Hey mom and family! Nice to hear from you again. I am going to answer those two questions first thing. I decided to go on a mission because I committed to doing it when I was young in Primary and also I saw examples such as my dad and my brother serve and they both talk about their missions all the time and I wanted experiences like theirs. Also, I guess you can say that I had the desire of teaching people about the Book of Mormon. The second answer is. I am glad I am on my mission because I have discovered more of a reality that this Gospel is true and that it really is important that everyone has it. I have realized for myself that families can be together forever, and that nothing will make you happier than by living the Gospel fully. Blessings really do come as you obey the commandments. I know now that nothing else is as near as important as this Gospel. I really have discovered true happiness on my mission and I am glad I am on it and I wish I could stay longer than two years.

I am sad that I missed out on conference with the family this year again. I miss the breakfast. I do get to see all five sessions and it was amazing. I tell you Conference is like Disneyland for missionaries. There were so many good talks. President Monson is hilarious and very warm like you said mom. His talks are always really good. I enjoyed both of Henry B. Eyring’s talks. I think he is my favorite speaker. They are funny and spiritual and really simple. I like his talks a lot. I liked everyone’s talks a lot. I can’t believe I just did crossword puzzles and talked and slept through all the conferences before my mission. I was such a loser for ignoring them. They are awesome. We just meet at the stake center to watch them all. It was cool because I got to see Elder Fourr there. Do you remember him? He was my companion for a couple weeks in the MTC. He has served in Spanish for almost all of his mission. He might fly home to Phoenix with me too. He is from New Mexico and he has a lot of family in Arizona. Anyway, conference was fun and good.

I cannot believe how big all of the kids are. Especially Nixon. He has hair and he looks like a little boy now. I couldn’t believe it. I met this 4-year-old girl here and she was super smart and then as I was watching her I thought of Sydney and how smart she probably is. It was crazy. They are going to be so different when I go home.

I did get fed on both of those days. We get fed every day here in Lawndale. Between the Samoan ward and the English ward, there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t get fed. So don’t worry about that.

Haha it is funny that Hillary cut Jordan Taylor’s hair. Yeah we were kind of friends in high school. More like funny enemies. Like he said, it was Stapley stake versus Greenfield stake (which for some reason included Landon Brough, Seth Wilcock, and Mitch Janda). I found out about the catfish thing but I guess I forgot to tell you. One time we threw a huge empty refrigerator on one of their lawns and handcuffed Landon’s little brother to their front door. It was super funny. High school was really fun because we battled it out with Stapley stake. That is funny that Hillary ran into him. Weird. He is a cool kid though. I bet Lindsay referred him to go get his hair cut by Hillary.

I am still glad that Dad gets to play golf two or three times a week. I bet he dominates now. Sorry that Haley rolled her ankle. That’s too bad. My face is getting better still. It looks a lot better than before. I am still working on it. Hopefully by February the majority of the acne is gone.

So, this week we had even better news than before. Do you remember L R and P from my USC area? Well, when I was teaching them before P lived in Lawndale and L lived in my area in USC. So we taught both of them there. Well like you remember probably we lost contact with both of them like my last two months that I was there in USC. Well, I knew that P lived in Lawndale so we tried visiting her like 3 or 4 times but she never was home. Until last Tuesday. We knocked on her door and lo and behold L answers it! He came out and said, “Oh my Gosh, Elder Jones!” and he gave me a hug. It was the sweetest reunion ever. He let us in and he now lives permanently with P in Lawndale. We caught up with him to see how he was doing. He is really busy and he was really busy before and so that is how we lost contact with him. Remember he couldn’t get baptized because of the Law of Chastity issue so we talked about that and he is in the divorce process with his wife that lives in Louisiana. It takes 6 months to finalize a divorce so he is 2 months into that agreement. He is on his way to living the commandments more fully. He still is confused about that whole situation and is still working things out but he is progressing. He said he wants to meet with us again so we set up an appointment with him this Friday. I am so excited that we contacted him. I think one of the reasons I was put here in Lawndale was to contact him again. So, I am really excited about that.

Also, last Sunday at church one of the recent converts in the ward brought a friend to church. The recent convert is an old Argentinean and he brought a younger Latin woman to church. There isn’t any relation between them. They are just neighbors. Her name is L. Anyway, this L is absolutely golden. We met with her last Tuesday as well and she told us how she has been led to the Mormon Church through people and signs in the newspaper and stuff. So, we gave her a Book of Mormon on Tuesday. We set up another appointment and she had to cancel because her daughter got sick so we invited her to conference and she came to the second session on Sunday to check it out. We talked to her afterwards and asked her if she had been reading the Book of Mormon and she said that she has been so we asked her where she was at. She was on Ether chapter 2!!! She had 40 pages left to go. She told us that she loves reading and that she loves the Book of Mormon. She probably has finished it already. We set up another appointment on Tuesday. She told us that she has some questions for us. So we understand that she has some doubts about the Book of Mormon but I think they will be pretty easy solvable questions to answer. She is a miracle. Prayer works.

B is doing ok as well. She stopped smoking on Friday night. Hopefully she quit for good. Other than that she is doing well. She did not come to conference. So we are printing off a talk for her.

As for other people in our teaching pool, we are looking. We are hoping to find some more solid people this week. Hopefully the Lord will continue to bless us. My interview with President Baker was really good. It was the best one that I have had with him. He made me feel really good about myself. The first thing he said was, ” Well, Lawndale isn’t a Spanish area and it isn’t San Pedro, so how do you like it?” I laughed pretty hard because he knows I wanted to go to a Spanish area and if that didn’t happen I wanted to stay in San Pedro. He told me how grateful he was for the hard work I was putting in and then we talked about the zone. I felt really good. He said some really nice things to me. He is a really good mission president.

Well family, I have to get going but I hope that everything goes well this week. I will write next week.
Love,
Elder Kevin Jones