Elder Wilcox...update:)

 So I have been having a hard time finding time to blog...I think I will just post some picture of Jarom and parts of his letters. Hope you enjoy them even though they might seem kind of random. It was SO fun to talk with him last week!! He is doing so good, loves the work and still thinks the French are stubborn and sometimes lazy!!! hahahaha! They closed down all the stores one week just because and he was unable to find a computer anywhere, that was when he said they were lazy. I didn't like not hearing from him one week, so I'm not going to disagree! As of March 8 Jarom has been gone for 8 months. Sure hope they start going by faster where he is concerned but not with the rest of my kids...is that possible?

oh guess what!? yep i got transfered to another ville! yeah thats why i didnt write you yesterday, i was on a train all day long. yep so now i'm in a new ville called... Gap. Kayla's gonna be so excited, its like the closest place to italy in my mission i think. almost to torino. and guess what... its surrounded by mountains!! oh yeah!! haha its right next to the alps and stuff i'm pretty excited. the only thing that kinda stinks is that its a tiny ville. yeah i would hate to be in a huge city but missionary work is a little easier there haha i'm back to contacting all day long yay! haha but yeah i'm pretty excited. 

So now my new companion's name is Elder Winslow. he seems like a really cool guy, not the crazy hard worker that elder dorton is but he's still super cool. he opened this area and has been in gap for 2 transfers. but yeah so Gap is like three hours from the nearest missionaries. we're so far away from everybody haha. but hey its a pretty cool place. we're surrounded by mountains. oh yeah. 
  So yeah its been one heck of a weekend but i'm excited to meat a lot of new people. the branch here is 8 strong members so we're gonna multiply that haha. oh yeah this mission thing is pretty crazy. i'm pretty excited to see how this transfer goes. oh and by the way we have the best apartment in the mission. its a fact. an old couple used to live there so yeah its pretty much heaven for missionaries. HUGE and very new. even has a balcony. anyways life's pretty good right now haha i'm in a tiny town clear away from everyone. oh yeah just like fillmore haha.

Alright enough of that stuff. so my week here, we have gone 2 weeks and found one person who would actually agree to meet with us. things are a little different out here. after 2 weeks of doing nothing but contacting people on the road, we found one person. geez no wonder there's only 8 members here and almost all of them are over 65 years old haha. not much to work with but hey, its better than nothing. i liked what the counselor to pres. carter (like an high counsel member for a branch cuz this branch is not a part of a stake) he said that we can see in this tiny branch of Gap that the quality of the members is so much more important than the quantity. and its so true! you'd be hard pressed to find members as strong as these anywhere in america. yeah not even utah. its true but with french members its either 100 percent or 0 percent. thats not always good but when they're 100 percent its so awesome!! 
  Anyways, so yeah we have been teaching some people here, a jewish girl and a muslim guy who's trying to convert us. then a dude who looks homeless and another dude who said that when people say that the church is true, they're being prideful. and yeah lets just say they're really not golden haha. the jewish girl came to church yesterday! and she was like walking around during everything, going out for a smoke break, and then bore her "testimony" in sacrament haha. that was interesting. the branch loved her but ya know... well, missionary work is so much different than every other thing in the world haha. like my instructor in the mtc said, we're called to be awkward. you wouldn't think it but yeah just about everything we do is awkward haha funny stuff. 
  So yeah its actually super hot here in gap and we've been going out in short sleeved t shirts. thats bad. i am so not looking forward to summer. i'm gonna die. my pants dont fit anymore though! haha thats pretty sweet i think. losin too much weight or somethin. 

  Yep there's really not a lot of stuff happenin here, its all the same, contact everyone, get lots of "not interested"s and stuff. people are pretty closed hearted here but most of the time they just dont hear a word we say just start screaming no no no!!! haha its funny. our lessons are always a gamble, it only takes one bad lesson to lose an investigator. thats never fun. but i'm learning a lot.  

 

Oh! big stuff happened this week. i finally ate at a french restaurant for the first time! and holy cow it was so good! instead of a salad i ordered meat, so the first dish i got a plate covered in sausage, liver, and ham. oh yeah thats right while everyone else ate salads haha, then i got a HUGE plate of potatoes, salad, and jambon grille or grilled ham covered in mushroom and carrot sauce. oh yeah it was heaven! i couldnt finish it, cuz it was so big! then we got a huge strawberry sunday. holy moley that was like the best meal of my mission!! i was on an exchange with another elder and it was an investigator who took us and payed for it. dang it was soo cool! then a member ate with us and it was just super fun. 



 I hope everything is going great there at home. i'm having a blast with my comp and loving missionary work!  and we just had church at the hotel for the last time!!! the new place is done with construction! its like pretty much an apartment but holy crap! i'm so so excited!!!! haha and so is the ward! its amazing what just having a chapel can do to raise the spirits of members. and missionaries for that matter. its going to be so so much easier for 
everything now cuz the church is in centerville. or downtown. so so awesome!

