Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 8

When I got to zone conference, They gave me a couple of dad's letters. I was happy to get those. My Apartment mailing address is 750 N King Rd. Apt. 1207 . Weather is perfect here. It hasn't rained since I've been here and I'm pretty sure it never rains here.

Sounds like you guys are keeping busy in Indiana. It is kind of weird to hear that grandma's selling the house. It seems like it will probably be for the best though.

Anyway, this week was fantastic.

My companion and I got to go do a little bit of yard work for an old lady nearby. While we were talking to her we learned that she was from Iran and that she had been living there in the 1970's. So she was super cool and had some cool stories. She made us some Persian food for lunch which was also really good.

On Wednesday every one of our appointments fell through.  Which was a bit challenging but it was alright. That day was less fun. However on Thursday we tried stopping by Herick's apartment again and he was there. So that was super duper awesome. Apparently he had been really busy with immigration lawyers and whatnot but we got to talk to him and start teaching him again. He's really cool. He had actually referred himself after he had just decided to go to the temple visitors center one day. He had watched the restoration video there and filled out a form online to have missionaries come see him. So he's awesome. So he has a baptismal date for two Saturdays from now.

 On Thursday we had also been walking down the street after another one of our appointments fell through and we saw an old lady that was trying to sweep out the door. We offered to help her. She's from Louisiana and has kind of a southern christian demeanor to her. When we offered to help her she had said "thank you Jesus". We had started talking to her and she said that she had had surgery recently and that she had been praying for someone to help her. She was happy to sit down and talk with us for a while. We had taught her about the restoration. She seemed to really like it. She told us that she had recently left her old church and was looking for another church to join. She was super awesome. Unfortunately, we're not going to get to teach her though. She doesn't speak Spanish so we referred the English Elders to her. I'm excited for her though.

We finally got to confirm Juana. She had been baptized about a month ago by the elders before us but she didn't go to church the next day so she hadn't been confirmed. Everyone was kind of getting on us to find her and confirm her. The Bishop and Mission President had just told us to confirm her in her house if we found her. But it was good, we got to sit down and have a conversation about the holy ghost with her and then confirmed her.

Saturday night we got a call that My companion and I were going to be giving talks in church Sunday morning. Fifteen minutes each... Spanish. So that was fun. It really wasn't that bad. I was able to pretty much say what I wanted to say. I took up all the time I needed to as well. It seems like Latinos really like to see people try to learn Spanish. Sacrament meeting was kind of busy both giving a talk and playing the piano but it was fun.

We had an appointment with a less active member and his non member wife this morning. We went to go teach them and they both seemed really excited about the gospel and the wife seemed really enthusiastic about wanting to come to church. She was also happy to see that I was trying to learn Spanish.

Spanish is coming along much easier. I can pretty much say whatever I need to say. I just need to figure out subjunctives and learn more vocabulary.

Anyways, I'm happy, hope you guys have a great week.

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 7

That's so exciting to hear about Courtney. Dan needs to start growing out his mustache. unfortunately I'm not allowed to. Anyways sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun there. How does Dan like Middle school?

This week was super duper awesome. 

We finally got in contact with Herick.  Herick is someone that the past elders had been teaching and had actually set up a baptismal date with but he had gotten really busy right around the time of his baptism so they couldn't baptize him. We're still trying to set up a time where we can meet him next week. We went to see Rosa again. She's been to church already three time and she's getting close to being able to commit to baptism. We finally got to meet Juana as well this week. She had actually been the first person we tried to get in contact with when we got into the area. We had gotten to meet her for the first time this Saturday night because she has been really busy as well. She had already been baptized and she just needs to receive the holy ghost. We invited her to come to church so that she could receive the holy ghost and be confirmed but she didn't come on Sunday. She has the craziest funniest little five year old though. He had used his magic to turn me into a rabbit and Elder Smith into a shark. So we had a lot of fun meeting with them. We had met with Brichie only once this week and he wasn't at his house the next time we came. It was alright, we had a good lesson with him on the book of Mormon. We're starting to get steady lessons with Dario. We actually have a lesson with him at 5:00 today. He likes the message a lot, the only thing is that he has a Santa Meurte necklace and a Santa Muerte statue in his house that he prays to Jesus through. He's super nice though and he likes to get the lessons. 

