Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 20

Hey, sorry I didn't write yesterday. Our Pday was switched to Tuesday because of a service we had to do. That's awesome to hear that Allison is going to go to Japan! That's super exciting! Sounds like a lot of things are going great. 

It's been a pretty awesome week. We had zone conference this week. That was fun. It goes on for 7 hours though and we were in traffic for 2 hours after that. The Tongan elders gave us a ride there and back. That was nice of them. I saw one of my old companions, Elder Jackson, there. 

Everything's still going well with Silvia. We had a good lesson with her on Wednesday. We taught about the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any members to come with us. But we arranged to have one come with us this Wednesday. Hopefully, all goes well with that. 

One of the Less actives we've been working with brought one of her friends to church. Her name is Christie. She's really interested in the gospel. We've already had a couple lessons with her and she met a lot of the ward at the linger longer. We've been arranging to get the young women's president to come teach her. It seems like everything's going well with her. The branch is awesome and they do a good job of just loving anyone that comes. 

It rained a lot in the latter part of the week. Biking in the rain isn't as fun. It was alright, though. We went to go visit a lady and she gave us a big bag of cookies. Apparently, she just loves to bake and always has a ton of cookies and she's just looking for people to take them. 

We did a thanksgiving service yesterday. It's basically distributing food for the needy on thanksgiving. What we were doing was just moving a ton of frozen turkeys. We probably moved more than a thousand frozen turkeys. It was a lot of fun. We did it with the Vietnamese elders. It required a lot of throwing frozen turkeys from a truck into bins. Whenever the Vietnamese elders would throw one of the frozen turkeys they would make angry bird sounds. That was pretty funny. All the other people volunteering there thought it was hilarious too. The Vietnamese elders are pretty awesome.

Hope you guys have a great week.

-Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 19

Hello,

Glad to hear you guys had an exciting week. That's awesome to hear about your Job offers! Our address is 501 West hacienda Avenue Apt. D30 Campbell, California. Sounds like a lot of fun with the Pumpkin sling shot. 

It's been a great week. We spent a lot of time in the Spanish Ghettos and looking for Potential investigators. Our teaching pool is starting to build up a lot more. We've got a few people we're teaching. So that's awesome. There's a few neighborhoods where we can almost always find a bunch of people walking about. We have a lot of less actives that live in those areas as well. So we've just been going and visiting them and talking to everyone we can on the way. 

We met a man sitting out on the side walk in a lawn chair. His name is Nacho. Apparently he had been in a car crash last march and is recovering from having several ribs and other bones broken. We talked to him for a while and he invited us back. We didn't think we heard his name right the first time he told us. We asked him again and he said "Nacho, Como Nacho Cheese". He seemed like a really pleasant guy. He was also pretty interested in the Gospel lessons.

We also have another investigator named Silvia. She has a son that's about 5 or 6 years old named Fransisco. We found her as we were walking around in one of these neighborhoods. We've had a couple lessons with her. We're also trying to get one of the members of the ward to come fellowship her. She seems decently interested. This Wednesday we're going to try to commit her to prepare to be baptized. So I'm excited for that.

We talked to a bunch of other people but those are the ones that stood out the most. I'm just happy to have people to teach.

Also this week, We went on exchanges for a while when new missionaries were in a meeting. I ended up going on exchanges with one of the Mandarin Elders. His name is Elder Wei. He's super awesome. We actually went contacting in one of those neighborhoods I was talking about. We covered basically all of the languages there. There were a lot of people that only spoke Spanish or Only spoke Mandarin. So that was a lot of fun. 

I got to go to church in the Moorpark ward this Sunday. This was the first time since last week was Stake Conference. It seemed a little bit weird going to an English ward again. It was also testimony meeting right after the election. So that was interesting. We had to teach Elder's quorum in the Spanish Branch since the teacher wasn't there. It went well. We just talked about President Henry B. Eyring's conference talk "that he may become strong also". It's not that hard to prepare a lesson in this Spanish Branch since everyones more than happy to comment so it's more like a discussion which is awesome. It was also nice to finally get to meet everyone in the Ward and Branch.

It's been a good week. Things are going well here. I hope you guys have a great week.

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Jones Week 18

Glad you guys are having a good time in Fort Wayne.  That’s exciting that Allison has her Japan Interview, Hope that goes well. Good to hear Fat Tina’s back. Sounds like Dan’s having a good time with the Pumpkins. That’s insane that it took four and a half hours to vote. I guess a lot of people are voting this election.

So I got transferred here on Tuesday. We’re covering the San Tomas Branch and the Moorpark Ward. So that’s going well.  I’m with Elder Bishop. He’s super awesome. He’s willing to work and we’re having a good time.

Our area is about ten miles by thirteen miles. Our apartment is about a Mile and a half outside of our area. So we’re getting to do a lot of biking. Apparently within the last few Months missionaries have crashed nine cars in this mission. Which poses some problems with managing areas.

