Allison week 2 Morocco

I had a great week, sorry to not check my email sooner. It’s been really busy. We just got back from a weekend trip to Casablanca and Marrakesh. 

Classes were really good this week. Now we can conjugate verbs in the present and past tenses! We’ll have our mid-term exam on Friday so I’ll have to make sure to get a lot of studying done this week.

Our school days are pretty interesting because we have a lot of breaks in the middle of the day. 

8:00-10:00 classes

10:00-10:30 tea break

10:30- 12:00 classes

12:00-2:00 lunch and study time

2:00-3:00 afternoon classes

3:00-6:00 extra activities like cooking club or conversation practice with Moroccans

They feed us so much! My host family likes that I eat their food though. Me and my host sister have done a lot of cooking together and I learned how to make cake and chicken the Moroccan way. 

I got to go to the market in Rabat on Friday and it was so cool! I live in Agdal which is the nicer area of the city where everything is really western so it was cool to see the Medina because it feels so different from America. It’s super crowded and the streets are really narrow. I got to go inside one of the other student’s host family’s house in the Medina and it had all tile mosaic walls and a courtyard in the middle of the house. It was fun to see more traditional Moroccan architecture. 

We only spent a couple of hours in Casablanca but we got to go in the Hassan 2 mosque which is the 3rd biggest in the world and is built on the ocean. Marrakesh was super hot but the market there was huge! We had a guided tour then got to explore the souk. Marrakesh has a lot of European tourists so the shopkeepers all know a few English phrases and shout at you to buy stuff with English accents. It was a really fun trip. 

Tagine on the first day of school

Allison Morocco week 1

It’s been a pretty awesome so far. We made it here without any problems. Morocco is super interesting and the weather has been really good. My host family is really nice. It’s a Mom and her 16 year old daughter Aya. They both have really good English but they mostly speak French at home and the TV is always in French. There is a festival going on in Rabat called Mawazine where lots of famous musicians come and play on 7 different stages in the city. Last night me and Aya went to one of the concerts for a group called Texas. Neither of us had heard of the group before but Aya said it might be good to go on a night that wouldn’t be as crowded. The singer was a lady with a really thick English accent who screamed a lot. We didn’t stay very long but it was fun to spend time with my host sister. My roommate’s name is Sarah and she’s really nice. It’s extra helpful because she is learning French and can help translate. I really like my language class. There are about 8 of us in each room and we learned some Moroccan dialect for the first two days and today was our first day of Modern Standard Arabic. We got to go to the American embassy a few days ago and we met the other NSLIY group that’s in a different part of Rabat. It was interesting to hear about some of the different jobs people have working at the embassy. The food here is REALLY good. We have tagine every day for lunch except Friday. Friday is the day Moroccans cook couscous before they go to mosque. We also get out of school a little early on Friday. Moroccan couscous is the best! It has lots of pumpkin and potatoes and carrots. Hope you guys are having lots of fun! 

Alberto baptism

Elder Tyler Jones week 96

We were really happy to see Alberto be baptized this week! It was super sweet. His family was there to support him and they gave really awesome talks about how they were happy to have another family member join them in the church. The family has been members for a while now and Alberto and his wife were before pretty opposed to the church. So whenever Alberto would come to visit, the family wouldn’t be able to come to church. 

 

But we had dinner with their family a bit ago and started teaching him about what we believe and the gospel and he changed his mind and wants to go to the temple. Right as we were going into the baptismal font he asked if he could say a short prayer with me. It was really sweet he talked about how grateful he is to have found the gospel and asked that he be guided by the spirit as he moves back to El Salvador tomorrow.

So it’s been awesome!

Companions

Elder Tyler Jones week 95

It was awesome getting to talk to you guys yesterday!

We’ve had a good week! Lots of good things happening. We had another giant, all of San Jose, party this week. That was a lot of fun and we’re even starting to teach someone that came to the party. Her name is Luna and she has a son that’s 20. She has had a baptismal date in the past but dropped it. So we’re excited for that.

Other than that our other investigators are doing well, the Hernandez family is doing awesome they’ve come 4 weeks now.