I wanna be the very best - Catamarca

Hey. It's me.

I

This week was extraordinary, as all weeks here are, which I guess makes extraordinary just ordinary. Hm. ANYWAYS some things about Argentina so you can picture it better are that there are dogs absolutely everywhere, most of them are ugly. Also if you don't know what mate is, its basically boiling barn juice, but it's actually pretty good once you have enough of it. Everything is pretty dirty, but thats ok, you just gotta accept it. On Sunday a little kid yelled at me and siad "Go back to your city, Yankee!" but I'm sure he was just messing around.

Halloween is tomorrow, everyone send me pictures of your costumes and I'll judge whose is the best.

So here's by spiritual thought/video game reference for the week, and it wont make complete sense to everyone, but its a lot better than the Elebits analogy I was going to use. So basically, life is like playing Painkiller by Judas Priest on Expert Mode Guitar on Rockband 2. Every note that comes is a choice you have to make in life. Sometimes, it feels like you have a hold on things, but other times, it's a guitar solo and you make a lot of mistakes. Overall, it's really tough, and after a lot of mistakes, you'll end up failing. HOWEVER. The Savior is like our bandmate that never misses any notes, he makes the right choice always. As you hit notes correctly, you build up "Overdrive" to help you in the song, so the Savior always has his Overdrive saved up. But, he doesn't use the Overdrive on himself to get more points, he uses it on you when you fail out of the song so you can keep playing like you never made any mistake. And at the end of the song, the scoreboard will say that you have 100%, because the Savior helped you get there. The Savior is always there ready to forgive and help us with our difficulties and temptations and sins, we just need to let him join our band and rely and trust in him and his power.

Hope that wasn't too much of a stretch, but I just had that thought earlier this week. I love and miss you guys, and I'll see you soon!

ATL

Elder Jenkins

A pretty view from the other missionaries' apartment

Our small lizard friend we found in our bathroom.  I forgot to name him at the time, but now I'm going to call him Kenny

POETRY

TINGLE TINGLE KOOLOO-LIMPAH - Catamarca

The subject line is something the people say here when they're celebrating, kinda interesting. Say it to your friends after you score a goal in fútbol or you win a game of Frolf.

Whats up! Life as a missionary is so so fun I love being here so much. I feel like so much has happened, but at the same time, it's kinda the same thing every day, but its good. Elder Farfal and I are having more and more regular conversations in Spanish, I love it. I love having him as a companion for a lot of reasons, one of which is the power with which he teaches. He's been out for 6 months now, but he's already an amazing missionary. Here's an awesome experience we had this week so you can see what I mean:

We were on the bus going to an appointment, and we headed to the back of the bus. A little bit after we sat down, a lady asked us if we were men of God. I responded as well as I could, saying that yes, we were missionaries for la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los santos de los Últimos Días. Elder Farfal came in and helped me talk with her more. She has a boyfriend who has two children and they hate her because she's not their real mom, and she's been having such a tough time, and she's not religious, but she prayed to God for help. We taught her a short lesson and she felt the Spirit really strongly. Farfal teaches really well, especially the Plan of Salvation. His mom passed away 3 years ago, but he is so calm and happy when he talks about her because he knows the Plan of Salvation is real. He taught the lady on the bus about the Plan, and since she lives outside our area, we gave her number to other missionaries to start teaching her. It was a really really cool experience, I'm grateful to have had it:)

Theres a lot more I could probably tell, but I think thats good for this email. Thanks everyone for the support and prayers, I can feel their help. Also, that fact about the subject line is total bogus, nobody says that, its a line from Tingle in Zelda. lol. Love you guys

Elder Jenkins

With our Haitian brothers in the CCM

My new companion Elder Farfal and my best bud old companion Elder Kotter

THE CORDOBA TEMPLE HOLY COW

The boys on a mountain overlooking Catamarca

My first asado, basically all the meat you could ever eat, this is one of the slabs

This ginormous snail we found walking around. crazy

FINALLY IN CÓRDOBA (kinda) - {Catamarca}

Whats up everyone! Sorry I couldn't write last week, our P day was right when I was traveling, so I never got the chance, and Ill probably forget a whole bunch from the past two weeks, but its good to finally write! My P days are on Tuesday now, just so everyone knows.

