Allison week 5 Morocco

That’s cool Tyler’s starting school and you got a cat! It’s crazy to think school starts in two weeks! 

It was a really good week. On Tuesday we went to a Moroccan orphanage to plant bushes and play with some of the kids there. 

We want lazer tagging as a group and had traditional Moroccan dance class. 

I’ve had a lot of fun spending time with my host family this week. Yesterday I went to the Medina on my own to pick up sprinkles, melting chocolate and Philadelphia cream cheese for the cake pops me and my host sister were making. I was surprised I was able to find it all. Shopping in the Medina as an American is a lot like a mix between a scavenger hunt, a corn maze and charades. I did get to practice my Arabic a lot asking shopkeepers where things were and trying to bargain. 

See you in a week!

Friends

Allison week 4 Morocco

It’s been a pretty busy week. We just got back from our trip to the Sahara Desert! It was awesome! We rode camels for about an hour out into the desert to get to camp and we slept out under the stars. I was surprised that I didn’t get too sunburned. The sand dunes were way taller than I was expecting. 

 

We also made stops to see monkeys, we talked to a random shepherd in the Atlas Mountains and looked at his sheep, and on the way back we went to Ifran which is supposed to be the Switzerland of Morocco. 

 

We got to go to a refugee center after school one day this week and we practiced English with the refugees there. The refugees me and another girl in my class named Hanan talked to were from Mali. They were super nice and it was really fun to help out in their class. They are going to school in Rabat and when I asked what they wanted to do when they got out of school, one said he wanted to be the foreign minister of Mali and the other said he wanted to be the president. 

It’s funny how tailored our Arabic skills are for the foreign service. The third vocabulary word we learned was United Nations.  After school one day they asked us to get in groups and write a story in Arabic. Our group wrote about a hungry dog named Bob who goes to the store to buy food. Bob the hungry dog also happens to work for the United Nations and is a translator specializing in the Middle East.

Atlantic meets Pacific, where clay mixed, Chefchauen

Allison week 3 in Morocco

It was a really great week. We just got back from a weekend trip to Tangier and Chefchauen. It was really pretty in both cities. We got to got to the straight of Gibraltar and we could see Spain on the other side. We had really cool tours of both cities. We went on a hike in the mountains near  Chefchauen. 

It’s been fun being here in Morocco during the World Cup. A lot of Moroccans were really excited that France won and in all of the shops and cafes we walked by in Chefchauen today, people were just watching the game. 

We took our midterm on Friday and it wasn’t too bad. I just hope I spelled everything right in the essay portion. 

We also got to go to an area outside Rabat where they make traditional Moroccan pottery. It was really cool to see the similarities between how they do pottery here and in my ceramics class at home. 

That’s too bad Dad doesn’t get to got to Utah for as long. I hope you guys have lots of fun! Have a great week!

Allison week 2 Morocco

I had a great week, sorry to not check my email sooner. It’s been really busy. We just got back from a weekend trip to Casablanca and Marrakesh. 

Classes were really good this week. Now we can conjugate verbs in the present and past tenses! We’ll have our mid-term exam on Friday so I’ll have to make sure to get a lot of studying done this week.

Our school days are pretty interesting because we have a lot of breaks in the middle of the day. 

8:00-10:00 classes

10:00-10:30 tea break

10:30- 12:00 classes

12:00-2:00 lunch and study time

2:00-3:00 afternoon classes

3:00-6:00 extra activities like cooking club or conversation practice with Moroccans

They feed us so much! My host family likes that I eat their food though. Me and my host sister have done a lot of cooking together and I learned how to make cake and chicken the Moroccan way. 

I got to go to the market in Rabat on Friday and it was so cool! I live in Agdal which is the nicer area of the city where everything is really western so it was cool to see the Medina because it feels so different from America. It’s super crowded and the streets are really narrow. I got to go inside one of the other student’s host family’s house in the Medina and it had all tile mosaic walls and a courtyard in the middle of the house. It was fun to see more traditional Moroccan architecture. 

