Hey what’s up family? How is everything going? I have to comment on the newest news first. The baby looks so cute. Teagen Sue does look like Heidi. Interesting. I am really excited to see her and hold her as well. Very good addition to the family. I forgot to comment to Heidi last week on her birthday. I feel so bad for not wishing her a happy birthday. Happy birthday Heidi! You got a really good birthday present. I am so excited for you and Paul. Mom, it sounds like that was the event of the week. The whole week revolved around Teagen. I am sorry that you got sick with a sinus infection. Are you all better from that? It sounds like dad had an awesome night on a stool. haha. That is very classic. All that good news in one letter. Thanks mom.

Rachel Robinson is leaving? She looks like a Spain missionary. That fits her very well. She will love it. Amy Webb is getting married? I may be able to see that after I am home. Haley has a boyfriend? I do remember that family. Good pick Haley. Yes it is my birthday coming up on Sunday. I will be able to buy beer legally. haha jk. I won’t do that though, no worries. Mom, your kids are old now. haha.

Well we had a pretty disappointing Sunday with investigators at church. 0 came to church. We did have a lot of less actives make it to church though which was a good thing. That doesn’t happen too often. So even though nobody came to church from our teaching pool, the less actives all came. We did see a lot of good things happen this week. On Wednesday we had visited a less active teenager to try to get him preparing for his mission, which he is already doing, when we realized he lives with his sister and her sister’s boyfriend. The boyfriend’s name is J and when we came in he was watching the Thunder and Kings game. It was a difficult situation. He was really into the game and we didn’t want to seem rude and tell him to turn it off so it was very distracting. I saw James Harden with his nasty beard and mohawk and I saw Jimmer Fredette who I have heard so much about. I refrained from watching and continued talking to the teenage kid when the attention went from the kid to J who was watching the game. We started asking him questions about his religious background and he really opened up. His girlfriend is a less active member and so he has heard a little about the church. Missionaries had never talked to him in his 7 years of knowing about the church. He used to be Atheist until he had a motorcycle accident. He was driving when a car t-boned his motorcycle at 50 miles per hour. He flew and slid for 200 feet before he stopped. The only injury he left with was a fractured hand. It was a miracle. His leg somehow didn’t get smashed and he lived. He said from that moment on he knew something had protected him and so that is how he came to know God. He says he just prays to God and is confused with all the religions out there. He asked a lot of golden questions and was really engaged and turned off the game as we were talking to him. It was awesome. We have an appointment on Wednesday with him so I am very excited for that. He was raised here and his parents are Columbian. Last night we had dinner with a super solid member named J. J invited his cousin and her husband again and we had a very spiritual lesson with them about the Book of Mormon. It was really good and we think that they enjoyed it a lot. This was the third time that we have taught them in a month. They live outside of the mission and they don’t want to accept missionaries where they live. They said they just want to learn from J. So we come over basically when they come over. Lots of other cool things happened.

I went on my last exchange on Friday with Elder Muse who is now the new assistant to the president. I was his district leader when he first came into the mission. I went to his area which is Santa Monica in English. It was really fun. Probably the rudest person I have ever met was in Santa Monica. We were knocking doors and we were talking to this lady when the lady’s next door neighbor came out and walked into her apartment and tried slamming the door on us. The lady that we were talking to stopped the rude lady and tried getting her out of her apartment. The rude lady kept saying stuff like, ” Are you (swear word) kidding me? You really are going to listen to these retards. They are only going to ask you questions about God and then ask for your (swear word) money.” Then she stormed out of the apartment in between us and walked back into her apartment. A minute later she came out again and still saw us there and she said, “(swear word)! Why don’t you leave this (swear word) floor and go ask the people downstairs for their (swear word) money!” Then she went back inside. We stopped talking to the lady because the rude lady didn’t want us there and she wasn’t really interested. So we continued on downstairs and knocked on the first door downstairs and that person was very interested in the Gospel and so we referred that person to the Spanish missionaries over that area. So the rude lady gave us good direction on where we should go next. That was a pretty funny experience.

So on Wednesday I have the trunky meeting where President and Sister Baker train us on what we should do when we go home. After that we have a chapel session with President and Sister Baker as a departing group. I am so excited for that. We can’t go to the temple the day before we go because the temple will be closed for cleaning and maintenance so we have to go two weeks early. I am really excited for that.

Anyways, that is all I have to write. I love you and have a good week!

Love,
Elder Kevin Jones

Hellloooooooooooo family! How are you doing? I have to start off saying I don’t know what to write. It sounds like this past week for you all was pretty normal. So by next Monday Heidi should be having her baby? Wow, that time went by fast. It feels like she just got pregnant. She should wait to have her on my birthday… I think you can do it Heidi. You can do it. It’s only what? Two weeks more? That time will fly by. Or even better, you should have her the day after I get home! That’s only like 3 weeks later than the due date. Haha I am just kidding. I am excited. It will be cool to hold a baby again…. I hope everything goes well at the show this week.

It sounds like it will be pretty good. What kind of new stuff are you selling? I am sorry you still are driving a Grand Cherokee. Which do you like better the Jeep or your Hyundai? I am glad the colonoscopy went well. Dad is running a half marathon? I want to run a half marathon. I am too fat for that though. I need to be in shape to run that. When is that exactly? Haley, spend more time at home. Mom needs a friend with her at home. Thanks for the letter mom!

