Elder Jon Pimentel 10/20/2007

Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 1:25 PM

Subject: Wahoo!This is great!

Hello everyone!

The plane ride was fine. Elder Erickson and I [had] members directly in front of us and to our diagonal right, and the lavatory to my right. No opportunity to share the gospel. The people in front of us were really nice though.

We were welcomed at the airport by the Mission President and his assistants, as well as a bunch of English elders. We went to the mission home and had some orientation and training. We had a fantastic dinner and a testimony meeting of sorts. The next day we had a hearty breakfast Thursday morning and left for the chapel to have another meeting and meet our trainers. They read an intro for each new Elder, and I wasn't expecting the part where "I poke Kint!" ;) [Gary’s note: the mission president asked us to send him a letter telling him about Jon. Part of our letter was a story about when baby Kent started crying and young Jon announced in a proud manner “I poke Kint!”] Before I go farther, our Mission president is awesome! He is very personable and very on the ball. Our mission is known for obedience. Exact obedience. Not only to the white handbook known as "The White Bible", but there is a whole new "higher law". We have about two and a half pages of additional rules, one of which is the further restriction of music---no soundtracks. :( But the rest of the rules, while difficult, are not impossible nor terribly unreasonable. I can see how they can help improve the work and better invite and maintain the spirit. Good stuff. So where was I? Oh yeah, we met our trainers, and mine is Elder Wilson [Gary’s note: Elder Wilson is the nephew of the guy I work with every day at Sonic], a.k.a. Elder Muaj Tsim, which more or less means "worthy". There are several possible translations, but that one makes the most sense. He is great! He is the same height as Elder Erickson (6'3") so I have another comp who "take[s] large steps" (forum) and I must hustle to keep up. He has a great sense of humor and we got along from the first hug. Oh, Elders in this mission don't shake hands with each other, they hug. Same with the mission president. Naturally we shake hands with everyone who is not a missionary, and with sister missionaries.

The sun hasn't shone at all yet, but it has been very pleasant temperature-wise. It rained all day Thursday, but I don't mind being wet.

I live with Elder Muaj Tsim and two other Hmong Elders in a not-too-shabby apartment. The other elders names are Elder Vang and Elder Vang. They didn't know each other before the mission, it's just that Vang is an incredible common Hmong clan. Elder Richard Vang is white Hmong and Elder Choua Vang is Green Hmong. Muaj Tsim's old companion (whom I replaced) was Elder Jonathan Vang, and Elder Jackson Vang is Elder Ericksons trainer and our district leader. So there are 3 companionships in our district. My area is called Frogtown, and I'm in St. Paul. "Frogtown" is "Zosqav" in Hmong. As I was saying, it rained all day Thursday, and as soon as we got to the apartment the four of us assembled my bike and we headed straight out to go contacting. We have a goal to OYM (Open Your Mouth) 10 people each every day, and my first day was no exception. We just go around on our bikes and stop and talk to everyone we pass about the gospel. There is so much more to talk about, but I have to go. Send mail to the mission office, they will forward it to me. We have a baptism on Sunday! This kid is the coolest! I've met so many great people. I want to tell you all about each of them, but I can't, and you probably would tire of reading. Suffice it to say I love it so far.

My new name is Muaj Yeej, and my clan is Muas

-Elder Muaj Yeej

Elder Jon Pimentel 10/16/2007

Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 8:44 AM
Subject: Tagkis kuv los rau hauv lub ntiajteb (tomorrow come I into the world)

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go/ I'm standin' there outside your door/ I hate to wake you up to say goodbye....'cuz I'm leavin' on a jet plane!

It probably won't sink in until I get off the plane that I'm actually going to be in the field. It makes me feel excited---well, excited and scared (to the tune from Into the Woods).

This week Elder Khamsa got a bag of "Asian peppers" from a relative. Our naikhu identified them as the infamous kua txob peppers, known to many Americans as Thai peppers. We all loaded up glasses of milk so we could try them out. I bit off a little over half a centimeter from the little devil, and it was certainly a new experience. It's not so much hot, as it is painful. Like most spicy things, it takes a second to really kick in. When kua txob kicks in, it's like someone takes a cloth covered with pins, wraps it around your tongue, and squeezes. While you're in the process of drinking milk, the effects are nullified, but as soon as you swallow, you're right back where you were. What fun. I'll see if I can send one to Kent (isn't he the wasabi king?).
I ran into Elder Shields a few times. It was really weird because I always thought he was about Kent's age. Guess not.

I've gotten to be proxy at the temple for some people with pretty cool names. One was a Brother Gould (not quite Goa'uld, but still cool), another had the first name "Splinter".

