December 28th

    Well I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas this week, I
hope you all received what you were hoping for, better yet, I hope the
Savior was in the mind of all of you. Christmas here was a record high
of 74 degrees, not exactly a white Christmas. This week we got to go
down to Richmond to a whole mission conference, where we we had
multiple trainings and talks given and a testimony meeting. We got to
listen to a ton of musical numbers also. The whole meeting was about 8
hours, but the spirit was there so strongly, it was an awesome
meeting.

 Elder Packer, Prince and Jacobson

me and the other missionaries or dudes, from our zone-

Elder Starr, me, Searle, Prince and Richards

 Elder Jacobson & the head honcho President Wilson

         After Christmas conference we decided to try and find more
new investigators because a lot of our potentials have gone "cold" so
we decided to try and find more people that will want to listen to our
message. We started off at these projects behind our apartment, we got
into one Hispanic home on the first door we knocked, after that it was
a bunch of people drugged out of their minds, so we didn't have a lot
of success there. We went to an older complex after that about a mile
down the road, it's funny because the complexes that smell like weed
the strongest are the ones where we will teach 8 or 9 lessons! So now
we know when we're about to have some success if it smells like
someone just blazed up in the stairwell haha.
        It's honestly been a pretty slow week because of Christmas and
everyone is busy, but after Thursday is when we've been having a lot
more success. We went back out to our two trailer parks we like to
knock at, and we were explaining to one of our progressing
investigators that we have been striking out a lot and we will see
people home but they will not answer. The investigator told us that
they have little kids keep watch for cops or other people from the
government, and that they see us and think that we are with the
government so they go and tell a lot of people and no one will answer
their door haha so that explains a lot for what has been happening
lately.
       Well at the beginning of the week we had about three instances
of people yelling and cussing at us, and trying to bible bash with us,
and I had a lot of hard feelings for those people. When I was studying
one morning I came across D&C 64:10 and it says "I, the Lord, will
forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all
men." With that I realized I was in the wrong also, and I need to be
better at letting things go and focus on forgiving them and focusing
on what I need to do to be more Christlike. Also this week I've been
feeling really insufficient because we haven't had a lot of success;
but yesterday at church there's a member in the 2nd ward who we have
gotten to know quite a bit and we were talking to him yesterday, and
he started to choke up and to thank us for what we do, because if it
wasn't for us he wouldn't know what eternity looked like, he wouldn't
know where to go or who to turn to, so that was so touching and
pierced my heart and After that I just know I don't want to be
anywhere else but here on a mission.
        That was my week in a summary, can't wait to hear from you
guys and I can't to fill you in on what will happen this week.

Con Amor
-Elder Jacobson

We loved being able to talk to & see our Elder! It was so neat to hear his testimony & we had family prayer with Ryan saying both in Spanish. It is so beautiful to hear! 

Christmas week

We saw Santa at a buffet a member took us to, and I was excited!

Well this week was such an awesome week! It didn't really start out
too awesome, we had 26 appointments fall through this week and even
just trying to see other potential investigators and referrals we have
been consistently striking out, but it all paid off. We finally got
the Dominga family to commit to baptism! It made this week so much
better and just made it feel like nothing boring or anything bad
happened this week. Ha we just finally sat them down and taught them
strictly about baptism and how important it is to be baptized when we
are able to be clean of sins, and into our church, not just as a child
and call it good. So she said yes and we asked her husband and he kind
of was wrapped up in a blanket and he said he doesn't know, because he
was already baptized, and she reached over and pulled off the blanket
from his ears and yelled "ESCUCHA! Tu vas bautízate" (listen! You're
going to be baptized) so that was definitely the highlight of my week!

Me and the Dominga family!

The low part of my week is that the Senior couple Missionaries left
this week, and now I don't have anyone to talk about hunting or horses
with, So I'm pretty bummed I only got to spend one transfer around
them.
Today we got to go to West Virginia with the Elders there, and we went
on a pretty awesome hike! We hike to the top of Spruce Knob the
highest point in West Virginia!

