Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 4

I haven´t gotten any snail mail from Dad yet, but I´ll keep looking. I did however get a package this week from Lisa Benjamin. Could you give them a big thank you for me. Sorry it´s so hot in Indiana, The weather is perfect here. Sounds like you guys are having fun. Was Allison able to run the cart down any hills or was it too muddy for that? I still remember the Children´s museum in Indianapolis. I really loved that museum. Glad Courtney and Hal are doing well in college.

I really enjoyed reading Jesus The Christ. I read it pretty much all day last week on my P-day and finished it. So that was super good. I really enjoyed it.  

Spanish is coming a long well. It´s getting easier to speak it more quickly. Our lessons are coming along well, it´s becoming a lot easier to be able to say what I want to say in Spanish. However, whenever native speakers talk together I still have almost no clue what they´re saying. So I´m going to just keep working on that. We´re getting better at speaking Spanish together all the time. So that´s helped a lot with fluidity.

It rained pretty hard this week, so the person whose umbrella we were using for our christmas tree took it back. So Christmas in July sort of ended this week. The district that shares a house with us has been getting pretty sick this week. Most of them are in bed right now. So I´ll just be trying to keep my distance for a bit.

We don´t have much to do today, Elder Creager wants to sleep for a bit so I´ll probably just read scriptures. 

We got another batch of missionaries yesterday which is always fun.

Elder Pippert and I every night give each other some problem to solve just for the fun of it. last night we determined that Elder Creager, based on the assumption that he averaged 2 glasses of orange juice per meal had drunken 5 and 1/21 gallons of orange juice while he has been here. So yeah, Elder Creager really likes orange juice. 

I´m finding ways to cut out more time for reading the scriptures. There are a fair number of breaks in the day but they´re usually short but if I read during those times It adds up to a lot.

During gym time I generally play volleyball or ping pong. There´s also a group of Latinos that play basketball together every day at the gym. They´re all in there 20´s and 30´s except this one guy that´s fairly short and seemingly in his 50´s and he seems to be the best one playing. So that´s always fun to watch. 

A lot of the same has been happening. But it´s good, glad to be here and I´m learning a lot. 

Anyway, I´ve been having a great time.

Love you guys,

Elder Jones

 

 Anyway, Some scriptures I liked this week, in case you´re interested:

Matthew 6:32-34

John 16:33

1 Nephi 10:22

Mark 10: 17-22

and I´m out of time. I hope those are right,  My scriptures are on my desk, I just have my notes with me.

 One side of my view on my way to class.

 

Here´s my view on my way to class every morning. Looks even cooler in the early morning or at night with the fog and city lights.

Letter to little bother, Dan.

Hi DaNL, Glád yóú´ré hávíñg fúñ in Iñdiaña. That´s a lot of seconds. Ill make sure to try to get a picture of myself with thumbs up this week. Hope you guys had fun at the museum, I love that museum, I still remember going there when I was younger as well. Hope you have an awesome summer.

Love,

Elder Jone

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 3

Sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun over there. Allison is going to have a great time at trek. She looks like a real pioneer.

This week was terrific. Pretty much everyone's sickness has subsided by now which is good. We got a new shipment of missionaries yesterday. There were a ton of them. We just saw a bunch of missionaries walking through the streets pulling luggage. We were helping some of them bring their luggage to their home and I was asking all of them where they were going. I have yet to find anyone here that is also going to San Jose. Everyone in my district is either going to Fort Lauderdale or New York. However If my approximations are correct in deciding how many Spanish speaking missions go to this MTC and how many missionaries are currently here and assuming that missionaries to missions are evenly distributed I should have to ask about 85 randomly selected people to find one going to San Jose. However those are some fairly hefty assumptions.... so I don´t know, Im going to keep looking. 

