San Salvador‏

I've arrived safely in El Salvador and am currently in the mission home. All is well.

Sorry for the brevity, but there's things to do.

Adios,

Jacob Newman

[Elder Newman's group on their last day at the CCM. He's in back row, second from left.]

[I assume this is their last pic at the CCM--on their way to their assigned areas. See him squished  into the left side of the van? Good thing he's a string bean :) ]

Elder Newman‏'s Arrival in San Salvador--Email from the Mission President

Hello,

We are the Glaziers in San Salvador. We received Elder Newman here. He is very well prepared and has great faith. We are grateful to serve with him here in this part of the Lord's vineyard. Thank you for preparing him so very well--he is a fine young man. I hope your family receives many blessings for the sacrifice you have made to bring the gospel to many of God’s children here on earth. I know you will see God’s hand in your life and the life of your son during his mission. One of the promises of God to his missionaries is that they will be protected and watched over.

His preparation day is every Monday. He can write and read your email on that day. He sends his love to all of you.

The best way to send packages is by US mail as these will arrive directly to our office without any fees or problems. The address to send packages to is:

            Elder Jacob Newman

Misión El Salvador San Salvador Este

PO Box # 3362

San Salvador, El Salvador

Central America

We love our missionaries.  We love and appreciate their faithful families.  We pray that, together, we will all grow in our personal conversion to the Lord.  Our mission theme is: "I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, and will be until the day I die."  We are working diligently to convert more than just the people of El Salvador.  We so appreciate your faith and prayers on behalf of all our missionaries here.

Love,

President and Sister Glazier

San Salvador El Salvador East Mission

Me falta una semana; venga rápidamente el campo‏

So, this week has been a mix of highly and not at all eventful! Market day was market day, and it was really cool. I absolutely love the environment here, and it was extremely exciting, although I didn't buy anything (Elder Carver got a chess set). Went to Wendy;s, which was weird, but the plaza was interesting. 

 

I'm sitting on about $10 in Quetzales and hoping I can find something to use them for. The proper army of pigeons was distracting, and I unfortunately let my timidity get in the way of doing contacts properly, but between everyone, we placed 5 copies of the Book of Mormon and my District is really fired up to do practices and get out in the field, which is what I was praying for, anyway. In the Evening Devotional, we saw like 5 people from my BYU Ward so Elder Strein and I were just having a good time (including Elder Tyler Persson, one of my roommates :> ).

 

Since then, it's been pretty chill. This morning may have been the last Temple Trip for a looooooong time. Some Salvadoran Elders say that most parts of El Salvador are more or less like here, which I don't mind since it hasn't been bad at all. I've also heard of some difficulties we'll probably find there (My teacher had a Hermana at the MTC from El Salvador who didn't know what the Gospel was, or more so, what a question was). I'm still District Leader, and things have been pretty solid in the District, and the CCM in general. This group is better than the last one in some areas, but punctuality and noise has been way worse. We've been teaching 2-3 practice investigators every day besides Sundays and P-Day, such that it was weird only having 1 yesterday.

 

All es lo que es. I probably won't get to write next week, almost certainly not the general email and only maybe a "I haven't died email" to my immediate family, so just be aware of that. I've been drawing a bit, doing a lot of scripture memorization, and am about to break p 500 in the Libro de Mormon. Not bad for 3.5 weeks. And recounting Twilight Zone episodes is terribly enjoyable. Just storytelling in general. I'll probably make some storybooks or something like that for the lessons, to help teach children and people who don't know Spanish/poorly educated.

 

Yeah, exciting tiiiiiiimes. Just remember, 1) we're going to Build ZION, 2) find the words of life and treasure them up because they are the beeeeeeeeest!

 

Adios for this week, and thanks to everyone who's written me :>

 

Elder Jacob Newman

El Sol Octagonal‏

Well, I've been a missionary for a month now, and come Wednesday, I'll have been a serving one for a month. This is mostly important because it means we'll be in the field soon. Between a few devotionals, Presidente Cox's messages, and now my spiels about Building Zion during District Meetings, I kind of want to get to work.

 

Speaking of which, this transfer day when the MTC is empty, we get to do a city tour of Guatemala City, esp. the Old City! That'll be great just because we'll finally be able to get out and about for a while. We've been within a 2x1/2 mile rectangle for the whole time we've been here (and that might be generous). We even get our cameras back for that day (though I won't be able to send photos until later). Most importantly, we've been cleared to do street contacts while we're out. They haven't been doing those at the CCM for a time because missionaries were misusing the time and freedom it entailed (same reason we're not currently permitted cameras, minimal contact with Hermanas). We're hoping to place 3 LdM. But yeah, we'll only have 2 weeks left, and as many as 35 nortes are coming in this week, such that there'll be more nortes than nativos. It'll be weird being the CCM veterans this time around.