We only spent a couple of hours in Casablanca but we got to go in the Hassan 2 mosque which is the 3rd biggest in the world and is built on the ocean. Marrakesh was super hot but the market there was huge! We had a guided tour then got to explore the souk. Marrakesh has a lot of European tourists so the shopkeepers all know a few English phrases and shout at you to buy stuff with English accents. It was a really fun trip. 

Tagine on the first day of school

Allison Morocco week 1

It’s been a pretty awesome so far. We made it here without any problems. Morocco is super interesting and the weather has been really good. My host family is really nice. It’s a Mom and her 16 year old daughter Aya. They both have really good English but they mostly speak French at home and the TV is always in French. There is a festival going on in Rabat called Mawazine where lots of famous musicians come and play on 7 different stages in the city. Last night me and Aya went to one of the concerts for a group called Texas. Neither of us had heard of the group before but Aya said it might be good to go on a night that wouldn’t be as crowded. The singer was a lady with a really thick English accent who screamed a lot. We didn’t stay very long but it was fun to spend time with my host sister. My roommate’s name is Sarah and she’s really nice. It’s extra helpful because she is learning French and can help translate. I really like my language class. There are about 8 of us in each room and we learned some Moroccan dialect for the first two days and today was our first day of Modern Standard Arabic. We got to go to the American embassy a few days ago and we met the other NSLIY group that’s in a different part of Rabat. It was interesting to hear about some of the different jobs people have working at the embassy. The food here is REALLY good. We have tagine every day for lunch except Friday. Friday is the day Moroccans cook couscous before they go to mosque. We also get out of school a little early on Friday. Moroccan couscous is the best! It has lots of pumpkin and potatoes and carrots. Hope you guys are having lots of fun! 

Alberto baptism

Elder Tyler Jones week 96

We were really happy to see Alberto be baptized this week! It was super sweet. His family was there to support him and they gave really awesome talks about how they were happy to have another family member join them in the church. The family has been members for a while now and Alberto and his wife were before pretty opposed to the church. So whenever Alberto would come to visit, the family wouldn’t be able to come to church. 

 

But we had dinner with their family a bit ago and started teaching him about what we believe and the gospel and he changed his mind and wants to go to the temple. Right as we were going into the baptismal font he asked if he could say a short prayer with me. It was really sweet he talked about how grateful he is to have found the gospel and asked that he be guided by the spirit as he moves back to El Salvador tomorrow.

So it’s been awesome!

Companions

Elder Tyler Jones week 95

It was awesome getting to talk to you guys yesterday!

We’ve had a good week! Lots of good things happening. We had another giant, all of San Jose, party this week. That was a lot of fun and we’re even starting to teach someone that came to the party. Her name is Luna and she has a son that’s 20. She has had a baptismal date in the past but dropped it. So we’re excited for that.

Other than that our other investigators are doing well, the Hernandez family is doing awesome they’ve come 4 weeks now.

Elder Tyler Jones week 94

We had a pretty cool week,

I got my new companion elder Larsen, he sort of looks like a smaller version of me according to the members, so they’ve taken to saying that he’s my little brother. He’s pretty cool he’s got red hair and glasses and he’s about 5’6. They’ve been getting a good laugh out of that. He’s been out almost 6 months now and he’s awesome!

The Hernandez family came back to church this week! It seemed like they really liked it this week. We had a lesson on the Holy Ghost in gospel principles and they were participating more than most of the members with really insightful comments. So that was super cool. They’re an awesome family. It was also testimony meeting and the Henríquez family, which was baptized about 7 months ago gave their testimony on why they decided to join the church so it was super duper awesome! We’re really excited for them.

There was a big cinco de Mayo party for all of the San José wards this week. It was hosted by the las Colinas ward. That’s the ward that I stared my mission in. So it was kind of surreal going back there. I got to see all of the people from the ward again. One crazy thing was the Flores family has a baby. I remember seeing the baby when he was super little. Now he’s up running around talking and everything. It was so crazy being back there.

So it’s been awesome! We’re super excited.

Hope you have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 93

It was a pretty awesome week!

The Hernandez family came back to church. And they were being really well fellowshipped and everything. They were participating in classes and it was all super cool. Gospel principles was on Adam and Eve and they really liked it. They were asking questions and sharing insights and everything. So that’s been really cool. We’re going to be meeting with them this week. 