We aren´t going to the temple today. So we have a full preperation day today. Elder Creager wants to take a nap today so I think I´m gonna try to finish Jesus The Christ today. I´m about 400 pages in and there's a little over 300 pages left. It´s a really good book. I love the perspective and insight that he has on the life of the savior. 

We also switched Classrooms this week. We moved to the Brigham Young building which is just across the street. I really like the new building because in the hallway to our classroom there´s a bunch of beautiful paintings of Christ placed in chronological order. There´s also construction right outside the window of our classroom which one might think as a bad thing but there´s a construction worker that often works right outside our window that loves to sing songs in Spanish while he is working. I don´t think he knows we can hear him but that´s fun.

The CCM is starting to get packed. The auditorium can´t fit all of the missionaries so they´re starting to set up chairs right outside of the auditorium so people can listen to the devotionals. So we´ve been trying to get to devotionals 20 or so minutes early now. On Sunday they showed us a video called ´´the testaments¨ (side note, I don´t know how to use quotation marks or apostrophes on Spanish keyboards so I´ve just been using the accent key without a letter) But I really enjoyed the video. It was basically telling the story of the first 10 or so chapters of third Nephi while simultaneously telling the story of the life of Christ.

The Lessons are getting better. Spanish is becoming a bit more fluid and lessons can generally go alright. We did TRC this week which is where they have people that only speak Spanish volunteer to come in and we give them a lesson. We had 2 lessons. One was with a slightly older man and when he started talking I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. So i said ´´si´´ a lot. But we had another lessons with someone who seemed like they were in their mid twentys  and we could understand them pretty well.

District volleyball hasn´t been happening as much anymore but while Elder Creager plays basketball there´s another elder that plays ping pong with me right next to the basketball court. He´s really good at it but I think I´m slowly getting better. I also played Foosball with 3 other elders that only spoke Spanish and it was super fun because they were getting super excited over it, shouting whenever the ball went in the goal.

I can see why Hal thought taking Latin was helpful with learning Spanish. At the beginning it was slightly difficult because I was mixing up Spanish and Latin vocabulary but I think Latin grammar is way more intense than Spanish grammar so you really need to understand how grammar works and what it does. So when we learn it in Spanish it seems relatively simple. The only challenging part is that in Latin you could have like 10 mins to translate a line whereas with Spanish you´ve got to do it quick enough to speak it. 

I´ve found 3 elder Jones´s so far, so we´re good friends. There´s also an elder in my house that looks almost exactly like Mr. Bean. He ended up finding someone who´s last name actually was bean and borrowed his name tag for a minute so he could have a picture with the name tag of Elder Bean.

I´m running low on time but i´m glad you guys are having a good time in Indiana, hope all is well. Love you guys.

 Here´s a photo of my district at the temple. The Elder next to me is Elder Creager, On the left side, the elder on the far left and the one with a book in his hand are our room mates.

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 2

Sounds like you guys are having a blast. Make sure to tell Tina, "she´s a fat lard." That´s amazing that you guys can actually fit both cars in there. I would´ve never guessed that they both would have fit.

This week was stupendous. Elder Creager is from Utah. The Spanish is coming along pretty well. I´m starting to be able to talk fluidly with a few pauses and stutters here and there. We´ve tried talking to some natives and it was decently easy but I think they must talk like babies with us because whenever they talk with one another I have absolutely no clue what they´re saying.

The food here is really good. At breakfast they have this mango yogurt drink that is super good. So I usually just get one of those for breakfast. 

This week was fun. We had a mini plague go through our district. My companion got a lung infection, we had a couple elders go to the hospital and pretty much everyone had a sickness of some kind. I was pretty fortunate to only get a sore throat, congestion and coughing. We went into the clinic for my companion´s lung infection and I suppose I must have been coughing more than normal or have just looked sick because the doctor wanted to look at me. Ended up I was alright, I didn´t have strep or anything. He just gave me some liquid to gargle and some cough drops. However, that was singly the most nasty thing I´ve ever gargled, but it was alright. However, one good thing about it was that they have a ton of Ensigns in the waiting room of the clinic. I don´t know if the one I read was recent or not but it was about Christ and included a bunch of quotes from prophets about him.