This sunday was the first sunday that the members of Gap have every had a building of their own to meet in! it was soo cool! we cleaned it earlier this week and this sunday was the first sunday at the new church and it was testimony meeting so it was a super exciting sunday. the members are soo happy to have a building of their own to meet in. it means so much. then we had three investigators there at church which was even more exciting for them. thats the most ever in like the history of Gap! this branch will grow for sure! it was a very cool sunday. 

Ok so about the work :) this week, a kid from the north of France who was born in gap and whose parents still live here, introduced us to his parents. we went over to his house and taught the parents, the dad is italian and the mom is french. both not too religious but also really sceptic about us. everyone thinks we're a cult here so people are always scared to talk to us. anyways, we had a dang good lesson and towards the end after all the testimonies and stuff, the parents accepted to read the book of Mormon and pray about it! it was pretty sweet, they totally feel better about us now. i'm so glad it went well, they've come to church twice now and the mom seems pretty interested. pretty cool huh? then we ate with them right after the lesson and they fed us a pretty good dish of like rice and curry chicken or somethin with veggies but then the italian dad pulled out a bunch of sheep cheese from Sicily! haha we totally had to try it. gross haha but better than french cheese. its just super strong and tasts like rotten milk. yum huh? haha i told him about kayla and how she served in italy. it was overall a pretty cool meeting. they seem way cool.

Well, I hope you enjoy reading bits and pieces of some of Jarom's letters. We sure do!!! 

SUU Graduation! Yeah Kayla!!!

 









Even though Kayla finished college in
December, she wanted to walk at the ceremonies this month. We are so glad she did! The ceremony was a two day event and a great closure.  The University had 900 plus women and 700 plus men graduate this year, and they compared it to the first graduation in 1918 which had 9 women and 7 men. I found that pretty interesting.  Kayla received a BS in Communication Broadcast and is looking forward to grad school in a couple of years. She has been employed since January at Divinci Virtural and living in Salt Lake City, yep, right down town! She loves it♥
 Some of the family members were able to come down to Cedar City, and Kayla truly appreciated them. Having Grandma Dorothy make it to this graduation was such a blessing! She has played such a huge roll in Kayla's life, they have a great bond.  Thanks to Denise for bringing her down!
We now have four family members who are SUU  GRADUATES:) Well mine was still SUSC but it still counts....Annette and Monty and myself all graduated and teachers, they both teach at a middle school in Cedar City, and I taught a couple of  years, one in Mexican Hat and one in Delta North Elem.  I was blessed to be able to stop teaching everyone else's children and teach my own after marrying my amazing hubby♥

                                                                 

 Lunch at Cafe Rio was fun and yummy! Nothing like a sweet pork salad! Kayla loves them:) Joel and Elexia and Jerzie met us there and yes, we all loved on their little girl and tried to share..... Pretty sure she had her picture taken almost more than Kayla!! haha!!

Let the party begin???
(apple something...)

 WE COULDN'T BE MORE PROUD OF YOU KAYLA!!!!! GRADUATING FROM HIGH SCHOOL, SERVING A MISSION TO ITALY, AND GRADUATING FROM COLLEGE ALL WITHIN 5 YEARS!!!!!!!!! LOVEY

Six Months into the Mission

 Possibly one of my favorite pictures! This is inside the Colosseum that is by his apartment in Nimes.  I knew he would be eating things he would never try here at home, but Snails?  This poor boys needs some meat! He's desperate! haha The only other thing to eat were steamed veggies, but he said they weren't bad dipped in garlic butter, just  a gross texture.

     Looking out over Nimes and he loves cloudy skies. The next picture just looks French doesn't it?                                               

First baptism!!! Contacted him on the street and 4 weeks later he was baptized. Before his transfer he had three more baptisms set.  Kind of sad to be missing them, but so happy to have helped them find happiness.

This is Elder Dortan, the answer to our prayers! Jarom's trainer was very difficult in so many ways and thats with Jarom not saying much, so we prayed all the time for a new companion. Now his letters say, "We're tearin it up and have Satan on the run!"

Even his smile is happier and natural now:)

When I opened this photo tears came to my eyes.  I have so much love for my Son and he looks so good.  He told me he new I would like this canal and fountain so he took this picture on his P-day. He was SO right!

 Saying Good-Bye to his first area was pretty difficult. He loved this man on the left, enjoyed being at his home (and how loud he would play his music for them) and he is such a strong member.  These ladies on the right are the girls in his branch, he knew I would like this picture of him and the 'ladies'! hahaha! See how they are leaning?? Smart girls:)  I got the impression that the ward members didn't have a good relationship with the missionaries previous to Jarom. Understandable when his trainer had been there 6 months. However with Elder Dortan and Jarom, the ward welcomed them with open arms and told them 'Good Job Elders' quite often. The trust and support was restored in their missionaries once again!  The picture below is the ward mission leader who supported the missionaries completely. He really welcomed in the new converts and always had the Elders over for dinner. Jarom loved this man and enjoyed being in his home. He will miss this area and all the people there.... 

