Elder Tyler Jones week 41

Wow, it sounds like you guys have been pretty busy. That's crazy to hear that allie's a driver now.  I'm sorry Mom's babies are still being crazy.  Sounds like you are working through some changes in your Gospel Principles class.  We usually teach gospel principles as well since our ward mission leader can't make it a lot of times and the sister missionaries are both pretty new.  It usually goes well for us we get good turnout usually and everyone likes to participate.

It's been a good week for us. We're still working with our investigators. With Easter week this week, some nice opportunities were opened up for us. So it was a pretty good week for finding and teaching since everyone's a bit more open during Easter week. 

We saw a lot of Christians parading in the streets all week long. There are a lot of different Christian churches in the area that we work. So that was pretty neat to see. 

Since a lot of our more promising investigators are the spouses of members it makes a few things a lot easier. The members are really helpful in getting us in when they're home and helping us with teaching them since they really want them to progress as well.

Transfers are tomorrow. We're both staying here which is awesome. There aren't too many changes so it should be about the same which is good. 

We had dinner with a Samoan family this week. They stopped us and asked us if we had dinner that night and we didn't so they just had us come have dinner with them. That was pretty awesome. They gave us Mexican food because they said they don't like Samoan food very much but it was still really good. 

One of the families were working with has an adorable baby that just turned 1. I'm going to attach a few pictures of him. His name is Santiago. He always has the cutest facial expressions.

Anyway it's been a good week for us here. I hope you all have another great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 40

Sounds like you all are having a good time in Indiana. I'm glad you guys had a good spring break

 

It's been another good week.

We had another opportunity to go to the temple this week. We went this last Saturday. The Bojórquez family drove us. We got to do a session in Spanish which was cool. The Oakland temple is beautiful but I believe it's going to be closing soon for some major remodeling. It'll be rededicated when it reopens in a couple years. So we might not get to go much more in my mission.

We've been working more with all the people I talked about last week. They're still doing well. They're still progressing and doing well. Members of the relief society started visiting the wives of our investigators that aren't active.  Hopefully activating them will help their husbands as well.  The ward here is super awesome.  They're really helpful and there are great members.

We've been focusing a lot more on finding people to teach in the mission.  So we've spent a lot more time looking for people to teach.  While we were out contacting this week a lady waved us over from her car she said she felt strongly that she needed to talk to us.  That went really well and she was really interested.  We referred her to other elders though because she doesn't live in our area. S o hopefully all goes well with that.

There's a recent convert couple that I talked to you about before. The Clementes. They're an older couple that are super funny. They're going to be getting sealed soon. So we're really excited for that. We go see them pretty regularly. 

Anyway, it's been a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones Week 39

That's awesome to hear about dads Job! I'm glad you guys are doing well and having a good spring break. Sounds like things are going well in Indiana.

It's been a pretty good week. Most of our investigators are the
husbands of members. So we've been working a lot with that.

Douglas is perfect, he agrees with everything in the gospel. He wants to get baptized and all that. We're just trying to get him married. He wants to get married. His girlfriend is an active member. We just need to work that all out with the bishop. So we're trying to get him in to see the bishop. Hopefully all goes well with that.

We have another investigator named Virgilio, we met him when he called to us on the street from his cab. His wife is a member and he's taken the lessons before in El Salvador. His wife's records aren't in the ward yet. They moved from El Salvador but never came to church here.
They've got a 6 year old son as well. We're still working on trying to get them to come to church.

David is the husband of an active member in the ward. He wants to get baptized he just needs to overcome some word of wisdom problems so we're working with him on that.

A lady asked us to come visit her and her family some day this week at church. She and her husband come to church every week. We came to visit them and we just talked for a bit. Their kids have been sealed in the temple and they have a few grandkids. They have one grandkid that lives with him who's about 11 months old named Santiago. He's the utest baby ever. Apparently the husband isn't a member though. He comes to church every week, we don't fully know why he hasn't gotten baptized yet but his wife really really wants him to get baptized so they can be sealed.

We've gone over a few times. He works in landscaping so he has a
beautiful garden he likes to show us and he's from El Salvador so he wants to teach us how to make good pupusas. He seems like he's
starting to like us more and more and he's been interacting more and more when we teach so I'm hopeful with all that.

Our last P day one of the Tongan members took us and the Tongan elders downhill mountain biking. They were some pretty big hills and it was a lot of fun. He works  at a bike shop so he let us borrow some really nice bikes to do it. Each bike was worth about $2,000. So it was rough terrain but it felt smooth going down. So we could get going pretty fast.

We also had dinner with the Bojórquez family this week. Whenever they have missionaries over they have them eat habaneros and take a video of it. They started keeping a record of how many habernos the missionaries ate and the record for most habaneros eaten at a time was 10. I wanted to beat the record so I ate 13. I think the Bojórquez family was impressed so that was good. It just felt awful in my stomach for the next day or so. So I'm not sure it was worth it. But that's alright.

