April 2, 2013

I am excited to get your emails every Tuesday! It is a
strange feeling to not be in contact with anyone but my fellow
missionaries all week! I had a great Easter Sunday! The president of
the CCM gave us eggs filled with candy with our dinner so it was a
little like home haha. Easter is a big deal in Guatemala they have it
for a week straight and there are many festivities and events because
of it.  I dont have to wear my suitjacket everyday. The only time I
wear it is when I go to the temple, when I go to devotionals, or other
such meetings. It isnt too bad, but it does get reallllyyyyy hot here.
I can stick it out though I have that Arizona blood. :)
I learned a little more about my mission
though. Apparently the North mission is just splitting in half so Ill
be assigned to either Guatemala City East or Guatemala Coban. I am
excited to see. I also learned that if I tell my mission president I
am interested in learning qechi that I will have a large chance of
going to the qechi speaking area in the North missions.
Today for p-day we got to go to the central market! It was insane
there was hundreds of thousands of items for sale in a underground
structure. It wasnt made for tall people though I kept running into
bags and things hanging from the ceiling. I tower over a lot of the
Guatemalans and they love to watch me jump, the other day some of the
shorter ones were asking me to jump over them. It was really funny. I
bought some handmade ties from the stores there. I really like them
the fabric is like what you would find in a mexican poncho jacket in
Arizona. Things are going muy bien down here! You can probably send
packages to the mission home now, the letters ive been getting have
been about 3 weeks late.  Make sure you always
put Elder Jared Peter Turley when sending stuff and the postal service
here will just send it through without much inspection. I
have memorized the first vision, the missionary objective, and the
first 5 verses of DyC4 in Espanol. I believe I am progressing rather
quickly! I am so excited for my last two weeks here. Time is starting
to fly! It will be my one month mark this week! I love you all hope
you are doing well. Hasta Luego!

March 26, 2013

I am doing well! It is my 3rd week here and it seems like the days
just fly by now. I am continuing to learn Spanish daily and am
enjoying every minute here in the MTC. I hope conference went great! I
want to send you guys pictures of what I have been doing, but our
cameras get taken and we cant use them. I guess it is because the
latino elders have stolen Norte items in the past but I dont see any
of the ones Ive been with doing anything like that. That is great that
Jacob got his patriartical blessing it sounds like it was filled with
revelation. I can now do many lessons only in Spanish and me and my
companion have been teaching tremendously. We went street contacting
yesterday for about an hour, we talked to  a lot of people about the
book of mormon, but unfortunately to no avail. A lot of the people had
to get on Buses and we were cut short. It was a cool experience though
and showed us how it would be in the real mission as well. Easter here
is a week long and is called the Semana Santo, or Holy Week i guess.
Apparently it is a huge deal in Guatemala City and the people carry a
large box along the street that looks like a coffin for Christs death.
I dont know fully it was explained to us in Spanish so I didnt pick it
all up. I got some letters from friends on Thursday through Dear
Elder, someone should show Casey and Asim and Zach how to use it. I
wanna talk to them. The new mission rules let me email other
missionaries which is awesome, so  I have been talking to Taylor and
Cameron and Enoch while Im here which is a huge blessing as well. I
gave the first vision for the first time in the lesson and it is so
much more powerful when you memorize the words and let the Spirit take
over in a lesson. Even though we are teaching our teachers acting as
investigators you can feel the spirit so strong sometimes. It has been
hard to send letters out because the main person in charge of sending
has been out of town, so I guess Ill have to just send stuff out when
I can. Also for those of you wondering where all my punctuation is,
these keyboards are based in Español so all the buttons are in random
places and I dont want to have to find them all the time haha. I also
cant space out my paragraphs which is kind of annoying as well. Well
by this time next week I will have 2 weeks left in the CCM and will be
in the oldest group of elders and hermanas, apparently there will be
40 new nortes incoming in the next group. That is insane! I dont know
where they will live haha! The CCM is already packed as it is. I just
bought a bunch of cool stuff I wanna send home to you guys, but I
still have to wait for the time that I can. Stuff is so cheap here, in
the distribution center I can get a book of mormon for like Q5 which
is less than a dollar, I dont know how expensive it is in the other
places but it seems really low to me. As for the missionary address,
Im not sure... You could ask Jessica which one she used because I
recieved a letter from her and it got here fine. Thats the only advice
I can give you. I miss you guys a lot and I hope I will hear from many
of you next time! Until next week!