November for Elder Jarom

Finally he sends pictures with him in them! Doesn't he look great♥ We are really looking forward his phone call on Christmas!!! Time isn't going very fast for us here at home.....I know it will get better but it seems like he has been gone forever. He is just coming up on his first transfer week since he arrived in France, we don't know if he will move or one of the other ones or if they will just stay in the threesome.  He spend the day with their District leader Elder Jellin from Orem in another city called Montpellier and had such a great time with him. He didn't care much for the size of the city, but I think it was nice for him to be with a fun Elder and leave the stress of his companions...They have been struggling, and I think they were struggling before Jarom even arrived, but I will share with you how they let the newest Elder solve their problems.. yep I'm proud of my Jarom.   

Thanksgiving was meat and potatoes and bread. He let me know they live above a bakery that has almost American tasting chocolate cake....could be dangerous! haha..

.... i went to toulouse for the blue's conference (here we're called blues instead of greenies) and wow that was so cool!! i love our president.i LOVED that day! it was so nice. very uplifting and motivating. but yeah so eventually i had to part ways with them and when i got back, things hadn't been going well. things had been happening for a long time now and i've been praying and trying so so so hard to find a way to solve our little companionship issues. impossible! took all week and finally we all just blew up on sunday morning. bad bad morning. and i was supposed to teach sunday school (terrifying) and anyways i ended up thinking all church how to fix this problem. eventually heavenly father answered my prayers and i figured it out. i had us do a little meeting when we got back from church. i sat us all down in the middle of the room i started it with a prayer, then i had us all share our favorite scriptures and how its helped us in our lives and then started the evaluation of the problem. first, i started out by saying the things that i was having a problem with. eventually it ended up with us discussing what was wront and how it all comes down to our different perspectives of what missionary work is and stuff. all in all after about almost three hours of non contentious discussion, we all figured out what was wrong. it ends up all i found out was what type of person my trainer was and all the things he's trying to do. i really just found out how i'm supposed to deal with him and how to make things easy and good for him and at the same time have unity and be able to work good together. it was a pretty good little meeting i think. if we didn't have the spirit there, it would've been a very scary meeting. we were all pretty heated and angry in the morning and we said... fine we're calling the president... i really didn't want president to have to figure things out that we could do ourselves so i just tried this out instead. great results. we still don't really like each other but there's no tention and we can work better a lot better together.
 

 I asked to see his apartment and he finally said after they cleaned for hours that he took this picture to send to me.  I think I felt better before I knew what it looked like where he was living.....Jay didn't seem to mind he said it looked like an Elder's apartment. Jarom actually said theirs was one of the bigger and nicer apartments. Really?......our main room in my apt. we have a massive apt compared to all the others. it has a study room, main room with kitchen and couch, then a batheroom and tub and a bedroom with 4 beds. pretty sweet huh. we just spent like 4 hours deep cleaning (me and elder nicholes, while samuelson slept)........

After getting such a short haircut before leaving the MTC I was surprised to he needed another one so soon. I remember cutting his hair and he was a little picky...wonder how his companion did? Again...notice the apartment.......I might not ask for pictures of his other places! Here is some of his last letter:


so yeah everyone in the ward is french, everybody speaks french except for an indian guy who came to church yesterday as a new investagator and he is looking like a next baptism!! its so cool! we just contacted him on the bus and invited him to come to church and he came! we taught him a bit and he's super interested and doesnt speak french. just english. so its pretty cool i think. i'm excited........... my president is so awesome. i think he's getting sick of my companion and how every single time he's told to do something by an assistant or zone leader he has to complain to president...........
   So we decided to stop by a referral that we got from a member and his name is Ihcean (ishean is how you say it?) he lost his job because he told his muslim boss that he was christian and that the boss should stop pushing his religion on him during work. understand? basically because he's not muslim, he was fired and can't find a job. but anyways we taught him the first lession and i taught quite a bit of it too, it was awesome and after the first lesson, he placed a baptismal date!!!!!!! holy crap huh?! so he came to church too and he was all excited and loved all the lessone (except i don't know what it is about french people but they're obsessed with deep docterine?! its so annoying all the sacrament talks were all about deep docterine stuff that wasn't even true and stuff, ) anyways i sat with him and helped him look things up in the gospel principles book and scriptures and stuff. it was awesome. i couldn't say much but i could try. it was pretty cool. i've never felt the spirit so strong in church than when i'm sittin next to an investigator helping them along!! its the coolest thing ever!! i love it..........anyways so this week went pretty good and i'm starving. i need to eat something. by the way i'm always thinking about bizarre foods with andrew zimmerman haha every time i eat something weird.... like salads.... and wow how come i really don't like tomatoes? why?! french LOVE tomatoes... its so weird. i never thought about it. well anyways i gotta send you some pictures so gotta go. i love you mom and its impossible not to think back at all the fun time we had just chillin and eating nasty hot dogs at maverick and stuff haha. i miss you a ton!! hope you have a great week!! love you.

Jarom