Update from Ty

This week has been pretty good. First of all I went on exchanges with Elder Johnson. We decided to bike for a bit that day instead of driving. We met a very interesting man. As we were biking past him he told us to be careful because there was water up ahead. He said we couldn't go into the water, but we could be baptized in it. We decided to go into the water and see what it was like. It was actually one of those giant water collecting pond bayous, but it only had about an inch of water. We decided to bike around in the water, and Elder Johnson slipped and fell in. As soon as he fell in, that man came back and we took a neat picture with him. 😂😂

We also went tracting for our set hour on Thursday and we had quite a few interesting contacts. First we met a guy named Herbert who we've actually been back to. He's pretty cool. Then we met a guy who seemed really excited to see us, but who had to leave in a few minutes so he didn't let us in. Next we met a guy named Mathew who has recently lost his dad. He said that us coming over was a sign from God.

Then we met a crazy lady. We knocked on her door and she asked what we wanted. We said that we wanted to share a Christmas message about Christ. She then flipped out and said "who do you think you are coming to my house late at night (it was 6:30) and trying to talk about Jesus with me? I know my lord and savior Jesus Christ! Now get off my property before I sick my dogs on you!" We left her property, but she decided to come outside anyways. We are planning on going back sometime earlier in the day so she has no excuse to not talk to us 😂😂

We met with Rita again. She is doing very well. She has had a lot of miracles in her life lately. She told us that at work, everyone has been noticing how much she's been changing. Because of that she got a promotion. She works at Hampton inn, and she was one of the maids who would have to get all the rooms ready for new guests. But she got promoted, and her new position is a lot easier, and pays more, and now she even has Sunday's off. It's really sweet to see the miracles in her life. She came to church again on Sunday and met just about everyone in the ward. It was also the primary program that day and she really like it. The only thing I have to complain about is the gospel principles class she went to. We were teaching, and guess what the topic was? It was "The gathering of the house of Israel". Not exactly the kind of lesson you want an investigator to go to, but it was all still good.

Later that day we went out with President Hayes. He is from here in Beaumont, but he lives in Houston because he is the temple president at the Houston temple. We went out with him to visit a lady named pearl, and a lady named Stacy. They are both really nice, and it was cool to be with president Hayes for a couple of hours.

This week has been pretty good. We met and exceeded all of our goals. We are planning on baptizing Rita on the 23rd. Things are going pretty good.

That's all for now, have a great week. Love you!

Elder Jones

an awesome tamale stand

Here's that guy we met at the bayou

us with Rita

Floods

This week has been crazy. First of all, we met with Ty and Atiti again. They are still doing good, and should be baptized on the 17th. The only problem is that they probably won't be baptized by Elder Saunders and me. They are both in their early 20s and so they are probably going to go to the YSA ward, and there are other missionaries in that ward. We'll still count them as our baptism though :)

We didn't get a chance to meet with Bone this week because it's been raining pretty bad. There's actually been a lot of rain here. More than I've ever seen in Utah. Beaumont has a pretty good way of getting rid of the water, because they have 3 foot deep ditches on both sides of pretty much every road which the water goes into. Those all connect to huge bayou sized ditches that are about 40 feet wide and 20 feet deep. Basically all the water eventually makes it to the huge ditches and eventually runs down to a city called Port Arthur where it goes to the ocean. It usually works pretty well, but we had so much rain so fast that the large ditches filled up, and backed everything up onto the streets. Some places were about two feet under water and everyone's grass was swamped. It was pretty crazy. It's actually raining a lot still, but it's been slow enough that everything has had time to flow away. It's crazy too because it didn't even seem like that big of a deal. I guess people here are just used to it.

We also had what's called Interview Training this last Tuesday. It's where the APs and President Drake and Sister Drake come and speak to us. It was pretty good. It was a good chance to talk to president one on one.

