Week 63 – Elder Jones

Fires, Friends and Facebook

Tuesday: Sorry, I forgot.

Wednesday:  So, we got Facebook today. Yay! We don’t start really actually using it until the 18th for proselytizing. But we are all going through and cleaning it up and adjusting as necessary. As I got on there, it felt like all my friends are getting married. I only knew of like one person that got married. And now I see how many people are actually married. That is weird. I also have seen several things that y’all have posted. I never realized how much everything back home has changed and how everyone has grown up. It cracked me up, Mom’s comments in my profile pictures. Yeah, you can still comment and do whatever you want. But if you want to contact me directly, email me please. Besides that, act normal. I’m still taking it all in.  I’m really confused right now with whether I’m still on a mission because it’s so different having access to Facebook. Give it a few days and I should be fine. I’ll get tired of getting distracted with what I have access to and ignore most of it. But now we can contact people a lot better.

We went to go get a broom for an investigator that needed one and we remembered that it was also her granddaughter s birthday. So we went and got her some gifts at the dollar tree.  I saw a cylindrical Rubix Cube. I bought it. Man it was hard. My mind couldn’t wrap around it at first. It was hard.  But after a half hour, I was able to solve it. It got easier after that and I could do it in about 5.  It is fun.

Thursday:

Cleaning out Facebook was horrible today. I had to go unfollow all the pages I’d liked so I don’t see notifications from them of see their stuff on my feed, but that means I had to go to my page, which means I had to see the last thing they posted. All the pages I liked were country music. And I saw a ton of the stuff that’s been going on, artists I’ve forgotten about. It was a little hard to unfollow them, but I did it. Wow, this is weird. Also going through all the pictures I have.  I miss a lot of people. People from EFYs, Alabama, Washington, Family, everyone else. Man it was a weird trip back in time. 

I am also very, very proud of all the people that are on missions right now. there are a lot. Way more than have gotten married. I’m so proud of them and it gives me a lot of motivation to know that I have so many friends that are preaching the Gospel alongside with me.

Besides all that, we had a good lesson with **** today. The only thing holding him back from baptism is that he has to work on Sunday. So we asked him to pray about whether or not he should fast about it to get Sunday’s off. So next week we should be setting up a day to fast with him. It went great!

Btw, I can see the Pursuing Happiness videos on your page now if you post them the way you have been.

Friday: It’s so weird to have our first names back. Oh Facebook. I also think it’s cool how missionaries are flooding the internet now.

Wow. It was such an amazing day. We did service in the morning for a member.   She also calls all the missionaries by their first names. Haha. Anyways,we had lunch there. Then we planned. Some of the sisters gave us pomegranates and so we ate those and planned. After that we went and contacted a little. Some weird stuff happened. Contacting is always interesting.  We are still listening to a lot of Christmas music. We had dinner out. Some guy was asking questions in the restaurant and we talked. He was a little intense but had some amazing questions and was really sincere. I gave him my Facebook name so he could contact me because he said he wanted to talk to me personally as a person, not just missionaries. 

Then we went to stop by *******.  She’s the one that had the insanely crazy lesson with. We went over and it was super awkward at first. We knocked and they looked through the blinds and the door never opened. Then her Daughter and her friend came up and let us in and said she wasn’t home. So we walked across the street to see some people and the daughter came and hunted us down and said she actually was home, she had just been in her room. So we went back over and as we were going back over, her son came home with two friends. So there were five kids there and they were going to have a sleep over and we made a little suggestion that they could listen to a little lesson. Surprisingly they ran and grabbed everyone and sat down.  We showed a video and they asked what the name of the video was so they could watch it again. Then we shared some scriptures and talked and answered questions. They wanted a test so we started quizzing them on the stuff they learned. They wanted another video to watch before we se them next.  We gave them one and will be back tomorrow with quiz. It was amazing. It went so well and they all listened and participated. We had been talking about being bolder earlier that day, so we applied it. Took a shot in the dark and with the help of the spirit, it worked.

Saturday:

The appointment wasn’t home tonight. But we will hopefully see them at church.

We had a ton of service today. We also biked to Biggs. The wind was insane. It was blowing us off of our bikes.  We had to go and it was only three miles away. But took us over a half hour to get there.  We visited someone, then started riding back.  My companion got flats in both tires, his handlebars got messed up as we pulled up, and his tire went uneven. We ended up biking back on semi-flat tires. About halfway back, the tire went completely flat and we were riding on the rims. We took turns. It was horrible, but a great adventure too.

Sunday: Don’t worry, the fires haven’t reached me yet. I can stay a little more in tune with the fires with Facebook. But I love that you are keeping me in the loop. Facebook of filled with so much clutter, it makes it hard to see the important stuff, so please let me know any updates. When you let me know about the Oroville fires I had just heard about them a few hours earlier. The next mission over, the Santa Rosa fire, is all burning. Like, the actual city is on fire. Also, Loma Rica, which is just below us is really, really on fire.  Oroville which is right above us is on fire. And when it starts raining, let’s hope the Oroville dam doesn’t break. It’s in our zone. It would reach here in just a few minutes.

I woke up with a ringing in my ear and it hasn’t gone away yet. It’s been horrible.

Monday: Ringing is still there. That’s not good.

Luva!