Conference was dope, I hope you all got the chance to watch it. It was such a good sendoff for the weekend right before I left for the field. It was a little bit tough saying goodbye to the people, but I was ready to leave. 

Here is a brief summary of my sleep schedule the days leading up to and including my travel:

The hermanas in our district had our roommates change our clocks, so when Elder Kotter and I got up to go on our daily run at 5:30, it was actually 3:30, so we got pranked hard, and when we got back to the casa and realized we had been pranked, we were demolished and couldn't sleep. A couple days later we woke up at 4:30 to leave for the airport, then headed to Buenos Aires! everything went well, I didnt sleep on the plane, we landed, had some food, then at 3:30 when we finally could go to sleep, we found out we were leaving the hotel to go to Cordoba at 5:30. so We got as much sleep as possible, then left for the airport again, landed in Córdoba, and met everyone!

This mission seems so so so cool, Ive met a ton of cool people here. I'm loving it, and Elder Kotter and I both thought it felt like home when we finally got to Córdoba because its been such a process getting here. I got assigned to my first area and my first companion! My comp is Elder Farfal, from Chile, and he speaks no English except for a few phrases, so I'm gonna need to learn Spanish really fast! We are serving in Catamarca, which is an area really far from the city of Córdoba, but its really cool. I finally got a somewhat decent amount of sleep on the 6 hour bus ride to Catamarca at midnight to 6:30. 

This week has been a lot of orientation and getting to know everyone, I have so much to learn here but it's been really cool, and my Spanish is progressing pretty fast. I still have no clue what anyone says, but I can talk with Elder Farfal pretty well. I honestly love it here so much. It's sick. I'll send more specifics in following weeks but for now just know that I love this Gospel, I know it's true, and I love Catamarca and all of you guys! Talk to you again soon!

ATL

Elder Jenkins

My new companion Elder Farfal

Made it to Argentina!

Leaving the Mexico Airport

Arrived in Cordoba!

With President and Sister Correa

5 more days at the CCM!

hello everyone, how are ya?

So I´ve had a few questions this week, first off, Elder Joseph from Haiti thinks I look like Michael Douglass, and I recognize the name but I have no clue who that is, so is he right? Can someone send me a picture so I can see for myself? What the heck is a wharf? Why does my neck only pop one way?

Anyways I forgot to write stuff down to email this week but I´ll try my best to make this as entertaining as possible. Elder Kotter and I have gotten a lot better in our lessons in Spanish with the help of the Lord. The gift of tongues is so real, and we work so well as a companionship. We just play off each other and take turns saying things that actually sort of make sense in Spanish. It´s like in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! when you get a double item box, and I´ll drop a banana peel of faith and Elder Kotter will throw a red shell of truth and scripture. What a guy, he´s so cool. I hope we get to see each other at some point when we get to Córdoba. 

I did a puzzle in the waiting room to get my immunizations checked off. it was of some little kids and a barn. I´m gonna be the travel leader for all the Córdoba missionaries, which sounds like a cool title, but it just basically means I have to bug everyone to have their bags the right weights. Yay me. I ate 15 rolls on thursday. We got to watch part of the Lion King in a devotional, so that was sick deans. I got to play a fish video game on the rowing machine at the gym in the morning, quality graphics, responsive controls, overall I´d give it a 3/3.

I´m getting a haircut later today, and I´m gonna ask for it as short as they are allowed to give me, cuz my hairs getting way too long. I´m sure I´ll probably look like Megamind afterwards, but I´ll send before and after pics and we can all make fun of me together.

There was a really cool devotional we watched by Elder Bednar, all about the Character of Christ and having Christlike love. He talked about how in every situation in the scriptures, Christ´s instinctive reaction was to turn to the welfare of others, never himself. I thought I had a good idea of that before, but Bednar gave so many awesome examples of Christ in the scriptures, as well as people nowadays that demonstrate Christlike love. It was really inspiring and I´m motivated to try to adopt that kind of love into my life, but it´ll take a while.

Thanks everyone for being so awesome, enjoy life back home without me, listen to Rappers in the Aisle and Dream of Mickey Mantle, love ya,

Elder Jenkins

We got stuck in the overflow room with a broadcast of the devotional in the auditorium, so Elder Kotter and I went in there to get a picture of ourselves, probably my favorite picture I have so far.

Bunkballers for life (my district)

Before

After

The District