Video, Audio, and a letter!

A Real Passion for Passion Fruit -Watch VIDEO:

You can LISTENto him by clicking HERE.

Skinner family!! Sorry i didn't write yesterday. The whole entire mission was called to come to Cali to learn about a new Christmas promotion the church is doing which includes renting the home page of Youtube and the giant tv's in times square​! It's called, "He is the Gift." check out the video at christmas.mormon.org and buy the Ensign for November and December! It's super cool!

Due to transfers this last week, we had a not-so-great teaching week. Our numbers were very low but now we have new missionaries to help us out. We got around four new investigators though and holy cow, they are ready for the gospel. (He's lucky to be in a mission where four new investigators equals low numbers for the week! haha) They love the plan of salvation and are enthralled by the Restoration.
The new zone leader and my new roommate is a gringo from Preston, Idaho and he has been so nice to have around. Living with three young adult latinos who are freaking crazy was getting a little tough to deal with. His name is Elder Johnson and he was totally in the widesreen version (and only the widescreen) of Napoleon Dynamite hahaha. So we have stuff to talk about.
Due to no one coming to church, we had to drop our baptism dates again :( But we're working on new ones. We had one inactive member, Jeison, who hasn't been to church in forever come out with to our lessons this last week and that did wonders for him because he rediscovered his testimony when we asked him to share it. My comp talks a little (way) too much during
lessons so it was hard to for Jeison or I to get anything in but when we did, it was amazing. And he TOTALLY CAME TO CHURCH!!! So we had some success with him and that was really cool.
My testimony has grown as I've learned to swallow my fear, trust in the Lord, and just TALK. It is so hard to get over my fear of my Spanish but when I do, the Spirit guides me and I almost always know what to say.
The whether is very cool but it rains about 5 times a day. And 3 of those times it does us more good to hold our umbrellas side ways because of the wind. 
I Love you guys and I pray for you too!
Love,
Elder Jenky Baby.      PLEASE leave us a comment if you happen upon this blog and you have an elder out in this mission. We'd love to connect!

More Birds in the apparment! Socks on his hands???

 

Alien Embios -aka Passion Fruit

Prayers Answered-Good Week

Hugh is adorable!!!! I sent him pictures of his new cousin, Hugh, born November 12th. He's right. He is adorable. 

See? told you so....

This week was incredibly better. All prayers said on our behalf were answered and we had some amazing lessons! All, but one, investigators are

progressing (all expect for coming to stinking church!). We had some really
spiritual moments with some families and they are loving the gospel and
building their own testimonies!! I was able to bear testimony about prayer
and that was absolutely incredible. The spirit was helping me because I
said things that I was not able to say before and can't repeat right now!
SO your prayers were answered! Hee hee. I love to hear this. Just sayin'.

My Comp is staying here so transfers are only happening for others. I'll be
with him until next transfer! Which I'm glad about 'cause we just barely
found our teaching pattern together and things are looking bright. I still
want to smash his Rubik's Cube but I'm sure he wants to shoot me when I talk
music so I never say much about it hahaha.

I tried cow tongue yesterday which was honestly pretty nasty...  But I know
that I'd be able to eat it if I had to at a members house haha. The mission
rules on lunch with members changed and now we have one family that feeds
us every day... The mission gives the family money and a menu and they cook
for us. Which in this culture, is not weird. But to me, it is very weird.
Hermana Marojena is our cook and I don't always like going over there
because she has a 22 year old son who lives there and is kind of a jerk to
her and everyone else. For some reason all of the Latino missionaries think
he's the bee's knees but he's always playing terrible rap music and trying
to show us his favorite lingerie models..  (rrrrr...Mom doesn't like this...)

SO yeah, other than him, all is well! We are fed very well. (Oh, by the
way, this is the member's house in which I vomited in the sink. Not
awkward at all.)
The letter that I was going to send you guys was going to cost $41 to send so I had ELder Martinez take it to send it form mexico. So it may never actually get there haha. But just know that it exists ;)
Love you mom!!!
Love,
Justin!!! Elder Skinner



Bit of messy apartment to look at in the background... 



Looks yummy to me! 

Audio File if you want to Hear Elder Skinner!

You can LISTEN to Elder Skinner TELL his stories if you click HERE!

Don't be fooled. He may have hated the Chicken Heart/Liver Soup, but he LOVED having to eat it so he could experience and therefore tell us all about it. :) That's one thing about his mission that I know he looked forward to! 