General Conference was awesome. I really liked Elder Oaks' talk. But I thought it was all really awesome. Our building is the stake center so we were having it shown there.  They were showing conference in 3 different rooms at the stake center. One room was English, one was Spanish and one was Tongan. The Tongans made everyone lunch in between the Sunday sessions. So that was really nice of them.

It's been a great week, I hope you have a great spring break!

Great food

Elder Tyler Jones Week 38

 

I hope you guys are enjoying your spring break. That's crazy that Allison is going to have her driver's license soon. That sounds like you'll have a lot of fun teaching Chinese babies English. 

It's been pretty good week.  I haven't been as sick anymore. So that's been going well. Whenever we had gone to visit people if I seemed to be sniffly then they would try to give us their entire medicine cabinet. 

We talked to David. He's the one that called us and wants to get baptized. He wants to get baptized still. The only problem is he has to overcome a word of wisdom problem but he seems to be enthusiastic about trying so hopefully all goes well with that. We're going to go visit him again tomorrow.  He's the husband of a member. So she's pretty excited about that.

There's another guy we're teaching named Matías. We keep trying to teach him and he's come to church. The problem is that he's pretty much only interested in coming to church to find a wife. So we're not sure where things will go with that. 

We met a guy named Ricardo we met in the street this week. He was baptized in El Salvador then moved here. He hadn't been to church yet so he had never had his records in our ward. He came to church this week though. He walked a long way to get to church. We offered to find a ride for him but he didn't want one. So we ended up finding one for him to get home though.

I got a call from the sisters in my last area and Kristie is still going to be baptized. So I was excited about that. She's going to be baptized on the 15th of April. So I'll probably be able to go back and see that happen. 

We have a member of our ward that owns a catering business. He feeds us every Tuesday and he makes the best food ever. I'd actually been hearing about his food since my first transfer in the mission. He's pretty famous among all the missionaries. I'll attach some pictures of what we had the last time we had dinner with him.

It's been a good week. I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones Week 37

It's been a pretty good week. Elder Freeman is pretty awesome. He's doing really well so far.  It's been a good week for us. A lot of our investigators are coming along really well. The hardest thing for us is getting them to come to church. Almost any Latino will listen to us, it's just they often times won't keep commitments which is a little frustrating. 

A guy in a taxi waved us down to talk to us. We had a lesson with him and his family this week. He has a wife and a young son. He wife was baptized a few years ago back in El Salvador. He had taken the lessons with the missionaries with the elders in El Salvador but had never gotten baptized. So now he's interested in learning again. The wife isn't on our records since she has been less active since moving from El Salvador but now they're both interested in coming back to church. They're a really awesome family. 

There are a ton of Tongans in Eastern Palo Alto. a lot of Tongans are already members of the church but they're all really really nice. We had lunch with a Tongan member today. People like to say that Latinos will feed you a lot but it's not even close to how the Tongan members are. They love to make the missionaries eat. A Tongan serving elder in my mission apparently gained 90 pounds on his mission. They're all super nice and funny though. They're a lot of fun to be around.

I've been feeling kind of sick lately which isn't too fun. It's going all right though. We're not biking around anymore so it's not too bad to keep going. 

There's a really funny older couple that was baptized about a year ago and is preparing to be sealed soon. They're the Clementes. They're just the best. Sister Clemente is the nicest lady ever and brother Clemente is the funniest guy I've ever met. They're both in probably their sixties. So we go visit them every once in a while. They went to San Francisco this past weekend and got us both ties. 

It's been a great week. I hope all goes well with you guys!

Elder Tyler Jones week 36

It's been an awesome week.  My new area is pretty awesome.  There's a lot of cool stuff here.  It's a really interesting area.  There are a lot more Latinos in this area than my last area so it's a lot easier to find people to teach. 

The ward is pretty awesome.  They're pretty good amount of missionary work.  The members are really anxious to do missionary work and they have a lot of people for us to teach.  So that's really awesome.  A lady apparently is trying to set up a time for us to teach her friends.  She also wants me to teach their children to play the piano as well.  So that should be a lot of fun.

A couple days ago a guy gave us a call and told us he thinks he has a testimony and that he wants to get baptized.  The elders had been working with him a long time ago.  But he just gave us a call a couple days ago out of the blue. So that was a nice surprise.

My companion is Elder Freeman, he's pretty awesome.  He's really good at playing the violin.  His Spanish is coming along well and he's doing awesome.

858 Coleman Ave, apt G Menlo Park California 94025

That's my new mailing address. 

It's a really nice area to be in. T here's a lot of cool things to see, a lot of Latino stores and whatnot. The only problem is the traffic is the worst I've ever seen.

I'm happy, it's an awesome area and I did a pull up today. 

Hope you have a great week!