 

Last week was rather sickly tho. I even had a fever for an evening and was extremely tired, and pretty much everyone was a little under the weather. Another missionary got a concussion during sports and a missionary from the field is on his way to the States for medical treatment. We're fine though, and it's the sickly time of the year in Guatemala, what with the rainy season starting. And our Distrito is working things out. One companionship was having a really hard time getting along, but they're doing better, and we're all setting goals to work harder and all that. So it should be good.

 

Also Job 38 is my favorite rebuke, coming from someone who doesn't care for rebukes. So poetic. One thing though, is that the Santa Biblia often lacks the same poetry as the King James Version. Specifically, Romans 8:38-39 is way better in the English.

 

Alright and Adios,

 

Jacob Newman

 

P.S. The Building Zion thing is really cool, though. We're doing stuff that Moses, Elijah, and every other leader of dispensations haven't done: building the Kingdom of God to last into the eternities. As such, we're empowered to do stuff they couldn't, and have access to different forms of power. I mean, we're doing essentially the same thing as Enoch and Melchizedek. We have a generation very much out of order, but we can also prepare them to conceivably meet God within their lifetimes. I can't really explain the full thing here, but yeah. It's A+.

 

We're gonna raise a New Zion to the Glory of God!

no queshtun‏

So, I'm at the meridian of time in the MTC here, so we're all kind of ready to leave over here. Presidente Cox has the mixed blessing of really making us want to get out in the field right now. But yeah, we're halfway there.

Last week has been about as crazy as it gets down here. All the nativos moved out, plus some of the nortes, and they've been replaced. Each new group of nortes is just getting bigger; the most recent is 11 people strong (only 3 elders and they're in the other branch but w.e). Peter Strein, who was one of the other Assistant Ward Clerks at BYU is here now. The rededication has come and gone, which was pretty cool but I don't really know what to tell you guys about it? And I'm District Leader for the next two weeks. I haven't done much yet, but I'll prolly do something more by the end I guess.  Oh, and Elder Carver was inhibitively sick yesterday (there have been a few sicknesses running around since the new group came in), so I was half Zone Leader last night (emphasis on half cus I'm definitely not a ZL right now). It wasn't really a big deal, but it kept me busier.

Otherwise, things are pretty chill. I can hold conversations with the hispanos down here, even if I have to guess what they're saying about a third of the time. But it's working. Vocabulary still needs work but that's that. More or less on track with my LdM reading (I'm up to Mosiah, though), investigator lessons, etc etc. I have run out of things to memorize though. They have us do el Proposito, First Vision, and DyC 4, but I finished DyC 4 last week, which leaves me little more to do in that vein. My District does have a propensity for creating slang, but that's not actual Spanish.

What do I even write about normally I can't remember for the life of me. It's hard enough remembering last week. Things are happening and all that, but I don't have a clue what's worth telling.

But yeah, Guatemala is Guatemala, I'm a bit impatient to get out in the field, and ~shrug~ Rainy season is starting and we're leaving the CCM [Spanish abbreviation for MTC--Mission Training Center] right before the ridiculous wave of nortes [Americans] comes in. The day after we leave, 60 nortes will come. Weird. Oh, and we know the reason why I got switched to the Guatemala CCM instead of Mexico: Hermana Cox called right as all the reconstruction was finishing and was like we just spent a bunch on reconstruction so we need people to fill it. So that's that.

Gmail/myldsmail looks weird today. I guess that's something. I heard that Thailand's government was overthrown and Ukraine is fighting the Russians/secessionists/whatever.

Adios,

Jacob Newman

Have a good week!

It would theoretically be nice to just know where lost things are even if you can't get to them‏

So, we dealt with our first guy with a gun today. We were walking home from the market cus we go every other P-Day and a guy with a shotgun just hails one of the missionaries and is like "I've got a question." Of course, he just wanted to let us know that his son was a member and went to the Temple that morning or was a Temple worker or something, cus I couldn't hear him. I figure he was a security guard for the auto lot he was on cus he had an official looking hat and the cars were expensive ones. So it really was trivial.

 

Anyway, exactly a week ago all my shampoo and body wash stuff disappeared (you know, the one we specifically chose to last a long time, mom), so I've been making do with borrowing just shampoo from Elder Carver for the last week. Thank goodness today was the market cus I was able to pick stuff up, though I just chose the stuff I trusted to not be super weird which means I got a nonideal mix of things. Exciting adventures and all that. The heat scarcely bothers me, though, but the bugs are starting to come out.

 

But yeah, I've set a goal to finish the Libro de Mormon before I leave, so I'm up to 2 Nefi from the past few days. The weekly Temple Trip was good, and Saturday's investigator lesson was incredibly spiritual. Like, it was just a practice lesson with our teacher, but for both Elder Carver and I, the spirit was stronger than all but a few moments in our lives. Reassuring since teaching members acting as investigators can feel a bit farcical.

