Elder Jones and Elder Dalley

Elder Tyler Jones week 59

Sounds like you guys are doing well. I'm glad your babies are being good. We didn't go to see the eclipse either. Some elders went to go see it but their car got towed. It sounds like you guys are having some good times. That's crazy to hear about grandmas car. Wow I didn't know you guys had peach trees. Sounds like you're having a good harvest.

It's been a good week for us. I got here to Hollister. Hollister is pretty awesome. It's a relatively small farming town. Most members live inside of town but a few live far out into the fields. So it's a pretty cool area. There isn't traffic here, like there was in Menlo Park, which is really nice.

The members here are great. We have some recent converts that are really nice. The branch is relatively tiny. There's between 30 and 50 people that attend sacrament meeting. They're all pretty awesome. The ward mission leader here is pretty cool. He had been sort of wish washy before apparently, but we passed by this week and we talked to him. He seems pretty excited about missionary work now. We talked to him about the branch baptismal goal and he got really excited for that, he ended up bringing a bunch of people to church. He started lining up appointments with investigators for us and all that. So he's pretty awesome. He brought up the branch attendance to he highest it's been for a while.

We also had a meeting with our branch president. He's a pretty cool guy too. He's an orthodontist and he's pretty excited about getting back on track with missionary work as well. He doesn't have a lot of priesthood support in the ward so that makes it hard for him, he's also running his own business so he's a very busy guy. But it seems like he's holding things together well.

Elder Dalley is my new companion. He just finished his training. So he's really awesome and has a lot of fire for doing work. He's from Idaho and he's really awesome. I'm really happy to be serving with him.

We have a really really nice apartment. It's maybe the nicest missionary apartment I've seen so far, pretty spacious and has its own washer and dryer inside of the apartment. So we don't have to go try to use coin laundry anymore. That's been really nice.

We've found some pretty cool investigators this week. We're teaching this young couple. They have two really cute sons that are about one and three years old. The one year old likes to dance a lot. But they're a cool family. They had come to our church a long time ago b said they'd be interested in learning more again. 

We also found this family that is pretty cool. They have a son that has cancer and also got into a really bad car accident about a year ago. He was apparently in really bad condition but some elders went over and gave the son a blessing and he's doing a lot better. The dad is pretty much already convinced about the priesthood and that this is the true church. It's just the mom is more hesitant. Also, they might be getting divorced soon which complicates things. 

So it's been an awesome week!

I hope you guys have a great week!

Javier Baptism

Elder Tyler Jones week 58

We had a great week. Javier got baptized. Here's the little blurb that we sent to president for the baptismal report:

Javier was found by the sister missionaries while contacting.they
referred him to us and we began to teach. From the beginning he was
interested and enthusiastic about the gospel, but he took particular
interest in the Book of Mormon. We gave him a copy and he started to
read right away. He felt the spirit telling him that it was true and
he gained a powerful testimony of the restoration and committed to be
baptized right away. The ward members did a lot to fellowship Javier
and made him feel right at home. Despite his struggles with his broken
foot, he put in the effort to come to church every week and even go to
the temple with us. He had a great experience at his baptism with a
lot of support from the ward. He's now excited to keep progressing and
to go to the temple again to be baptized for his parents. This Sunday
we asked him how he feels now after being baptized. He told us that he
feels great and that he just wants to do whatever he can to serve god.

So yeah we had an awesome experience with Javier. The ward did an awesome job of showing up for his baptism and it was really awesome. The relief society is goi to bring him food while he's on unemployment and a member is getting him a white shirt and tie. So that's really awesome. During the service I had to get in the water with them since Hno. Clemente has a bad arm and Javier has the broken foot. The first time Hno. Clemente tried to do it on his own but he couldn't get him under all the way. So I helped him the second time and his hair was still above the water. So we ended up doing it three times. But Javier was laughing by the third time so it was good.

I'm getting transferred to a small town called hollister. It's a small Spanish branch in a little farming community. So I'm pretty excited for that. I'll be leaving tommorow.

Anyway, im having a great time!

Sitting at google headquarters, visiting temple

Elder Tyler Jones week 57

It's been a good week for us,

Javier is still ready to get baptized on Saturday! So we're super excited for that! He has his baptismal interview tomorrow and we've already gone through all of that with him. So now we're just trying to get his baptism all organized. But he seems really excited. We need to get a bag to put over his cast while he's getting baptized but we're just going to get a bag from CVS or something like that. Also, Hno. Clemente is going to be baptizing Javier! Hno Clemente is a recent convert that's super awesome and is about to go to the temple to be sealed to his wife. So that's going to be super awesome!

We had a temple trip yesterday. We brought Javier, Douglas and his girlfriend, Juan Carlos (The sister's investigator), and Hno Bojorquez and his wife (the first counselor). That was super awesome. We took up 2 cars with Juan carlos going with the bojorquezs to the temple and we went with Javier in Douglas's car. We got there and went into the visitors center and there was all sorts of presentations and things for them to see. it seemed like they really liked it. Then we just walked around the temple which they seemed to like as well. there's also a beautiful view of the bay from the Oakland temple so that was nice to see. Ill send some pictures of that trip.

