2nd week in the field- Aug 1

Hello family! so 2 of my investigators have a baptismal date for the 20th of august! i asked the husband and he said yes! so they are set and ready to go! we watched the joseph smith movie with them this week and it was so wonderful, i felt the spirit so strong. Their names are Maria and Nery. Marias parents are also investigating but need to get married first. we have a couple new investigators too! i really love all of you so much and i am so grateful for all that i have. you are such a loving and wonderful family who i know loves me no matter what. please be so safe traveling and working! i love you all with all of my heart!

more pictures!- July 25

me and the elders in my misson from my district at the ccm

hermana green and i after the change conference about to head out to our areas!!! (some places in my area look like the ghetto in the background of the pic)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 me on my 2nd day with my first breakfast during personal study

third day  i think after our studying about to go out teaching!!

today the 25th p-day with our lunch!

a street that looks like all the other streets im usually walking on. (ill get a pic of san juan next week

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my old stunt partner Chandler Stone who was at the ccm picking up missionaries

elder bishop and I on tuesday for the change conference

view from the mission home apartment

first week in the field- July 25

hola familia! i am in my first area and it is amazing to be a real missionary really out teaching people!!! i have so much to tell you all but i dont even know where to start!! well basically all is well and the whole week has been surprise after surprise! i cant believe how much my life has changed in just a few short months, and especially in the last week!!!

okay so wednesday we woke up and were driven to a chapel in guatemala city with all of our stuff. then we went into the chapel and had whats called a change conference, or transfer conference, and we had to sit on the stage and then they announced who would be companions with who and where we would be going! everyoen was so anxious and excited including me, because our missionis so big and different depending on where you´re sent! it was like a whole new mission call... so they announced me and my companion is Hermana Molina, latina from costa rica, and she will be my trainer for 2 transfers or 12 weeks, she speaks like 20 words in english,,, so its good for my spanish! hard but sooo good and i am so happy with it, anyway my area is called Ciprisales, and its somewhere in guatemala city, im not sure exactly where but you can probably google it. its not far from the ccm or the temple, but the area is SO different. 

okay so my house is cute! its totally pink on the outside and has a little courtyard thing inside, and then a bedroom-studyroom , a kitchen, a bathroom and a lavendaria all separated by the courtyard thing. ill attach pics, its not too dirty and we just cleaned it today so its great! i really like it for the most part. 

 

anyway so the field started an hour after arriving at my house!!! we went out and visited memebers and less actives that afternoon!!! it was wonderful! it was the longest day of my life! basically we walk a lot on the streets, soooo close to moving cars!!! ive never been so close to moving cars in my life, usually im driving one, so thats still new and scary. the first day we visited this lady with no teeth and she lives in this place called San Juan... which is the saddest and most ghetto part of my area. all of the houses are made of cement and metal and tin and its so sad. i can´t believe how little they have, their beds are almost always in the front room and the cook in disgusting conditions... its so sad i dont know how else to say it. the whole first day i couldnt stop staring because everywhere i turned was just awful. going to africa definitely helped prepare me for this though. its kind of like africa except for in kenya i was watching from the car when i was in the city. 

my favorite family is one that lives in san juan in this little cement house thats connected to all the other houses and they are very active, except not the dad as much, and they are so sweet and forgiving of my spanish! they even help teach me words and help my sentances. when we go to their house we sit on one of their beds, the floors are cement and the baby runs around... its so not childproof, it makes me want to fix everything. thats how i feel here, i just want to run around and fix it all... and i cant. 

but i do have a message that can fix things. i am bringing the message of the gospel of jesus christ and the happiness and blessigngs that they can recieve if they accept this beautiful gospel. as missionaries we are able and encouraged to promise blessings to investigators and i did that last night. we were in a tut-tut or somehting, its like a scooter with a mini car built around it, and the driver is our investigator and his wife as well as we were driving around with him and his wife my companion committed them to be married in august (they have 4 children) and we were so excited! after they drove us home, we were talkig to them about their marriage, they were saying something about how its going to be hard because of money or something. i felt impressed to promise them that they would receive so many blessings if they go through with it. it felt amaizng because i knew it was true and it will happen, their house is sad too, its all so sad, but their family is cute and im so happy

 

anyway the girl has a baptismal date that my companion and her old comp set and im going to ask her husband to be baptised tomorrow! pray for me! i love you family!

