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

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