Letter number three.....San Francisco IN A DAY!

Letter three.....

We received Jake's email yesterday, and life seems to have taken on a routine cadence for Jake in the MTC.  We were abel to chat back and forth and he seems happy....one funny comment is that he misses being able to have the time to "dry off" after a shower." He comes up with some amusing details that sound like Jake to me.  He also told me to not send care packages for a while because as he put it "we have enough food in our tiny room to fill three of your pantries." He enjoyed Shelly's fiesta party she sent and I wasn't surprised by that because Jake never met a chip he didn't love! I love the obedience of the district. It would have been awesome for the them to be able to sight see in San Francisco but they were completely obedient and I know this principle will bring blessings. Our table seems empty, our house seems quiet, the front curb looks bare, but I know Jake is in the right place at the right time.

bonjour again,

The days here are super long but looking back at the week it seems super short. It is more like a week a day a day for a week, odd perspective right?

So on tuesday we went to san fran and appeared at the french consulate to get our visas for guadalope(dont know how to spell that) and french guianna, they still have our passports but we should get them back in a few weeks.

this is our schedual for going to san fran,

wake up at 4 take shower get dressed in suit

430 go to travel office and get travel stuff,

5 go to airport

sit in airport till 830

fly for two hours

30 min taxi to consulate,

we were an hour early so we walked around san fran and went through china town, ate at subway (eat fresh) and then went to the consulate

at the consulate, we bassically got our picture taken, signed a form, had our fingerprints scanned and then left.

30 min taxi to the air port

waited 4 or 5 hours for our plane to depart

waited 4OR5 HOURS FOR OUR PLANE TO DEPART.

we were stuck in like a hundred yard hallway for delta whilst we waited, took a few naps, gave out some passalong cards. while i was sleeping all peacefully they covered me in smarties.

two hour flight home.

ate at smash burger and felt beyond great about eating real food.

hour ride to the mtc.

That is litterally all we did in san fran, woke up at 4 got back at 9:15ish. twas a long long day, but really refeshing to get out of the mtc for the day. if i wasnt sleeping i was smiling, even then... was probably still smiling.

we are in progress with like 3 different fake investigators, im getting really good at gospel related french and my goal for this week is to become better at conversational french as well.

we did a door to door exersice with a different teacher where we had no back round info about the investigator and it was crazy how well we were still able to speak even though we had no plan or forethought.

no longer have to use notes in lessons.

gained 7 pounds. you cant see it i swear.

even though the food is not top notch it is easy to over eat, so i had to put myself on a one plate a meal diet. works good untill we have something decent.

we had "roast beef" and "mash potatoes" for dinner on sunday which was the best meal of the day but in no way was even close to the awesomeness of my mothers roast beef and mashed potatoes.

im reading the bible from cover to cover right now in engish, im half way through exodus. and I am half way through first Néphi in french.

other than that same ol same ol

avec amour,

Elder Lewis

All the Sisters and Elders walking to the Marriott Center

Busting a pinata for an Elder's Birthday....MTC fun!

Jake asleep while his trusty companions fill his gaping mouth with smarties.

Jake and his companion Elder Call

2nd E-mail

2nd E-mail

Well, as Jake's Mother, I have felt that Jake was away at camp. I've been busy so I've been coping quite well, but today it set in that Jake was actually not coming home.....it was hard to hear that there are some challenges.  What Mother ever wants to hear that the food is not great, or that he is a little lonely!  Lance reminds me that I survived "5" years of college eating Macaroni and Cheese and little else.  He seems close to the spirit, and he is learning and loving his district....these were my primary concerns for him. I really enjoyed his letter, and was able to e-mail back and forth today as I was home when he sent his email.  Please send him "Dear Elder" letters.  His unit is 352.  

Hey guys!

Crazy things were happining here at the MTC this last week, or so it seems. alot has passed so i will try my hardest to remeber all of it and tell it well.

First full week was not that bad, each day here seems more like two or three but it is all good because looking back on it I get to see how fast it really went. There was a ton of just super crazy fun stuff. Starting off, our " investigator" ended up being  our insanely european looking teacher Frere Mayne, which was sucky because you become super emotionaly attached to the people you teach. The investigator was someone that frere manye taught on his mission. side note: frere mayne plays wide reciever for byu. They started doing it this way so that you try your hardest to speak french and like i said we had no less than 20 minutes of teaching all in pretty dang good french i must say myself. We learned so much more about french thiss week. it is almost weird to look back and see how little you could speak a week ago and see how much you speak it now. We integrate french into everything, we call it parle votre lang wich is speak your language. Our goal for this friday is to only speak french all day. because of this i have pretty much become a professional finder of words in the dictionary.

Sorry for all the spelling errors, im typing fast and there is no spell check on these computers.

So tomorrow all four of us west indies guys are going meet with the french constibule tomorrow. oh by the way did i mention it is in san fran? because it is. haha so we wake up at 4 take a plane to san fran take taxi there, apear before the french constibul, who signs our visas and gives them to us, then we take a taxi back to the air port, then plane back to the mtc. Pretty crazy day all in all if i must say so myself. but it is going to be super awesome. we always joke about going out side of the fence into the "real world" and about how there probably isnt anything even out there haha. but it is all good:)

So other things that happened this week.... oh well on wednesday the food here started repeating again and is now just meh. haha it also is not verygood for your digestive track. like. no way it can be good.

there are some really delicious fresh bagles including the jalapeno ones that are just fantastical. other than that the food is pretty low key. they feed us wayyy to much and we are on the grandma schedual for eating

we have breakfast at 630(so we have to wake up at 6:( sad day) and lunch at 11 and dinner at 4.

