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