Week 19

December 27, 2011

Hi Family!!!

Since the library was closed yesterday on our preparation day we had to do our emailing today. Sorry if that confused you!

First of all, it was soo fun talking to you on Christmas Day! I just loved seeing everybody and getting to hear your voices. It's official, I have the best family ever!! (Hands down.) It was too bad Dave and Anthony couldn't be there, but I totally understand. That reminds me... Can I get Anthony and Justin Jones' email address from somebody? Thanks!! I hope you all remember the commitments I left with each side of the family and decide to ACT. :) 

Here's a reminder:

-Jones family: Have a missionary experience THIS week. Remember to pray about it and look for opportunities that come. Also, make a mormon.org profile.

-Bennett/ Jones family: Focus on personal prayers and study Christ's life and the atonement.

I know you will be blessed as you follow through on the commitments you have made. As you do these things you are showing your love for Heavenly Father. (And also me, haha!)

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for the gifts that you gave me for Christmas!! I will be writing thank you cards hopefully this next week if I have time but I just want you to know that I really appreciate everything.

So let me tell you why this was such an incredible Christmas!! I get all happy and excited just thinking about it.

Although I love my family very much, I didn't have any feelings of homesickness or anything like that. (please don't take offense. haha!) I how no doubt whatsoever that this is where I'm supposed to be right now that it takes away any possible feelings of selfpitty or sadness. A lot of people ask, "Are you sad to be away from your family during this season? I bet that's hard." "Aww, I feel so bad for the missionaries during this season." Then I have to respond with, "Actually, there is no other place I would rather be right now and I couldn't be happier!" They look a bit puzzled but it's so true!

I feel like we have a big family here in Grand Island that takes good care of us. So I'll go through real quick what we did on Christmas Eve and day.

Christmas Eve:

-Went to Stuhr Museum with Sister Butler and looked at all of the trees that were decorated and donated by different clubs and groups from G.I. It was really cool and helped us feel like it really was the Christmas season!

- Had a lesson with Michele and her husband Bob. Michele is doing good and bought herself a nice quad scripture set. She loves it!

- The missionaries from Grand Island went caroling at a nursing home. Oh my goodness, I LOVE caroling!!!! I'm probably going to make this a tradition because it's amazing. Not only does it make me super happy but it brings the Christmas spirit to others and puts a big smile on both of our faces. Doesn't get much better than that! Luckily the 6 of us missionaries (Me, Sister Ashby and Elders Meza, Samuel, Elkington, and Edmunds) sounded pretty good together singing, if I do say so myself. We even had some harmony and all that good stuff in the mix.

- Then we had dinner with the Noorlander family! A cute, young family with 3 little kids ranging from ages 5-9. It was so fun to have dinner with them and see how excited the kids were for Santa to come. They gave us each a present with a ton of food in it and also gave us all of the left overs since they were leaving to UT the next day.

- After that we went home and opened presents! It was weird going home so early but President suggested not to be out visiting people or tracting. So me and Sister Ashby had a fun time having Christmas Eve together!

Christmas Day:

-We woke up bright and early to go have breakfast with the President of the Spanish branch and his wife. They had the 6 of us G.I. missionaries over to eat and open presents. The elders brought their presents that they got from home and opened them there. We didn't get that memo so we opened them the night before. It was pretty funny seeing what they all got!

-All 3 wards from Grand Island were combined for a Christmas program with really nice musical numbers. Sister Ashby was part of two different songs. She's a good singer! (That's why we sounded so good caroling. lol)

-After church we went to the Butler's house to talk to the family on skype! YAY!! What a fun time that was! That was the fastest two 30 minutes sessions ever! Time just flew by and I didn't even get to hear much about your lives. Luckily we can email and I can get the scoop there. I loved visiting with you all though. After skype we had lunch with their family and they too gave us all of the leftovers since they are leaving town as well. We have lots of leftovers.

- A little bit after that we had dinner with the Loveday's in the ward with 3 little girls.

-Then we went carroling to Michele and Bob since they are always by themselves and don't have any friends outside the ward. They were just so happy to have visitors on Christmas day.