Kind of a cool experience this week. We were at a member's house this week and we met the member's father in law. He’s visiting from El Salvador. We started talking to him for a little bit and he actually became really interested. We came back the next day and talked to him for about 2 hours. He’s been to church a couple times in the past but after talking to him he decided that he needs to come to church and he needs to be baptized. The problem is he works sundays while here in America. He said “tomorrow I’m asking my boss if I can have Sundays off”. Turns out his boss said no. But he’s going back to El Salvador in like 2 weeks and he knows he won’t have to work Sundays there. And even better he lives right across the street from an LDS church. So he’s planning on going and getting baptized in El Salvador. We’re gonna get him in contact with the missionaries down there.

Today was pretty cool. There’s a mini golf place near our apartment that is owned by a member. They let the missionaries go for free whenever they want. So this morning we went and did minigolf for a while. That was a lot of fun. 

We also found out that my companion is getting transferred. He’s going to Las Colinas, the ward I started my mission in. I’m getting a new companion named elder Larsen. I don’t know him too much but he’s short, has red hair and hasn’t been out very long at all. So I’m excited for that.

This apartment I’m in is really nice and it has a gym so it’s pretty nice.

One thing that’s kind of crazy to think about is that the California San José Mission is the most expensive mission in the world. Also, right now I’m in the most expensive apartment in the mission. We're really close to the googleplex, we have Samsung down the road. All of
the giant tech companies are all around us. It’s also a pretty nice apartment so the church is paying more than 3,000$ a month for this apartment. That’s super crazy.

But things are going well for me here. I really like the ward and I’m really enjoying the area.

 

Have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 92

Sounds like things are going pretty great.  Thanks for getting me an iPhone!  That’s really nice of you.  They’re asking me if I want to keep my iPad for like 80$. I’m thinking I shouldn’t.  I don’t really know what I would do with it if I’ve got a phone and then get a laptop for school.  I’d just upload all my notes and photos onto a usb that I can bring home.

We’ve had a pretty good week!

The Hernandez family ended up not being able to come to church this week. They were planning on coming to church but then the mom and daughter got sick so they didn’t make it. We’re going to be meeting with them and hno. irhaeta this coming week. We were talking to the young women president and we’re goin to see if we can get the daughter to girls camp this year. 

The Moreno family came to church this week. They’ve been inactive for quite a long time and it was their first week back. They ended up being a bit late and only made it for a portion of sacrament meeting but they got to meet some members of the ward and have some good relationships. So that’s awesome. 

I FaceTimed into a lesson with a lesson with an investigator in my last area. That went pretty well. We were actually at the end of splits so we called in with hno. Jimenez, a member in our ward. He did really awesome and we were able to get her to commit to coming to church this week. So that was pretty awesome.

Sounds like you guys have been having a good time.  That’d be really awesome to go out to scout camp with the young men. 

It’s kind of crazy to think you guys are getting snow. It’s been feeling like summer here. In the 70’s all week. So that’s been really nice.

Excited to talk to you guys in a few weeks!

Elder Tyler Jones week 91

Glad to hear things are going well.

We’ve had another great week!  This is an awesome place to be working.

We’ve been helping a family come back to church. They haven’t gone in about twenty years and they’re coming back. They have a young son that they’d like to be baptized as well. So we’re helping him be baptized as well. We’re really excited for them.

We also had a family come to church this week. It’s the Hernandez family. They’re a really awesome family with 4 kids. It seemed like they really enjoyed church and were really well fellowshipped. It was ward conference so it was a bit of a weird meeting but it allowed us to explain the priesthood better to them. So that was really awesome. We’re going to be meeting with them this week.

We watched Coco today. I liked it. I thought it was a really good movie. We went to watch it with our high councilor over missionary work.

 

 I got my flight itinerary this week. Looks like I’m going to be flying into Fort Wayne at 9:00pm June 13th.

It was an awesome week!

 

Elder Tyler Jones week 90

We had a good week!

