Week 27 - Happy New Year!

Hey everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. It definitely was fun to be able to Skype home with my family, and to talk with them. What wasn't exciting was having to hang up...

However, it is exciting to start a new year! We have been asked by our mission president to sacrifice things that are holding us back from being consecrated missionaries. The new year gives all of us the same opportunity; to change something so that we can become more devoted to our Heavenly Father and to Jesus Christ. I know that if I follow that counsel and show my love for God by sacrificing something, that I will be able to feel the Spirit more effectively in my work! I can promise the same for each of you.

Since Christmas we've been able to see some neat things happen. We went to visit a less-active in one of our wards, but ended up teaching a non-member who is now one of our investigators. He's a 19 year-old kid with a smoking problem. The Spirit was interesting in that lesson because Elder Crabb and I felt like we should promise him that as long as he kept meeting with us, that he wouldn't want to smoke anymore. At the end of lesson, he pulled out his cigarettes and said that he could already feel that promise working. I was super excited! I'm glad to be able to be apart of this Work!

Anyway, I hope you all have a happy new year! Keep in touch!

Love,

Elder Jones

Week 26 - Merry Christmas!

Dec 22, 2014 

 

Cousins Elder Koval and Elder Jones serving in the same Zone!

 

 

 

Friends and Family,
 

I just want to say how grateful I am for the Christmas season. It's a really wonderful thing to be able to have my thoughts directed more towards the Savior during this time of year (although that should be the case year round). There's something about the Christmas Season that really softens peoples' hearts. I don't know about any of you, but I think that's definitely the Spirit.

 

This past week, we had our mission Christmas party. We had the opportunity to come together as a mission and celebrate the birth of the Savior. I had a lot of fun. The sad thing was that we had transfers the same day. 28 missionaries went home, and some of those people have become some of my best friends. It was sad to see them go, but they've served their time. It's weird to think about how that'll be me in 18 months, but I'm trying to put that thought out of my head as much as possible.

 

Even though all the Christmas festivities have been going on, we still were able to do missionary work! We are still handing out the He is the Gift cards (remember to #SharetheGift!) In addition to that, our mission has set some really big goals to further the Work here. They want the mission to have at least 1400 member-present lessons a month and 720 baptisms for next year. We have started to work on accomplishing those goals. We had a lesson with a member present last week that resulted in us having a couple set for baptism! I'm super-excited to work with them; it will be challenge because they are living together (they're not married) and they smoke. But the one investigator told us that he knows the church is true, so we definitely have room to work with!
 

In addition to that, President Ahlander challenged the mission to read the four Gospels before Christmas. When he issued the challenge two weeks ago, I made the determination to do it. I am happy to say that I finished reading them this morning! It was tough, but I definitely learned a lot about Christ. My favorite story would definitely have to be in John 9 when Christ healed the blind man. The man, after receiving his sight, testified that he believed that Christ was a prophet of God because he healed him. The Pharisees didn't like that so they cast him out of the synagogue. These are my favorite verses:

 
35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?

 36 He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?

 37 And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.

 38 And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.

 

I hope that we all can be like that. To recognize the miracles in our lives and realize the source of those miracles. I hope we all can remember the Savior's birth this Christmas season, but more importantly, I hope that we can remember His life.

 

I love all of you! Merry Christmas!

 

Elder Jones

Week 25 - Almost Christmas

Elder Crabb

 Friends and Family,

It's crazy to think about it, but I have already been serving a mission for almost 6 months. I just can't fathom how fast the time goes. I blink and it's just gone.

All in all, I have had a really awesome week! It's rained a bunch this past week, so my companion Elder Crabb and I have sloshed along in the mud while tracting several times. My shoes pretty much got caked with mud. It makes me look like I work hard ;)

Rain tracting is fun, but it makes it even better if you have a good companion. Elder Crabb is awesome. When we do missionary work, it's really fun because we can just laugh and enjoy each other's company from appointment to appointment. To be truthful, companions really can make or break your mission! If both missionaries are on the same page, so many things can get done!

