Opening my mission call.

On the way home from the airport about 3 weeks ago my family and I were all just chatting and my dad looks at me and says..."Jami i think your call is here". i laughed thinking he was kidding but he kept saying he had a feeling and we rushed home to the mail. i did not think this was it. there was no way. my dad and sister got the mail and of course pretended there was nothing there but then in front of my eyes they pulled out my call. i couldn't believe it. i started crying. i was so excited!!!!!! it was here. we all ran inside and i could hardly wait....my parents asked if they should invite people over but i told them i just wanted it to be our family. i was so nervous and couldn't stop getting emotional. i prayed by myself in private to bring the spirit into the home and in my heart. i was so antsy! nick my brother ran home with Kate his girlfriend in Utah once they heard the news and jumped on ichat or skype. i was freaking out. it was in my hands. everyone was waiting. i couldn't wait any longer and once nick was on the screen i started to open it....really slowly and everyone was so silent. right when i slipped the paper out of the envelope i looked right where i needed to(where it said i was going) and became very emotional...i then composed myself and looked at everyone smiling who were all just waiting for me to talk. i then read out "sister pond you are hereby called to serve as a missionary of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. you are assigned to labor in the Argentina Cordoba mission". i just closed my eyes and cried i was so happy. everyone was cheering and freaking out and it was the most amazing and spiritual moments of my life. i cant even describe it. i was on a cloud and with angels all around me just in heaven. so happy. i am leaving august 25th. the crazy thing is my mom said at church that day she told people she thought i was going there and also guessed it right before i opened it! nick also guessed it to not knowing my mom had like right before i opened it! this was the one of the most spiritual moments of my life and i could not be more thrilled and ready to go. i have been waiting and preparing so long to go and it is finally here. my prayers have been answered. i am gong to learn Spanish. my life is bliss. i cant believe it. my mission touches where my brother served in Uruguay. this is all so surreal and i am sooo spiritually fed and satisfied. my testimony is already growing. i am in love with life and cannot wait to serve.

.....adios for now!

Cute kiddies.

Since I am expecting to leave on a mission soon, I figured it would be good to spend some productive time serving and helping out at schools and other service projects. I decided to volunteer at a kindergarten class that my mom’s best friend teaches at. Her class was very small but very personal and easily controlled. We all sang songs together and I got to hear them all read out loud. The kid’s graduation was only a few days away so they all showed me the song they were going to sing for their parents at the end of the year. The song they sang for me “These Two Hands”, was so inspirational. It was all about how they would be able to do so much and grow up working with and using only their two hands and never giving up. These tiny kids were doing these little gestures and hand movements with the song and it was so cute to see them with all this motivation and love and hope. They were all just so ready for the new chapter in their lives where they would attend the “big kid school” next year which was elementary school. There was this only little girl who just had the prettiest little bow in her hair and was so full of life and love and was just so smart. She sat me down and insisted that she had to read to me all 65 pages of a Dr. Seus book and even when the teacher would tell her she didn’t have to read me the whole thing and could stop, she said she wanted to read the whole thing and was not going to give up. I just smiled and laughed when I looked at my moms friend and told her I would let her read me the whole thing, even if it took long and I couldn’t work with other kids. When this little girl would ever mess up on one word, she would not let me help her and would figure it out herself, say it, and then start that whole page over again. Even though I was wanting to play and color with the other kids, I could tell this little girl was so happy to be reading to me and wanted to impress me. I sat through it all and as she got through each last page, she would push back her bangs out of her face, look at me, and smile with wide bright eyes just waiting for my response. When she finally read the 65th page and it was closed shut, she ran up to her teacher and told her what she had done, just beaming and so thrilled. My mom’s friend was so happy that I had done that for this little girl and thanked me the rest of the day. I got to fill out this “great job” card for the girl to write down her accomplishment of the day so she could take it home to her family and show what she had done. I wrote down on the card what a lovely, bright, happy, loving, and smart girl she was and said that her parents were very lucky to have her a part of her life. When the day was over, I got into the car and as we drove off my mom’s friend informed me that this specific girl that read to me did not know how to read when she first came to the class and had come so far since then. She also told me that this girl was very precious to her because she had an alcoholic mother and a hard living situation at home that makes it hard for her to receive much attention and admiration. I just remembered that precious girls big brown eyes and her little cute dress and shoes. I wondered if she ever got to read to her mom and hoped that someday her family would clean up and give her the love she deserves. I prayed intently for this specific girl that night and was grateful I was able to learn from her and take just a little time out of my life to meet her and listen to her read. I am so thankful for these small and simple encounters with people in life that can teach us so much about ourselves and about life. I think it is so important to show all children and kids love and appreciation and help them understand and know in some way that they are forever unconditionally loved by heavenly father and by the people around them.