Before I forget, I'd like to thank Liz for the goodies: Liz, thank you for the goodies! There.

As a zone leader, I discovered that we believe in meetings, we schedule meetings, we have endured many meetings, and hope to be able to endure all meetings. If there is a meeting we seek after it. I had 7 on Sunday.

Kent, it may amuse you to know I found the word for "Lampwick". It's teeb xeeb, pronounced 'dang sang' both with high level tones.

Doug might like to know that some Hmong use the Chinese word for 'stuff', but they change it a little to make it easier to spell. It's spelled toob xib.

Outta time! I'll call you
-Elder Meej

Notes from Sam - 10 October 2007

Hi everybody,

British postal workers have been on strike for about a week, and so I haven't gotten any mail since last Wednesday. : ( But that's a pretty small inconvenience - one of our investigators gets paid through the mail and has had to make all sorts of special arrangements this week. Besides, pretty soon the strike should end and they should deliver all the backlog.

On Friday and Saturday we went on exchange with the other elders in our district, who are working in the village of Kendal. Elder Tomita went to Kendal, and Elder Turner, who is from Sacramento, came to Barrow to work with me. Elder Turner is recovering from surgery - he had to have his appendix removed just last transfer, I believe - but he was a good sport and we did a lot of good work. His style of missionary work is quite different from Elder Tomita's, so it was a really good experience for me to work with him for a day. Both the Kendal elders stayed with us on Saturday night so they could see General Conference (Kendal has no chapel so they have to come down to Barrow for the broadcast), and I also got to go on exchange with Elder Di Iulio from Italy for a couple of hours.

On Friday night, Elder Turner and I committed one of our investigators to baptism later this month. Gavin, the investigator, got really excited when we told him he could get baptized this soon. He made it to General Conference on Saturday night and to a baptismal service (for an 8-year-old girl) on Sunday, which helped him feel really good about going through with it. One of his big challenge right now is quitting smoking, but we met with him last night and things look very good.

Our finding efforts are also going well. Until last Friday, I had never been invited to come inside a door when tracting, but since then I've been invited in three times, once with Elder Turner on Friday and twice on Monday. One of these was a really nice old couple who were eager to chat with us, albeit not necessarily about the gospel. The husband told us all about his experiences serving in Burma in World War II: learning Urdu from Indian servicemen, negotiating with a local headhunter tribe, and "fighting the Japs." He was very apologetic when he realized Elder Tomita was from Japan. : )

Thanks again for your wonderful letters! I hope everything is going wonderfully in Jacksonville. I'll try and send you some pictures, but I may not have time - if not, I'll try next week.

Love,
Elder Pimentel

Notes from Sam - 3 October 2007

Hi everybody,

Sometimes it just feels so great to be a missionary! Last Thursday we had a tea appointment with a family that had a whole bunch of Primary-age kids. The family lives at the top of a several-story apartment building, and when we got out of our car two of the kids on the balcony of the apartment building (who must have been there watching for us) starting waving to us. When we got up to their flat, the two little kids sang us a song that they’d prepared specially to greet us, and throughout the whole appointment we had a cluster of kids all around us (including two nonmember neighbor kids) asking us questions and showing and telling us things. When we taught our lesson at the end, they were eager to read scriptures and answer questions and tell us all the things they knew about the gospel. It just made me feel good about the world. As we were leaving, Elder Tomita reminded me about the scripture that tells us that we must become as a little child in order to enter the kingdom of God, and I could really see what it meant.

We've found some new investigators since I've arrived, which has been exciting to see. One of them in particular seems particularly promising, a guy who Elder Webb talked to in the street when we went on exchanges a week or two ago. He told us that he's been looking for a church to join (he's tried a couple of them and has not been satisfied); we've taught him twice so far and he's "keen" to keep on learning about the Church. Yay! And even when tracting or street contacting doesn't lead us directly to new investigators, it can be really productive. We tracted in Millom on Sunday, and although we didn't get to teach much at all, we happened to (or, I should say, were divinely guided to) run into two different less-active members who we hadn't met before (although we'd tried to find one of them earlier and failed). Both of them were friendly and said they'd be happy to have people visit them.