We've also done a lot of contacting this week. We've met a lot of nice people. It's great that there are plenty of streets where we can pretty much guarantee that everyone we meet is going to know Spanish. We met a lot of people that we're really nice. We had taught a couple of people sitting out on their lawn. I think I'm starting to realize how many different christian beliefs there are out there. The guy we had been talking to is catholic but he believes that you can only worship Jesus through Mary. But we had a nice discussion with them and we might go back to see his friend some time this week. We had also met another group of people sitting out on their lawn. We started to talk to them and they invited us to sit and talk with them. A little bit in their daughter had told us that both of them were nearly deaf so it was interesting teaching the restoration by nearly yelling the entire thing. One day it was about 3:00 in the afternoon and we were walking down the street to find people. We asked a man that had walked past us how he was and he replied saying he was very bad. We had asked him why and he responded because he doesn't believe in god. At this point we start talking about how we are able to know if there's a god. He went on a little tangent on how everything in this world is logical. At this point he had gotten a little closer to us and we could smell alcohol in his breath. He asked us if we knew what there was before god. We just told him that god is eternal. He told us that's not possible,  that there had to be something before god. Then he told us that he knew what was before god and with wide eyes he just told us: Aliens. He told us how he read it in a book once. Then he sort of just walked away giggling.

We got to eat balut this week. I think that's how you spell it. A Filipino family had given it to us. Basically what it is is a hard boiled fertilized egg. It's essentially just got this black soupy liquid inside, egg yoke and a little baby chicken inside. It's best to not look at it when you eat it. Nonetheless, it made my companion vomit. It didn't taste too good. If you crack open the egg and pull away the yoke, you can distinctly see the little baby chicken inside it as well, With the head, eyes, beak and everything. I'm pretty sure Filipino families just give it to missionaries for the entertainment of seeing them eat it.

We're also going to be getting a new investigator. This man had gotten a blood clot in his brain and was going to need to go into surgery for it. However, he had gotten a blessing and after a few days the clot had gone away with any operation. So now he want's to meet with the missionaries. So we're really excited to get to teach him.

Spanish is coming along well. I've been getting better at being able to understand people. It was pretty hard to understand everyone with all of their different accents at first. It's getting a lot better now though. I've gotten to start to be able to go and contact people on the street in Spanish and actually get through a normal conversation with them which is exciting. It seems like Latinos are really nice about helping people learn Spanish though. So even if they're not really interested in our message they're willing to talk with us and let me practice Spanish. All the Latinos are just so great.

Anyway, it's been an awesome week, I hope you guys have a good time.

Love,

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Jones Week 6

I'm glad you guys are having a great time in Indiana. Wish grandma a happy birthday for me. Allison is going to love the etymology teacher. She's super nice and funny. When I got to the mission office dad's letter was waiting for me which was awesome to get.

So much happened this week and it was so great.

So Tuesday after my district had left I went with the zone leaders for a day. I had just slept on their couch. I had to be at reception by 3:00 AM on Wednesday and I was the only one leaving that day. I set my alarm for 2:30 so I could get their on time but I suppose they didn't trust people to get their by themselves if they were alone so I woke up at about 2:00 AM to a 50 or so year old Mexican man yelling "Buenos Dias Elder!" which was pretty funny. We left at about 3:00 for the airport. When we got there the man trying to figure out my flight was getting pretty frustrated because all of the delta flights had had a problem that messed with everyone's flights so My flight had changed slightly. But Everything was alright. In the Mexico Airport I met a man from Guatemala he had 4 kids who were 0, 2, 5, and 8. He wanted to get a picture with me to send to his kids. He also was helping me some with my Spanish. I met a man from Jerusalem in Los Angeles and we talked for a while. On my flight to San Jose the flight attendant talked to me because he had served a mission in St. Petersburg which was also cool.