Well, we have been doing a lot of work for the ward. We are trying to help strengthen it and help it be more organized. This past Sunday, 4 of us missionaries spoke in church talking about what we should be doing as members in missionary work. I wasn’t one of those that spoke. It really went well. We received 12 referrals yesterday. It was awesome. We also went to the PEC meeting and talked to the Bishop about the missionary work and he is on board to help us out as much as possible. The ward is really getting a lot better. They are being more proactive. Missionary work should be picking up. We asked President Baker if he would do a fireside for the ward in March and he agreed to it and so he will be talking about missionary work. That should go really well as well. So that is what we are trying to do right now. Getting the ward on board with missionary work.

We had two people at church. E came and an eternigator came. The Eternigator’s name is V. All of her kids are baptized but she isn’t because she isn’t living the law of chastity. She has to get a divorce in Mexico still to be able to be baptized. So she hasn’t been coming to church so we talked to her about it this past week and she came to church. So that was good. E was the only one to come from his family. His brother went to the Catholic church and their aunt was lazy and didn’t come to church. So we have a lesson with them tonight so we will see how it goes.

We are struggling to find solid investigators. We have a lot of potential people that aren’t progressing. So we are still in finding mode. We are honestly doing everything we can to find more people. There is a list of all of the different finding ideas and there are only three that we aren’t actually doing. We are thinking about trying those three things as well to help us find more people.

Tomorrow I have my last zone conference. We will be with the Marina and Griffeth zones. I am excited. I have always liked zone conferences. We are training on how to make lesson plans for lesson 2. It has been prepared for a while. I am excited to do the training three times to all three zones.

Well that is all that happened this past week! Sorry this letter was short. The church is true!

Love,
Elder Jones

Hey family!!! How are things going for you this week? It sounds like the week will be quite eventful for you mom. Having the show and everything. I am sorry I can’t come over and help you out with that. I like helping out with that kind of stuff. Congratulations on your new calling mom. It sounds like our family is full of primary choristers. I thought Hillary was a primary chorister too? All three of you are doing the same thing. That is really cool. The Gillettes will be there when I come home. I am excited to talk to them when I get home. Grandpa, Grandma, Derek, Danae and the whole family is coming home to Arizona when I get home for two weeks. That is really nice of them. I really appreciate that. I am excited to see all of them. That will be fun.

The story with Brett’s mission president is that his mission president was the 2nd counselor in my mission presidency and he did some baptismal interviews for some of my investigators. So I knew him kind of. So when we found out that he was going to be the mission president in Brett’s mission I told him to tell Brett hi. I guess he transferred my message to him and so Brett is sending a message back to me. So that’s the story with that. I hope I explained it well.

So you have liked the Grand Cherokee a lot? So I am guessing they exchanged you a car while yours is in the shop? That is cool…. Sorry about your colonoscopy. I remember when you had to do that drink thing two years ago and I remember you didn’t like it then either. Well it’s worth the check up isn’t it? I don’t want you to have cancer…. Garrett Green is getting married? Awesome. Elder Stenquist is from Kaysville Utah as well. So that is cool. That was a good letter mom. Thanks a lot for that update.

Well at transfers I got a new companion again. This is my 7th companion in my last 8 transfers. His name is Elder Clements and he is from Austin Texas. He has been out for just over a year and he is a really good missionary. He is about 6 foot and weighs about 210. He is a football player so he is pretty ripped. He is very positive about everything and doesn’t get down. He reminds me a lot of Elder Romrell, a hard worker and a very nice kid. We get along great. We have some good goals for my last transfer here. We both really want to work hard…. Elder Ferrin had been asking to get switched to English for a while so he was transferred to Inglewood English flushing with Elder Gilbert. They both flushed the zone leader area. So Elder Ferrin was really excited for that. He was also excited that he doesn’t have to kill another missionary. He had already killed 3 missionaries. So it was a good move for the both of us. I am really excited for this transfer. I feel like we are going to do a lot of good work.

So our area is on a low right now. We are working with the people we have and we have been finding a lot of people recently. We found 8 new investigators last week from tracting and street contacting. We have been working really hard lately. It is fun. We both have the same energy in talking with people. So we make a good team. We have found a couple pretty solid people but we will see. We still have our return appointments with them coming this week so we will see how that goes.

As of right now we are still working with M and E and their family. We talked with their parents and they don’t want them to get baptized yet. They feel like they are too young to make that decision in their life but they like the fact that we come over to teach them all of the time. So, we are getting closer for their approval but it doesn’t look like they will be baptized while I am here. We still want to work with them and be in their home because the grandma that takes them to church and her daughter that is 14 are less active. So we feel that as we have our presence in their home teaching them the Gospel that it will strengthen the family a ton. They did not come to church yesterday. Church was a little different here in Southern California. We had an area broadcast stake conference thing where we watched Elder L. Tom Perry, Paul V. Johnson, Steven Snow, and Barbara Thompson speak to us. It was good. It was all in Spanish but it was at the stake center which is far away so nobody came to church. So that was a bummer. Church being far away seems to add another excuse for not coming to church. So M and E didn’t come to church. Well Z, who I talked about last week was difficult to come into contact with this week. We didn’t get the opportunity to talk to her at all. So that was a bummer. So we will make the efforts to contact her this week. I isn’t progressing anymore. It is difficult to sit down and teach her and her family. They don’t keep our appointments at all. We had one lesson with them this past week but it didn’t help her progress. Her desire to learn right now isn’t that strong. She has a date for the 29th of this month but we are going to have to change that. So that is our basis of who we are teaching.

We are also trying to teach the part member families that we have in our area but that isn’t moving to quickly. We are working with our recent convert, M, to teach her mom and family but the mom is really Catholic and isn’t really opening her ears to the message right now. We have faith that something will happen this week. We have a lot of floating potential in our area. So I have faith that somebody will jump through the ranks.

