Monday, June 22, 2015

19th Pday in Peoria and 42nd P day in Phoenix Mission part 2! HOT.

19th Pday in Peoria and 42nd P day in Phoenix Mission part 2!

HOT.



a gem he found looking at family history!
Hey, I was browsing our family line, and my 4xGreat (I think)
Grandmother's sister's grandson is Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). He's
on mom's side. It is Obidiah Tate's wife.

Pretty crazy, huh?


Elder Jones' "Air Conditioner"  (the FAN"
Hello, everyone! As you can tell by the title of my email, it is HOT.
Like, really hot. This week is going to be worse! But that doesn't
mean I'm not having a great time here in Arizona. When we're biking
around and its 110°F, attitude is everything. You can bike and
complain and be hot, or you can be positive and joke about being hot.
Either way you're going to be hot and gross; however, the temperature
doesn't have to affect how negative your thoughts are. That was my key
learning from this week. Anyway, here was my week!

Monday: Pday, and day 300 on the mission! I can't believe it's already
been this long. We got a pretty sweet referral from a member in the
ward. Excited, we knocked on their door in the evening. They weren't
there. So we decided to try back the next day or the next time we were
out finding. I'll get to that later in the email. I was told I'd give
a talk on Sunday so I prepared it during studies. I haven't ever given
a 20-minute talk in church so I didn't really know how to start, but I
did my best and received revelation on the topic. We had dinner with
the Centennial Ward bishop, and their dog just had 8 puppies. THEY ARE
SO CUTE. I'LL ATTACH PICTURES. After dinner we helped Chris and her
parents move some furniture, then we had a little lesson with her.
Plus cake. Cake is always good.
Temp: 106°F

Tuesday: We went to the thrift shop to volunteer. We helped move some
donations inside and sorted through them. Then we arranged and sorted
incoming books. Somehow we always get stuck organizing the books.
Haha! After service we cleaned up and headed to dinner at the
Hunsakers' home. Brother Hunsaker usually tries to force us to eat a
ton because he thinks it's funny. It's like a battle—who can overcome
the other? Haha. It's a friendly battle, though. "Here, Elder, you
need another piece of chicken." "No, I think I'm good, but thanks." He
turns to me, "Here, Elder, show your companion how it's done. Take
another piece of chicken." "No thanks, I'm full too!"...battles like
that. :) After dinner we visited Dion and talked with him a little bit
and set up a return appointment.
Temp: 91°F

Wednesday: It wasn't really that hot but it was still a pretty
miserable feeling. While helping at the thrift store a huge moving
truck came in. They were picking up donations. We unloaded the whole
truck. There were tables, couches, dressers, mattresses, and other
random things. The truck was about 20 degrees hotter than outside.
After service we showered and went out. We visited the sweet referral
we got. They answered and were NOT happy to see us. They were very
confused when we said that their friend told us that they were
interested. The member told us that THEY requested a missionary visit.
So yeah. That was a bummer. We had dinner with a member and then went
out with a member of the Elders quorum. We visited some members and
potential investigators. 3/4 of them opened up which was great!
Temp: 95°F

Thursday: Average Thursday—we weekly planned. We decided that we
should focus on part-member families because the work here is getting
kinda slow. We had dinner with the Parris family. They just moved into
the ward like 4 days prior. So we ate on their couch. :) They made
suuuuper good chicken, pepper, sausage, and shrimp skewers on the
grill. We went to our lesson with Angel, but she wasn't there. Again.
Sigh...we visited Chris and shared a message with her.
Temp: 100°F

Friday: District meeting! Our first one in three weeks! I led a
discussion on the importance of getting our investigators to sacrament
meeting. An insight that I read is that when the people we teach stop
coming to sacrament meeting, it gets easier for them to miss other
commitments like reading the scriptures and praying. When they come,
their progress is multiplied tremendously the next week. For instance,
Britney. She was pretty closed for the first few visits—until she came
to church. There, she was fellowshipped and opened up to us the very
next visit and set a baptismal date. Attending church is important. No
wonder it's a commandment! After the meeting Elder Bradshaw had to get
a new bike tire. He installed it, and we went out for a little while.
Chris took us to a pizza place for dinner because our dinner
appointment cancelled on us last minute. We then had a really solid
lesson with Britney. We taught the Plan of Salvation and the Spirit
was there. Our tongues were loosed as we testified of eternal
families, and His eternal plan for all of us.
Temp: 102°F

Saturday: My 10 month mark! To celebrate we went to Culver's for
lunch. Elder Bradshaw got a deluxe triple. He regretted it
later...haha. When we went home we looked through our paper area book
to see if there would be any potential. We found a couple people in
there and will be contacting them this week. We then went with Brother
Wincek to a lesson with Dion. Surprise, he wasn't there! So we went
visiting some people who Brother Wincek wanted to see. We had some
success there. Then the Winceks took us to a delicious deli. I ate the
whole sandwich really fast. Haha. We ended the night with a wonderful
lesson with Leah.
Temp: 104°F

Sunday: I gave a talk in the Oakwood sacrament meeting. It was 20
minutes. I haven't given a talk since I left, and I've never given one
that long. It went well, though. Chris got some pictures of me so I'll
send them. We had dinner on the other side of our area so that was
pretty miserable. But it was super fun. We had some delicious BBQ pork
which made up for it. After dinner we went finding. Not much luck, but
we tried!
Temp: 106°F

Monday: Non pday. We had a lesson with a new investigator, Paulo.
Elder Bradshaw and Elder Goehring contacted him at CVS Pharmacy and we
taught him the first lesson. He's YSA age, but it was great to get to
meet and teach him. We then had dinner and a lesson with Chris.
Temp: 111°F


I hope you all have a wonderful week. Keep in touch. I really
appreciate all of your prayers.


Much love,

Elder Jones
Oakwood / Centennial Wards
Arizona Phoenix Mission


Back row: Elders Weston, Bunn, Melsen, Ashby, Bradshaw, Jones, Langi,
Rodriguez, Langdon, Wolfgramm
Bottom row: Elders Earl, Safford, Goehring, Merrill, Owens, Gonzales,
Zaugg, Timm  ( Elder Langi who is standing next to Elder Jones is the big guy from Tonga that BYU has recruited to play football after his mission.  He is 6'7" i think and weighs 415 pounds.  He makes Elder jones look pretty small!)

His favorite!  Splurg!

look what they found in the church freezer!
New puppies
weekly planning break



Chillin' with Punnin'Head

Lone Elder- waiting to give a talk on Sunday!

Service car wash...

Or a way to stay cool?

Get that car CLEAN!




1 comment:

  1. This is last weeks email. Elder Jones gets to stay in Peoria 6 more weeks! And so does Elder Bradshaw! Yeah!

    ReplyDelete

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