Oct.28th

Warden, Washington

So I have two minutes so I'll tell you some stories I suppose.
We are still teaching Hadi, (the man from previous email from Iraq) and he is progressing slowly. I think he'll be baptized one of these days. He's all confused about the million religions but only ours makes perfect sense because it's right, and he is understanding that.
Yesterday we went to Wenatchee (thus no email) and did some shopping. I bought a tie and a shirt but only spent twenty bucks. We went to this house for lunch and they had a three foot long iguana/dinosaur. It was huge. I put it on my shoulder. I'll send you a picture one day when I get it back to me.

As missionaries we do a lot of reactivation, so far we've been pretty successful, infact that's how we got the two baptisms sunday.
So three baptisms had to be postponed again because their dad ran to mexico to visit his sickly father. We baptized two and I did it for the first time, in spanish too.

Oct.20, 2008

This is the house where Ben lives! In the basement of a members home.

Dad,
Be careful in OC (Orange County, CA). From the tv show there is a lot of horrible things happening there, watch your back. Of course I never saw the show I'm just assuming. After all, Terminator is the governor, how safe can you be?

Next week we have five baptisms scheduled (we had three for this last week but we had to move them to this sunday.) It's going to be the best day of the mission thus far.

Mom,
The man named Hadi, from Iraq, is progressing slowly. He has all these crazy views, and before we teach him more we have to get clearance from the first presidency to teach him. For some reason that is a rule with Muslim people - need to have permission to teach them (because if they are planning to return to Iraq Christian, they'll end up dead - Hadi reiterated that fact to us as well). He believes in the Book of Mormon, and prophets, but he thinks Christ was merely a prophet. We were finally able to show him that prophets are called of God, not just inspired, spiritual people. he eventually understood and agreed after using some scriptures.

Spanish is still improving slowly. We ate at a peruvians house the other day when I was on exchanges in Othello. The food was AMAZING. But they started laughing at me when they were complimenting my spanish, and then asked me a simple question and I became confused. They thought I understood them perfectly so they were saying how good I was at spanish. Once they asked me a question and I didn't understand they started laughing. It was funny, however, I was understanding most of what they were saying, just the oddly worded question threw me off.

If basketball season starts soon let me know how my Jazz are doing.
Thanks for the package, it saved me. Thank you very much.

Que les vaya bien
-Elder Jacobson
Alma 30:34

Oct 14th

Mum,
Thanks for the email, it was very good. I'm glad you were able to see Aaron Kristen and Candace. I havent heard from them in a while and I thought aaron moved to austrailia or something (my brain created that when i hadn't heard from him in a while). Will you tell that kid to send me a letter. I'm in a horrible letter drought and I wanna hear of his weber experiences.
Yes I need a coat. It's in the twenties at night and the high is in the fifties and the wind pierces even to the very soul all hours of the day. Could you send me your olympic glove liners, and that gray nike XC hat that i have. It is a beenie and it has a bill... If you cant find it then you can simply send me some of those ear things to keep my oversized hearing tools warm.
Sorry to keep asking you to send me things.

Sorry to make you send me that absentee ballot. I decided i'm not voting. for several reasons: I don't know anything about politics because i've been out of it too long. And I'm being to worldly trying to get involved or wanting to vote.

We met this guy from Iraq. He lived there thirty years and has been here for a while. He said the people in Iraq are very grateful for George Bush because Sadaam was a tyrant. He said if you got a speeding ticket, and you were on bad terms with cops they had the right to kill you... and your brother.. and your mother. "But now we are free," he said. "I think God put into George Bush's mind, that Sadaam Hussen (spelling?) had weapons of mass destruction, even though he didn't, so America would come and free Iraq."
We baptized Gio Flores on september 13, Victor Medina on the 20th, and Charity Clark on 10/10. We have three more coming up this week that didn't happen last week. They are victor's children. Then we have two more the next week.

Thanks for everything mom, Love you.
-Elder Jacobson
Mosiah 3:17, 2 Nephi 31:21

The Work Goes Forward

Dad,
So you're lucky, I gave mom the boring email and you'll get the exciting one. Apologize to her for me please. Oh, and exciting is relative. Just have her read this one.
We met this kid named Franky one sunday while he was walking the streets. We made an appointment to teach him a few days later. The next night we saw his little brother whom we had had a few encounters with previously. He told us tenderly once to get lost, the next time that we shouldn't come back. And that night we saw him walking home and he told us that he just doesn't like Mormons, "no offense." we ended up giving him the lesson of the restoration while walking with him home. By the time we got to his house we had finished, set up an appointment with him to come with his brother the next day. We then talked about music and movies with him. This worldly conversation helped us a lot because now he thinks we are cool when before he had us stereotyped as Mormons so he hated us.
Carlos and Franky are their names. Both have read in the BOM and are inches from a testimony.
Next we have Juan and Tony. Two other high school aged kids. We have talked to these guys many times, while biking with them and just talking. We played basketball with them randomly one afternoon in our suits. Then we played football with them, which I might add, I dominated even in a shirt and tie.
Anyway we finally taught them and I think they are ready to here it. They wouldn't have been ready at first, but this we got to know them as friends many doors have been opened. if all goes to plan they will be baptized at the end of the month. Speaking optimistically of course.
There are too many other similar occurrences than i can share at present. Just know that the gospel is true, or we'd be walking around with nothing good happening. But, The Lord works miracles for us, and people progress towards baptism.
-Elder Jacobson
Psalms 9:11