Since our priority for this month is to hand out the He is the Gift pass along cards, we have made it our focus to hand out 10 a day. For missionaries in Vegas, 10 cards should take no time. But here in Logandale, it's an ordeal. One day this past week, we handed out cards from 10:30am all the way to 6:45pm. It was definitely hard, but one of our APs put it best when he quoted D+C 58:27 to us upon hearing about our day:

Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;

Although we don't have too many investigators now, we are working as hard as we can to find people to teach. My testimony has grown, especially as we've contacted more less-actives and potential investigators this past week than my entire time here.

Yesterday in church, a lady walked up to me and said, "Zachary Jones!" The fact that anyone knew my name caught me off guard. Turns out that she is the close friend to my great-Aunt Darlene. It's always cool when you run into connections like that.

I love you all! Make sure to write and let me know how you all are doing. I hope you all have a merry Christmas!

Love,

Elder Jones

Week 24 - Lots of work=Lots of fun!

 

Hey family and friends!

My companion and I have had a really exhausting week. Elder Crabb is the district leader, so he is supposed to go on companion exchanges with everyone in the district! Unfortunately, we had three days of exchanges back-to-back-to-back. That was a really long three days, but we were able to get a ton of stuff done.

On Wednesday, we hit the ground running. We contacted 6 referrals and gained several new potential investigators. On Thursday, we did the same thing and ended up contacting 4 different referrals. On Friday, I went on exchanges with my Zone Leader Elder Kennedy and we worked in his area. Everyday, my companions and I would tract and hand out 10 of the He is the Gift Christmas cards. After we went home, I was just about finished. I pretty much went to sleep as quickly as possible.

However, the work continued into Saturday as we helped a non-member lady move into our ward (she's a potential investigator) around 8 am. Then we helped one of our wards set up for the Christmas party. We had the Christmas party around 6 pm that night, but we left early to hand out our 10 cards for the day.

It's so fun being a missionary when there are things to do. When there aren't, it can be pretty brutal, but as long as you keep a good attitude about the whole thing and then work hard, the Lord will help you to feel satisfied with the work that you're doing.

I hope you've all been utilizing the new He is the Gift video! We've had a lot of cool opportunities in sharing that!

Have a great week!

Elder Jones

Week 23 - He is the Gift!

Hello friends and family!

I hope that you all have had a great week. Things here in Logandale and Overton are definitely interesting! It's a lot different from serving in Vegas. There aren't as many people around, and the ones that are end up being Mormon. That doesn't mean there isn't work to do. We're trying to work a lot more with less-actives and part-member families, and we even have a couple investigators that we're working with!

We helped an older member in our ward put up a 12-foot star with lights in his front yard. After which he began to tell us about all the people that lived on his street. He gave us 3 referrals! After that, he told us that he has 3 grandsons on missions. We told him him where we were from. After we talked, I asked him if we could pray with him. He responded by saying, "Heck Yeah!!" (Keep in mind this brother is probably in his late-80s). It was a really fun service-opportunity.

I really want to tell you all about the new initiative that the church has put out! It's called He is the Gift. Along with the initiative, the Church has put out a new video in regards to the Christmas season. I encourage all of you to go to christmas.mormon.org, watch the video, and then share it with #SharetheGift. The Church is really pressing this in terms of missionary work. Along with your December Ensign, you should have gotten a pamphlet with a bunch of pass-along cards. Christmas is probably the easiest way to share the Gospel. Handout a pass-along card and share the video. Also, the video is so important that the church has bought all the ad time on YouTube's homepage from December 7th all the way through the New Year.  It's super important that you invite friends to watch it.

My new roommates are pretty interesting. They're Spanish speaking Elders. One thing they like to cook for lunch on occasion is cow heart... I haven't tried it yet (and I probably won't) but they tell me it's good.

My Thanksgiving was great! We only had one appointment (thank goodness), but we still ate too much (never mind). I hope all of your Thanksgivings were good too! It's definitely weird not being with my family for the Holidays...