I got to San Jose at about 12:30 and my mission president and his assistants were there to greet me. I pretty much had just stayed with them all day. Other people were supposed to come in the same day I came in but the Delta flight delayed everyone by a day who was coming from Utah. There was one other Elder that came in at 12:30 at night though. He was transferring here from Canada after a visa wait: Elder Ourkerk. So the Assistants and I went to pick him up. The delta issue affected him as well though and he was in an airport waiting 14 hours for his last flight. We got back to the airport and at this point I had apparently been awake for about 25 hours with the time change so Elder Ourkerk and I got to sleep in until about 7:00 while the Assistants went to get other missionaries in the morning. We had our introduction and orientation which was nice.

Friday we Got out companions. My Trainer is Elder Smith. He's super awesome as well. We're both new to the area that we're serving in right now so we've been going try to figure out who everyone is that we're supposed to be teaching. Apparently there is a lady: Juana who had been baptized but had not yet been confirmed so we've been trying to get in contact with her all week. She was never at her house when we went and she had never answered her phone but we're going to just keep on trying. We got to teach a lesson with another lady named Rosa who has committed to being baptized. We did a lot of street contacting this week as well which has been really great. We apparently don't do any tracting in this mission, only street contacting. We've gotten to set up a few appointments with people. One of them was Juan who was just sitting on his front porch rubbing his belly when we first met him but he agreed to let us come back and give a message to him and his family which is good. 

We went and did a bit of yard work for some members, in this process me and my companion took down the biggest thistle I've ever seen. This thistle was taller than either of us. It was cool seeing how big they could get. We also cut up some box springs and threw them out for them. They were from the English Ward but they were super nice. The husband was the kind of person that new a little bit about everything so he was really fun to talk to.

Going to the Spanish ward was fun. Rosa hadn't come which was disappointing but I was able to understand some of what was being said and I enjoyed it. Apparently they're in desperate need of piano players so I'm likely going to be playing piano in sacrament. We've got a little keyboard in our apartment that I've been practicing on and it's starting to come back to me.

Anyway, I'm out of time.

Love you guys,

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 6

Dear Family,

We are thrilled to report that after Elder Jones arrived safely in his mission day before yesterday here in San Jose, California.  We picked him up at the airport and he was able to do get a little rest after his very early morning departure from Mexico City. He ate dinner at a member’s home, followed by an interview with me, and accompanied us to the airport to pick up another missionary.  The next day he was able to meet up with all of the other new missionaries coming in after their day-long flight delay, and they went out to do some missionary work right away.  Then we had dinner and a testimony meeting together  at the mission home. This morning, after orientation at the mission office, all of the missionaries met their new companions and went back to their areas.  Elder Jones will be serving with Elder Smith in the San Jose area.

You should expect to hear from your missionary on his next Preparation day, which will be Monday, August 15. Thank you for your prayers and support, and for sharing Elder Jones with us here in the wonderful California San Jose Mission.

Also, I encourage you to join the "California San Jose Mission Moms" Facebook page, where we often post pictures and missionary updates.

With love,

 

 

Glen D. Mella

President, California San Jose Mission

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

 

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 5

Sounds like you guys are having a good time. That´s crazy that Dan´s going into middle school. I remember how it took me forever how to figure out how to use my locker in middle school. It sounds like you have a really awesome job. That´s a sad situation but it´s cool that you get to help people like that. That´s awesome that the garden is going so well.

 I got my flight itinerary yesterday. I´m leaving next Wednesday. at about 3 in the morning. It´s kind of funny, My companion will leave Monday with the a few people in my district, then Tuesday the rest of my district will leave, then I leave Wednesday. So that´ll be exciting. I´m not sure what they´re going to have me do on Tuesday. They have a sheet that lists everyone that´s leaving this week. About half leave Monday, the other half Tuesday and then I´m the only one leaving Wednesday. But yeah. this time next week I´ll be on my way to San Jose. 

Been spending more time talking to native speakers this week. It´s been surprising that if they know that you´re not a native speaker they won´t talk super fast and so I´ve been generally able to hold a conversation with them in Spanish. So that´s been fun.

 It seems weird here seeing everyone we´ve known since we got here leave. Last week the district that we had a nearly identical schedule to left so it´s kind of strange having them gone. But I suppose that´s quenched by the excitement of us leaving so soon.