Pictures of Hermana's Appt:

one more day till the field!- July 18

hello family! i leave for the mission home tomorrow! we just said goodbye to all of the missionaries going to missions other than guatemala and peru! I can hardly believe im actually going into the field this week. it feels scary and so exciting at the same time. my spanish definitely still needs so much work but i know it will come. i pray for el don de linguas (the gift of tongues) every night, and i say EVERY prayer in spanish. i hope i get a latina companion or one that is amazing at spanish! So i think the guatemala city north mission home isnt too far from here so i heard we may actually be coming back here to spend the night after we spend the day with the president. i am pretty sure the new president and his wife have already started their mission, so we are their first group of missionaries! (maybe that means they will like us the most :) anyway this week has been full of more hours of class and devotionals, we taught lessons, and i really really enjoyed teaching all of them. i love teaaching repentance and forgiveness and teaching anything about the atonement. mommy i have almost filled up  my entire missionary gospel study journal. i LOVE it thank you so much for buying it! you can send another one if you want or i will just make another and make an index in the back. its perfect for preparing lessons the preach my gospel way because i can assess their need and then find scriptures and things that they need to hear really easily. i love you all so much and i hope all is well at home! maybe ill get to email more once im settled in my new area and with my new comp! the mission hojme address they gave us is the 5 degrees one. letters from the US have finally started arriving so some people are getting mail,. so it does get here thats good! i love you all sooooooo much. love you!

Pictures from the CCM:

Last Week in the CCM!- July 13

hi family! i am so so happy that you got my SD cards and bookmarks that i sent! I will make sure to take lots more pictures and record more memos when i am in the field (in ONE week!!!) it is hard here because of the rules and i live with 5 other girls in one room so voice recording is hard. but starting next week i will have lots of new stuff to tell! So this week we went to the plaza/central park again on monday and we did prostelyting with our north american companions and it was hard! we both are new at spanish but we were able to talk to some people about the church. we didn{t get any refferrals, but i did give away a Book of Mormon to a guy who wanted one and he knew a little about it (and he spoke some english which helped). anyway i will leave for the mission home (which i think is pretty close to here) on tuesday! I think we will stay there for a night, and then go to our first area. i kind of hope that i am in the city so i hear lots of spanish, but kind of dont want to be because the city seems scarier than the rural areas... oh well. i am praying for a latina companion though!! pray for her! i love you so much and cant wait to talk to you next week!

"water from heaven"- July 6

okay family! another week down at the CCM!! I loved reading about tori,s birthday and the cabin!!!! i am so happy it went to wonderful! We wore red white and blue here for the 4th of july and hung a flag in our room! oh you can go to guatemalaccm.com and see our group pictures! we took on the first 3 weeks, and we just took another one with all of the new latinos and north americans that came last week. so we have a billion missionaries here right now! 130 or something, i am in the case de huespes side of the building and it works fine! i have two new latina companions and i can communicate with them as much as i need to, still loves of hand motions and sound effects when i dont know a word but i can express myself so i am happy! This week i tried to say the word rain but i didnt know it so i said "auga de el ciello" or water from heaven or the sky, hahah they laughed. i also said  the word "pollo" (chicken) when i meant "poco" (small or little or somehting) so that was funny. the temple trips were fun! we did one session completely in spanish with english headphones i used sometimes, and the last part in spanish for the past 3 trips. oh i forgot to tell you last week! last week i got called on the spot to give my spanish talk in sacrament meeting! i wrote a good talk so i was happy to share it but it was funny because im sure it wasnt perfect. but i think it went well! i also gave the relief society lesson that week with hermana green, but in english. oh one of the latinas here said she found my mission blog before she got here on her mission!! i love you all so much! sorry about your foot tori! i love you!!!

here is the group picture from the website she mentions- can you spot Hermana Jacobsen? (hint: in red, third from the end on the right side...)

 Note: if you go to http://guatemalaccm.com/galeria/Ccm/tourccm.html you can take a little "virtual tour" of the Guatemala CCM to see where Hermana Jacobsen is!

Week 3 is done!!- June 28

Hi family! so today we took a bus around the city again and went to a market and bought guatemala things!!! we also went to a 3d map thing and a museum... sooo cool!!! SO i took pictures and will send them. ALSO there is this family here staying in the other side of the CCM where visiting families stay and they were with us and all of a sudden the mom looked at me and was like... "JACOBSEN!!! oh my goodness you are eliot,s daughter!!! i watched you open your call on facebook!" it was so funny. her maiden name is Jacobs and she went to saratoga with you daddy! She and her family are here picking up their son from the guatemala central mission. I am sending her home with some tiny gifts for you guys from the market! They will be home in like a week and you should meet up with them! Today my comp and i got moved to the other side of the CCM because there are about to be 115 missionaries this week ( more than double how many the past 3 weeks, all of our latina missionaries left yesterday and we will be getting new latino and north american missionaries tomorrow!!! a lot of them, so we are overflowing into the hotel side of the CCM. sorry that was confusing. we had a wonderful spiritual week and my lessons are getting better and so is my spanish. i really felt like i was able to get to know our latina misisonaries even though they didn{t speak english. it was wondeful., oh and we have snack time at 7:45 every night which is awesome. we get to go to the temple twice this week! I am sooooo excited. mommy im sad you got stung by a scorpion!!! But i LOVE the picture daddy took of you, you are beautiful! i love you bye!!! - Hermana Jacobsen

