Elder Tyler Jones week 77

Sounds like it’s been pretty cold. It’s been in the 40’s and feels pretty cold. It’s going to be a bit of a shock to be back in Indiana.

 

One thing I really like about California is the fruit trees. There’s fruit trees everywhere so you can go and pick fruits all the time because no one cares if you take them. Otherwise they just get a lot of rotten fruit on the ground.

We had a pretty good week. The only thing is a lot of people in Fremont and I all got sick this week. So that wasn’t too fun. But it ended up alright. We had a lot of meetings this week that we had to go to and then had stake conference this Sunday. 

Stake conference was a bit far away so people had a hard time coming. It ended up being alright. President Gonzales was able to get some less active families to come though which was pretty good. 

President Gonzales is pretty awesome he’s an awesome person to have come out with us and he’s always super excited to come out. He really wants to turn the branch into a ward.

The branch has a lot of really awesome members. They’re pretty excited about missionary work but don’t really know what to do. So we’re tryin to put together a program that’ll help them do that. 

We’ve been teaching a family that has been active for 2 years. The wife and kids are all ready to be baptized but the dad sort of just doesn’t care. He doesn’t pay attention during lessons and sort of just sits in. But they all want to be baptized as a family. 

Elder Tyler Jones week 76

It was nice to get to talk to you. I believe my release date is June 13. Sounds like things have been pretty busy but sounds like a lot of fun.

We had a pretty good week. We’ve been getting acquainted with the branch this week. We got to go to church with just the branch this week so that was a lot of fun. The branch is a little bit bigger than Hollister.  And we meet in the chapel which was pretty cool.  They had forgotten to put a program together today so they had all of the missionaries talk and the branch mission leader.

We got to meet some cool people.  We met a pair while tracting they let us in and we’ve had a couple of lessons with them. They’re a young family with 2 little kids and we talked about strengthening their family. They liked it and we’re going back to teach them again.

We’ve also been teaching a family that’s been active for 2 years but hasn’t gotten baptized. The mom and kids are ready but the dad isn’t very motivated. So we’re trying to help him find some motivation.

Glad to hear that you guys had some good times. Sounds like a lot of
fun lighting the ginger bread house on fire.

So things have been good. It’s been fun in the new area

I hope you have a great week!

Nativity - Elder Jones as Joseph

Elder Tyler Jones week 75

We got to see Carmela get confirmed this week! It was super awesome and one of the missionaries that started to teach the family a year or two ago came back and saw her get confirmed. So that was super cool. They’re all doing super great.

So I got news that I’m getting transferred this week. I’m a little bit bummed to be leaving Hollister but it’ll be alright. I’m going to Fremont which is on the other side of the mission. Way up north. So I’m excited to see how it goes. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing for Christmas this year. But whatever it is, it’ll be good. My companion is named Elder Cabral and he speaks Portuguese natively.  I’m going to be sharing an apartment with an Elder named Elder Holland. He’s from Indiana and came out 2 transfers ago. That’ll be pretty cool. 

We had our branch Christmas party this week. We had about 200 people come. That’s more than I’ve ever seen at a branch party before. We didn’t think we’d have so many people so we didn’t prepare a whole lot of food. But somehow the pasole made it through the whole time. So it ended up being good. We had a little posada and the person being Joseph didn’t show up. So they asked me to be Joseph which was also a lot of fun. Brisa got to be an angel which was awesome as well.

I’m excited to speak to you at Christmas!

Baptism in Hollister

Elder Tyler Jones week 74

We had another good week!

So Brisa and José Luis's mom told us that she wanted to be baptized at the end of their baptismal service and this week she was baptized! It was super awesome! A lot of members of the branch showed up to give support and it was a really great service! Also, elder Stewart had the opportunity to baptize her so it all went super great!

Getting everything planned out was pretty fun. There were a lot of complications and getting everything figured out took a good while. But it all worked out and we're happy. 

We had stake conference this week. That was pretty cool. Elder Clark from the seventy came because they were reorganizing the stake presidency. Our branch president, president Nordstrom, got called to be the second counselor in the stake presidency. So we were pretty sad to see that happen since he'll end up being released as the branch president. He's really awesome and has helped us out a lot. 

We went hiking at Pinnacles National Park again today. We had a lot of fun doing that and got to go into some caves. 

I'm a bit nervous that I'll get transferred next week. Hollister has been my favorite area so far and it would stink to leave.

I'm excited to get to call you guys for Christmas. That should be awesome!

Elder Tyler Jones week 73

We had a pretty good week!

This week was a little bit crazy. They're trying this new program in our mission where they bring together a bunch of missionaries and have them all go on exchanges for a week and work in one area. So I went on exchanges with Elder Reid. They essentially wanted us to go tracting all day long but said if we had any appointments we needed to go to we could do that. 

We had a few members from the ward come out with us which was nice. There were a total of 14 missionaries in the area. Altogether we ended up finding over 200 people over the week. But none of them came to church. So now we've all gone back to our regular areas and the elders there have to sort of have to figure out what to do with all of those people.

But we met with the Ramirez family again and a couple more people wanted to be baptized this coming weekend! So we're going to be trying to pull everything together for that. Hopefully all goes well with that!

So we've been doing pretty good!