We finished our lessons with one of  our practice investigators and we have one left with the other, they´ve been going along a lot better, It´s a lot easier to teach lessons when you kind of understand Spanish. I feel like I am at the point where just talking Spanish all the time with people that really know Spanish is the main way that i´m going to get much better from here. I think I learn a lot whenever I talk with native speakers. 

I taught my roommates the "when you wake up in the morning and its a quarter to three, ya brush your teeth" song, So now Elder Pippert has been singing it all day.

I´ve been reading a lot In Mathew and Mosiah this week which I´ve really enjoyed reading. 

I guess not much changes at the MTC from week to week, but It feels like more things change from week to week since we´re just constantly learning new things. Anyway my daily schedule is pretty much:

5:30 I get up, shower, Get ready. 6:00 read scriptures until 6:50. Go to class, Get there about 7:00. Read scriptures until 7:30, go to breakfast, get back to class about 8:00, read scriptures until 9:00. Have language learning class until about 11:30, practice teaching until 12:30. Go to lunch, Go to Gymn, get back to class around 3:00 Have language learning class until about 5:00, practice teaching until 6:00. Go to dinner, Go to language learning in computer lab, at about 6:45. Go back to class around 8:00 practice teaching until about 8:20, Personal language study until 9:00, plan until 9:20. Get back to the house at 9:30, Then write in my journal, get ready for bed and read scriptures until 10:30. 

Huh, when I write that all out it seems repetitive but it´s really pretty fun and exciting every day. 

I´ve played a lot of ping pong this week during gym, I´m getting pretty alright at it. 

I´m getting my haircut today and weighing all my luggage to make sure its within the weight limits. I´ll probably also just read scriptures today.

Anyway, Love you guys,

Elder Jones

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 4

I haven´t gotten any snail mail from Dad yet, but I´ll keep looking. I did however get a package this week from Lisa Benjamin. Could you give them a big thank you for me. Sorry it´s so hot in Indiana, The weather is perfect here. Sounds like you guys are having fun. Was Allison able to run the cart down any hills or was it too muddy for that? I still remember the Children´s museum in Indianapolis. I really loved that museum. Glad Courtney and Hal are doing well in college.

I really enjoyed reading Jesus The Christ. I read it pretty much all day last week on my P-day and finished it. So that was super good. I really enjoyed it.  

Spanish is coming a long well. It´s getting easier to speak it more quickly. Our lessons are coming along well, it´s becoming a lot easier to be able to say what I want to say in Spanish. However, whenever native speakers talk together I still have almost no clue what they´re saying. So I´m going to just keep working on that. We´re getting better at speaking Spanish together all the time. So that´s helped a lot with fluidity.

It rained pretty hard this week, so the person whose umbrella we were using for our christmas tree took it back. So Christmas in July sort of ended this week. The district that shares a house with us has been getting pretty sick this week. Most of them are in bed right now. So I´ll just be trying to keep my distance for a bit.

We don´t have much to do today, Elder Creager wants to sleep for a bit so I´ll probably just read scriptures. 

We got another batch of missionaries yesterday which is always fun.

Elder Pippert and I every night give each other some problem to solve just for the fun of it. last night we determined that Elder Creager, based on the assumption that he averaged 2 glasses of orange juice per meal had drunken 5 and 1/21 gallons of orange juice while he has been here. So yeah, Elder Creager really likes orange juice. 

I´m finding ways to cut out more time for reading the scriptures. There are a fair number of breaks in the day but they´re usually short but if I read during those times It adds up to a lot.

During gym time I generally play volleyball or ping pong. There´s also a group of Latinos that play basketball together every day at the gym. They´re all in there 20´s and 30´s except this one guy that´s fairly short and seemingly in his 50´s and he seems to be the best one playing. So that´s always fun to watch. 

A lot of the same has been happening. But it´s good, glad to be here and I´m learning a lot. 

Anyway, I´ve been having a great time.

Love you guys,

Elder Jones

 

 Anyway, Some scriptures I liked this week, in case you´re interested:

Matthew 6:32-34

John 16:33

1 Nephi 10:22

Mark 10: 17-22

and I´m out of time. I hope those are right,  My scriptures are on my desk, I just have my notes with me.

 One side of my view on my way to class.