We also do this thing on Thursdays at 6:00 PM called hour of power.  Basically it's the only time we really do any tracting. Elder Saunders and I drove all the way up to the top of our area to see someone we haven't seen in a long time. He wasn't there, so we decided to just do some tracting. The first door we knocked on there was a really nice lady named Alex there. She is in the military, but she's going to be home for a while. She was really nice and gave us punch after only talking to us a for about half a minute. We then talked to her for just over an hour. She took what we said pretty well.

This week has been pretty sweet. Lots of flooding though. Our zone actually got the lowest contacts in a while this week. Probably because of interview Training and the rain and all of the meetings we've had, but that's no excuse ;) so we'll do better this next week.

This Thanksgiving Week

This week has been pretty sweet! We met with Ty and Atiti again. They are doing very good. Atiti had a question for us because she said her mom was a devout Southern Baptist. We had taught Atiti last time that not just anybody can baptize, and how you need to have the proper authority. She said she had told her mom that, and her mom flipped out and said we were wrong, and that it didn't matter who baptized you. She asked us if there were any scriptures in the Bible that she could show her mom to prove to her that you need to have the proper authority. Which is really cool because everything we've taught her has just made sense to her.

We also had a great thanksgiving! We ate at our Ward Mission Leader's house with his family. We ate most of the same food as we eat in Utah, but NO MASHED POTATOES! We did have some sweet potato pie though. We also had some "cornbread dressing" it's really just stuffing, but for some reason it's called cornbread dressing down here.

We met with Rita again. She's doing very good. We are going to setup another baptism date since she couldn't make her last one because of a doctor visit.

We also met with Bone again. He's doing OK, but he's really just having a hard time with the Word of Wisdom. He'd be able to quit drinking a lot easier if he would get out of the empty lot he hangs out at a lot of the time (since most everyone there struggles with the Word of Wisdom).

We also went on exchanges twice this week. I went out to our Zone Leader's area one day, and we met some really interesting people. We met a Deacon from one of the many Baptist churches down here. We were talking to him in his front yard. We were explaining the Restoration, and he was certainly not open to it, but we kept talking for about ten minutes. He said to us, "You mentioned there was a modern day prophet, who is it?" I said it started with Joseph Smith, and as soon as I said that he flipped out and said, "Nope, nope, nope, nope. If it's anyone other than Jesus then it's wrong." He then walked inside and as left we said "What about Noah, or the other prophets?" But he was done with us :(

We also met a guy who was actually genuinely interested in the Gospel. While we were teaching him on the street, his phone kept going off, and he'd pick it up and say "just come by" and hang up. He actually had about 4 different phones on him, and when we asked him why, he said they were for work. He also said he was making way good money. Then, after we were done teaching, and walking away, he asked us if we wanted some drugs... We said no and kept walking. He was really nice though.

It's been a pretty good week. We will see what happens next week!

Also, one more thing, the church is doing an initiative called Light the World. Y'all need to go to www.mormon.org to check it out!

Love,

Elder Jones

It's almost thanksgiving!

This week was very interesting. First off, we have a new person on
date for baptism! His street name is Bone. We met him last Friday when
we were on bikes. He flagged a down and said he was ready to hear us
out. I guess some other missionaries had tried to teach him before. He
was sitting in an empty lot where there are a lot of homeless people
and drugs and alcohol (and gang violence) but we decided to stop by
anyways. We taught the restoration and gave him a pamphlet. That was
all last Friday, and so this Tuesday we came back at 4:00 like we
scheduled with him, and as it turns out, he was actually there, and he
had read the pamphlet.
Then we taught him about the Book of Mormon.
The next day we met him again and he had read 4 chapters, so we taught
him the plan of salvation.
The next day he had read through the pamphlet a lot and had some
questions on how we repent, so we taught him that and also taught him
about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The next day we taught him about the word of wisdom, and yesterday we
followed up with him on that and taught him some more commandments.
It's going to be very interesting to see where this goes. A lot of
times people are apprehensive about baptizing homeless people because
they sometimes just get baptized so they can get bishop's store house
food for free, but we don't get that feeling about Bone (Michael). But
it will be interesting to see where this goes.