This is one that I really liked and wrote down in my notebook. Its by Joseph Smith.

¨The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the apostles and prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that he died was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it¨.

I got to go to the temple last Wednesday. The Mexico city temple is so beautiful. they have the coolest paintings in there. We got headphones to listen in English as well. We also get to go to the temple today. And we might go next week and I don´t know the plan after that. So I´m super excited for that.

This week the elders that first tried to do their laundry ended up with white shirts that looked like they had tire marks on them. So I waited until that was figured out to do my laundry. They have little detergent pods at the store that are super squishy and fun. I got some of those and did a few loads of laundry, I´ve got my whites in the washer right now. 

We get about 100 pesos a week which is about the equivalent of a little over 5$ to spend at the store here. I´ve heard that they don´t make any profit off that store so things are super cheap. So far I´ve gotten a bunch of squishy detergent pods, a Spanish hymnal and they had a set of books including True to the faith, our heritage, our search for happiness and Jesus the Christ for about 175 pesos. I got those books last night and they´re super good so far. 

Sorry you guys are having hot weather in Indiana, Here it´s absolutely perfect. There is rain but it´s always slightly cool in the morning and only gets slightly warm in mid day. Although this week we were on our way to language learning and Elder Creager suggested that we go to the house to get an umbrella. While we were on our way it started pouring and hailing a little bit. We got to the house and got the umbrella but with how hard it was pouring the umbrella didn´t really do anything. So we got to class drenched in water. But it was alright, we dried off. 

The people in our house are doing Christmas in July for some reason. They put an umbrella in the middle of the front room, wrapped it in green paper and put a little foam star on top of it. So there are Spanish Christmas carols every night now which is pretty fun. 

We have 2 people that we practice teaching in Spanish to now as well. We can pretty much go without notes all the time at this point and the lessons are starting to go a lot better than they used to. I accidentally mixed up the word pecado and pescado in a lesson which was super funny since pecado means sin and pescado means fish.

We had over 200 missionaries arrive last night. There were under 50 that came the Tuesday that I arrived. The number of missionaries here is supposed to double by the end of the month. When we first arrived I remember hearing everyone talking in Spanish and not knowing what they´re saying and being worried about how I don´t know what anyone´s saying. So consequently Elder Creager and I have a lot of fun talking in Spanish as fast as we can with newly arriving missionaries.

Elder Creager and I are going to go get our hair cut in about 15 minutes. 

Thanks for writing,

Hope you guys have a great week!

 

 Oh I also realized I never wrote down my line of authority. I haven´t needed it yet but if you could ask someone to send it to me that would be great. Thanks!

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 1

Hey! Sounds like you guys had an awesome time on the fourth of July. On our Fourth of July everyone in our district and the district right next to us stood up and sang the national anthem to a American flag patterned scarf. So that was pretty fun. The natives thought we were kind of weird though. They also gave us American food on the Fourth of July: Root beer and hamburgers.

I´m going to try to be more creative in my adjective choice for describing my week than Hal and Courtney.

So this week was really Spanish. I had a great time. There were 7 missionaries on my flight from Atlanta to Mexico City. I actually knew one of them from when he was in my EFY group in normal: Elder Thomson. He had actually shown up late and was running to get on but I was surprised and happy to see him. He´ll be going Spanish speaking to the Provo, Utah Mission. I got through immigration okay but since there was a big group of missionaries and  was last ´m pretty sure the lady stopped caring once she got to me. Once we came out of immigration there were some people waiting for us to bring us to the CCM. They were so awesome they were trying to speak english with us because they knew that we didn´t know Spanish. They were so happy and they loved making jokes so that was awesome. 