Julia got baptized! We got her all ready to be baptized this week and we had her baptismal service right after church on Sunday. It was really awesome since so many people were able to attend. They seem really happy though. She went to primary again today and In a couple months she's going to start going to young womens. We were talking to the Young womens president about seeing if she could go to Girls camp but she just barely misses the cut off. But either way they've been making lots of friends in the ward and they're really happy to be here. They want us to start working on Julia's brother now. He's a little bit older and living with his girlfriend but they want us to try to get him coming as well. So we'll do what we can.

Had a fun experience on a bike this week. So, in this area I'm just using another elder's bike to get around but the problem is that his bikes front portion with the handlebars and the wheel aren't really attached to the frame to well so its a little shaky sometimes. We were riding home from an appointment we had and there was a guy on the side of the street. So, I decided to stop and talk to him. But as I put on the brake and began to slow down the entire front just gave out and it flipped me over the front of the handlebars. I didn't really get hurt too bad at all but it was a really good conversation starter with the guy on the side of the street.

Other than that we've been visiting a lot of our less active members. It's been pretty good. We've been trying to introduce more and more people to family history and people are generally really interested.

They've got me signed up for "My Plan" now. That's a program they have returning missionaries do to prepare them to return from a mission. It hasn't really become real to me yet that I'll be going home soon. 

But anyway, things are going pretty great. I'm really enjoying this ward.

I hope you have a great week!

Julia baptism

Elder Tyler Jones week 89

That’s awesome that you guys are in Atlanta! I hope you have a lot of fun.

We had a great week!

Yesterday we met with a lady that hadn’t been to church in 21 years. She was baptized in Mexico and came here and stopped coming.  A missionary that had taught her got in contact and directed her to church here.  She came back to church a week ago but we still didn’t know who everyone was yet. But someone directed us to her and we went to visit them on Saturday.  They’re very excited to be coming back to church.  They came to watch conference and loved it as well.  She has an 11 year old daughter that really wants to be baptized as well.  They’re going on vacation for a bit the 12th of April and they wanted her to be baptized before then.  So she’s being baptized this Sunday.

We’re super excited for that!

General conference was awesome!  My old mission president, President Mella was announced as an area seventy in general conference.  Also, Elder Gong is from Redwood City which is really close to where I’m serving right now.  Lots of cool changes-- that will be good. 

They’ve been telling us to use family history a lot more recently.  So for the first time this week we started talking to people right from the start about family history.  We talked to this little old Peruvian lady that just lit up when we started talking about family history.  Telling us all her stories about her ancestors.  So that was pretty cool, we’re going back Saturday with a family history consultant to help her get started.

Sorry to hear you guys are feeling sick. I hope you get feeling better!

Ramirez - Perez family

Elder Tyler Jones week 88

We had a good week. Our area is ginormous. It covers Santa Clara up to Mountainview around Los Altos. It’s all densely populated as well.
That’s been really cool.

A lot of people here are family members to people in my past areas
which is pretty cool. It’s kind of like already knowing the ward.

So it’s been great here, excited for Easter, general conference and
April fools day.

Have a great week!

 

Elder Tyler Jones week 87

That’s super awesome to hear about Allie going to Morocco. That’ll be so fun. That’s pretty cool to hear about Chuck and Amy moving into ft Wayne. 

We had a pretty good week this week.

We had a lot of rain this week. I found a rain jacket in the closet here though so I was able to keep pretty dry. It’s good to have he rain. It doesn’t rain a whole lot here so whenever we get rain it’s good for the area. Not too many people want to open the door in the rain though which is a bit harder.

We got to meet with Gerardo this week. He’s doing well. He’s preparing to be baptized on May 17th! So that’s super awesome. They went to Lake Tahoe later thins week to enjoy the snow out there. It sounds like they had a lot of fun. They also went to church out there which is pretty cool.

This week I found out that I’m getting transferred to Los Altos. It’s pretty close to Menlo Park, one of my old areas. It’s where a lot of tech company campuses are, like Google. So that should be cool. There’s a Spanish branch there I’ll be working with.

So I’ve been doing a lot of packing and saying goodbye. It’s been a good area here.

Well, I hope you guys have another great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 86

We had another good week.

