weird things that I’ve eaten is a granadia. It doesn’t taste too bad but its a fruit that you crack the skin and peel it open and it looks like a spider laid like 100 eggs inside the fruit!

We had P-day today which was super awesome! we were supposed to do some stuff for our visas on Tuesday but it got rescheduled to Thursday so we were all pretty upset that our P-day was going to get cut short by 2 hours! Also we found out that it overlapped with our email time and our laundry time so we were all freaking out! On the day of P-day after we had gone to the temple we were on our way to lunch today and we found out that the interpol got rescheduled again so its tomorrow not and we got all excited because we were going to get to write and do laundry! Today we had to wake up at 5:45 which was a bummer but it was all worth it because we got to go to the Lima temple today and it was so cool!! It’s a very small temple and the session was in Spanish! After the temple we went to store and bought some snacks and some other stuff and our chaperones showed us where the temple store is so we can go there next time and get some Peru scripture bags and some other cool things! We didn’t have much time out of the CCM today but it will be better next time and I can’t wait to go to the temple again! We got some knock off soccer jerseys for really cheap and they’re pretty sweet! I took pictures but I don’t have the plug for the camera so i can’t send any pictures unless i can find a card reader the next time we go to the store.

The CCM is awesome so far! I learned how to pray and to bear my testimony in Spanish! The days go by like weeks because we do so much stuff in a day but the weeks go by like days. I can’t wait to get out to mission field now im so excited for that!

Love you all and hope your doing well!

Elder Jarman

First email!

9-12-13

Hey guys! I only have ten minutes so it will be very short for now. All went well with the flight and we all got here safely. I know two people that are here with me in the CCM which is awesome! It’s nice to not feel completely alone. When we got here all of the sudden everything was in Spanish and it was like wow this is going to be tough. We took a bus from the airport to the MTC and all along the way were these really poor looking buildings and it was very humbling to see. I appreciate what I have much more now seeing the conditions that these people live in. It still hasn’t really hit me yet that I’m on a mission, it feels like I’m on one of those mini-MTC trips but I’m sure that it will start to set in soon especially because we received our name tags today. All is well so far and I’m not positive yet but I think P day will be on Thursday for now. Love all of you! More to come when I have more time!

Con amor, Elder Jarman

Leaving for Peru!

9-10-2013

Last meal before heading off to Peru for 2.

 Saying goodbye to Cannon, Gwen, and Brandon on the phone at BYU.

 Setting apart

 This one's for Elder Underwood and Elder Gentry

 See ya in 2...

Mission Call Opening May 4th 2013