100 days and counting!

Wow I have been out here for longer than I thought. It goes fast.

mom, that's soo funny that you have been stalking Hermana Hunt, what does she say thats more descriptive? Y'all know that I ain't no good talker of this here language merican.

alex. I would like rachel sandorfs email please. Thank you.

We got a little christmas tree and lights and stuff! We also got a ceiling fan in our room. The little things that makes life so wonderful.

mom, I took out about 20 bucks today from the christmas gift of grandma, I am gonna buy some sweet scripture covers. Thanks Grandma k!

my belt started to break the other day, so I bought electric tape and wrapped it completely. super cool, and pretty resourceful I thought.

I bought "horse carrots" and thought of my fam, cuz there aren't baby carrots here. but no worries, they taste the same haha

some guy told me to say hi to obama. so when yall see him, give him my best regards.

I got my christmas packages! I look forward to opening my presents and guessing with the scriptures on them!

THank you for the tree, I have a pic that yall need to see on the blog of it. It made me quite a happy missionary.

Thank you for pictures, I always love pictures!

Pretzals were deliciously salty, and the chocolate pretzals equally sublime.

my comp says thanks for the stocking for him too!

thanks for the recipies, I am gonna make cookies someday if I ever have time.

I loved the gingerbread ornament, it really did smell and remind me of home.

Thank you to everyone for the letters as well, its amazing how much more it touches me out here to get a letter from my grandma or sister or cousins. Thank you all, I cherish every one.

mom, yes we got a conference liahona in English to read.

you bet I popped all the bubble wrap in my package.

Weird tradition here, everyone for a few days walk to this city a ways away. like overnight many of them. hoard the street. They walk for the cause to help heal someone or something of that effect. I respect their faith, even if it isn't in the right Person.

Incredible experience the other day. We were gonna go build a house of this lady. There was a big storm and this poor lady basically had her house collapse on her. she has to be 70 or 80. anyways she is living with neighbors and is ok, just mentally scarred a little. But we had this planned activity to go and do this project. so that morning we woke up early and I had a terrible feeling about it. I couldn't explain it. I expressed my concern with my comp who did not feel the same way. so we called president to ask what to do, because I could see no logical reason not to go. It was going to help immensely. He basically told us to pray together and figure it out. we decided after prayer to go, and just be cautious. We get there and get a phone call from President, he says, are you guys building? I told him yes, he said, good, I know why you felt to call me this morning. I have been wanting to do service with my family, can we come and help for a few hours?

Now you have to understand, being a president of over 400 missionaries, as well as an hour and a half distance between us and his family, this is quite a unique circumstance. His whole family came, I got to know them better which was great. To be honest we probably didn't help the guy who was building the house too much because of our inexperience, but it was nice to be a part of it.

after however, we invited them to meet a family that we had just activated, the familia acosta. The hermano acosta had written a letter for the president about a week before telling him how the missionaries had helped him and his family and President had read this letter to every one of the missionaries in the mission, to help boost them to work with inactive and less active members. so of course he said yes, and we went with president and his family all of us in work clothes to meet them. You should have seen their faces. It helped strengthen them soo much. Ever since this family has been so much more spiritually inclined before temporally. They only had great things to say about us as their missionaries (thank goodness) and it was an incredible visit. It's incredible how God can link all these things together and make things work out how they need to.

Well I love you all, especially my family. I have realized the incredible love I have for my family. I apologize to the rest of my friends who read this, yall are great and I love you all very much and appreciate your support, but I have realized how important the family is. I love you all. let me leave you with this quote.

You can count the seeds in a single apple, but you can't count the apples in a single seed.

This is soo true of missionary work.

I love you all, tune in next week.

from your ever sweating elder, Elder jake simpson

 

 This is what our bedroom looks like! and that fan is all we had to keep cool at night until we got got an overhead fan this week! some missionaries have air conditioning. we have mosquitoes and  hot air blowing around. living the life!

 This is what our kitchen/study room looks like!

 me and my sweet olimpia shirt!! and new watch! side note, sorry that I didn't make my bed mom...

 This is my wall, lots of quotes, and not in this picture now includes more quotes and christmas cards from fam and cousins! If you look close at the map in the middle far right of the pic, its upside down. don't ask my why he did it that way

 These things are everywhere and as big as a softball

This is our little christmas tree, this was before I got the object in the next photo...

The christmas tree my fam sent!! Thank you mom for being so creative.

**comments from Mom - I came across a sister missionary's blog who turned out to be Hermana Hunt who is serving in the same city as Jake. It is fun to read his version of events and then hers. She is in the pink and Jake is behind her. They were in the MTC together. She said, "Elder Simps is a big nerd, but he is cool and watching out for me since we are the only two Americans in our area right now." She said the two of them try to play piano for the branch on Sundays.

 Ultimate Frisbee with District - Photo from Hermana Hunt

Elder Jake, his Companion Elder Herrera and Hermana Hunt with the other sisters from their area. (Itagua) Photo by Hermana Hunt