A Little Bit of Everything!

Hey family!

Wow, it was a hard week. Spanish is getting crazy (not like it wasn't already). We had 2 days last week that we called our "English Fast" or as the optimistic people like to call it, our "Spanish Feast." I'll let you decide what I called it. :) Haha, but it was a really good experience. Unfortunately, I found that when we have our "fast/feast" days, I just kind of clam up and don't say much of anything, but don't worry, I'm getting over that. My teachers are really good at being patient with me as I try to formulate sentences and with encouraging me to speak.

So the night before our first fast/feast, I think I must have been stressing really bad because me and my comps had to teach a lesson the next day on the Plan of Salvation, which we barely started studying, and in Spanish. Yes, my first lesson in Spanish. So anyway, I had the craziest dream! I dreamed that I wrote an entire song about the Plan of Salvation to cover all the points of my lesson, in Spanish, of course. I woke up the next morning and could only remember one of the lines (I would sing it to you but you can't hear me so...yeah, sorry :) but don't even fret, I will have a song written about it by the time I get home. Maybe I'll sing it at my homecoming talk! Haha. :)

Speaking of my song stuff, I played the love medley of hymns I played at my farewell in RS on Sunday. It went well, at least that's what I was told. Multiple sisters came up to me and asked me where I got the music from. Haha, love it. :)

Anyway, I have had some way cool experiences at the Referral Center this week. If you don't know, that's the place at the MTC where we can make phone calls following up with people who have requested Books of Mormon and DVD's and stuff like that. One night while making phone calls, I called 2 people who spoke only Spanish! It was awesome. I didn't hand the headset over to my teacher, like I've done in the past, but I talked to them and testified to them and they both want the missionaries to come to their house! I could feel the spirit working so strong in me. I was telling one of them to please excuse my Spanish because I don't know it very well and he was like, "Oh, no lo creo, no lo creo! Muy bien! (I don't believe it, I don't believe it, it's really good)" Haha, it made me happy.

Another cool experience at the RC - we went in to do some calls on Saturday during our free time and I went about 45 minutes without a single person picking up the phone. I prayed for someone to answer and finally this guy in NC did named John. He had met with the missionaries several weeks ago but they hadn't followed up with him on anything and he had a bunch of questions about things he had read in the Book of Mormon, so he decided to ask me. We talked for 45 minutes! And then I left him to read 2 Nephi 31-32 (because he had questions about baptism) and he asked if I would call him back on Monday night to answer any more questions he might have. So I did last night and we talked for another 45 minutes! This time I left him with parts of 3 Nephi to read and asked if he would pray about the things we talked about and he said he would! It was awesome. He wants me to call him back again next Monday night and I told him I can but that then I would get him in touch with the missionaries again in his area so he can have person-to-person contact, because that is so much better. But still, it was way cool. He's one of those types of people that knows the Bible front and back but he said that I was making sense to him so we'll see. :)

DID YOU KNOW? Fun fact of the week: An elder in my district, Elder Lamoreaux, came up with this hypothesis we decided to try out. He wondered if you mailed a letter with a fake address and no postage, but with the address you wanted it to go to as the return address if it would get there. So we tried it out. We wrote a letter to our teacher, put her address in the return address, and put his address as the address to go to but in Provo (he's from Phoenix). Sure enough, a couple days later, Hermana Cochrane, our teacher, came in and said she got it! Haha, we won't do it again, because it's kind of cheating the system, but it was a fun thing to try out and know that it works. ;)

After about a week of receiving nothing, I felt so loved because I got about 11 letters in just a couple days, so thank you! I got 4 postcards from Dad in England, and a letter from him, a letter from Celecta Moss, Amy Dyer, Alison Moreno, Amber Hendrickson, and Amanda Frey. THANK YOU THANK YOU! I replied to all of you to day! :)

Well that's about it for this week. I hope these letters are actually exciting to you because I look forward to writing these all week! :) Take care and know that you are in my prayers every day. Please keep me in yours to master this language and be an amazing missionary! I miss you tons but I love you more!

Love,
Hermana Jackson