Love you all! Keep in touch, send pics, and let me know how you all are doing!

Love,

Elder Jones

Week 22: Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey friends and family!

My week has been one unexpected circumstance after another. Like I said in my last email, I've been transferred to Logandale, NV. I cover two wards - one in Overton and the other in Logandale. My new companion is Elder Crabb, a missionary from Colorado. We work really well together, probably better than my last couple companions.

We had some cool spiritual experiences. The one I will tell you about involves prayer. So here in Logandale, most everybody's Mormon so it's hard to find non-members to talk to. We were walking around, and we decided to say a prayer. After saying the prayer, we contacted and tracted into member after member. I even told Elder Crabb that I thought my Spidey-senses were off a little bit. We were walking back to our car when we saw someone coming are way so we contacted them. They turned out to be non-members, so we shared a scripture with them. After that, we asked if they were interested in learning more (they weren't) but they said their friend Larry might be. So we followed them back to their house. We met Larry and his dad Robert. Larry is a non-member/atheist but Robert turned out to be an inactive member of the Church! Robert is hard to teach, but he said we could come back whenever. Hopefully we will have the opportunity to teach Larry and Robert so that we can help them come to church sometime! Heavenly Father literally put us in the right place at the right time to meet them that day.

We've also had some interesting adventures. On Friday, we were driving on some dirt roads and got our car stuck in some really soft sand around 8 pm. The wheels wouldn't turn so Elder Crabb tried to get the wheels unburied while I tried to use the accelerator to get us out. Our minivan doesn't have a 4-wheel drive so we ended up getting pretty stuck. 

We got back on the main road around 9 pm and knocked on a random house for help. An older-woman answered the door gave us a ride back to our car, and we ended up knocking on another door. The man who answered is a cop. He called one of his friends (who just so happened to be the second counselor in our ward) to come pull us out. We had some crazy coincidences that led to us getting our car pulled out. It's safe to say that Heavenly Father was aware of our situation and helped us to be safe.

In short, missions are awesome. You get the opportunity to rely on Heavenly Father as much as possible. And the best part is that he actually responds by giving you what you need.

I love you all! Keep in touch!

Sincerely,

 
Elder Jones

Week 21: New Transfer, New Area

17 November 2014

Hey everybody!

As you probably could tell from the subject line, I'm being transferred from my home here in the Meadows 8th ward to a ward in Logandale. Based on the teasings by my fellow missionaries in the Meadows Zone, I've been "exiled" from the Las Vegas Valley... Oh well! I'm pretty excited to serve in Logandale for the next couple of months. I hear there's lot of service opportunities (farm/ranch work), no Walmart, and lots of mormons! It's certainly going to be an adventure.

What's interesting is how you grow to love the area you serve in. To be honest, this area had been a struggle when I first got here, but I've met so many new people and have gained a lot of new friends who I hope keep in contact. That's the way the Lord works; you first show Him your willingness by enlisting in His army, then you show your humility by being obedient to His orders, and, lastly, He helps you to feel satisfied with your work when the job is done. I really do love this place; I'm sad to leave.

I watched a Mormon Message this past week called "You Never Know". It's about a mom who wants to go and spend a couple hours with her cousin, but her day seems to be eaten up by babysitting, kids' science projects, comforting and consoling friends, making dinner for people, etc. At the end of the day, she is upset because she was unable to hang out with her cousin. She feels like a failure; but when her son says the family prayer, she's able to realize how much good she did that day. At the end of the video, President Hinckley gives a quote:

"Many of you think you are failures. You feel you cannot do well, that with all of your effort it is not sufficient. We all worry about our performance. We all wish we could do better. But unfortunately we do not realize, we do not often see the results that come of what we do. You never know how much good you do."

President Hinckley is the man! I hope and pray that you all can feel satisfied with whatever work the Lord gives you as long as you do your best. That is certainly how I feel now that I'm being transferred.

I love all of you! Keep in touch and be safe!

Love,
 

Elder Jones

p.s. congradulate Maddie Widgren for me! She'll do great!