April 18, 2016

Wow! Tell Will I am so proud of him for getting his Eagle way cool k? And Ally is so cute in her birthday photos:) And no I haven't got the rain jacket yet but my zonies called me yesterday and said they had something for me so I assume that is it but it hasn't rained for like a week now. I hope we aren't out of the season for it right before I have an actual jacket.. Haha
Alright so here is some more about me cuz I know that's all you wanna hear:) So my companion right now as of two weeks is named Elder Vandenhazel. We get along fine and I don't mind him. He went to the Provo MTC because his Spanish was supposedly "advanced". He is my first non-native companion right? And apparently down in Blue Island (his previous and only other area in the mission) they had a very high Mexican population. Mostly from like two different cities that he knew super well. Well here in our ward, and in my last ward as well, we don't have very many Mexicans at all. Like they are there and stuff but we have tons of people from all over South America and they speak differently than the Mexican dialect. So we are in one of our first lessons when he got here with this super old lady that we call Abuelita who is from Peru. And she speaks very... Peruano :) haha so like halfway through our time there he looks at me while she is speaking to him and says, "dude what is she saying to me?" Hahaha and I laughed so hard!! I have said that so many times to my other companions but now I am so used to all the other accents that I understand them perfectly and it was just funny:) so I am not very used to the Mexican accent actually and it's very easy to pick out for the most part. So some things that have happened since he has been here is I crashed twice on my bike, I don't think I told you about the first one. It was really cold one night and we woke up to a bunch of ice on the roads. And we had an appointment at 10 am so the ice was still there when we were out. So I was just going and all of a sudden my tires flew out from under me and I slid with my bike for like 20 feet on ice and it was awesome. Also we have been doing tons of work with inactives and have found a couple of families that the elders didn't know about but the members do so we are working with them now:) and ya... It's all going well:)
-Elder Jones

April 11, 2016

That is great that you guys are doing missionary work in the neighborhood. I can't wait until Kalen goes home so he can show you guys how good he is at it now. I still am not very good at being a missionary but I'm learning more and more! Every companion I get helps me be better at teaching... Man I really still am terrible at teaching though. I forget like the biggest parts of every single lesson. And I get way flustered so I talk fast and who knows if they can understand a white kid throwing words at them, but I have fun wherever I go:) Conference was great! Did I tell you I got a new companion. So his name is Elder Vandenhazel. He is actually younger than I am. His birthday is in June and he came out at the exact same time I did. He went to the Provo MTC instead of Mexico. He is from Salt Lake. We don't have any pictures together yet and my iPad still it terrible with memory so I can't take any but if we do sometime today, cuz we are going downtown with Elder Peralta, and if I can upload them I will send them to you:)  Oh and I crashed on my bike today...
So let's see how good you are at understanding my story in spanish?

 Qué pasa mama? :) quería decirte una cuenta cuando yo estaba en mi última área. Fui con mi compañero a la mall en pday para comprar algunas cosas. Y en esa experiencia encontramos este muchacho que nos reconoció. Entonces yo pare para hablar acerca de algo que él quiere. Primero nos dijo que su nombre era "Rooster!" Y dijo eso con fuerza. Era chistoso porque sabía que no estaba usando drogas el, pero estaba en la forma de si. Y nos dijo muchas cosas sobre las eternidades y como espacio es en actualidad un oyó negro) y cosas locas así. Fue muy raro pero aprendí que algunas personas son locas aún que aparecen muy normal.

April 4, 2016

So new stuff...First my comp is being transferred! He is going down to Indiana with Elder Palmer!! I am getting a guy named Elder Vandenhazel. I ride bikes everyday and we do work. Ya I gained a ton of weight in Gurnee but it's all falling off my stomach finally but my thighs are getting huge so my pants still barely fit. thanks to the bikes.  I didn't get my haircut last week because we didn't make it but I am in the shop of our member right now to get it done.  Make sure you send a rain jacket because it's pretty wet around here every day.  That's all for the week.  Here is Zone conference from last week and my haircut.

March 28, 2016

This week was crazy fun and I can't wait to send you the picture of our rainy day. That's a funny story too:) but agenda wise it's all the same. Appointments, contacting, church, more appointments. Elder Rejas and I are really good at getting appointments and having people to talk to.
Chicago is so great! ;) and I am getting a hair cut today. I realized it looks terrible when we went to the sealing on Saturday for David Lovato who was a good member friend of mine in Gurnee. Someone at the wedding told me my hair looked shaggy. So I will cut it today:) So we actually missed the temple sealing which we thought was at noon, we got there at 11:45 and we thought we had time to spare. Everyone was outside and we were like sweet we will go in together and they said... Ya you missed it. But we were in all the pictures at least!! :)

Don't forget to look up the Logan Square building in Chicago Illinois! :) that is what my building is called and I'm sure they have pics of it. It is super cool cuz it has under ground parking and I've heard that it is the only church that has that. We live in just a regular old building. It's only like two stories and we live upstairs. We have to carry our bikes up and down everyday cuz we keep them inside. We don't really decide whether to bus or bike anymore we just bike because we don't have bus passes. So we have to bike no matter what which is evident from last week when it poured on us. We didn't get to see the river green for St. Patricks Day... We forgot to go so we just missed out. I haven't loaded any pictures lately because I have been having major problems with storage on my iPad. I have been doing awesome though and I love Elder Rejas. We get along great. He is 22 and from Vegas.

-Elder Jones                       This is me riding a bike in the rain for an hour.