Well to start this email off, I'll just say that for every good week,
there's a bad one haha... Cause this week was one of the hardest yet..
We had some lessons fall through and due to some bad planning none of our
weekly goals were met :(
It's been really hard to keep patience with the other missionaries too.
Living with three other guys my age who are crazy Latinos is pretty
difficult sometimes. I'm glad he's experiencing new cultures! Elder--- from Mexico who shares our apartment with us is on his last week so he's been really homesick and having a hard time with that. But He'll be there soon :)
Some good things that happened! We have new baptism dates for the ----
family and they are excited and really seem like they want to join the
church. So I'm stoked about that! We're starting to teach one of the
daughter's friends too so it's slowly growing. We helped out with two
baptisms on saturday and that was really cool. Neither of them were for us
and our area but they were for some investigators we've made friends with
at church. Super spiritual. The people who were baptized shared their
testimonies after and that helped me out a lot. Because I suck at Spanish,
I'm limited to sharing a very short and brief testimony. But hearing their
testimonies, which were also very short and very simple helped me to
realize that Everyone's testimony has to grow. My Spanish testimony will
grow with just a little time and patience. :)

In other news, I ate some chicken throat, heart and liver soup yesterday...
SO NASTY... I'm so glad no one saw it happen but when I was eating the
liver, I straight up dry heaved probably the hardest I ever have. hahaha. My
neck is sore from it! If it weren't for juice, I wouldn't not have been
able to eat it. So there's my fun eating story for the week ;)
I hope things are going well! I love you guys! 
Love,
Elder Skinner!

Street Contacting, Laundry, The Birds and a Spanish-Speaking Parrot

Mountain Hike

Things sound like they're going super awesome! I'm glad. Your costumes looked super rad! This week was better! I have been relying Christ a lot more. 

We went on exchanges again on Thursday and that was fun! I was with Elder Chanca, one of the zone leaders and when we were making goals, I said we should get 10 street contacts. Normally, it's a good day if you get 3, but it's mostly because no one ever tries to do it. So we set that goal and MADE IT!!! My companion found out that and the next day we got 11, and now the whole zone is flipping out over street contacting! Yesterday, we went to an area that had very few investigators and all of the missionaries split up and just talked to people on the streets for and hour and a half. We ended up with around 40 or 50 total!! So now we just need to use them ;)
We had two birds get into our kitchen on thursday and I about peed my pants when I went to put away some bread and they flipped out. So we practically tore apart our kitchen trying to catch them and get them out of the house hahaha. It was super funny expect for the part where they pooped everywhere... Didn't get on any of the food though so that's what counts ;)
I'm starting to notice what every one says about South American missions is true. The people will commit to just about anything, like baptism, prayer, reading the BOM, and coming to church. But they don't ever follow through. We had 15 investigators say they were coming to church but only 5 showed up (and they were a family). Because of that, we had to cancel a baptism date for a  family because you need to attend church 3 times before baptism :(
But i'm not complaining! I'm super happy the ones that came did! I can tell they had a good experience and seeing them progress makes me want "SHOUT! throw my hands up! SHOUT!"  Seeing results when investigators act on the gospel is really what makes the work so wonderful and your testimony stronger. There is a talk I read in the Liahona called, "Becoming Perfect in Christ" and I think all of you should read it. It's helped me want to try
harder to be better and throw away my unrealistic expectations for myself
and others. It´s a great article!
We have an American investigator!!!! His wife is Colombian and they moved here 1990. He suffers from a spine disease I forget the name of and he is restricted to his bed. So during exchanges I went there and taught the first lesson in English which was actually harder than I thought.. But hey, it went well and they really like us!
I´m havinga  great time and I´m glad to hear you guys are too! Love you all!
Love Elder Skinner

 One of the birds we caught in our kitchen.

Me doing my first load of laundry on a handwashing thing. Which was kind of fun (in the way that doing the dishes for the first time as a kid is fun, before you realize that it´s a lame chore haha.) 

We hung out with a member family today and went to a restaurant where they caught and killed your fish as you ordered it, which I personally found horrific. So I ordered chicken. And then we hiked around the mountain that we were on for an hour. 

We saw this parrot who actually copied what you said!! Unless it was in English... so if you were ever wondering if birds could understand different languages, I guess they can!