Elder Tyler Jones week 30

Hello,

Hope you guys had a great week. It sounds like a lot is happening in the world.  I end up hearing some stuff about what's going on in the world since we're covering the English branch.  Sounds like things are all pretty entertaining still. 

That's crazy to think that Hal is going to be married soon. Both Hal and Courtney will be married. It doesn't seem like that long ago that we were all trying to get up together and Courtney would drive us to seminary. Now they'll both be married and I'm out on my mission. Time flies by so fast.

It's been a pretty good week. Elder Jackson is my new companion. We were companions before when I was in that trio with him and elder Smith. He's having fun biking. The first week on bikes is always the most fun since you're not used to it yet. Apparently, this area is the only Spanish area that bikes right now. You learn to love it. It's kind of nice to be biking on cool evenings. It's just nice, I don't know how else to describe it.

So this week I ended up purging out a lot in our area Book. We had a big list of investigators that, in three months, I had never seen or had seen once. Not because we didn't go visit them, but because they were never there. So we went looking for pretty much all of them and if we couldn't find them we dropped them. Maybe we'll look through the former investigator list again some day. So now we have about 7 people left that we actually can go visit. So our area book is more organized now. Our plan for next week is to just find a lot more new investigators. 

There were some announcements in the "teach repentance, baptize converts" broadcast this week. So the schedule changed slightly. Our schedule was like this:

AM

6:30 - get up, exercise

7:00- prepare for day, shower, breakfast 

8:00 - personal study

9:00 - companionship study

10:00- language study

11:00 - proselyte, lunch, dinner, etc.

PM 

9:00 - daily planning

9:30 - get ready for bed

10:30 - sleep

Now it's:

AM

6:30 - get up, exercise, prepare for the day, personal study, daily planning (whenever you want in this time frame)

10:00 - proselyte, language study, companionship study, lunch, dinner (whenever you want in this time frame)

PM

9:00 - 9:30 - return home, get ready for bed.

10:30 sleep

So it's basically just changed that they want us to do all the same things. Just to do them in down time between proselytize activities. So it should be good.

We got back in contact with Christie this week. We've had a couple of good lessons with her again. She came to church as well. She's going to be baptized February 25th. So we're excited for that. Hopefully all goes well with that. We're just reviewing some of the stuff we talked about before. The Hernandez family is doing really well too. Hna Hernandez is still coming to church and she's doing awesome. 

We started teaching a guy named romiro recently. He's pretty awesome he's been keeping commitments. He's  reading from the Book of Mormon and all that. He seems like he's genuinely interested as well. So we're happy teaching him. He's a pretty cool guy as well. 

So it's been a pretty nice week. I love you guys, hope you have a great week!

Love, 

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Jones week 29

Hello, sorry this letter is coming kind of late. We've been a little busy today. Elder Bishop is being transferred to Yerba Buena tomorrow. My new companion is going to be Elder Jackson. We served together previously when I was in the trio with him and elder smith.  So that's going to be pretty exciting.

Sounds like you guys had a pretty exciting week. I heard about Donald trump's inauguration.  I heard that the Mormon tabernacle choir sang for it but I didn't hear about all of the marches. That's all so crazy to think about. I got the subway gift cards. Thank you so much for those.

It's been a pretty good week. We're still always looking for more people to teach. The stake is really pushing for us to do more contacting. We already do a lot of contacting. So not much changed with that.

We visit a guy in a care facility here semi-frequently. His name is Tuni. He's about 28 years old and is paralyzed from the neck down. His family lives pretty far away so he doesn't get too many visitors. The facility is right around where most of our investigators are so we like to just drop in and talk to him. He's a really nice guy he had just gotten into a car accident about 6 years ago. He keeps a really positive attitude about it despite his situation. One of the members of the Spanish branch is a nurse at this facility. So that's how we found out about him.

I don't think I've ever told you about hna. Hernandez. We've been visiting this family for a long time and talking a lot with their less active sons. They actually came to church this Sunday. We were a little surprised but we were really glad about that. Hna Hernandez is super awesome. She's always sharing the gospel with people and she treats us like we're her children as well. They're a great family. 

Anyway, it's been a good week. It's going to be exciting with transfers.

I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Jones

Hal presenting at conference

Elder Tyler Jones week 28

Sounds like life is keeping busy for you guys. Thanks for sending me the picture of Allison's cake. It looks super nice. That's crazy that Dan is growing up so fast. It seems super weird that dans going to start giving talks and whatnot. It sounds like dan is going to have a lot of fun with his friends though. I'm glad the babies aren't beating each other up as much anymore.

 It's been a good week. We've been focusing a lot on finding new investigators. We're just looking for more people to teach. We found a former investigator in the grocery store today. There's a little Mexican grocery store in the area where we usually go contacting. We usually go there to do our grocery shopping since it's super cheap. We found a guy named Marcio and talked to him and as it turned out he's a former investigator. So we're going to visit him this week.