We also met a completely crazy lady. She told us she was married to
bugs bunny. Here is a quote from her
"Bugs bunny! buuugs bunny! BUGGS BUNNAYYY! 7, 7. Lucky number 7! You
see the slots, you want 7. 7. 7. Lucky 7. BUGGS bunny. Born 1987.
Illuminati bugs bunny. I gave a man $5,000,000. Then I gave him 7. 7
milllliiioooon dollars! 7. Beyoncé."

I'm really not making any of that up. It was really weird, but also really sad.

We also taught these two girls named Ty and Atiti. We had been trying
to teach her friend Timeka, but she is always really busy. Ty and
Atiti are actually really open to the Gospel. We had a really good
lesson with them, and we'll be meeting with them tomorrow, so we'll
see how it goes!

We haven't been able to meet with Rita lately because her friend got
cancer and she's been busy helping her.

We had dinner with the Larsen family in our ward. They are really
cool. Brother Larsen has a whole factory in his shed where he makes
bullets which is really cool. He also went on a huge rant about the
election, and how the results of it lifted him out of a deep
depression.

Anyways this week was pretty great! I can't wait for thanksgiving!

-Elder Jones

This dope week

This weeks has been pretty dope. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to meet with Rita at all, because she's been really busy, and we've been pretty busy too.

Our district leader has to go on exchanges with everyone in his district at least once a transfer, and since our district leader is going home today, he's been really lazy and hadn't gone on any transfers, so two of the days last week, I wasn't even working in my area. 

Also, Thursday, we went to the Houston Temple. It's a really pretty temple. I have a picture I'll include in it.

I did have a few crazy experiences. First, one of our investigators called us up at about 8:00 and asked us to come over and "talk about Jesus". It was kind of hard to understand him but what he really meant, was that he wanted us to "talk to Jesus"

He had someone over from his church who was 1st, claiming to be Jesus, and 2nd higher than anyone I've ever seen. He told us he was Jesus, and he started speaking in tongues to us, and I think he cursed us too. The funniest part is when he quoted the Bible and told our investigator to "watch and be sober, because there are false prophets" funny stuff, but kinda sad too :(

Also, it's transfers today. So those two Elders are going home. Me and my comp are still together in the same area. My comp is District Leader now 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 so he as more than double the responsibilities of a normal missionary 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 he's not too happy about that 😂😂😂😂

Also, we are getting a car tomorrow, which will be really nice.

Update of Tyler

Sup,

This week has been pretty good. It's funny because there are these two Elders in my district, Elder Tukuafu and Elder Moos. They are going home in a week, and they're super lazy now :) It's just funny because they're so ready to go home. Elder Moos has a van, so he drives me and Elder Saunders around and it's just really funny how out of it he is. That and he just got a baptism Saturday, so he thinks that gives him even more reason to be out of it.

Something really cool this week is that one lady Rita, who gave us a bunch of stuff the day we met her. Anyways, we hadn't met with her for about a week and a half, so we just decided to stop by on Wednesday. We were talking about stuff, and she was telling us how she was just super mad one day because her kids had left her freezer open. All of her Cool Cups melted and a lot of frozen meat thawed out. Anyways, she was super mad. She just decided to pray and actually to read the Book of Mormon. It really calmed her down which was really good. Then after we talked about the plan of salvation a bit, we asked her to be baptized and she said yes! We set a date for the 26th. We asked her to come to church with us, and on Friday we took her on a church tour.

On Saturday we went back over to her house to teach her the word of wisdom. We figured we should teach her about that as soon as we could because she was always drinking beer whenever we saw her. She also fed us lunch, and while we were eating she asked us if we would want some tea to drink. We thought, "oh great, we're going to have to get her off of tea too". When we told her no, we don't drink tea, she said "oh that's OK, I don't either, I hate tea" so that was cool. Then we told her about the word of wisdom. It was funny because the whole time we were over there she was drinking out of a McDonald's cup, and she told us that she put beer in it so we couldn't tell what it was because she had started feeling guilty for drinking beer for some reason.

