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