Week 21

First off, I have to apologize if my last two letters have been
slightly depressing in tone. I pr poise I'm happier than I ever have
been and things are going great. I Blame my high school English
classes for teaching me to write super dramatically, and sometimes I
go a little overboard haha. Things are going great here in Cartagena
with elder Striebeck! It's been getting hotter and hotter everyday,
which makes it really hard to walk around and try to do missionary
work...good thing we have a car! Haha and yeah the other missionaries
do hate me and my comp

However, it seems that my days of air conditioning and cruising the
Spanish countryside have come to an end. My companion received a phone
call this week and he will be training a new missionary, which also
means that I will be saying good bye to my first area. It's been
pretty hard not to be kind of sad. Starting out here has been a real
blessing, a place where the work moves so fast and all of the members
are supportive and loving and with a car, but I know the lord has
other things for me to learn that I can't learn here. I thought I
escaped my first summer in Spain, but alas the time has come for me to
experience the true missionary life.

This week, I realized one of the things I dislike most about Spain. In
America there is a flap in the plumbing system that only allows the
water to go one way, away from your bathroom. Well here they don't
have that so you always get to wake up to the sweet smell of.....yeah.
However, that is not the worst of the problems. The absence of the
flaps also allows for the entrance of cockroaches into your house. I
don't think I've ever felt more fear than I have walking in the
bathroom to wash my hands and practically shaking hands with a
cockroach. And yes, I scream like a little girl when I see them....my
excuse is growing up with three older sisters in the house I never
learned how to scream like a man.

We saw a ton of miracles this week. We have been waiting for two of
our investigators to get their papers to get married. This past week
we decided to fast and prayer so that their papers came in, and when
we went to check the next day they were in!! That might not seem like
a miracle, but here in Spain it takes FOREVER and a day to get your
papers to be married. We also were called by a member of the church to
go to the hospital and give her a blessing this week. The doctors told
her that she would probably be in there for minimum 12 days. The next
day she walked out of the hospital perfectly fine!

Everything here is going great! Thank your for all of your support and
prayers. I am loving being a missionary, and I know that this is what
the Lord wants me to be doing. I hope you all have a great week. You
will be in my prayers!

Love, Elder Jenkins

Things I learned:

1. The best way to kill a cockroach is run away and make your companion do it
2. The only street sign that is the same here is the stop sign
3. You can only be your best as you learn to depend on others
4. Patience is inversely proportional to how many continuous hours you
have been speaking a different language
5. Warriors won the NBA finals....( I have my sources)
6. Michael Jordan died .... ( I have bad sources as well) according to
a Facebook post an investigator saw
7. There are over 20 provinces in Argentina and only 3 or 4 talk with
the famous "sho" accent, but the people from those cities are the ones
who are on television most and what not
8. When you fall asleep praying you wake up forty minutes later with
really hurt knees

Have a great week!