Douglas is doing well also. He's had a hard time meeting with us because of his work schedule but it's starting to clear up so he's been able to talk with us. He wants to get baptized he just needs to get married to his girlfriend first. So they really enjoyed the temple trip and were able to talk to Hno. Bojorquez about trying to get married. So things are going well with them.

Also, we had a big multicultural night this week as well. It was between our ward, the English ward and the Tongan ward. It was pretty cool. They had a lot of interesting performances and whatnot. Some investigators were able to come as well so that was pretty great.

So things are going well for us here!

I hope you have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 56

Sounds like things are going well in indiana. That's awesome that you guys got that car from Grandma. That's so cool that Allie will be driving around in it. That's so awesome that Dan's going to be giving his talk in sacrament next week! I'm sure he will do a great job! Hopefully the babies aren't too crazy this year. I suppose you'll get this letter after your first day of work So you probably already know a bit about how crazy they are.

We've had a great week! 

Javier came to church again! So we're super excited about that. He's still in line to get baptized on the 19th. This has been his second time coming to church and he's really been enjoying it. He's already read a lot of the Book of Mormon. He's been getting to know a lot of people around church which has been awesome. He has a broken foot so he can't really do much all day so its generally really easy to find him at his house. We've been getting members to go over and see him so that he knows some more people in the ward. We usually only go over in the morning or mid day though. The people he lives with like to drink a lot and are aggressively catholic. But Javier doesn't drink or anything like that. He committed to live the word of wisdom this week. He didn't have any big problem but he's still committed. So that's been super awesome. Hno. Clemente has come with us a couple times for lessons and he's been really awesome. Hno. Clemente has always been an awesome person to bring to lessons. It's hard for anyone to not like Hno. Clemente. 

Also, the Clementes are planning on getting sealed in a few weeks. They've already gotten their endowments and their trying to set a date to be sealed in the temple. So we're super excited for them. 

Also, We found a member that's just been looking for where the church is. They were active before they moved to the area. But they moved here and couldn't find the church building so they hadn't gone. But we contacted into her in the street and she told us that she's a member. Then they came to church the next day. So that was cool.

We contacted a guy on the street this week and he pointed us towards a house and told us to go and knock on the door. He essentially said "My wife is never going to believe this". But he told us to say that he sent us. So we got to the house and knocked on the door and it turns out she's an inactive member. Her husband and kids aren't members. She was so surprised because she's moved a lot and every time she moves the missionaries somehow manage to find her really quick. But we talked to them for a little bit. They don't live in that house, they live outside of our area and were just visiting family. But they were all pretty excited about the gospel and going to church. She took at as a sign that she really aught to be going to church. So she'll be trying to bring her family along with her to church in El Camino ward just south of us. They had a little girl who went to primary as a little girl. She's ten now but she was super super excited when we talked about primary because she remembered how much she loved going to primary. So that was an awesome experience.

We went to play mini golf today. There's a place where missionaries can go to play mini golf for free because the owner is a member. We noticed that their's a big discount for families that go play mini golf there on Monday evenings as well. But it was a fun thing to do and we had a good time. 

Anyway, I've been doing well

I hope you have a great Week!

Semi naked bird I found, plus picture with companion

Elder Tyler Jones week 55

I'm glad you guys have been doing well in Indiana. Sounds like things have been interesting and I'm glad that you guys got to make the trip to Odon this week. That's pretty cool that you guys got a new car this week. I hope it works out well.

It's been a good week this week. Javier came to church this week. He had a broken foot and is going to be in a cast for the next couple months. He's really been enjoying having our lessons and he's been reading a lot of the Book of Mormon. He's already read all of first Nephi and keeps going on. It seemed like he really enjoyed church. We talked to him about baptism and he's willing to, so we're super excited for that.

This week we found a guy who was pretty interested in the gospel. He doesn't speak Spanish but we just started to teach him so we could refer him to the English elders. When we went over he had 2 other friends with him. They were all pretty intoxicated and the apartment smelt rather potent and was pretty messy. One of them was eating cat food. So we talked to them for a little bit and then left. They invited us back for dinner the next day as we were leaving. We thought that there was little chance that they were actually going to have us for dinner but we thought we aught to jus come back anyway. So we went back the next day and it was super weird. The entire apartment was cleaned up. They were all really well dressed with collared shirts and their shirts tucked in. They prepared a really nice dinner, set the table really nice and we had a good dinner with them. We talked about the gospel and all 3 really enjoyed it. We're going back next week with the English elders to hand them off. 

We also had a pastor trying to convince us that repentance wasn't necessary. We stopped to talk to him for a while but then even after he followed us to the car to try to keep talking to us about how we don't need repentance. He was an interesting guy. He wasn't really like offensive, he was really nice he was just sincerely trying to convince us why we're only saved by faith and that there's no need to repent. That went well into the night and we got home late because of it but it was a kind of fun experience.

Anyway, it's been an interesting week. I hope you have a great week!