I think the best news of the week is that J A, a less active about a year and half ago but now is active, found his records and is going to receive the Melchezidek priesthood this Sunday. He has been trying to find his records for the last 9 months and he wants to serve a mission but nothing was happening. He finally found the records and is able to go on a mission. He is 25 almost 26 so he was running out of time to serve a mission. So he is preparing his papers for his mission and he is going to leave as soon as possible. It was awesome news. He is a good kid and we were so excited for him. It took a lot of prayer.

Not much else is happening this week. I have my last Zone Leader Council of my mission tomorrow and we have to give a thirty-minute training on how to make lesson plans for lesson 2 tomorrow. Right now in the mission all the missionaries have started preparing a lesson plan book which lists all the possible scriptures you can find for specific topics, certain questions that you could ask for each topic, and some other examples that we could use or teach during our lessons. The purpose of doing this is so that we can know the lessons better and be better at teaching by the spirit in our lessons. SO this past month the whole mission has been working on comp lesson 1. So our training is on how we can better prepare lesson plans for lesson 2. We already prepared for it and is pretty good. I am excited to present it tomorrow.

That’s it for this week. Sorry it was a boring letter. haha. I will write to you next week. I love you.

Love,
Elder Kevin Jones

Hey family once again! How are things going this week? I think I ask that question every week. haha. But I mean it every time. Sounds like quite the eventful week that I missed out on. Lentils for dinner, someone rear-ended your new car mom, you and dad got to go to the suns game, and the Gillettes are home from their missions. That is a lot of stuff. Oh and you and dad have already lost a ton of weight. You two probably will be toothpicks before I get home. That is exciting. I am excited to see everyone again. It’s been a long time.

So now you know when I am coming home… Geez, I am officially in the oldest group of missionaries in the mission. So I am being released that quick after I get home? I guess its good to do that right away instead of waiting a billion years to be released. The mission doesn’t tell us that information because they don’t want us to get trunky. So we basically don’t find out until we leave what time we are actually leaving. But I know now haha.

So mother, yes I like lentils. Isn’t that one of Paul’s favorite dishes? Or Mitchell’s favorite dishes? Sorry to hear that your Hyundai Tucson got rear ended. So what car are you going to be driving until then? Do you get to steal Haley’s truck? So the suns lost to the worst team in the league? Wow that is exciting. haha. I have been hearing a lot about the Clippers and how they beat the Heat? That is nuts. I am excited to watch some basketball and play.

The Gillettes are now home from their missions. I want to know how they are doing. I think they are both going to BYU immediately so I probably won’t get to see them right away. I miss those kids. I am sure that their homecoming talks were really good. They are really good kids. I wonder if they look any different. I am glad it was a good week. Keep going strong with your diets.

So…. Three people came to church on Sunday! That is improvement. M and E the two kids came to church. Tonight we have a lesson with them and we are going to watch the Testaments and talk to their parents if they are ok with them being baptized. I hope they are cool with it. Their dad is a staunch Catholic so we will see what he thinks. They are really smart kids. Last week they missed church and we taught them and made them feel terrible about missing church. We told them by not going to church they basically are telling God that they hate him. We used the scripture in John, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Going to church is a commandment and if you don’t go to church you are saying that you don’t love Him. So that is saying you hate Him. Well, they got the picture so hopefully they won’t miss church ever again. I am excited for our lesson with them. They have the best potential to being baptized right now.

The other person that came to church yesterday was Z. She is like a 50 year old woman that is going through a lot of tough times right now. She and the man that she has been living with have been taught for a while. They can’t get baptized because of course they aren’t married. We talked to Z about it and she doesn’t want to marry him. He cheated on her like 6 years ago. They have two 6 year-old kids together so that is the reason why she doesn’t kick him out or leave him. So she is stuck in a sticky situation. She was being taught near downtown before and then she moved over here so now we are teaching her. It was her first time at church over here. I hope that they have more potential in the future. It’s a sticky situation. We did service for them on Saturday and so that helped her make the decision on coming to church.

Well that is it for people who came to church. We are hoping for more next week. We are teaching a couple other people that may have good potential. I talked about A last week. Well we are still talking with him. We are just waiting on his wife to join in on our lessons. If she joins in then I think he will come to church and that she will be able to be baptized. We are also teaching I. She is lazy along with the whole less active family. It is so hard to get them to come to church. The say they always work but I don’t believe them. Getting people to church is a very difficult thing. We are still using the mobile area book to find people. We have a lot of return appointments. We just have to see who is ready and who isn’t. There are a lot of people in the book.

The referral sheets idea is going great. We had an awesome lesson on Saturday with J, a super strong 25 year old member from Guatemala, and his non member cousin and her husband. It was really good. He invited them over for dinner because we used the referral sheet with him and they agreed to come. The ice was broken really well and then we taught the Restoration very simply and answered a lot of questions. The Spirit was there so strong that they started crying. Anyways, they live outside of the mission so we are unable to teach them and they aren’t sure if they want to have missionaries come over. They want to learn from J. So it was definitely a good experience and maybe they will come over again and we will be able to teach them again. Having members bring nonmembers over for dinner with the missionaries is an awesome idea. So that was a really good experience.