Herbert hasn’t answered the door or his phone at all. So that’s a bit disappointing. Not really sure what happened. We asked one of the people fellowshipping him to reach out and see what happened.

We talked to gerrardo, he’s doing really well. He has a meeting tommorow to try to get divorced to his wife in Mexico. He’s trying to get married to his girlfriend here in the United States so he can be baptized. He’s already had 3 kids with her and they’ve been living together for a long time. They don’t have contact with his wife in Mexico so they’re working that all out tommorow. Hopefully all goes well with that.

I fixed up one of the bikes in the area so we’ve been able to go out biking more which has been a lot of fun.

We had some rain this week and apparently we’re supposed to have a lot more next week. So that’ll be an exciting adventure.

We climbed mission peak today. That was a lot of fun. We started the hike at around 7 and got done around 11. It was a pretty steep hike but the views were pretty cool. From the top you could see the entire bay. From San José up to Oakland and San Francisco. So that was a lot of fun.  Going down was a lot more fun than going up.

I hope you guys have another great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 85

Sounds like you guys have been keeping pretty busy. That’s interesting to hear about the March madness for the youth.

We had a movie night this week, that was pretty cool. They watched Coco on a projector, they were deciding on what movie they wanted to watch and one member said he had coco. We got the disc from him and it looked pretty clearly pirated: thin case with paper printed out cover and then a generic Walmart cd inside. We probably suspected that since it hadn’t come out on dvd when he offered it to us. But it worked out fine. Everyone had a good time. We went to set up and left. But our branch mission leader said a lot showed up.

We had a cool experience this week.

I was driving while it was pouring down rain. Their was a constant pitter patter on the roof when all of a sudden we started to hear repeated clacking sounds. I looked out and saw hail accumulating on the rooftops. It began to look like snow. We pulled over and went out into the hail storm. There was hail accumulating everywhere. I quickly ran to the nearest pile and packed it all into a small ball and threw it at my companion. He did likewise. People were coming out of their apartments to see the hail. We used the opportunity to talk to a few people out in the hail. They weren’t interested but at least we tried. Quickly the hail cleared up and it all began to melt.

And that was how I had a snowball fight in California. 
We think Herbert is avoiding us. He hasn’t come to church for 2 weeks
now and is cancelling all of his appointments. So that’s been kind of
disappointing, not really sure what happened.

It doesn’t look like much, but it’s a lot for California.

We also found 3 chickens in the target parking lot today.

Have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 84

We had another great week. Herbert wasn’t able to come to church this week because he was working but we did get to meet with him this week. He still feels a bit nervous right now. But he does still want to be baptized. He lives with a bunch of friends that have a hard time living the gospel and so he feels like it would be hard to live the standards while living with his friends.

There was a wedding in the branch. A lady that was baptized a little over a year ago got baptized to a man whose a Jehovah's witness. So that’s interesting. Apparently he’s not active in his faith though.

Their family came with them to church this Sunday. It’s been rather cold this week. Cold for California, that is. It’s been in like the 30’s and 40’s. It’s been a bit harder to catch people outside and get them to open the door. But it’s still been good.

 

The classes you sent for BYU-I sound like good to me. Not really sure what to expect but that sounds awesome to me.

I heard that black panther was a really good movie. So that’s cool that you guys got to see it. A lot of members have gone to see it and they say it’s really good.

We’ve been having a good time. We’re at the church playing sports right now.

I hope you have another good week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 83

Sounds like you guys are keeping pretty busy.

Herbert has since gotten cold feet and has decided not to be baptized. He still really enjoys church but he is a bit nervous. So we’re meeting with him Tuesday to talk to him s little bit more and to see if there’s anything we can do to help.

There’s a man named gerrardo in the branch that we’ve been working with. He’s started to get pretty serious about being baptized. He is the boyfriend of one of the members of the  branch. He is married to a woman in Mexico but lives with his girlfriend and 3 kids here. So he is working on getting divorced and then remarried to his girlfriend here in order to be baptized. It’s going to be a bit complicated but he’s determined to be baptized on may 9th. So we’re really happy for them and their family.

Alberto, the father of the ramirez-Perez family has not budged. He really is intent on not being baptized until he feels like being baptized. So we’re going to try to give him some space and hope for the best.