June 22

Hi family i don't have much time but i love you so much and things are great here! I had a wonderful experience this week at the plaza in downtown guatemala city! We went on a field trip on monday and got to prostelyte for 2  hours right outside their whitehouse type building. I was paired with my latina companion, thank goodness and i loved it! There were people just sitting around the courtyard, and my companion just looked at me and said ...Donde? I pointed to two ladies and we just walked up to them, she introduced us and our message and they LISTENED! I bore my testimony and they took a pamphlet about the plan of salvation and gave us their address and said they wanted to hear more! My jaw hit the floor when she started giving us her address. I couldnt believe it! We got 4 referrals slash addresses from people, three were families. I dont know if they will actually let the missionaries into their homes when the missionaries go, but i hope they do! It was such a wonderful experience because they liked the messages and i got to do a lot of the introducing and testimony bearing! They seemed to really want to know what i thought was so important that i was trying to speak spanish to say it. I love being a missionary! i love you family! please watch The Testaments this week, we watched it and i love it!!!! i love you! talk to you next week.

Week 1 at the CCM!- June 15

Hola mi familia!
Its my P-day and i only have  a few minutes to write an email to you all! (in the field i will get a whole hour i believe) i got super lucky slash blessed just barely becuase all the computers were being used so this teacher let me use his lap top for a second, long enough for me to attach two pictures! So one of of me at the airport a week ago and one is of me like 30something hours later the first night at the CCM with my new companion Hermana Mascow, we are standing in the main hallway of the CCM. My classroom is down the hall benind us and the cafeteria is to our right. The main devontional room is right by there too. There are 51 missionaries here right now and we have a record of one half being hermanas! we have 24 hermanas! the girls sleep on the third floor in a girls hall in 4 rooms and half are latina. I have 4 latinas in my room and they are so funny because we only understand each other some of the time  haha. but we get our points across usually... via the words we know and hand signals to learn new words. My latina companion is named Hermana Antúnes (i think) and she is very patient and nice to me. I spend all meals and devotionals sitting next to her. my companion is paired with her companion too. So ya it helps a lot because then i have to use what spanish i do know if i want to talk! I think the mission president is very inspired for doing it this way! his name is president steimle (or close to that) and i asked him and he is the one president funk was talking about.

Oh i have a calling! I am the technology person.. i make sure all of the mics, speakers, movies, and stuff are working before the devotionals (my teacher said i am the second girl to have that calling like ever! Thanks for teaching me all i know about wires etc david and daddy!) so i am okay at it and they seem to like me!
My teachers are all native spearers, i have 4 and they use english when we need to be learning something gospel related or when we don{t get what they say in spanish. they are so nice, i like them more than my provo teachers. anyway i love you so much and i go to the guatemala temple today!!!! i will write you more next week but i love it here! oh and the food is pretty normal i had pancakes yesterday and we even had a burger! love you!°

 

 Hermana Jacobsen at the airport! Heading to Guatemala!

 Hermana Jacobsen and her new companion Hermana Mascow

"Hola from Guatemala!"- June 8

I am safe and sound in the Guatemala mtc!! we got here around 7 this morning after flying all night, i think i got probably 2-3 hours or so on the second plane ride... but we arent going to sleep till tonight so i hope i stay alert! they just gave us 2-3 hours to unpack and get settled just now so that was nice and now its 11ish and we are starting our day! all of my bags arrived safelt and the mtc building is right next to the temple! the mtc is beautiful wood everywhere and there is just a tiny hallway of girl}s dorm rooms .. max capacity is 24 girls i think. right now i have only seen like 12 <max capacity for the whole mtc is 80missionaries<¿ so sorry i am having issues with the sympols and stuff on this keyboard! its a little different. i switched companions and her name is hermana masco and she came on the flight with us. we will be getting two new latina companionships in our dorm room later today i think... it will make me learn and hear lots of espanol! anyway we had breakfast already, the food was good, a egg and ham crousant sandwhich and some oatmeal stuff and beans haha and some juice that was like cantalope juice or something haha. they have purified water for us here to drink and the building is so nice, we feel spoiled. but i like it. its so tiny i hope i become good friends with all of the missionaries. anyway i havent figured out where the enter button is on this keyboard so its just one long paragraph! anyway i love you so much and it was so fun tlaking to all of you last night! i love you i love you i love you!!!! i like it here and im excited to learn more espanol very quickly! all of the forms we have to fill out have all been in spanish hahaha its so funny. anyway, i love you!