I can’t really comment authoritatively on the accent of the Manchester character in [the comic strip] Get Fuzzy – I’m about three hours north of Manchester right now, and apparently British accents are particularly distinctive and region-specific, changing significantly in only ten miles – but a number of the phrases he used in that comic strip sound very familiar: people are always saying “alright” (in a way that almost leaves out the L), and I’ve definitely “summat.” I think I’ve also heard people using “and that,” although it hadn’t jumped out at me before I read the comic strip. I’ve noticed a couple of other things about the Barrowian accent: people use the word “youse” as a second-person plural (a la “y’all”) and the vowel sounds from “boat” and “but” are pronounced almost identically. So when people say “Barrow,” it’s almost more like “Bar-uh.” At the open house the other day, a woman was telling us about the town in Northern Ireland where her ancestors came from, a tiny village with not much in it except a church, some houses, and a pope. After a little bit I realized the word she had said was “pub.” : )

Love,
Sam

Elder Jon Pimentel 10/9/2007

Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 7:39 AM
Subject: Txoj hau kev tau raug hloov lawm

The subject of this E-mail means "The plan has encountered changing". On Friday one of our naikhu (teachers) got a phone call saying that Elder Erickson and I were to stay until the 17th. We then received new travel plans confirming this. The rest of our zone, save it be an English district, are leaving this week, but we will get new Elders on Wednesday. We will just miss the new Hmong Elders because they will arrive on the 17th a few hours after we leave. We have been called as Zone Leaders for the remainder of our time at the Missionary Training Center, which presents us with an excellent opportunity to serve. We also have been paired up with Elder Khamsa, a Laotian Elder---the only Laotian Elder--- who is actually is Laotian and is called to serve in Oakland, CA speaking Lao. Hmong borrows around 50-60 words from Lao, so it's fun when he recognizes a word here and there when we speak. On the 17th I will likely call between 7:00 am and 8:00 am.

Conference was great! I've never enjoyed conference quite so much, and the reason is probably because I never listened so much. It also helps that I was actually looking for things to get out of the talks. Next conference, I urge all of you (even Daniel, but maybe not Tiara) to take notes and look for something to get out of each talk.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!
-Elder Meej

Potter Update

During Priesthood session is a good time to sit down and write a little update I've been meaning to :)


We are in our official countdown to graduation from law school. Hooray! But in that we have realized that there's still a lot of things we haven't accomplished yet on our "East Coast To Do List." We've decided that since John's already accepted a job offer at Orrick Harrington & Sutcliff in San Francisco for next fall, school doesn't need to be as time consuming as it once was. We are taking time to play! In the past couple weeks we've gone to the Jersey Shore, Princeton, hit up a Yankees game and picked our own fruits and vegetables at a farm. Next weekend is our fall foliage trip and the weekend after that is Boston. So we are packing it all in before the weather turns cold.



In between our trips we've been keeping busy. John has been involved in Moot Court and is the Law Republicans President this year. He's also been put in as Young Man's President (we really only have one active young man in our ward...sad!). Mia is learning something new everyday. She is determined to start running as soon as possible. My back is starting to ache a bit as we make lap after lap around the apartment. For Halloween she is going to be a chicken. We took pictures of her in it at the farm the other week. I think Halloween is going to be a lot more fun for me from here on out...haha. As for me, I'm loving being mom. Mia and I play with friends from the ward on a regular basis and we like to go on lots of walks. I've also started going back to work at the ad agency I worked for previously. It's nice that I just go in once a week to help with special projects while John watches Mia.

If anyone wants to make an NYC trip anytime in the next 8 months you'd have somewhere to stay! We'd love to have you!

Elder Jon Pimentel 10/2/2007

Weeks 1 through 6


Week 7


Week 8

Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 7:32 AM
Subject: Lub sijhawm los lawm! (Yuav luag)

Nyob zoo!
October already?! Gadzooks! I got my travel plans, and I am indeed embarking on the 10th. The lap bar is down, the ride operator has marbled through his speech on the loudspeaker, and train is clink-clattering up the first hill.

During my time here, I have noticed a sizable handful of flagrant grammatical and spelling errors on signs, in speech, and even in the missionary handbook. I know everyone make mistake, especially me, and my spelling isn't perfect (I can barely spell in English anymore because I'm so accustomed to phonetic writing), but I expect people to proofread signs and official handbooks before they go out. For example, the wallpaper of these computers gives this warning: Any misuse of the Internet or e-mail will cause the missionary to *loose* e-mail privileges while at the MTC. (Emphasis added). In the handbook and on a sign near the ATM, there are references to some sort of ATM machine, and I'm wondering what they do with all the ATMs the ATM machine makes (for surely that must be its function). Also, several people, including Bishops, teachers, etc. refer repeatedly to those who undergo orientation as being orienTAted (emphasis added). Sometimes (depending on who it is) I say "Wait, who was oriented?" and they get this look on their face like, "Oh, I guess there IS a word for that after all and I don't have to make one up!"

It sounds like you got my tape....cool.

My district got to give a pep talk to a new group of Thai-speaking missionaries, and give them advice etc. It was a fantastic experience. I gotta go! Love you all!

Elder Meej