So basically the Spirit taught her the word of wisdom before we could :) She also came to church yesterday and she really liked it. When we were giving her the church tour Friday, she was asking us questions like "does your church have a rock band like mine" and stuff like that. So obviously our church was very different from hers. It was also fast and testimony meeting, which I've been told is usually not the meeting you hope to bring your investigators to. But every time someone would go up, they'd say something that was really good that I know Rita needed to hear. It was really cool.

Other than that, nothing much really happened.

Love - Elder Jones

My pumpkin started rotting

Update From Tyler

This week was a pretty slow week :( We had a lot more scheduled appointments cancel. But luckily we got a lot of new investigators, so we'll be able to teach a lot more this next week. This week was also pretty slow because a good part of it was scheduled with meetings and setting up for Halloween parties for our stake and things like that.

I didn't do any pranks this week, but I came way close to dumping flour on one of the other Elders in our apartment complex while he was in the shower.

We also had a lesson with this one lady we've been teaching for a while. We taught her the word of wisdom last week, and this week when we met with her again, she had completely stopped smoking. That was really cool. That is a big problem down here, because pretty much
everyone smokes.

We also had a really crazy experience this week. This guy named Pastor Jordan took us to an Islamic mosque. When we went in, we had to take our shoes off, and most everyone was kneeling on this rug, but we were just sitting on a chair. Whenever people would walk up to their spot on the mat, they'd say something in Arabic and kneel down. Then an Islamic pastor got up and gave a sermon. It was weird because he used some stories from the Quran that we'd never heard before. Then after that this random guy stood up and started yelling "Allahu Akbar" and everyone stood up. He then started singing in Arabic, and when he'd say "Allahu Akbar" everyone would kneel and kiss the ground, and he'd say it again, and everyone would stand up. It was really, really different, but the people were really nice, and it's really admirable how devout they are.

We also had a stake Halloween trunk or treat. We went to set that up and that was fun. We also got to be the judges of this chili cook off, which was fun. We went over with the Elders in our complex, because they have a car, and we picked up some other Elders that are in the Spanish branch. We also bought some candy so we were able to be a part of the trunk or treat. It was really fun.

Also, Wednesday we drove to Kingwood for new missionary training. I got my iPad, and on the way back we stopped at this place called Buck-ees.  Also, yesterday I found this cat. There's a lot of stray cats in Beaumont, but this one had a collar so I assumed it was safe. The cat just ran over and jumped on me and started purring, so that was cool.

I'm really loving my mission. The work is hard but I've already seen what impact the Gospel can have on someone's life.

Love,

Elder Jones

Update from Tyler

Mission life is going pretty good here, kind of a slow week though, we had a lot of appointments cancel.

The other day I woke up at 6:30 and went into the bathroom. Greeting me was this giant cockroach on the wall, it was nearly three inches long. It kinda freaked me out, but whatever, so I left the bathroom, closed the door, and told my comp. In a slightly alarmed voice, he asked me if I had killed it. I said no. About 30 minutes later my comp was going to go take a shower, but he wanted to kill the cockroach before he took the shower. The last time I saw it, it had run behind the toilet. We sprayed the toilet with some cockroach poison, but never noticed anything running away. My comp still wouldn't take a shower without knowing where the cockroach was. Luckily I found it in the kitchen area where we sprayed it with the poison and killed it. When my comp got into the shower, I tied a string on one of the cockroach's legs, and hung it from the ceiling in our walk-in closet so that the cockroach was at head level. Since you had to make a turn in the hallway to get into the closet, you couldn't see it until it was right in front of you. Anyway, my comp gets out of the shower, walks into the closet, and nearly gets a mouth full of dead cockroach and freaks out. He didn't like that... :)

It has been a pretty slow week since many of our solid investigators were really busy, or had health issues, or their friends had health issues. There are a lot of refineries and factories here, so that's probably why there are so many people getting sick. 

