Helping teach Primary

Elder Tyler Jones week 32

I'm glad you guys are keeping busy. Sounds like life is staying pretty exciting for everyone. It's still so weird to think about Courtney and Hal and their marriages. It seems like a lot has changed in the months I've been gone.

It's been a good week though. We're still working with Christie. We found out this week she spells her name "kristie". She's still coming to church and everything's going well with that. She's probably going to push her baptismal date back a week just because a couple in the branch are getting married that day. But she's still really excited for that and enjoying church.

Our bikes were broken all of this week. So we ended up having to walk a lot. It was all right though. We just had to plan a lot of travel time. 

We're still working with Romiro. He lives with a less active family and so he'll only come if the family comes. 

I did some more cleaning around our apartment this week. When I came into this area the apartment wasn't in the best condition, so I've been slowly cleaning it up bit by bit. This week my big project was the bathroom. It didn't seem like anyone had done anything to clean it in something like a year. It was pretty bad. But two hours, one and a half rolls of paper towels, and a whole lot of bleach later, it looks pretty nice. So I'm happy about that.

It rained some this week. It seems to rain a lot in the winter time here. It didn't rain at all my first 4 or so months here. Now it rains all the time. But we have ponchos so it ends up being all right.

Anyway, it's been a good week. I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones and his desk

Elder Tyler Jones week 31

That's exciting that Dan did so well in his band contest.  Sorry to hear how crazy Mom's students were this week. Hna. Hernandez teaches preschool and has some crazy babies too.  So I like to tell her some of your stories about crazy babies.  It sounds like things are remaining entertaining in the news.  I'm happy I get insulated from all of that.  Hope you guys have a good week this week.

It's been a pretty good week. Everything's still going well with Christie. She and her mom are still on board for the 25th. It doesn't seem like there are any major problems yet. She's still pretty excited and is still coming to church. We're just trying to get her more involved with youth activities and whatnot. But everything's going well with that.

Romiro didn't come to church this week. He's still doing all right though. We saw him a couple times this week. We're still just really focusing on reading, praying and going to church. He's a part of a part member less active family so it seems like he only comes when the family comes.

We started teaching a family that used to be investigating that we had on our records. They're Marcos and Maria. They had been investigating for a while but the missionaries stopped passing by so we're just going to give it a shot. They seem really nice. Hopefully something comes of that.

The San Tomas branch is still doing really well. They've got a good number of people coming every week and they're slowly growing. They're considering moving into the chapel at some point. Probably won't quite yet, but they're excited that it's even a consideration at this point.

We found another Little Mexican grocery store that's even smaller and cheaper this week. They sell habanero peppers as well. So one of the Chinese elders and I ate one as a part of an object lesson. Then everyone in the district wanted to try one. So everyone in the district ate a habanero this week. That was entertaining.

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