Tyler and Pablo

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 22

Hey mom,

I'm glad things are fun with the kindergarteners. That's crazy that Courtney's getting married this month. Sounds like things are all around going pretty well in Indiana.

It's been a fun week. Near the beginning of the week we had to help set up for a Christmas crèche they have in this stake every year. Apparently something like 10,000 people come to it. They just decorate a church building extensively and they have a bunch of nativity sets all around and some Christmas music. We were only there for four hours and we hardly made a dent in the amount of decoration that they were doing. There were 16 missionaries there as well.

We haven't been able to find Silvia again which is a bit disappointing. We've stopped by her house a few times and never found her. 

We went to go make and serve food to seniors at a retirement home this week. That was fun. One of the guys there taught us how to peel an orange with a spoon. They were having a silent auction with fake money. They were getting pretty in to it.

We've had a couple more good lessons with Christie. She came to church again. Her Mom wants to come to church as well. Our ward mission leader taught gospel principles and he's awesome. He does a great job of making things really simple. One of the members sort of just walked into the class though and kept on making comments. At one point he was trying to explain the abrahamic covenant and his literal/ adopted seed. So that was fun. She was a bit confused but we tried to refocus the class and it wasn't bad.

Friday night between our two bikes we got three flat tires. Something in the road had punctured both of my companions tires and one of my tires. We were about three and a half miles from our apartment when that happened. We tried patching the bikes on Saturday. We were able to patch two of the tires but one of them already had 5 other patches on it. So that one wouldn't hold together. So we're going to have to work all that out with the vehicle coordinator this week.

The Tongan elders have been taking us around everywhere today for P-Day. The Tongan elders are great. We also had interviews today. That went well.

Things are going great here. Hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Jones Week 21

Hello,

That's so exciting to hear about your class. The classroom is looking awesome. That's great that you had a good thanksgiving. Good to hear a lot of people are coming to gospel principles. 

It's been another good week. We got to go to the branch presidents house for thanksgiving. He's a really good cook and apparently had been cooking since 5:00 in the morning. So it was a lot of food and a lot of good food. 

It rained a lot this week again. I guess it just rains in the winter here and never at any other time of the year. But that was alright. 

We're still trying to get in contact with Silvia. We're going to drop by her house Wednesday and maybe another time this week.

Christie is doing well. She came to church for the second time yesterday. She still seems to really enjoy it. We've had a few really good lessons with her. 

We're still focusing on trying to find a lot of new people. The problem is that there's usually not too many people outside in the rain. However the church's Christmas initiative is starting to come out and so it's easier to share a Christmas message with people to begin talking with them.

I got to teach gospel principles this week since the teacher was out of town. It wasn't too bad. We had a good few people there. People liked to make comments so it made it easy to teach.

The Chinese elders in our district had a baptism this week. So that's awesome. 

Hope you guys have a great week.

-Elder Jones