This week we also had Zone Conference which took up almost a whole day on Wednesday. We also had a few service opportunities. I fixed my ward mission leader's chainsaw, which was cool, and I made my comp's fat tie a skinny tie, which was cool, and I tore down a lot of wallpaper, which was cool. 

We did meet a lady named June this week. She's a recent convert and always super sarcastic which is actually quite funny. We stopped by her house a few days ago to say hi, and she told us to grab some of her camping chairs and sit down. Then she says "I can't believe someone would just throw away these perfectly good chairs", (they weren't perfectly good). In addition to her humor, she's really nice too.

My dad asked me how I was dealing with the adjustment, homesickness, weather, etc. The adjustment really isn't that big of a deal. This is my life now, :) better have a good attitude :)

Thanks for all of your support and prayers. If you get a minute drop me a line and let me know how you're doing.

Love,

Elder Jones

Update from Tyler

This week has been pretty fun. We contacted 18 people and asked them to be baptized, which is really good. We had a lot of lessons cancel on us, but that's OK I guess. We also had a great lesson with that lady who gave us all that Ramen and stuff last week, so that was a good experience.

It really just hit me how different this place is. Most places are really run down. There are some places that are actually pretty nice, but they're only as good as a typical Kaysville neighborhood. There is this one park where there is a lot of gang violence and shootings, which is kind of scary, especially considering the shootings happen in broad daylight, but its far enough away that I'm not scared.

It was kind of scary the other night though. My comp and I parked our bikes on the end of this street and walked up the street knocking doors. We met this one atheist guy who showed us a video about how religion is all made up and what not. I asked him a few questions and ultimately stumped him and then bore my testimony. I asked if we could come back, and he said no. :) but the scary part was when we were heading back down the road to our bikes. It was really dark and there weren't many streetlights and we had to walk past these two guys. One of them clearly had a gun in his pocket, and the other had a huge wad of cash.

I've learned that when dealing with some of the people there is this thing we do called "The Point". When we see one of our black "homies", we just raise up our hand like we're going to wave, but instead we just raise up one finger and point kind of at them and then up in the air. They do it back and they know we're homies. Honestly, I'm not worried about getting hurt here at all.

It's a little sad here too, because there are a lot of people who believe in God, but they don't want to change or anything. Most of the contacting I do goes like this:

me: "Christ gave his apostles the authority to baptize, right?"

dude: "Oh yeah, amen brother"

me: "All of the apostles died and that authority was gone from the earth"

dude: "Oh yeah"

me: "That authority to baptize has been brought back in our Church, and only in our Church"

dude: "Amen! oh yes brother"

me: "Will you be baptized by that restored authority?"

dude: "I've already been baptized"

me: "But will you be baptized again, this time by the proper authority of God?"

dude: "I've already been saved"...

No, its not all that bad, but that's 70% of my contacting, kinda funny, but kinda sad.

There's also this church here called the Calvary baptist church which is crazy. The members are super devout, and the church is one of the top businesses here in Beaumont. They're super anti-Mormon, so if we meet anyone from that church there's almost no hope, kinda sad. There is this guy from there named Pastor Jordan who takes me and my comp to Golden Corral every Thursday for lunch. He has this goal in life to unite all the churches into one. He'll say stuff like "If Joseph Smith said he was a prophet, then he was a prophet. Amen brother!" He's really nice.

Another different thing is the home teaching here. Our ward is a pretty good ward, but their home teaching is at less than 10%. The thing is, that home teaching means so much more here than in Kaysville. We met this member family yesterday who just lost their baby. They aren't super active, and the ward had no idea what they were going through. It was really sad because their house was way dirty. Their walls were covered in all sorts of gross stuff and their carpet was filled with crumbs and gross things. Their mom is really sick right now, because she had a late stage miscarriage, and the dad works a lot. What's even sadder is the fact that the ward had no idea, it's just really sad.

