Elder Tyler Jones week 85

Sounds like you guys have been keeping pretty busy. That’s interesting to hear about the March madness for the youth.

We had a movie night this week, that was pretty cool. They watched Coco on a projector, they were deciding on what movie they wanted to watch and one member said he had coco. We got the disc from him and it looked pretty clearly pirated: thin case with paper printed out cover and then a generic Walmart cd inside. We probably suspected that since it hadn’t come out on dvd when he offered it to us. But it worked out fine. Everyone had a good time. We went to set up and left. But our branch mission leader said a lot showed up.

We had a cool experience this week.

I was driving while it was pouring down rain. Their was a constant pitter patter on the roof when all of a sudden we started to hear repeated clacking sounds. I looked out and saw hail accumulating on the rooftops. It began to look like snow. We pulled over and went out into the hail storm. There was hail accumulating everywhere. I quickly ran to the nearest pile and packed it all into a small ball and threw it at my companion. He did likewise. People were coming out of their apartments to see the hail. We used the opportunity to talk to a few people out in the hail. They weren’t interested but at least we tried. Quickly the hail cleared up and it all began to melt.

And that was how I had a snowball fight in California. 
We think Herbert is avoiding us. He hasn’t come to church for 2 weeks
now and is cancelling all of his appointments. So that’s been kind of
disappointing, not really sure what happened.

It doesn’t look like much, but it’s a lot for California.

We also found 3 chickens in the target parking lot today.

Have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 84

We had another great week. Herbert wasn’t able to come to church this week because he was working but we did get to meet with him this week. He still feels a bit nervous right now. But he does still want to be baptized. He lives with a bunch of friends that have a hard time living the gospel and so he feels like it would be hard to live the standards while living with his friends.

There was a wedding in the branch. A lady that was baptized a little over a year ago got baptized to a man whose a Jehovah's witness. So that’s interesting. Apparently he’s not active in his faith though.

Their family came with them to church this Sunday. It’s been rather cold this week. Cold for California, that is. It’s been in like the 30’s and 40’s. It’s been a bit harder to catch people outside and get them to open the door. But it’s still been good.

 

The classes you sent for BYU-I sound like good to me. Not really sure what to expect but that sounds awesome to me.

I heard that black panther was a really good movie. So that’s cool that you guys got to see it. A lot of members have gone to see it and they say it’s really good.

We’ve been having a good time. We’re at the church playing sports right now.

I hope you have another good week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 83

Sounds like you guys are keeping pretty busy.

Herbert has since gotten cold feet and has decided not to be baptized. He still really enjoys church but he is a bit nervous. So we’re meeting with him Tuesday to talk to him s little bit more and to see if there’s anything we can do to help.

There’s a man named gerrardo in the branch that we’ve been working with. He’s started to get pretty serious about being baptized. He is the boyfriend of one of the members of the  branch. He is married to a woman in Mexico but lives with his girlfriend and 3 kids here. So he is working on getting divorced and then remarried to his girlfriend here in order to be baptized. It’s going to be a bit complicated but he’s determined to be baptized on may 9th. So we’re really happy for them and their family.

Alberto, the father of the ramirez-Perez family has not budged. He really is intent on not being baptized until he feels like being baptized. So we’re going to try to give him some space and hope for the best.

 

Today a member from the English ward gave the elders a giant box of chicken jerky. They own a grocery outlet, which is the west coast equivalent to aldi. They had a bunch of chicken jerky they couldn’t sell so they gave it all to the missionaries. So now we have a giant box full of jerky in our apartment.

So things are going good for us,

I hope you have a great week!

Cooking and baptisms

Elder Tyler Jones week 82

That’s crazy that church for you was cancelled. It’s hard to remember that you guys are in winter right now. It’s been in the 60’s and 70’s all week.

We had a good week, Herbert came to church again and it seemed like he likes it. This is his third time coming to church and he’s planning on being baptized the 24th of February. We’re pretty excited for that. Hopefully everything goes through with that.

We have had a lot of less active men come back.  Jordan’s dad, Marvin, has been pretty consistent in coming to church since Jordan’s baptism.  So that’s been pretty awesome.  We had 16 men in elders quorum this Sunday. 

The branch is hoping to turn into a ward at some point.  So we’ve been talking a lot about that. It still needs a bit of growing but it seems like it’s on its way. They’re definitely the biggest branch I’ve been in. We talked to the stake president and mission president this week about what would need to happen for them to be a ward but they weren’t quite sure.  They want to do a big missionary blitz like they did in my last area around Christmas time. I’m not sure how effective it was but we’ll be doing it anyway.

We had a valentines party on Saturday, where they made a lot of lasagna. We ended up having so much lasagna that after church on Sunday we all got together to eat lasagna again. Herbert came to the valentines party as well so he had a good time.

Today we went and played rugby for a few hours with our zone. That was a lot of fun. I also tried making gulab jamun. It turned out tasting like wet funnel cake. The problem is I don’t really like funnel cake. But the other elders like it so they’ve been going at it.
 

Have a great week!

Elder Tyler Jones week 81

It was an awesome week!

The Ramirez-Perez family got baptized! It was awesome, everyone was so excited a bunch of missionaries from a long time ago, which had already gone home, came back to the area to see them get baptized.  It was really an awesome service. 

We brought one of our investigators to the baptismal service and he seriously liked it. He mentioned that it was the first baptismal service he had ever been to. We talked to him for a bit and he said that he would like to be baptized. So we’re working with him to be baptized at the end of February. So we’re pretty excited about that. His name is Herbert. We found him knocking doors a few weeks ago. He’s come to church a couple times already. He’s from Guatemala and he’s living with some friends in an apartment. He works a lot to be able to send money back to his 4 daughters in Guatemala. He misses his daughters a lot and his wife doesn’t let him talk to his daughters any more, so he feels really bad about that.

Another man in the ward, named Gerardo, said that he would like to be baptized. He lives with a member and they want to get married it’s just going to be complicated to make that happen. So they’re not quite sure when he’ll be able to get married so he can be baptized.

We have transfers tomorrow. We’re all staying, so that should be good. 

I’m going to make some gulab jamun today. I’m pretty excited for that. I found it in an Indian grocery store.  There’s a lot of different types of shops and stores here from different cultures. I tried some samosas and this interesting lentil vegetable pocket thingy.

We played a lot of sports today as well. 

So it’s been pretty great!

Have a fantastic week!

Elder Ty Jones week 80

We had another great week!

Jordan got baptized! It was super awesome the whole branch showed up to support him and the family. His sister gave a talk about baptism that was super awesome. There were a lot of family members that aren’t members of the church there as well. So that’s exciting.

The Ramirez-Perez family is all good to go for this Friday. The mom and daughters are going to be baptized but the dad hasn’t decided yet. So hopefully he decides to do so. The branch is pretty excited for that since they’ve been actively coming to church for 2 years now. They’re some of the most active members we have.

We’ve got a few other people that are progressing well. So we’re excited for that. 

We had a branch party on Friday which was a lot of fun. A fair few showed up and we had nachos and played jeopardy. I ended up being the game host so it was a lot of fun.

We had a regional conference this Sunday. We all met in the stake center and they had talks by Patrick Kearon and D. Todd Christopherson. That was pretty good but it was hard to get people to come since the stake center is pretty far away.

I hope you have a great week!

Love,