We had an interesting day yesterday. We had no plans from about 5 to the end of the night which is about 3 and half hours. So we decided to work a whole entire street that went about a mile and we visited all of the former investigators and the potential investigators to find people. So after we began, we knocked on a door and this 75 year old el salvador guy answers and lets us in. He tells about how much he loves this country. His house was super small and he had a full sized bed. Then a little bit after we got there we saw another guy there who was old and he lived there too! Yes they were gay. We taught them a brief restoration and then said a prayer with them. They talked a lot so we just tried to get out of there because we couldn’t stop them from talking. So we continued down the street and taught another kid who was 22 years old. He was pretty receptive and we asked him if we could come by some time this week and then he said, ” sure, you guys look like you smoke weed. You can come by.” I was like what? How do I look like I smoke weed. I am wearing a white shirt and tie with a nametag that has Jesus’ name on it. We told him that we don’t smoke weed and he still set the return appointment. Then we finished the road and we went onto the main road and on the side of the road was this homeless drunk guy talking to a bush. He spoke Spanish. He asked us if we could help him up so we lent our hands and helped him up and then we gave him a pass a long card with Jesus Christ on it and he began singing to it and he wouldn’t stop so we just walked away. So on our way back to the apartment, an Italian guy stops us and talks to us, which was weird because there are only Latino people here in HP. So that was our night last night. It was pretty eventful and fun.

Well that’s all I can remember to write about. Is it ok if I sell the bike to a missionary here for 100 bucks and then give you the money when I get home. He needs a bike and he likes riding mine. I let him borrow it. Honestly, I will probably never ride it at home. I just want to know what you think and if it’s ok to sell it to him.

Thanks for everything family, I love you and will write next week.

Love,
Elder Kevin Jones.

Hey family!

How are things going this week? I hope things are going well for you all this week. First off, congratulations to Paul on completing his Master’s Degree. That is awesome that all of those loans are paid off by ASU. That is super awesome. I wish I had that done so I wouldn’t have to worry about school when I go home. So that was some good news to hear. I am glad that is all going well.

It is funny that Brett has hopped back so quickly into the dating life. I can’t believe it. I don’t know if I will be the same way at all. I think I will need time to adjust. haha. He probably will be engaged by the time I get home. I can see that… Congratulations to Amanda Johnson. Everyone is just getting married right and left. I think that is pretty funny. I won’t have any friends by the time I get home.

Sydney got a haircut? That is awesome. It is funny how she likes to do all the girly things that Nathan and Lacy don’t like to do. It is super funny. I am excited to see that video of her singing when I go home. I miss dinner like usual every Sunday. I can’t wait to hop back into the family for Sunday dinner. That is one of the things I miss the most.

I am glad that you and dad are on a diet. I need to eat healthier as well. All I have eaten my whole mission is junk. Just a bunch of chicken, rice and beans and tortillas. That has been my most popular meal in my mission. I am excited to have chicken crescent rolls, and Cafe Rio’s pork salad, and the Fast Sunday roast and potatoes meals again. Well keep going strong with the diet mom and dad!

This week was all right. A lot of good things happened but nobody came to church still. I am glad that you laughed at my confirmation experience. That tells you how good my Spanish is Nathan. I actually got up and bore my testimony in testimony meeting yesterday. I got nervous of course but once I got up there everything felt fine. I felt like I needed to go up and bare my testimony. In Latin wards, just about everybody is a convert so they all love missionaries. Especially when they bare their testimonies on Fast Sunday. I felt like I needed to go up because missionaries never go up and plus the ward needed some missionary work encouragement because all 5 companionships in the ward are struggling to teach people right now. So I got up and I told everyone who I was and where I was from and then right after that I told everybody that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is not my friend. I said that because that is the first thing that people ask me right after I tell them that I am from Arizona. So everyone thought that was funny. Then I talked about missionary work and how all of us can share the gospel. So I told them about Maria and her family’s conversion because of just sharing the gospel at work. I mentioned to everybody that all they need to say is one sentence about the Church and you have done a lot in missionary work. So that was the basis of my testimony at church. It was good for me to get the nerves and go up there. I was scared to do it but I felt good afterwards. But like I was saying we didn’t have anybody come to church.

So on Friday last week, President Baker came out and worked with Elder Ferrin and I. It was a good experience. Of course we got all nervous about it but I like it that President takes his time to go work with missionaries. We contacted people in the street with him. We contacted a few former investigators with him and we had a couple sit down lessons with him. It went well. The Spirit was there and I think President enjoyed coming out with us. It is funny to hear his Spanish too. He speaks it pretty well but he has a gringo accent. It is funny but its cool at the same time.

Well the main people that we are teaching right now are E and M, and a girl named I. E and M have a lot of strong influence from their family not to do anything right. They didn’t come to church yesterday because E had his birthday party the night before. But of course, they can’t come to church unless somebody in their family will take them. Usually it’s their grandma who is a member but she slacks off a little bit and doesn’t go. So it is kind of frustrating. We are planning on going over their tonight to chastise them and to teach them. They are doing ok other than not going to church. I is a part member that I think I talked about yesterday. She has the same problem with her family. They are less active and won’t go to church with her. So we need to chastise them as well. We want to go over today as well. So they are the main people we are working with right now.

Right now in the mission, we are focusing on making something called a mobile area book which helps us use our time more wisely. So in the mobile area book, we separated our area into 6 areas, and we wrote down all of the members, formers, and potential investigators that live in each area to help us out when our plans fall through. So yesterday, we tried to contact somebody but they weren’t home so we opened up our mobile area book and went to go contact a member that lived close by to the person that we wanted to contact. So we knocked on the door and it was this 22-year-old kid who had been baptized 4 or 5 years ago that was wanting to come back to church. The even better thing is that he got married 6 months ago and his wife is not a member. So we are going to begin teaching them. This mobile area book is really effective. It helped us out last night.

We also started using this referral sheet that helps us get referrals from members. An elder in the mission made it up. We translated it into Spanish and we used last night with 4 members and these 4 members ended up giving us 4 referrals. It worked out really well. It worked out so well that I want to use it for every member that we are visiting. Right now we need more solid investigators and the members are the better source to find more people.