This week every day we have gym time, which you can go to the field and play ultimate fris(awesome) soccor(not awesome) and sand volleyball(no one plays).

 there is also a gym  with like 6 courts for basket ball and up stairs we have a track and some weight lifting machines. ive got to say, i have kind of fallen in love with running. gives you a little less good feeling than swimming, and sucks while you do it, but it feels good after and it is super good woork out. unfortunatly i have my dads sweat genes and i look like i took a shower afterwords.

Interesting fact: we hvae to wear our suits on sunday. I sweat the most on sunday. nasty right? haha

Not sure what else to write, there is always more but i have got only so much time to email. speaking of which, if you want to write me mail while in the mtc, it would be easier to dear elder me, because i can read it every night and we have a ton of time on p day to write mail but not to email. we only have an hour for email a week, sounds like alot but it goes by soooo ooooooo quickly!

Saw Chris langford off on sunday night. saw Carson Roskelley a couple times. ran into randall robinson on our temple walk. side note: temple is closed till august super bummer. also am just down the hallway from Micah Lund which is sweet. 4 and a half more weeks or so! gonna be awesome!:)

Sinserly,

Elder Lewis

MTC

Jake's Farewell Luncheon

We had a wonderful day celebrating Jake's mission.  We had so much amazing support from our  family.  Jake was able to have a great day chatting with some of his closest friends. I already miss their happy noise in the house.  Many of these Young Women are planning on serving a mission in the next year....isn't that awesome! It was a wonderful day.

Many many many "female visitors" ha ha.......the last for a while!

The flags of the Caribbean Islands

            

Great friends lead to great decisions....thank you all for your good influence.

Jake's First Letter

Dear Family,

Being it being the first night I thought (was admonished) I'd write you a letter. My first day was awesome! It is so relaxed here, except in French Class, then I have to listen.

Fun Fact: all the buildings here are dedicated so the spirit is super strong whatever you are doing.  

Elder Call is my companion, same height and weight, curly hair and from Logan, Utah.  Probably 80% of of the people in the MTC are from Utah.  Saw Caden Hammer today, otherwise I am alone.....

Love You Lots,

Jake

A real chatty letter as you can see.  Jake loves interesting little facts and statistics and it will be fun to read all these little tidbits over the next two years.  We miss Jake tremendously, but know that he is doing the Lord's work and we are excited for the all of the people whose lives will be changed forever when they have a young set of preaching missionaries teach them about Heavenly Father's plan for his children.  

Jake's First official e-mail

Oddly enough Jake's Branch President was our neighbor, ward member, and one of  our Stake Presidency councilors while we lived in Orem.  We Love President Mangum, he is an amazing man and we were excited to get this news.

Bonjour Tous le Monde!
 
The MTC is great! Everyone here will always say to the newbies " make it to sunday" and it is so true, the first coulple days are super interesting but they feel like they are several days each. The beds are cozy because we are so freaking tiered every night! My companion Elder Call is super awesome, he is about the same hight and weight as me and is from logan Ut. 
 
The food here is good but we hear that it repeats every week so it could get old quick. We are never really hungry but we eat anyways because we know if we don't eat then we will be starving. We have gym time a few days of the week and I discoved the track upstairs above the gym (not much of a basketball fan). I think I am going to really enjoy running, gives you the same large serving of endorphins as swimming does so it feels good and bad at the same time. I ran for thirty minutes with this guy going to hondurus, felt awesome and another thrity minutes for personal exercise time on saturday. 
 
The Spirit here is super strong because all these buildings are dedicated. Learning is absolutly unbelivable! It has been five days and we have already learned so much in french! If you asked any missionary here that was learning french they will tell you that the gift of tounges is real. like scary reall. 

Did you know that you have real investigators in the MTC? Ours is Christifer but we call him chirstoff because it is easier to pronounce in french. We taught him friday morning and saturday afternoon, heres the catch, he is from Paris, born in luxemburg and speaks almost no english. He is really interested in the church and he played for some really good team till he got a stress fracture below his knee. the team was Paris Saint Germaine? which means nothing to me but Elder Call plays soccor and he was freaking out. we Taught him for 20 minutes both days and it was crazy because i had no idea what i was really saying but it was all in french and he was understanding it. Blessings man blessings. 
 
Well the days are long, a typical schedual includes two three hour blocks of class room instruction, an hour or two of language study, two to 4 hours of personal study, 2.5 hours of eating prayers devotionals and so much more. 
 
Saw a cool devotional recoding of Bednar speaking here on the character of Christ, he talked about turning outwards insead of in and it was just super cool and made me think a ton. well i need to load pictures and send them to the fam bam, who will load them to my blog at jakelewiswestindies.blogspot.com <http://jakelewiswestindies.blogspot.com> if you want to see them. 
 
A Prochain!
 
Elder Lewis 

Jake's Mission Begins

Tonight Jake was set apart as a Missionary by

President Read of the Meridian Stake.  His 

blessing was amazing, and I feel excited for 

Jake as he begins his mission for Jesus Christ.  

MTC ADDRESS

Hey so my MTC address is going to be,

Elder Jake Evan Lewis

AUG27 WST IND

2005 N 900 E Unit 352

Provo, UT 84602

And my Email will be:

lewis.jake@myldsmail.net