Mexico City is so beautiful. When we were flying over it I was amazed at how huge it was. The city just extends on for seemingly ever across hills and valleys. They took us on a bus from the airport to the CCM. The city is so beautiful with all the houses being brightly colored and compact. Driving in Mexico city is awesome. I don´t think I´ve ever seen so many cars so close together moving so quickly. It was about a 45 minute drive. 

When we showed up at the CCM we went into the Thomas S. Monson building for our orientation. They reviewed our vaccine records and a few of us elders had to get another tetanus shot. But the nurse gave me a little fun size chocolate bar so that was good. There were 4 elders with me when we arrived and we´re all in the same house. We walked around trying to find everything our first day. A lot of people had told me that there was going to be a lot to do on the first day but I guess at this MTC they didn´t have anything for us to do our first day other than orientation and then at night a devotional. There was a maintenance man and one of the elders asked if it was okay to drink the tap water in the CCM. He told us " No, your estomach explode". 

The devotional was by the person who is in charge of all of the MTC´s worldwide. He showed us pictures of all of them and some of the things they were planning on doing. He told us that the CCM is the best MTC. The CCM is the biggest MTC in acres and we have fewer missionaries than Provo so that´s awesome. 

When we got back to the house all the elders that were arriving later in the day were there. My Companion is Elder Creager. He´s super awesome. We´re both really determined to learn Spanish. We study a lot and try to use Spanish with whoever we can. We´re rooming with Elder Widney and Elder Pippert. I´m really glad I got put with these elders as well. Behind our house beyond the CCM wall there´s what looks to be a 4 giant lego arms sticking up out of the ground and we were all theorizing on what it could be but Elder Widney said that it looks like a dead robot cat laying on its back so we´ve just taken to calling it "El Gato Robot".

My Spanish is coming along well. I´ve been trying to listen to the native speakers and i´ve been surprised that I was able to generally understand what they were talking about. "Generally understanding" meaning being able to pick up a few words and guess what they´re probably saying. I feel like I´ve learned more Spanish than I did in the 2 years in Spanish. The teachers speak slowly with us so I´ts easier to understand what they´re saying. 

They really do just drop you into speaking the language here. On our second day they had us teaching lessons with a pretend investigator entirely in Spanish. My first Lesson I brought in 4 pages of notes. I don´t think i would´ve been able to say much more than "¿Como esta?" or "¿Empmizamos con un oración?". If I didn´t have notes. I even had notes on how to pray in Spanish. Yesterday we gave our 5th lesson and I was able to go in with just my Spanish scriptures and a pamphlet to give him. That lesson wen´t well, I´m sure i made grammatical mistakes but it was okay, we were still able to get our message across. I was really excited after that lesson.

Adapting to missionary life is kinda weird. Thinking things like "I only have an hour a day to read my scriptures in English" is weird relative to life before going on a mission. I think a lot of missionaries here have seen "the other side of heaven" because a lot are trying to just learn Spanish by reading back and forth out of their English and Spanish scriptures during language study. I guess if that works for them, that´s good. They gave us 4 books that explain all the grammar and a list of all the most important vocabulary so I´ve just been using those. 

The view from the CCM is beautiful being surrounded with mountains and houses on the sides. It´s even more beautiful at night. The Weather has been amazing this week, We play volleyball every day in gym. Elder Creager and I haven´t been bitten by mosquitoes yet but others have, Elder Creager theorizes that it´s because we drink a glass of orange juice at every meal. I´m not so sure about that but whatever it is, its working. 

I´m out of time, talk to you guys in a week. Spanish keyboards have ñ.

love, tyler

Allie volunteering at the Zoo

Week 103

Hey guys! So Juan Carlos, Karen, and Lenning were all baptized on saturday! and then confirmed on sunday. I`m so happy for them. I was able to baptized Juan Carlos and Karen. They didn`t know that it was my last week on the mission until I told them yesterday. They were happy that they didn`t wait more time to be baptized. We had a lot of great experiences this week that I`ll tell you all about pretty soon! I hope you all have a great week!