So I don’t have much more to write but there was something crazy that happened on Saturday. We were by the 110 in my area and we were going to an appointment when all of a sudden on the right hand side of the road there was these four African American chicks chasing another African American chick. One of the four was wearing this leopard printed leotard thing. It looked weird but they chased down this girl and then grabbed her hair and started pulling her down to the ground. And they threw her down and they just starting punching and kicking the snot out of her on the side of the road. She almost was curb stomped. While this was happening we were sitting at a red stop light. When the light went green we just pulled to the side of the road to keep watching this. It was like 50 feet behind our car. So after they beat the snot out of her they left and the girl just got up and walked away smiling. We were in shock. After that beating we thought she would of just laid there but she got up and walked away like nothing happened. It was nuts! So that was my crazy adventure of the week.

Anyways, I love you family. Thanks for writing me. The church is true. Keep believing in it. I will write you next week.

Love,

Elder Kevin Jones

Happy New Year!!! Sorry about my typing if I have errors. This keyboard is a retarded keyboard. It took us forever to find one of these little computer shacks that were actually open. I don’t know why everything is closed today. I guess the government just needs more days off. The post office was closed too. Sometimes Monday is the worst day to have a preparation day just because of all of the holidays. Anyways, How is everything going? How was the New Years for all of you? It was awesome to talk to you all on Christmas. I enjoyed it very much. I didn’t realize that I went over my time alotment by that much. It went by really quick. I was disappointed to find that I was out of time.

Anyways, I am glad that Granddad is doing well. I didn’t know that he had had that nerve problem. I am glad that he is able to walk now. He sent me a Christmas card. Before I forget thanks to everyone who sent me a Christmas card or package. They have been well used.

I am glad that Brett has grown a ton. He is a good guy. I am excited to see him when I get home. Happy Birthday Aunt Rosemary. I hope those three movies were really good. Thanks for your support while I have been out here.

So right now I am emailing in this little shack like I said and there is this guy right next to me who is playing some kind of video game and he is getting angry and yelling at the people that he is playing with and it is really distracting. On top of that there is an argument going on with two Latin guys in here as well and it is really loud. So sorry if I lose my train of thought or something I say doesn’t make any sense. Well I hope everything went well on New Years. We just went to bed at 10:30 and woke up at 6:30. I don’t know how we slept through all of that hardcore party music all night. I think it is something that happens when you just get really old in the mission. You just become a super tired missionary and sleep perfectly. It is really nice to sleep well every night. Thanks for the letter mom. Your letters are never dull. Don’t worry about that.

Well, the confirmation of M happened yesterday and I had the opportunity of doing it. I think I messed up a couple of times. It is confusing going into blessing language in Spanish because you think that it would be just like a prayer but it is the exact opposite. So I messed up once saying that it was M’s church instead of God’s church. Hopefully people got what I meant. That was the only thing I messed up on. So her confirmation went well. She felt like she was going to pass out in front of everyone but it went ok. She survived. Church was confusing because we all thought that there was only one hour of church again but really there was classes. So that was weird. So we stayed for the whole three hours. We only had one investigator come to church and that was one of the kids, M. E his brother couldn’t get up because of the new years celebration. So that was a bummer. We are bringing them both brownies tonight for our lesson because it is E’s birthday tomorrow. We are still working on trying to get a good conversation with their parents to see if its ok that they get baptized. Hopefully they decide to let them. So he was the only one that came to church. We are setting a goal to have 6 people at church next Sunday.

During church on Sunday there was a family of three that randomly came in. They all had been going to church in Bell, California which is still in the mission, and they liked it. They haven’t been baptized so we are hoping to start teaching them. They gave is a bad address because they just moved in and they couldn’t remember it. She gave us her name and we are hoping to contact her today or tomorrow. Her name just happens to be M as well. I cannot remember her two sons names as well. They all speak perfect English. So hopefully it turns out.

After church on Sunday we went and tried a few former investigators and less actives toward one side of our area that we hardly ever go to. We went to meet a less active family and found them and they are a family of 6. They are all members but one of the sons who is 20 years old has his girlfriend that is living with him and she is 19 and her name is I. She is not a member and she is very interested in what we believe. So we are excited about that. Even though there is a Law of Chastity problem that we are going to have to face. haha. Hopefully that goes well.

On New Years Eve we had to be in at 6 so we had a zone activity at the HP building. We bought a bunch of practice tennis balls and we played dodge ball as a zone for 2 hours. It was really fun. But… I am extremely sore and it feels like I threw out my arm. But it was worth it. The zone had a lot of fun……….. Tomorrow we have Zone leader Council. I am excited for that again. It has been a couple months since I have been to one of those. President Baker usually talks about the Atonement and they are always really good discussions. I am really excited for that.

Well that is it that I can say. Sorry mom that my letters are super dull and boring. haha. I love you all and I will hear from you next week.

Love Elder Jones

Dear family,
Hey how are things going this week? A lot seemed to have happened. I don’t know what to start commenting on. Well I am glad that you got my package. I was worried it wouldn’t get there in tip top shape. I paid the cheapest amount to get it there in a week. haha. Well I hope everyone got something. I sent a total of 9 things for everyone in the family. If Haley took both the shirt and pants then not everyone got something. I am glad you liked the pictures. I am not the best at taking pictures. So, sorry for the bad quality. I sent home some random stuff too that I had for some reason. Sorry that a twisty straw was in there. I didn’t have anything for the kids so I decided to throw some random stuff in there that maybe might catch their attention. The shirts will probably shrink.