 

Today a member from the English ward gave the elders a giant box of chicken jerky. They own a grocery outlet, which is the west coast equivalent to aldi. They had a bunch of chicken jerky they couldn’t sell so they gave it all to the missionaries. So now we have a giant box full of jerky in our apartment.

So things are going good for us,

I hope you have a great week!

Cooking and baptisms

Elder Tyler Jones week 82

That’s crazy that church for you was cancelled. It’s hard to remember that you guys are in winter right now. It’s been in the 60’s and 70’s all week.

We had a good week, Herbert came to church again and it seemed like he likes it. This is his third time coming to church and he’s planning on being baptized the 24th of February. We’re pretty excited for that. Hopefully everything goes through with that.

We have had a lot of less active men come back.  Jordan’s dad, Marvin, has been pretty consistent in coming to church since Jordan’s baptism.  So that’s been pretty awesome.  We had 16 men in elders quorum this Sunday. 

The branch is hoping to turn into a ward at some point.  So we’ve been talking a lot about that. It still needs a bit of growing but it seems like it’s on its way. They’re definitely the biggest branch I’ve been in. We talked to the stake president and mission president this week about what would need to happen for them to be a ward but they weren’t quite sure.  They want to do a big missionary blitz like they did in my last area around Christmas time. I’m not sure how effective it was but we’ll be doing it anyway.

We had a valentines party on Saturday, where they made a lot of lasagna. We ended up having so much lasagna that after church on Sunday we all got together to eat lasagna again. Herbert came to the valentines party as well so he had a good time.

Today we went and played rugby for a few hours with our zone. That was a lot of fun. I also tried making gulab jamun. It turned out tasting like wet funnel cake. The problem is I don’t really like funnel cake. But the other elders like it so they’ve been going at it.
 

Have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 81

It was an awesome week!

The Ramirez-Perez family got baptized! It was awesome, everyone was so excited a bunch of missionaries from a long time ago, which had already gone home, came back to the area to see them get baptized.  It was really an awesome service. 

We brought one of our investigators to the baptismal service and he seriously liked it. He mentioned that it was the first baptismal service he had ever been to. We talked to him for a bit and he said that he would like to be baptized. So we’re working with him to be baptized at the end of February. So we’re pretty excited about that. His name is Herbert. We found him knocking doors a few weeks ago. He’s come to church a couple times already. He’s from Guatemala and he’s living with some friends in an apartment. He works a lot to be able to send money back to his 4 daughters in Guatemala. He misses his daughters a lot and his wife doesn’t let him talk to his daughters any more, so he feels really bad about that.

Another man in the ward, named Gerardo, said that he would like to be baptized. He lives with a member and they want to get married it’s just going to be complicated to make that happen. So they’re not quite sure when he’ll be able to get married so he can be baptized.

We have transfers tomorrow. We’re all staying, so that should be good. 

I’m going to make some gulab jamun today. I’m pretty excited for that. I found it in an Indian grocery store.  There’s a lot of different types of shops and stores here from different cultures. I tried some samosas and this interesting lentil vegetable pocket thingy.

We played a lot of sports today as well. 

So it’s been pretty great!

Have a fantastic week!

Elder Ty Jones week 80

We had another great week!

Jordan got baptized! It was super awesome the whole branch showed up to support him and the family. His sister gave a talk about baptism that was super awesome. There were a lot of family members that aren’t members of the church there as well. So that’s exciting.

The Ramirez-Perez family is all good to go for this Friday. The mom and daughters are going to be baptized but the dad hasn’t decided yet. So hopefully he decides to do so. The branch is pretty excited for that since they’ve been actively coming to church for 2 years now. They’re some of the most active members we have.

We’ve got a few other people that are progressing well. So we’re excited for that. 

We had a branch party on Friday which was a lot of fun. A fair few showed up and we had nachos and played jeopardy. I ended up being the game host so it was a lot of fun.

We had a regional conference this Sunday. We all met in the stake center and they had talks by Patrick Kearon and D. Todd Christopherson. That was pretty good but it was hard to get people to come since the stake center is pretty far away.

I hope you have a great week!

Love,