Ps. Invite the neighbors over for dinner on wednesday! It`s a great missionary opportunity that will only occur at most 3 more times. Grandma and grandpa don`t count, although they are invited! It`ll bring you more satisfaction than listening to me talk about Perù all evening.

Elder Jones

Week 102

Hey guys! We had a great week!! Juan Carlos and Karen got MARRIED!!! Woo. I´ll send pictures as soon as my companion sends them to me. We didn´t go to the wedding this time because it was outside the limits of the mission, but they did invite us to their house afterwards to eat a peice of cake. As a result we met his brother Fernando, who went to church yesterday with his whole family!! We talked to them yesterday and they also want to get married. There is another community wedding on June 24th and they are going to get everything ready to be married on that day. Yesterday at church Juan Carlos and Karen looked so different. They were holding hands for the first two hours of church, which is something I´ve never seen them do. They just radiated happiness. Yesterday Juan Carlos was able to bear powerful testimony to his brother that marriage is something that comes from God and he talked about how when we do what god expects of us he blesses us immediately. When I saw them with Lenning at church yesterday the only thought that went throught my head was, "this is why I came to Perú". It made everything worth it. They are ready for their baptism on saturday. On tuesday they will have their interview. On thursday President Larson accompanied us in the afternoon and it was a great time. We visited Beatriz who is someone we found this week as we accompanied the seminary teachers to look for less active young men and women. Beatriz is the grandma of a less active young man who is about to turn 18. We didn´t know she was a member when we visited her but when we found out we invited her to church and she accepted. She couldn´t read because she didn´t have glasses, so president Larson gave her his glasses. We also visited Jaime, the brother of Karen, who is really excited about getting married, his wife wasn´t that excited about listening to us, but president Larson bore powerful testimony of the temple and eternal families, and andrea, Jaime´s wife, began to be very sincere with us and she broke into tears. She said, "I will do anything to be with my children forever." They have 5 children. Elder Alfaro and I have felt a lot of Joy this week as we have been focusing on families. There isn´t much point in doing missionary work if the end isn´t the temple. I admit that it´s something I already knew before this week, but as we continually work with families my testimony and understanding of it increases. I´m looking forward to another great week and I hope you guys have a great week as well!

Elder Jones

Week 101

Wow I need to get an autograph from Allison before she wins the Nobel Prize. That´s seriously very impressive. That´s awesome that Tyler went to Prom! I can´t believe it´s been 2 years since I went to Prom. Sounds like everyone else is doing great! I´m getting my stitches out today and it´s healing fine. We had a pretty great week. It was a little frustrating because all I want to do is work, but we had many meetings that kept us out of our area this week. On Tuesday I had to go to the doctor in the afternoon and on the way back we got stuck in traffic and it took us 3 hours to get back home. (it would have been faster to walk home if I wasn´t on crutches). The good thing is that the buses are always packed with people that have nowhere else to go, or anything else to do than listen to us. I met a woman on the bus this week that is listening to the missionaries in another part of Lima and she has a baptismal date for this month. I´m glad I opened my mouth to talk to her. On thursday we had the multizone training, and on Friday we went to the temple. I learned a lot this time in the temple. It´s been a while since I´ve done endowments and I feel like now that I´m starting to understand the gospel a little bit, I understand the people that say that they are still learning from the endowment session even after years of attending the temple. So the biggest news this week is that Juan Carlos and Karen have basically everything ready for their mawwage this Saturday and they are getting baptized next Saturday (May 28th) with Lenning. They are progressing so great and I feel like you all need to meet them someday. We have found many families this week through other families that we are teaching. There are a lot of people coming to church and I´m absolutely sure that there will be many baptisms in June. I´m learning a lot still and I´m trying to take advantage of the time I have left. I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Jones