Anyways, about the time to call home…. We have church at 10:30 here our time and 11:30 your time. We also have a baptism right after church at 12:00 our time and 1:00 your time. That will probably be about an hour long. So the best time I can give you is somewhere between 1 and 1:30 my time and between 2 and 2:30 your time. That will probably interrupt a little bit of granddads time but that is the best time I can think of to make the call. So expect a phone call probably around 2:15 your time. I still have your numbers memorized so there won’t be any problem with that. I am really excited although it does feel like I just called you guys, but that was 7 months ago. It will be nice to talk to you again.

So Derek is home from his mission now. Brett is coming home today and Jace is most likely coming home today as well. Jace left in the middle of December two years ago and everyone gets an extra 4 or 5 days on their two years so that probably means he is coming home today. The Gillettes come home towards the beginning of January and then the rest is downhill from that. Everyone will be coming home in the following two or three months.

I am sorry about Nixon and Sydney being sick. That sounds terrible. Maybe it will be the last time that Sydney throws up. The last time that I threw up was when Haley was born and that was all over dad. I think I had strep throat too. That is a fun fact for all of you. haha. I hope they get better before Christmas.

My companion goes home in May so he most likely will be my “killer”. I think that is the right lingo mom. haha. But you never know because President Baker is full of tricks up his sleeve. He seems to make transfers very unexpected. I still like my companion. We get along very well. He reminds me a lot of Douglas. He is very similar to Douglas. It is only us two in my apartment. I hope you didn’t get me too much in my package. I am grateful for it though. Thanks. Thank you to the Shreeve family as well. They have been really awesome to me. Sorry I am not the best at writing back to everyone but I really do appreciate everything that you have done for me.

So, yes we have a baptism on Christmas. We have been working with these two sisters for a very long time. M and K. They are 18 and 20 and K got baptized like 5 weeks ago and finally M made the decision to be baptized. She chose her baptismal date because she has already been taught everything. Her problem is that she has trouble doing things in front of people. So she was really nervous about being baptized in front of people and even more nervous about being confirmed in front of everybody. But now she has gotten the courage to do it so we are very excited. I have already taught them like 6 or 7 times. I feel like I had a part in teaching her. Elder Ferrin will be baptizing her and I will be confirming her in front of everybody at church the following Sunday. Hopefully I don’t mess up because it is in Spanish. So M is doing well and she will be baptized on Sunday after church.

This week we also found a couple of really cool kids. Their names are E and M. They are brothers. E is 11 almost 12 and M is 10 years old. They are extremely smart. We found them because they are the grandchildren of a less active lady in the ward that wants to be active again. We have taught them the whole restoration and the plan of salvation. They are very understanding. Their mom actually is a member of the Church but she doesn’t go because her husband is Catholic and from the sound of it he is really die hard Catholic. So that is our only concern with them. The father of them may stop them from being baptized. They came to church on Sunday though and they liked it. They have liked everything we have taught them a lot. So they are both very solid.

The other investigators we have are not progressing very well. We are teaching a guy named C who is out of town until after Christmas. Then we are teaching a couple other families that aren’t showing much progression as well. We do have a lot of potential floating around in our area so we are excited about this upcoming week.

This Saturday we have a Christmas devotional as a mission and that is when everyone gets their packages and letters and things. I volunteered to sing in the choir this year just to mix things up. It should be good. It was good last year. I am excited about it.

Other than this I don’t know what else to write. I hope you all have questions and stuff on Sunday. I am excited to talk to everyone of you. It will be exciting.

Love,
Elder Kevin Jones

Hello family once again. How are things going this week? Well I will comment on your letter mom but first I want to tell you what happened at transfers. I got a phone call from President Baker right after exercise on Tuesday morning of last week and he told me what was happening with me. He asked me if I liked my area, and I told him of course I like my area. After that he said, “Well like is now a past tensed verb, you liked your area now because we are going to transfer you.” In my head I was thinking really? I am being transferred again. I was sick of moving around every transfer. Then he said don’t worry, we are just moving you to the area next door to the one you are at and we are going to make you a zone leader again. I was very surprised. The zone leader that was there went home on transfers because it was the end of his mission so that spot was open. He said you will still be in the same ward and Spanish speaking but we need you to work with Elder Ferrin who is now my new companion. So now I am a zone leader and I am in the area that is called HP Central and my boundaries are Slauson on the north, Florence on the south, Santa Fe on the east, and the 110 on the west. So it basically is a giant rectangle. So I only moved one area to the west. Elder Castaneda stayed because President wanted to finally make him a senior companion. He got a pretty new missionary named Elder Jenson, So that was transfers.

I had to move apartments and everything. Elder Ferrin and I gutted out our apartment because it was a pig sty. It was so dirty. Now it looks good. Elder Ferrin is way cool. He is from Plain City, Utah, which is an hour north of Salt Lake City. He loves basketball and golf and he is really good at both. He is 5’10, which is pretty short but he still can play basketball pretty good. We already knew each other before so we were pretty excited to be companions. I hope he is my last companion. I am done with change. So I am pretty excited about this transfer. We have a little bit of work from the looks of it so I hope that we can find some baptisms.

Anyways, thanks for your letter mom. It sounds like you had a fun time at a Rodeo smelling cows. haha. It’s pretty funny that you and dad were dating for a weekend. I can’t believe you never have slept in separate twin beds since you have been married and in separate rooms. I thought that was really funny. I am glad that you had fun and I am happy that dad bought a new cowboy hat. Yes, I remember Mao.

It sounds like I missed a good stake conference. I don’t remember that family from the Glenview ward. I feel like I have forgotten everyone’s name in the Allen Ranch ward and from work. I can’t remember anybody’s name from back home now. President Layton sounds like a really good stake president. He was cool when he reffed my Young Men’s basketball games. It’s sad that I missed that stake conference.