Christmas was a fun and busy day where we got to spend quality time with a lot of different ward members! It was amazing! It was so nice to be able to really get to spend time and reflect on the Savior's birth as well. We didn't have to get caught up with  gifts or any of the other distractions that normally come with Christmas time. I am so grateful for the Christ's life and for his atonement. I am grateful to be a missionary and testify of him every single day. It's truly a blessing to be representative of Him in everything I do. What an honor. Whenever I think of the Savior I am so motivated to be the best person I can be and especially be the missionary that He would have me be. I am grateful for all of your love and support. Thank you for everything!

I love you all so much and am grateful for your examples and the ways that you serve others. You are amazing!

Love,

Sister Jones

(Hopefully this long email makes up for the wimpy one last week!)

Week 18

December 21, 2011

Hi everyone!!

So we found out about transfers today... and Me and Sister Ashby are both staying in Grand Island! Yay! We are happy about that and so is the ward! :)

Wow, so a lot has happened in the past week and a half but I can't really remember all of it. I'll do my best to sum it up in the few minutes I have left of email time! EEK!

We had zone training this past week and it was focused on the atonement! It was awesome! All of the missionaries had to come with a short talk prepared about how the atonement has blessed their lives and then a couple missionaries would randomly be picked on to give their talk. Well guess what?! I was 1 out of 3 missionaries to be chosen! I wasn't too surprised though. I kept thinking it would be me then shoving it out of my head thinking, "There are about 50 other missionaries or so that could give it... I'm off the hook." haha. Nope! But it was really cool and I am grateful that I had that opportunity. I wish I had time to share more of my thought about the atonement. But it is one of the greatest blessings that we have and it helps me to continually strive to be better and work towards becoming like the Savior. (So that was surprise talk #1)

Surprise talk #2: Bishop called me on Friday to give a talk in sacrament this past Sunday. Normally I would be going crazy that I didn't have much time to prepare a talk and then would do a ton of research and type it up perfectly on the computer... but as a missionary it is very different. No computer and not many resources except for the sciptures and general conference talks, which is a proabably a good thing. I LOVED my topic for the talk though. It was: What Would Jesus Do? And the talk was focussed on the conference talk "Doing the right thing, at the right time, without delay." I was so excited when Bishop told me what I would be talking about. So I happily accepted! I believe the talk went well! That's what people told me at least. It was only about 12 minutes and I was able to just have about 5 bullet points and the talk in front of me. That's when you really have to let the Spirit guide. A lot of the talk was about service and becoming like the Savior.

I've officially decided I LOVE trailor parks!! (At least the ones where peole speak English.) We found 3 new investigators this week in a trailor park we found and it was awesome! Sister Ashby was hesistant to go there and didn't really want to tract around there but I felt good about it so we started knocking and everyone we talked to let us in and we shared the gospel with them. Yay for trailor parks!! :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! I have to go. love you all!!!

Week 17

December 12, 2011

Hola familia!!

It sounds like life is getting kind of stressfull and crazy now that finals are here and the Christmas season is rapidly approaching. Good luck to everybody that is taking finals right now! I'm praying for you! I remember those days like it was yesterday... good times! haha! Missionary work has stresses of it's own kind but I don't really miss taking finals.

Things are going well out in Grand Island! Everything is nice and white, covered in snow! It's been in the 30's recently. On the days it has been in the high 30's we get all happy and excited... who knew there would be a day when I would be happy it was 37 degrees out as the high. I forgot to mention before but when it snows and the roads are a little bit slick they ground the cars, meaning we drive our cars home, park them, and start walking. Even when the roads don't seem too bad they have been grounding them... so i have a feeling we'll be doing a lot of walking this winter. The Elders have been letting us use the car a lot recently and giving up their turns with it. We are SOOO grateful for that! We even made them cookies to try and show how thankful we are.

We had a cool experience earlier this week! We were about to visit a less-active person and before we left the car to his house we prayed we would be able to find new investigators and to put people in our path to talk to. So we go and visit with the LA man and then right when we get out there is somebody standing out in the cold outside his door drinking coffee! (Weird!) So we visit with him and we're able to give him a Book of Mormon and invite him to read and pray about it. He was pretty open and said he would read. Then right after that we went to visit a person who has never opened their door and a girl opened and said we could come in and we taught her the first lesson. It was awesome to see our prayers directly answered like that!