Anyway it’s good. We get to do a lot of contacting and it’s easier to talk to people. So apparently the finding strategy of the missionaries before us was just teach lessons to active members and ask for referrals. So there were basically no investigators when we were coming into this area. But Elder Bishop is super willing to work so we’ve been out contacting less actives, recent converts and their families. We walked around the Spanish ghettos a lot looking for people to teach. We’ve gotten a few investigators this past week. But I think we’re going to do better this week now that we kind of understand the area better.

I think we’re going to have a good week this next week. Were just going to be focusing a lot on building our teaching pool.

We got to meet some interesting people this week from going and seeing Less actives.

We met a man named CJ. CJ is pretty awesome. He’s already quit drinking we’re just trying to work with him to be able to quit smoking now. We talked to him a little bit this week. He doesn’t want to try to ease off of smoking; he said that trying to ease off doesn’t work for him. So he’s just going to try to quit cold turkey. So we’re hoping that goes well. He’s also hoards a lot, so his apartment is pretty messy. We helped clean up a little bit with him.

We do a service in this zone that’s a lot of fun as well. Once every other week we go and wrestle an investigator. He has some sort of psychological problem where he doesn’t like people touching him. So what he does is he takes muscle relaxants and wrestles missionaries. Every other week he just takes a little bit less and wrestles again. So hopefully this should help him with that. His name is Mark. He’s about 57 years old but he can dead lift something like 375 pounds. He’s huge. We don’t do regular wrestling though. We do something called submission wrestling. In regular wrestling the goal is to get them on their back for 3 seconds. In submission wrestling your just trying to get them to tap out. So it’s more about putting pain on the other person. That was a lot of fun.

I guess being a district leader and a trainer is good. It seems like there are some missionaries that are really want and are excited about getting leadership callings and whatnot. I, kind of, think that’s dumb. It’s sort of just another thing to stress about. Although I’m glad I’m with Elder Bishop. He’s awesome. I’ve sort of tried just solving Rubiks cubes when I’m stressed about anything. That’s pretty fun. My fastest time for solving a Rubiks cube now is 43 seconds.

Anyway, it’s been an exciting week. I hope you guys have a good week in Indiana

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Jones Week 17

I got the package you guys sent. Thanks for that!  That's exciting for Allison, wish her good luck for me. It's crazy that Courtney and Hal are getting married so soon.

It's been a great week. We got a referral this week for a man named Luis, we went to go see him and had a really good lesson. He seemed to be really positive and he even came to church yesterday with his girlfriend which was awesome. So that's exciting.

Still haven't gotten in contact with Nathan, he doesn't respond to any calls or messages and we don't know where he's living now. So we haven't made any progress there. However, Gwen got baptized this week. It was really awesome. She was a lady Elder Smith and I found and taught. We had ended up referring her to the English elders though. I'll send a picture of us at her baptism. 

We had our ward Halloween party on Saturday. It was combined with the English ward. None of our investigators came which was a bit disappointing. There's a family we're teaching that lives in a neighborhood where they can't go trick or treating. We thought for sure they would come. 

Other than that it's been a good week. I got to play the piano again in sacrament meeting. There was a meeting for all of the adults the 3rd hour of church so they had us just go take care of the primary. They just put on one of the Book of Mormon cartoon videos and they were completely fine. I still remember watching those videos as a kid.

Transfers are tomorrow. So I'm just now finishing my training. I'm getting transferred to Saratoga. I'm going to be a trainer and a district leader there. I think It's a smaller area so I think I'm going to get to ride bikes which I'm really excited for. It's a lot easier to do contacting while you're on bikes. Also, bikes are just fun.

We're not allowed to go out tonight after P-Day because of Halloween. so I don't know what we're going to do. Probably nothing. Just more study time I guess.

Anyway, I hope you have a great week.

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Jones Week 16

Glad to hear you guys are having a good time. I got a flood of dads letters this week after the mailbox being broken for a while. That's funny that Allison just now got my letter. That was quite a while ago. Has Dan gotten his yet? That's so cool that about Allison and the Japan trip. That'd be awesome if she gets to go. 

So since last week Nathan hasn't answered any of our calls or messages and didn't come to church. It seems like he just dropped off the face of the earth. It's reminiscent of Herick. Whenever we have a very promising investigator that progresses a lot they just sort of drop off and we can't get in contact with them. So I guess that's alright, we'll keep trying to contact him.

However a less active just showed up with his family, out of the blue, at church. None of the members of his family members are members. So that was awesome. 

Gwen, the lady Elder Smith and I taught and passed on to the English elders is getting baptized on Saturday which is awesome. I'm really excited for that. 

We found a couple of investigators a few doors down from our apartment. One of them grew up in a Mormon foster home so she already has good feelings towards the church. They're both pretty religious and read the bible every day. So that's awesome.

Something kind of funny this week was that for church this week I played The Battle Hymn of the Republic. In Spanish it's a bit difficult to keep up with the pace of the song just because of the words. I tried slowing it down a bit but everyone was still jumbling up the words. So that didn't go so well. 

We had a big fireside for Spanish speakers this week. A couple of less actives were able to come which was awesome.

Anyway, I hope you have a good week.

Love,

Elder Jones