It is sad to hear that Sydney’s front two teeth are dying. Ouch, that’s too bad. Sorry I wasn’t home to help set up Christmas stuff this year. So now I have 20 ornaments on the tree. Mom, I am getting old. Your youngest son is in his twenties now. haha Its ok. I can’t wait to talk to everyone on Christmas. What time would be best to call? Nighttime? Afternoon? Give me a specific time that would work out best for all of you. It will be fun. I am going to send off a package for you all today so you should be getting it sometime this week. You can open it whenever. Before I forget next week is temple Pday so I will write on Wednesday the 21st.

Well we had a rough Sunday. Everyone from my old area came to church but this area nobody came to church. They had two baptisms a couple weeks ago in this area so they are kind of in finding mode but there are plenty of investigators that they are teaching as well that could progress. From my old area, A came to church except he has relapsed like three times this past week and he came to church on drugs so it was kind of scary to talk to him. He left right after sacrament. E came to church and a couple others of theirs came to church. Here in this area we are teaching two people. An 18- year-old girl named M who has been taught everything but she is scared of doing things in public. So she is scared of being baptized in front of people and scared of being confirmed in front of the whole congregation. She could be baptized any week this transfer.

We are also teaching this guy named C who is from Honduras who is 31 years old. He hasn’t been taught that much but he is eager to learn. We are going to go to the Visitor Center this Thursday with him. He is depressed because his girlfriend and his 5-year-old son just left him so he is trying to fill in that hole that he has right now. He didn’t come to church because he was depressed. So we will be working with him on that. We think going to the Visitor Center will help him out a lot. Other than that we are looking for people that will start progressing. It will be fun.

I am excited to be here and excited to work with Elder Ferrin. Well I don’t know what else to say. I know this church is true. I have no doubt that it is true. I love being out here on the mission. I wish I could stay longer. I am having fun sharing the gospel. I hope and pray for more people to except the truth. I love you family and I hope you all have a good week. Love, Elder Kevin Jones

Hello family once again. It is hard writing a weekly letter these days. I don’t know anything new I could say to you all. It’s hard. It’s as hard as putting on zit ointment. I just don’t have time to put that stuff on. haha. How are things going this week? Weeks are flying by.

I can’t believe dad was here to play golf and he didn’t invite me. I have never heard of that course. The traffic is always bad like you said. There are good times during the day where it isn’t busy and then there are lots of times during the day where it feels like you don’t move at all. I wouldn’t recommend living here for that reason only. I am glad it was worth it for him.

I am happy that Haley had fun at her dance. Its funny that you thought that all the boys looked like they were 12 years old. Did I look like I was 12 when I was 16? I am glad that Haley had fun though.

So you’re going to a rodeo this week with? Sounds like a blast. That is interesting. I didn’t know that they did that every year. I hope you two have fun. I am sure Nellie and Haley will be just fine while you are gone…

Its getting that cold there. 31 degrees. Right now its cold here. It is freezing in the mornings. We play soccer at the church every morning. It is cold. Its nice to have the church just down the street. It works out really well. It’s also nice to have the key to the church.

Happy Anniversary Hillary and Mitchell. 2 years already. Only another 60 more to go on earth. haha. I remember your wedding and it was cold. I remember also that Derek brought his girlfriend to it as well. Derek should be coming home soon right? When does he come home? Did he recover from his Mono on his mission? Thanks for the letter mom. I like your letters.

Yes we have transfers this week on Wednesday. I think Elder Castaneda is leaving for sure. There has been some strong signs that he will be leaving. It’s good. I still hope I get to train or have a newer missionary so I can practice my Spanish more. It’s easier to not listen intently when your companion is already fluent. He has helped me a lot though. I feel like I am at the point of where I left off at from Hermosa Liahona. I feel like I have regained all of that back. I just have 12 weeks to speak and listen the best I can. Learning is not that easy. It’s hard. I hope I can speak it well when I come home. I will let you know how transfers go next week.

Last night was the departing missionary fireside. We went with some members and our investigator’s car broke down on the way to the building. So we kind of were illegally there but we couldn’t leave so we stayed. It was good to see the testimonies of two of my past companions. Elder Stenquist and Elder Judd are going home. It’s sad to see the missionaries you got along well with go home. I will definitely stay in touch with those two elders. They were two of my favorite companions in the mission. It was also cool to see some past investigators and members from my previous areas. I saw the Hoeft family again. It felt good to see them. They acted like the missed me. It makes you feel good when people miss you. I saw a lot of other investigators there as well. Sister Hoeft is going to get baptized in January with her son. I think they are waiting on Brother Hoeft to become worthy to baptize them. So hopefully I will be able to go to that baptism.

Yesterday at church was an ok day. The people that we wanted to see there didn’t come for reasons of their own. So we only had E R and J. I don’t know if I told you about J but he is the one that has been coming to church every week for the last two months. He is good friends with a family in the ward. You can tell that he is feeling the spirit. He is wanting to make changes in his life. He works his own hours and so he used to work every day of the week. Now he understands the Sabbath Day and he is giving up work on Sundays to come to church. He is making these changes on his own. We have only taught him once because of his busy work schedule so we might be lucky to only teach him on Sundays. So he may take a little bit longer to help enter into the waters of baptism but he is doing really well.

E is doing excellent right now as well. She comes to church every week. The only problem is the Law of Chastity, which is the problem with everyone these days. You are right mom being married and having kids under wedlock is the minority these days. It doesn’t work that way these days. People don’t understand the law of chastity and the family proclamation. Hopefully more and more people can learn that.