We had another lesson with Silvia this week. We'd been teaching her since about our second week in this area. She dropped us this past lesson. So that was a bit disappointing. But it'll be alright.

For our preparation day we went and played volleyball with the Tongan ward. That was a lot of fun. They're really funny and the game gets pretty intense with them. The Tongan elders in our zone invited us to come with them. 

Our bikes broke again this week. So we're going to need to repair the wheels again. But that should be alright. We'll be able to deal with that.

I cleaned up our apartment a lot this week. I organized pretty much everything and rearranged things. The walls were covered with all sorts of stuff so I just took almost all of it down. It looks quite a bit cleaner now. So it just feels nicer to be living in that apartment. This apartments been used by missionaries for a really long time.

Elder Bishops been a little sick this week. So not as much happened this week. He's feeling better now though. So I'm thinking we're going to be able to get more done next week.

Transfers are next week. So this might be my last week with Elder Bishop, since his training will be done. But who knows what'll happen. It seems like when you think you know what's going to happen, you don't know what's going to happen. Like when I thought I was going to stay in Las Colinas and my trainer was going to leave but they actually just kicked me out and had me go train in a new area. 

Anyway, I hope you have a great week.

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Jones week 27

Hello,

I'm glad things are going well in Indiana. Its good to hear all the babies are behaving. Good to hear Allie is doing well with driving. I still remember getting sandwiches with Dan at Subway.  When I go to Subway now, I just get the vegetarian sandwich anyway since it's the cheapest and then ask them to put everything on it since the toppings don't cost extra. So I think we'll still be able to share. 

It's been an exciting week. We had a lesson with Silvia again. We brought one of the members of the branch with us. That was awesome. They related really well and she did an awesome job in helping with the lesson. So we were pretty excited about that. 

We got to go to the Oakland temple this week. That was awesome, the Oakland temple is really beautiful. The Oakland temple is also pretty big which was cool to see. There's also a beautiful view of the bay from the temple grounds as well.

Earlier this week we got a call from the Tongan elders at about 9:00 pm that one of them was in the emergency room. We were the closest to the hospital, so we went over there and stayed there with them until about midnight. Apparently one of them had a problem with his lungs and couldn't breathe.  When he got out he told us that he had to get back home in 30 minutes.  So we got him back in their car and drove him back to their apartment. He was getting progressively loopier.  He was entirely knocked out as we were getting him from the car to their apartment. So we had to carry him in and into his bed.  He plays football and has apparently been recruited by a bunch of schools.  So he's over 6 feet tall and almost 300 pounds.  Moving him in was a bit challenging.  It was alright though.  He's doing fine now, he's up and walking about.

We had another interesting experience a couple days ago. We were at a dinner/correlation meeting at our ward mission leader's house with the Spanish sisters in our district and as we were leaving one of the sisters got kind of dizzy and dropped down on the floor. Then after about a minute she passed out. She was going in and out of consciousness for about a half an hour. She also had this sharp pain in her chest. We ended up having to move her from their house to our ward mission leaders car and they drove her to the Emergency room. She's gotten better now. They just don't know what it was. So I don't know what's going on with that.

Other than that it's been a pretty good week. We've had a good time, we're still looking for people to teach. The sisters have a baptism tomorrow which is exciting.

I hope you have a great week,

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones week 26

Hello,

Glad you guys have been having some good times.  I'm happy everything ended up well with Courtney's wedding.  Thank you so much for all of the pictures.  It's nice to see everyone.  Dan looks really spiffy in a suit.  Looks like you all had a good time.

It's been a good week for me.  Our branch mission leader is back from vacation. So it's been awesome having him back to help with some of the coordination. 

We had New Year's this week. Since New Year's Eve isn't a great time to proselyte we had to go back a little early. We were allowed to stay up until 11:00 but I was tired so I ended up just going to bed at 10:00 anyway. Someone gave us a bottle of Martinelli's sparkling cider for Christmas so we just drank that before we went to bed.

We got back in contact with Silvia this week. She was one of our former progressing investigators. We lost contact with her over the holidays. We had a nice lesson with her and have another appointment with her soon. We're trying to get a member of the branch to come help fellowship. We've got one sister in the branch that lives really close to her that we're hoping on but we've got another member as a backup if she can't come. So I'm hoping that'll all turn out.

We're allowed to go to the temple twice a year. We go to the Oakland temple which is about an hour outside of our mission. I just finished planning, getting permission and confirming a temple trip for tomorrow. So we're pretty excited for that. We'll be going with some members to a 10:00 am session so we'll be able to get back before lunch. So we won't end up losing too much time for it. 

It's been a fun week though. We've talked to some interesting people. Some lady ran up to talk to us. We talked for a while and we realized that she seems to have something like schizophrenia. She ended up following us for a long time and we just talked to her until we got back to our bikes and just told her we had to go and biked off.