Sister Ashby and I have been able to push a lot of cars out of the snow from being stuck. We feel so buff after that. Every person we have helped is a man and so he's in the car pressing on the gas and then 2 girls are pushing the car to get out of their parking spot or out of an icey patch. We have been successful every time! Oh yeah! Our new motto is, "Sisters to the rescue!"

We walked all day Saturday and we were so tired by the end of the day. A lot of side walks aren't shoveled so we get to trudge through snow a lot. Sister Ashby has fallen about 4 times. It's hilarious! We both just laugh and then keep on going. I haven't fallen or slipped yet. (I'll probably fall today because I said that!)

Just a reminder: On the week before Christmas my p-day will be on  Wednesday 21st and then transfers will be Dec 22nd.

Have a great week everybody!! I love you!!

Week 16

December 5, 2011

Hi family!! (and other friends that read this)

How is everyone doing? Thanks for all of your emails and letters. I appreciate hearing back from people!

So this has been a pretty good week! Michele was baptized on Saturday!! YAY!! It turned out really well despite all of the craziness that took place that day. I heard that putting together a baptism was a stressful experience and I thought they just didn't know how to plan very well. Well, I am here to say that it is stressful. We had everything beautiful orchestrated out and organized to perfection. Then it started snowing, and snowing, and snowing Saturday morning. It really wasn't that bad but people in the ward were acting like they have never experienced snow before. I was so confused because I thought Nebraskans were tough and were used to weather much worse than what was on Saturday. But anways, as the snow kept falling people were calling and cancelling on us. First a few people with the refreshments called and said they couldn't make it. That's fine, we'll get by without that. Then Michele's ride 20 min before the baptism said they didn't feel comfortable driving and they couldn't pick her up. Then the man baptizing Michele said he was still doing a surgery at the hospital and probably wouldn't be able to make it. (15 min before the baptism.) I was just laughing as all this was happening. It was crazy! All of our plans were falling through because of the snow! But in the end we were able to find Michele a ride and also find a ride for the people who were giving a talk at the baptism. Also, the man who baptized her was able to make it last minute. We also had someone come with refreshments. Phew! Sister Ashby and I held it together pretty well throughout the day. The baptism turned out great though and everything ran smoothly starting 5 min before her baptism. Luckily Michele had no idea what was going on behind the scenes of people canceling. There was still a good amount of people that came to support her, even with the snow and road conditions.

Michele was so happy and excited at her baptism. It was so nice to see her all in white ready to make this commitment with the Lord. Sister Ashby and I even sang a duet! We sang the famous baptism song, "When I am Baptized." I know what you're thinking, "You really sang in front of people?" Yes, I did. Only because I love Michele. I figured if I can sing in the car, shower, or at home I can sing in front of a big group of people at someone's baptism. haha! It turned out pretty well, or so people told us. I also gave a talk on baptism. Everything went really good and there was a special spriit at her baptism. She is amazing and I'm so grateful I've been able to teach her and watch her progress.

Some other experiences this week:

-A few weeks ago a woman had us pray with her that she could have some toilet paper to get her through the rest of the month before her money for the month came. It was so sad that she is just scraping by so tight. We decided we could be the answer to that prayer so we anonymously brought by a few rolls of toilet paper for her. When we went by to see her this week she said she knows it was us and just started bawling saying how grateful she was for us. She was crying and crying about how we are angels and an answer to her prayer. She is such a sweet lady and has a real testimony of God. It was a neat experience and very humbling.

- We give service at the Salvation Army clothing store every week. That's always fun and we meet some really nice people.

-BJ committed to quit smoking yesterday! She's been smoking since she was about 7 so this is a major step for her.

- The weather is getting pretty cold here! The wind is crazy some days and that's the worst part. Earlier this week I had my glasses on and we were walking and every time I breathed it fogged up my glasses and then the wind would clear it up. I had to deal with that all day long because my eye was acting weird the past week. It was pretty funny though. And whenever we walked into some body's house my glasses would fog up again and I would have to take them off and clean them. But I am layering up a lot so the only thing that is exposed is my face. I need to find a stiffer scarf that will stay up and cover my face. We are tough so the weather isn't a huge deal. It's really pretty that snow is everywhere!

Well time to go! Have a great week!! Love you all!

-Sister Jones