A and A didn’t come to church because they fixed the brakes on their car instead. He is still doing good not doing drugs. He has made it two weeks now. So he is making strides right now. The teaching process is going slow because he talks so much in lessons. He dominates the time. So we are going to try to quicken the process of the lessons. They will get baptized. Although we found out that they aren’t married. We thought they were but they weren’t. So they have to do that before they get baptized.

D and J didn’t come to church. They were lazy too. Laziness is a big excuse for not coming to church here as well. So we are going to work with them as well. Other than that we don’t have anybody really that solid. We are still looking.

Thanks for your prayers and support! I love you and I hope you all have a good week.

Love,
Elder Kevin Jones

Hey mom and family! How are things going this week? It sounds like last week was a lot of fun. I wish I was there to be with the family for Thanksgiving. Also, to play football with everyone in the ward. Also, to play golf with Dad, Colton, and Jason Willett. Also, to see everyone. I feel like I missed out on some stuff.

Thanks for answering my questions mom. It was good to hear that Aunt Louise is doing a lot better. I want to see the new changes in their house as well. It sounds really new. I missed out on Uncle Geoff’s turkey as well. Darn. Did he make two turkeys or just one? Latins here don’t like turkey for some reason so I didn’t get to eat turkey for thanksgiving. I only ate chicken and ham. I think they don’t like the hassle of making it. It takes too long for people to make a good turkey.

I can’t wait to see Dad’s car. It sounds really nice. I think I would be excited to show it off at car shows as well if I had that car…. Sorry to hear about the stores lack of success with the Santa this year. I could make a better Santa. Dad would make a really good Santa. You should just have dad do it next year…. I can’t wait to be at Sunday night dinner again. I don’t think you will be able to fit me when Heidi’s new baby comes. How is Heidi doing? Is she really big right now? Its good that Heidi is married and having a baby and that she is over the age of 18 years old. Too often I see 14, 15, and 16 year-old girls that are pregnant or that already have a kid here in HP. It is insane. So, thank you Heidi for obeying the commandments.

Well mom, you know me when it comes to Christmas. I am almost home and I really don’t need anything. I just want to see more pictures of the family. The ones you gave me last year for Christmas are outdated now. You all probably look completely different again. I think that is all I really want. Maybe another tie? I really don’t know what I would need for my last two months here… I am sending home a Christmas package. I know you are probably wanting to see some pictures as well so I am going to send home all the pictures that I have printed off in my mission in a package here soon. I will also throw some other stuff in there as well that I got for everyone. So that’s all I think I want mom.

Thanksgiving we cleaned the whole church building for a service project. It looks so much better. It went from really dirty to just dirty. It got to the point where it was presentable. The building needs to be torn down but the city has made it a historical landmark and it can’t be torn down. It is a pretty classic looking building from the outside but the inside still needs help. They need to redo a lot of it. Thanksgiving we visited people. We weren’t allowed to tract after 6 o’clock.

Well, this week we had 5 at church! We keep increasing one more person every Sunday. It was good. We had D and J that came to church like usual and you already know their story. They are still in the same position. She needs to get a divorce and they need to get married. They were the ones who we had Thanksgiving dinner with. We are planning on helping them start saving money for the divorce and to really hit the importance of living the law of chastity so that they get started on fixing their Law of Chastity problem…. E R came to church as well. She is still very solid. She came without her member boyfriend,which shows that she wants to learn and that she wants to get baptized. Her boyfriend that she is living with talked with the Bishop and the Bishop gave him some numbers that he can call that can help out with finding out if he is divorced or not so that they can get married. So they are progressing. Hopefully she can get baptized here really soon…

Then we had two new people that came to church. A and A. They are 24 years old with a three-year-old son and they are married. Armando doesn’t speak English but A does. A was a referral from a bishop in a ward near by us. He wanted help to get over an addiction with Crystal Meth. So we went over to teach him and he has a sincere desire to change. He has been addicted to Meth for over 6 years now. The longest that he has ever quit for was for 2 weeks. He is ready for some help. Anyways, he likes what we teach him. The first lesson we just listened to his problems that he was having and we invited him to pray and to read the Restoration pamphlet. The next time we came over he felt like he received and answer to his prayer. His uncle that he hated called him and apologized and they fixed their issues and his step mom called him as well and he hated her too and she apologized and they fixed their issues. This all happened in one day. So he promised us that we were allowed to come over whenever we wanted. He said that we will always be welcomed at his house forever. Anyways, they came to church only for the first hour because they hired a babysitter to take care of their 3-year-old son for only an hour. We didn’t explain well enough that their was a class to take care of their son while they went to class. They said that they will take their son next week. I am really excited about these people. We still need to set a baptismal date with them, but they are solid.

C ended up dropping us. She didn’t want to learn anymore and she didn’t want to come to church. So we were surprised but that was just a sign that she wasn’t ready.

There is a guy that we are going to start teaching that has been coming to church for the last month and half. He lives outside of the ward boundaries and he only comes to our church because he is always working in HP and he also knows a family that lives in our ward. He is pretty solid. We had dinner with the family that he knows last night and he told them that he is very appreciative for being welcomed to the church and for having us over to teach him more about what we believe. So we got permission to teach him so he should be pretty solid. His name is Jose. haha. Pretty classic name.

This week not much new is going on in the mission. Next week we have transfers. I have a feeling that Elder Castaneda is going to be transferred. I hope I get to train one more time before I go. I liked training and I think having a new missionary would help me focus really well.

Well family, I love you and thanks for being the best family. I will write to you next week!

Love,
Elder Kevin Jones