March 20, 2013

Things are going great! I just got done with an amazing P-day! The latinos in my room left this morning it was crazy to see how much of a bond we had with those guys even though we couldnt hardly communicate with them. I was super upset when they left early in the morning, I got up at 3am to wish them good luck with their missions. Our investigator turned out to be a set up, but I wasnt too upset he is now able to help us with how we taught him and what we did good and bad. I have seen Hermana Jardine multiple times pretty much almost daily, she is in a different class but is now in my district. I am not sick anymore thank goodness, Im feeling super healthy now, Today a bunch of the Latinos were lining up for me to jump over them because they were so short. It is so weird to see how different their lives our than the Nortes. Tomorrow a new shipment of recruits comes in for the CCM so we will have about 30 more Nortes as well as about 100 more latinos. The new mission wont come in effect until about July from what Ive heard, and it will basically split my mission in half. I really hope I will get to see Tikal, but I will go wherever the Lord wants me to! I havent been able to use my camera since Ive been here until finally they gave them to us to use for yesterday and today, I got a bunch of pictures Ill have to find out how to send. The temple is amazing here, I look at all the architectural value of it and it is just so cool how they did it. It was dedicated in 1984! I am with my same companion for my whole 6 weeks so nothing new there. We are doing fake teachings all in Spanish, its getting better everyday! One of these times ill just write the whole letter in Spanish for you guys!

March 12, 2013

These computers arent advanced enough to do a lot of the stuff your
asking so Im just gonna write stuff haha. I have been very sick this
whole week with a cold and then I got pink eye right after my cold was
finally ending, then I lost my voice so it made it really difficult to
participate in a lot of things like class and what not. The food here
I would probably not want if it was given to me at home but Ive
learned to try new things and I am really enjoying the food! They have
a lot of variety and I havent had the same meal yet in the week Ive
been here. My compañero is cool and we have become really good friends
in our time here. The keyboards here are really weird, they are built
for spanish letters so I am having to get used to a lot of different
keys. Our Pday is when we go to the temple.
It was an awesome experience today. My week has been amazing and Im
picking up Spanish really fast. Me and my compañero have 4 latinos in
our room and we teach them english and they help us with Spanish
nightly. The latinos are only here for 2 weeks so we will be sad when
they are gone next week. It is a strange experience here. There is 170
elders and hermanas here, but only 30 are nortes (north americans) so
we are basically immersed in Spanish which is a really good thing. We
started teaching lessons in Spanish to a real investigator our 3rd day
here! Luckily he spoke some english so between our Spanish and his
English we could get the point across to him of what we are trying to
say. The lessons were going great until one of the other
companionships in our group taught chastity. He called us hypocrites
for believing in one man and one woman marriage and staying true to
one person when in the early times of church there was polygamy. It
was upsetting to hear that he was upset by this principle. Do you guys
have any advice of what we could tell him? I have not heard of a sight
seeing trip or anything of the sort, we dont get to leave the CCM(MTC)
much because of the danger. Me and my compañero have kept a running
tally of sirens in our proximity since thursday and its at 62 sirens.
So basically in 5 days there has been around 11 sirens a day in the
part of the city we are at. I thought this was crazy until I heard the
temple and CCM are in one of the nicest parts of Guatemala city. It is
insane! I hope everyone is doing well! It would be really nice if you
could forward these letters to all of our family so they can see how I
am doing. How is the blog going? I hope my friends are doing good and
are excited to see what I am doing here. Pretty soon Ill be able to
write a whole letter in Spanish, currently I can pray and bear my
testimony in Spanish! Well that is it for today! Im out of time!:(
Love you guys and Ill be back next week!

Safe in Guatemala

Elder Turley e-mailed us on Thursday morning to let us know that he arrived safely at the MTC in Guatemala.  His p-days are on Tuesdays so we will hopefully hear more from him then! He said that the days are long, but the work is good!

Message from Elder Turley

March 4^th 2012

Hey everybody, my sister Allyson is going to be keeping up a blog for the two years I’m gone. She plans to update it pretty much weekly or bi-weekly. It will just have some of my letters home and basically a rundown of what’s going on in Guatemala while I’m gone. It will also include some pictures and other things when I can send them home and have access to a computer. I don’t know how often I will be able to get to a computer so we’ll just have to wing it and see as the time goes on.

I’ll miss you guys while I’m gone! But for those of you who want to you can see how I’m doing with a click of the button.

I’ll probably have a final entry for tomorrow, until then, hasta la vista J.

-Elder Jared Turley

Welcome!

Hi everyone! This is a blog that I'm keeping up for Elder Turley so that everyone can be informed about how he is doing in Guatemala. I'm going to keep it updated as we hear from him, and I've included the addresses to where you can send your hand-written letters and any packages that you may wish to send him.

Using the website Dear Elder is the best way to contact him, and for those that aren't familiar with this service I've added a tab at the top of the page to give you some instructions.

Unfortunately, due to mission policies, we can't give out his e-mail address, and I won't be able to post his e-mails word for word, but I will do my best to let you all know everything that is going on with him as we hear from him each week.

Obviously the best thing for you all to do is to write him and let him know how you are doing and support him as he won't be able to check Facebook or contact people except through letters for the next 2 years.

Thanks for visiting!