Anyways, this might seem like my week was really sad, but it wasn't. I'm just realizing things are a lot different from Kaysville, but the important things are the same.

I'm really loving it down here.

Elder Jone

First Week in the Field

Hey everyone!

Texas is sweet. I was assigned to an area called Beaumont. It's way sick. It isn't as ghetto as I was told, it's actually quite nice. There is a culture shock since 99% of the people around here are black which is really different. Everyone is so nice though. I love talking to black people since they are so nice. They all love us down here too. We also just got our car taken away because apparently Salt Lake needed cars back, so we are now in a biking area. Everyone says that biking stinks but it isn't that bad.

Anyways, in our first week we taught 13 investigator lessons and three member lessons. We have this thing in our mission called "Fear No Man" which just means that everyone you meet you should ask them to be baptized. We did that 20 times this week which is about double what my companion has ever done before. It was great.

My comp and his old comp had been teaching this kid named Keith for a while. We went over to his house a few days ago and ended up talking to his brother. When we were saying the prayer, his mom came outside and invited us to come in. She was just super nice. She said that she was really grateful for us helping out Keith because he was hanging out with a bad crowd. She said she was just really proud that we were out on missions and not getting messed up with drugs and stuff. Anyways after we taught her, she started giving us stuff. She gave us a bunch of Ramen and a box of frosted flakes, and some soaps and shampoos and some toothpaste. It was so funny, she was so nice.

Pretty much everyone we teach or meet wants us to come back and teach them again. There was this one guy named Michael Pengar who we were teaching who told us that if we were ever in any trouble we should just call him because everyone knows him. 

Anyway, its way fun here. I love my mission!

Love you!

Elder Jones

Tyler is in Houston

Tyler's Mission President


Your Missionary has arrived safely to T.H.E. Mission! Upon arrival we met your missionary at the airport.  They went to the Kingwood Church, had lunch and focused on training and interviews were conducted by President Drake.  Then they met their new companion and were transported to their area of service. They are now out diligently searching for our Heavenly Father's children and doing the work of the Lord. Thank you for sending your son's and daughter's to us, they have added great strength to our small army here in the Texas Houston East Mission. We love them and are so grateful to have them with us. You will find attached a picture of your newly arrived missionary with Sister Drake and myself as well as their arriving group and Trainer.

 Message from Tyler




So I got to Texas yesterday, and that was fun. I met my new companion. He's great. He's actually from Layton. The area is pretty good. I still don't know where anything is, and it's really weird how there aren't any mountains around. The humidity isn't too bad either. My comp said our area is actually pretty ghetto. My comp told me a story of something that happened to him at our apartment, but I don't want to scare you so I won't tell you 😋

First Message from the MTC‏

Hello everyone!

My first two weeks at the MTC have been great! I've learned so much and I've never felt the Spirit more in my life! Everyone is so nice and fun to be around.

I'll be leaving for Houston at 5 AM next Monday. I have a connecting flight in Denver, and then I'll be in Houston at noon. I can't wait!

The MTC is kinda tough though. The classes are really long and the food is just average BYU food. I really can't wait to get to Texas!

There's this one guy in our district called Elder Swanson. He's from way up north in Idaho, and for the first week or so everybody thought he was autistic. Not in a mean way or anything, it's just that he never socialized or talked, and was always taking notes with this super small handwriting. No joke, he was ALWAYS taking notes. Anyways, Sunday night we were watching 17 miracles, and when the movie was over, and me and my comp, and Elder Swanson and his comp were walking back to the room, I had the impression to just put my arm around the guy, and make him feel better. I kind of ignored it, but it came again a few seconds later, so I did, and ever since then he's opened way up. He's actually a really normal kid, and he's really funny. He really doesn't have the slightest hint of autism or anything. but that Sunday night when I was going to sleep I just started crying because I realized it was the Holy Ghost telling me to just make him feel better.

-Elder Jones