Me, Elder Prince, Packer & Franklin Elders on top of Spruce Knob

So yeah this week has been pretty boring as far as stories go because
we've just been trying to visit lots of people.

One scripture I found which I love is Matthew 25:21 I encourage you
all to read it, and I promise you will feel the spirit.

1st transfer down!

It's weird I've already had a transfer go by in the mission field. I'm really glad I'm out here and I'm grateful for who I get to be around! 

Well to start off our week on Tuesday we ended up dropping John as an investigator, he said he didn't really want religion in his life, and just stuff like that. Wednesday we got to go down to Richmond for Spanish conference, it's just where some missionaries bared their testimonies and then others gave some talks. It was pretty fun to see all the Spanish missionaries there! After that we got to go to café Rio which was amazing!! 

I also finished the Book of Mormon again this week. I'm so glad I have the Book of Mormon in my life, it has so many answers to everything that we deal with in life. It also tells how we need to live our life, and overall its just a wonderful read. A lot of people try to tell us whats wrong with the book of Mormon, but no one has ever read it. So I just encourage you guys to just read if you haven't already, and then just read it again if you have. 

We have been striking out on people a lot lately, we try to visit twelve or thirteen people a day and no one will answer, let alone listen. We finally got to talk to two people. The one is a Hispanic named Ever. We got to talk to him and apparently he's been taught a lot and has a strong faith in god, but says if you go to church its all good. It just doesn't make sense because he wont go to any church let alone a specific one. 

The other person we found was named Jennida. She's full of kindness and light which is great. We got to teach her the Restoration and set up another appointment so we will see what happens there! 

Other than that, nothing really crazy happened this week. 

Can't wait to share with you guys next week!! 

-Elder Jacobson

The Thursday before this letter Elder Jacobson had an appointment about his ankle. It was still causing him a lot of pain and was still swollen. The dr. told him it was most likely torn ligaments and to plan on surgery (yes, he's always been this injury prone). We prayed (again) that he'd be healed for his follow up appointment. On the 17th I received a message from him saying the follow up appointment only showed some tendonitis. We are so thankful for this!!! 

Weekly email!

Well as always this week was good and full of weird people, spiritual
experiences, and your basic mission life. 
We got to go back and visit my personal favorite people to talk to, the Dominga family. The two really old Puerto Rican investigators we have. They're my favorite
because they can just talk your ear off for hours! We haven't been
able to see them for about 2 weeks, but they have been listening to
the Book of Mormon (they can't read or write) and they love it! I'm so
grateful we got to find a CD set, let alone in Spanish for them!
That's just how the lord works. Haha they told us to be careful when
we come over because there's people who "pretend to sell pizza, but
they sell marijuana" but she said we're men of God so we will probably
be fine haha. So sure enough we start walking over there and from out
of freaking no where this dude pops out behind these trash cans, and
he's wearing a onesie that's is a shark and it has a hood with the
shark head and mouth, and he is hammered drunk, bottle in hand and
everything. He tried yelling and to give him money, so we told we will
give him our money IF he can catch us. So we start running and we
watch him fall over like 8 times before he just lays there hahaha.
Highlight of my week.

And here is the Domingas dog that just hangs out on my shoulder for an hour or more every time we go over. 

The spiritual part of my week was trying to contact referrals
and potential investigators. This happened twice in the exact same
way. We tried seeing a woman and both times we knocked the wrong door,
and we got a lesson with the person that lives there and got to set up
another appointment with them! Just pretty awesome how the spirit
works.

 Here is me and Elder prince, just being classy gents, or just being tools

And last but not least valley view or little Mexico trailer park, Where we have been knocking doors quite a bit lately. 

One thing Ryan expresses in his personal letters is how much he loves being a missionary! It's also fun to see how his personality isn't changing, but his testimony and spiritual side is growing incredibly fast. 

Love him!!