A Beautiful place called Ghana.

Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light. -Norman B. Rice

Heaps of Love

Mr. El Salvador

"You are called to represent the Savior. Your voice to testify becomes the same as His voice, your hands to lift the same as His hands. His work is to bless His Father's spirit children with the opportunity to choose eternal life. So, your calling is to bless lives. Your call has eternal consequences for others and for you. In the world to come, thousands may call your name blessed, even more than the people you serve here. They will be the ancestors and the descendants of those who chose eternal life because of something you said or did, or even what you were. . .You see, there are no small callings to represent the Lord."

Elder Henry B. Eyring

Email from Elder Heaps:

Buenas dias mi hermosa familia! so good to hear from you guys!! always such a joy to hear from everyone and hear how everyone is doing. so as always this week has been really good. we were suppose to have a baptism yesterday but he wants to wait a week so he will be getting baptized on saturday!! but this week we have been working hard as always. trabajando como negroes! thats my companion and my moto. hahaha but this week we have found 12 new investigators and most of them are all really positive.i really enjoy working with my companion. we are basically best friends we are always talking and laughing and just having a good time. so on friday we had a ward activity and me and my companion gave short little talks and i gave a talk on the importance of family prayer. something that gordon B hinckley always talked about. it went really well and i shared some good scrips for it and everything. family prayer i have learned is something very important and necessary to strengthen the family. after we had a dinner appointment with a family and i helped them make hamburgers and french fries. taught them how to really make a american hamburger and i chopped up some potatoes and made french fries. it was so good! i should probably be a chef. haha so are you guys going to send me some recipes or what. right now for breakfast i make banana pancakes and we hired ourselves and cook for lunch and then for dinner i usually make grilled cheese or something like that. but send me some good recipes please! and send me the recipe for no bake cookies. so on sunday was an exceptionally good day. we had an incredible attendance. we woke up early and walked about 3 miles to go get one of our investigators and when we got back to church we opened up the doors and my jaaw just dropped. every seat was filled. i was so happy! we had an attendance of 127! thats the most its been in a long time. and if we are able to keep the attendaence above 120 for 3 months they will build us a new bigger chappel! we also had 5 investigators at church and one of them has a baptism date for this saturday and then yesterday we put another bptism date for the saturday after. its interesting because my first day here in this area we took a taxi with all my bags and the guys driving started talking to us and told us that he is a member and that he has been inactive for about 10 years and so after we started visiting him because he just moved to our area and his wife is not a member. but we have been teaching them every since and they are way positive so we put a baptism date with her yesterday for the 19th and she said she would have to think about it and she will let us know this week but her husband wants her to get baptized so we are pretty sure that she will get baptised this month because i know that it wasnt by chance that we met him the way we did and it wasnt by chance that they just barely moved into our area. and then there are a few other investigators that we are hoping to baptize this month so we are working hard for that. so this week has been raining alot and i have been getting soaked, i wish i had bought a nice big umbrella. my marmot jacket is working nicely but the rain here is basically the same as if i were standing under neath a waterfall, it rains so hard. but yeah all is well here in El salvador. im learning a ton. i am almost halfway through doctrine and Covenants and im obsessed! so good! love it.

-I have been thinking a lot about Kyle lately and I just love Kyle and I am so proud of him. He has been my inspiration since the day I met him and I feel so lucky that we will be serving Spanish speaking missions at the same time and be able to both be missionaries! We will both learn and grow so much as we are gone and I cannot wait to share those experiences with each other the whole journey through.

Life is GOOD.