A member gave us a hot sauce called "100% pain". I put it all over my food, but Elder Bishop wasn't as convinced. It was hot, but it was all right.

Anyway I hope you have a great week. 

Love,

Elder Jones

Our district

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones week 25

It was so good to see you Sunday.  That was a lot of fun to get to talk to you guys for a bit.  It seems like everyone's doing really well and things are pretty exciting at home.  Sounds like you guys are keeping busy with wedding preparations.

We had a really great Christmas. We had only an hour of church. We ended up singing a couple times in the Spanish branch. They were pretty much just trying to fill up the time with musical numbers. It was really nice though. They had a lot of funny little kids singing and all of that. So we had a good time.

The Tongan elders and the Spanish sisters all called home from the church building as well. That was just an hour or so after sacrament meeting. The Tongan elders have a car so they were able to take us back.

We spent Christmas Eve with one of the members. We had a lot of fun there. They had a few really nice Christmas traditions. We played a bunch of different percussion instruments to Christmas hymns. We sounded awful but we had fun nonetheless. The dad told a couple Christmas stories. All in all we just had a nice time.

We were pretty busy Christmas Day. We had three dinners at different members houses. I was very very done after our second dinner. My companion was still hungry after our third dinner. I don't know how he does it.  He can pound food better than anyone I've ever met.

Other than that, we got together with another companionship and went caroling to a few members of the ward and branch. We had a good time doing that as well.

I had a really great Christmas. I hope all goes well with wedding preparations. 

Have a great week!

Love, 

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Maxwelll Jones week 24

Hello, 

Great to hear things are going well for you guys. I hope you're having a great Christmas season. It's funny that NWACS is still letting out for everything. That's great that you're so close to winter break though.  Allie's already 16, Courtney and Hal are getting married. That's all so weird, tell all of them to stop growing up for me. 

It's been a pretty great week here. We had a bit of bike trouble and for about a day I had a flat tire but we had to get somewhere so I just rode the bike with the flat tire. But we have it fixed now so that's all good.

So, the apartment we're living at right now has been lived in by missionaries for a long time. So when we got here it was pretty messy. We've been slowly cleaning it but this week we did a lot of  cleaning for the apartment. It looks much nicer now than when we first got there. So that's pretty nice to have. It just feels better living there.

One of the less actives we meet with, CJ, quit smoking. He's been having problems with hoarding, drinking and smoking. He's quit drinking already. Now he's quit smoking. In about a month he's moving into a new apartment so we're going to try to help him move in and keep his new apartment more clean and organized. So he's doing really well. We're really pleased about that.

It's been a pretty standard week. We've been looking for people to teach always. We're passing by less actives and all of that. Things are still going well with all that.

Next week we'll only have one hour of church and there won't be any correlation or council meetings which will be nice.

Transfers went well. All the new people in the zone are nice. We all get together every Saturday morning at about 5:50 to play sports. 

I'm looking forward to getting to talk to you guys on Sunday. I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 23

Hello,

I'm glad to hear things are going well for you guys. That's exciting that you're all going to get to get together for Christmas. Sounds like you're going to have a lot of fun. I'm not quite sure how or when I'm going to get to call you on Christmas. I assume I'll get more information on that in the coming weeks.

So this Tuesday is transfers. Both Elder Bishop and I are staying. A couple people in the district are leaving. It should be interesting.

This week went well. The tires are fixed which is awesome. Today I got letters from Dad that were from when I was still in the MTC. We also helped take down the Christmas crèche party that the stake did.

I had to go to a bunch of meetings this week. A lot of ward and stake correlation stuff going on. Some of the meetings were in Spanish while some were in English. I feel like meetings in Spanish always go well. They're better at keeping it light by joking but getting things done by being brief. Meetings in English were often times a lot of people saying a whole lot without really saying anything or "yeah, I agree because (same reason the previous person stated)". So yeah, got to love meetings.

One of the problems that a lot of missionaries have in this stake is finding people they can teach. So they were talking a lot about really creative ways to try to find new people to teach. One of the stake high councilors was talking to us at one point about how we managed to teach so many people and how we manage to find them. I suppose he was expecting some really creative, clever trick for finding people. So he seemed a bit disappointed when I told him that we just walk around the sketchiest neighborhoods we can find and talk to everyone.

So we don't have a whole lot of trouble finding people. It's a lot of getting people to commit to do things. But every once in a while we run into someone that will keep commitments and all that which is always awesome.

We had the ward Christmas party. That was a lot of fun. We helped set up and decorate and all that. There were a few investigators and less actives there. So that was great being able to talk to them.

Elder Bednar came this week and we had a three hour devotional with him. It was just the missionaries in our mission there for that meeting. Elder Cook from the seventy came as well. That was fantastic. 

It's been a great week.

Hope you guys have a lot of fun preparing for the holidays.

Love,

Elder Jones