 

Probably the hardest thing right now is just finding time to relax. There's even more to  be done here than in college, so even P-Days we don't really have time to unwind per se. Spanish isn't too much of a problem, but I'm still limited in vocabulary (especially when spoken to) and some of the accents are ridiculous. El Salvador allegedly has the slowest accent, so that's at least a minor boon. But yeah, just reading the LM, being with nativos, and practicing is bringing me to the point where I can usually get preterite conjugations right the first time impromptu, actually using imperfect subjunctive, stuff like that. I remember all the grammar to some degree thanks to Mrs Bradshaw, but I need to iron out the wrinkles of disuse and fortify my grammar.

 

Oh, and the MTC is almost completely empty right now. All the Nativos and a third of the Nortes left this morning, so it;s just 2 districts of Nortes (approx 14 people) plus the staff who are all prepping for the Rededication. That'll be broadcast all over Central America and I've heard that the President of Guatemala is coming to the Open House in the morning. I'd give it about a 50% chance of it being true. Everything'll be weird that day, and it'll either be great or especially unpleasant for the nortes arriving tomorrow. We'll see if they're in our Branch or the other one, cus if they're in the other one, we're gonna be lonely nortes and never see them. I know I have a friend or two from BYU coming to this MTC either tomorrow or in 2 weeks, so that could be exciting.

 

Anyway, some more stuff probably happened, but I can't remember the past week for the life of me. It seems I've been oddly singled out by my teachers and the MTC President, sometimes just in speaking or sometimes roles. And Elder Carver's been called as Zone Leader, and now that the old one left, that means he's acting.

 

But this is prolly how I'll do things, one big email and mostly just replies for everyone else.

 

Adios,

 

Jacob Newman

First Week Done--Life in the CCM (Missionary Training Center)

He's on the left...new haircut! I think this may be the group he traveled with from LAX

The group of elders that arrived the same day he did...May 14. There was another pic of the sister missionaries taken. Let's see...starting from the sister, count two rows up and two to the right if you can't pick him out :)

His disctrict. He's the 4th one from the left.

(From his first emails home...)
Anyway, things are going. First few days were pretty rough, but Fri afternoon things started picking up. Sundays are the best though/ Also, excuse symbol errors because this keyboard is Spanish but it's programmed as an English keyboard so basically all the symbols are wrong. Currently, there's ~120 nativos (Latin Americans) and 20 nortes (North Americans), and only a few of the other nativo missionaries speak any real English. A few learned in Grade School or travel, though. From what I've heard, that ratio's gonna switch, possibly before I leave, since Americans are going on vacation and nativos back to school. That'll be weird, cus right now the nortes are a bit pampered because they understand how it is to be limited in conversation and everything's just harder for the lot of us. They don't even have an advanced Spanish track, so you're here for 6 weeks or 2 and everyone is in the same class. It's good because I can help the Elderes who don't have any Spanish experience, but it does make it harder to improve my own barring practice with the nativos. Some of them I can understand pretty well, but others not so much, for probably an average of 50% comprehension. They can all understand me, though, so that's bueno. 

Oh, and the CCM is getting rededicated in just over a week I think, so that'll be spiffy. It's kinda weird cus at least the nativos change out every 2 weeks, so they'll be gone soon and we'll have new roommates and all that. Plus, fair warning: until you get acclimated to the CCM, it's extremely unpleasant and stressful. The first few days, everyone is just having difficulty and all, but after that, it does get much better. Especially if you work. I haven't felt particularly hot here, but that seems to not be representative. It also hasn't rained, though it's usually overcast. The CCM is more conservative in culture than the Provo MTC, but that's at least in part because the nativos don't have the same cultural background and need certain conservative customs to keep them from going rogue. E.g., it's specifically emphasized that no stealing or anything of the sort is permissible. Stuff like that. You get used to it pretty quick and they're a bit laxer with the nortes. There's a little truck that comes to the CCM on P-Days and sells missionary stuff, and some of it's cool but it's also rather expensive, unlike everything else.

Oh yeah, we only have one sister from the US in our District cus all the others are on the Native track (one of whom was in my Calculus class @ BYU). But yeah, my Spanish is pretty solid actually, especially since I've had a lot of practice. Just need a bit more comprehension and vocabulary, and then review some of the more advanced tenses. I am wondering if that'll affect anything, but probably not. 

Let's see, we go to the Temple on P-Days and it's otherwise just been chilling today. We've taught one "investigator" four times and that's been going well, especially since Elder Carver and I have been putting a lot of effort into improving our teaching and doing things right even though he started with no Spanish and I'm at least able to manage conversations with most people. It's been pretty good with him, he's a hard worker, well-motivated, all that. He's working really hard on the language too.

So I don't particularly have many emails to put in this mass one so if you know someone who wants it feel free to forward it/have them give me their address otherwise I won't be able to send them anything. 

Elder Newman