 

Here´s my view on my way to class every morning. Looks even cooler in the early morning or at night with the fog and city lights.

Letter to little bother, Dan.

Hi DaNL, Glád yóú´ré hávíñg fúñ in Iñdiaña. That´s a lot of seconds. Ill make sure to try to get a picture of myself with thumbs up this week. Hope you guys had fun at the museum, I love that museum, I still remember going there when I was younger as well. Hope you have an awesome summer.

Love,

Elder Jone

Elder Tyler Maxwell Jones Week 3

Sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun over there. Allison is going to have a great time at trek. She looks like a real pioneer.

This week was terrific. Pretty much everyone's sickness has subsided by now which is good. We got a new shipment of missionaries yesterday. There were a ton of them. We just saw a bunch of missionaries walking through the streets pulling luggage. We were helping some of them bring their luggage to their home and I was asking all of them where they were going. I have yet to find anyone here that is also going to San Jose. Everyone in my district is either going to Fort Lauderdale or New York. However If my approximations are correct in deciding how many Spanish speaking missions go to this MTC and how many missionaries are currently here and assuming that missionaries to missions are evenly distributed I should have to ask about 85 randomly selected people to find one going to San Jose. However those are some fairly hefty assumptions.... so I don´t know, Im going to keep looking. 

We aren´t going to the temple today. So we have a full preperation day today. Elder Creager wants to take a nap today so I think I´m gonna try to finish Jesus The Christ today. I´m about 400 pages in and there's a little over 300 pages left. It´s a really good book. I love the perspective and insight that he has on the life of the savior. 

We also switched Classrooms this week. We moved to the Brigham Young building which is just across the street. I really like the new building because in the hallway to our classroom there´s a bunch of beautiful paintings of Christ placed in chronological order. There´s also construction right outside the window of our classroom which one might think as a bad thing but there´s a construction worker that often works right outside our window that loves to sing songs in Spanish while he is working. I don´t think he knows we can hear him but that´s fun.

The CCM is starting to get packed. The auditorium can´t fit all of the missionaries so they´re starting to set up chairs right outside of the auditorium so people can listen to the devotionals. So we´ve been trying to get to devotionals 20 or so minutes early now. On Sunday they showed us a video called ´´the testaments¨ (side note, I don´t know how to use quotation marks or apostrophes on Spanish keyboards so I´ve just been using the accent key without a letter) But I really enjoyed the video. It was basically telling the story of the first 10 or so chapters of third Nephi while simultaneously telling the story of the life of Christ.

The Lessons are getting better. Spanish is becoming a bit more fluid and lessons can generally go alright. We did TRC this week which is where they have people that only speak Spanish volunteer to come in and we give them a lesson. We had 2 lessons. One was with a slightly older man and when he started talking I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. So i said ´´si´´ a lot. But we had another lessons with someone who seemed like they were in their mid twentys  and we could understand them pretty well.

District volleyball hasn´t been happening as much anymore but while Elder Creager plays basketball there´s another elder that plays ping pong with me right next to the basketball court. He´s really good at it but I think I´m slowly getting better. I also played Foosball with 3 other elders that only spoke Spanish and it was super fun because they were getting super excited over it, shouting whenever the ball went in the goal.

I can see why Hal thought taking Latin was helpful with learning Spanish. At the beginning it was slightly difficult because I was mixing up Spanish and Latin vocabulary but I think Latin grammar is way more intense than Spanish grammar so you really need to understand how grammar works and what it does. So when we learn it in Spanish it seems relatively simple. The only challenging part is that in Latin you could have like 10 mins to translate a line whereas with Spanish you´ve got to do it quick enough to speak it. 

I´ve found 3 elder Jones´s so far, so we´re good friends. There´s also an elder in my house that looks almost exactly like Mr. Bean. He ended up finding someone who´s last name actually was bean and borrowed his name tag for a minute so he could have a picture with the name tag of Elder Bean.

I´m running low on time but i´m glad you guys are having a good time in Indiana, hope all is well. Love you guys.

 Here´s a photo of my district at the temple. The Elder next to me is Elder Creager, On the left side, the elder on the far left and the one with a book in his hand are our room mates.