First Pictures!

 Her District!

 Hermana Jacobsen and Elder Riggs being awkward!

 Hermana Jacobsen pointing on the map to where she will be in about a week and a half! Guatemala!

 Hermana Jacobsen and her companion, Hermana Desoto

"Week #2"- May 27

Hola Familia!

Well I definitely hate the little timer going in the upper right corner of my screen - how annoying! I am in the laundry room waiting for my stuff in the dryer right now with a bunch of other missionaries writing letters! I just sent off a handwritten letter to you all in the TJMAXX bag i just sent home via postmart - i think you have to go to postmart and pick it up today. I sent pictures!!!

Well this week has gone by so fast! I basically just studied and ate! My district is amazing, check out the picture I sent. All of the elders in my district are really so nice and diligent, i am sad none of them will be in my mission, they are all going to honduras or el salvador/belieze missions. But it has been wonderful to get to know them and learn from their examples. A couple have girlfriends at home writing them so we hermanas are good at teasing them a little - big sister style.

Last night we had a wonderful scripture reading session where we had people reading the BOM outloud in english while we all followed along in spanish (like i would do at home) and it turned into a testimony meeting where whoever wanted to ended up saying something, and then we kneeled in prayer and sang army of helaman - just in our classroom. It was so nice. Our teachers will be wondering what they missed! We spend most of the day without a teacher doing scheduled personal/companion/language study but 3-6 hours a day a teacher comes. We have 2 teachers and they both act as investigators when it comes time to practice teaching. We have to learn their needs and what they know already and construct lesson plans for them. It is difficult not to want to tell them everything at once - but having to do it en español really makes it easier because i HAVE to say it simplified. haha

Thank you for all of your letters and prayers this week! I also loved the packages. I think I will mail home my microchip from my voice recorder before i go off to guatemala so you guys can hear a little bit, I dont have much time to record here though. I have recorded some though!

My flight plans for June 7th: SLC -> LA -> Guatemala City (via delta)!!! AHHHHHHHHHH! Thats soon!!!

I was freaking out a little a few days ago because i felt like i had to learn spanish in 3 weeks.. so that i wouldn't drown when i got immersed in it - I want a solid grammatical foundation and vocabulary so the immersion does me well instead of just making me confused. But i am not expected to learn it in 3 weeks so its okay - ill just keep studying! Its coming along, i do lots of flash cards hahah.

I love you all so much! I miss you lots!

Love, Hermana Jacobsen

"Hola Familia"- May 27

"Hola"- May 21 (First Email)

"Hola!" - May 21 (First Letter)

Hola!!!

Hi everyone! I am safe in the MTC and today is my P-day for exactly 3 hours haha - a well deserved break! The schedule is so busy! I can't figure out how to send the pictures that i took but I have taken them. this computer recognizes that a camera is connected but it won't let me access "my computer" to get to the camera! bahhhhh. Oh well, i will print and send them when they are done printing next week.

My week has been so busy and full of gospel, lessons, studies and eating! We eat 3 full means a day which is intense! ahah it is exactly like the dorm food so i like it just fine :) My companion is Hermana Desoto and she is so nice and knows lots of spanish already so she is very very helpful to me! There are 4 girls in my room (6 bunk beds) and we all get along great. 3 of us are in the Guatemala NOrth Mission and Hermana Campell is going to an El Salvador mission, but we are all going to the Guatemala CCM in 3 weeks together. I have seen 2 other Hermanas that will be going with us. My district is 12 missionaries that I spend basically all day with. We do personal study, companion study, language study, and class all in the same tiny classroom haha. We aarree  squished but its good. THe elders are all very nice and act pretty grown up, ive been very surprised. My guy teacher is hard and my girl teacher is nice and speaks slowly enough that I understand a lot of what she says... well not a lot but i pick up way more words than i used to! We have had some wonderful spritual workshops as well! I am excited to go put all that i am learning into practice! I am learning to pray in spanish and learning to bear my testimony. I do lots of spanish flash cards all day. ahhhh busy busy!

Mommy everyone loves my outfits! It was a little cold this week but I wore sweaters and we were inside mostly anyway. Thank you for the coat and packages! :)

Daddy I am using my voice recorder! I got the message about the default saving so ill play with it.

Kids--- I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!

anyway I am happy and I love you so much! Thank you for helping me get on this mission! ( I say help because I don't think i could have done it by myself!)

I will send pics  ASAP!!!!

love Hermana Jacobsen

First Letter from the MTC! -May 18