Another note from Wes...

 So apparently we didn't get an actual message from Wes today, just a bunch of pictures.  So he mentioned that they had this torrential storm that came through with tornado warnings and so forth.  He didn't mention where he was with the booth and all, but it looks like some sort of festival or fair.  As he states "so there was a huge storm that we were in this week. like there was tornado warnings and stuff. apparently its just a regular storm for florida... yeah...haha :D"


Leave it to Wes to laugh off tornado warnings.  But notice his cool new back-pack...  Jeff got one just like it for his birthday too.  Wes needed something a little more compact since they have the I-pads now.    But he loves it and that is all that matters.

Birthday Week-end

Well, weird things are afoot with the blog, so bare with me!  Jeff and Mason went on a campout this last week-end, so it was just Sydney and I for Friday night (Morgan is in California, playing til Wednesday).  So no birthday party this week-end.  We will have to wait until next Friday.  

Anyhoo, we were able to go and watch the women's conference Saturday night and then have a little party with the girls afterwards at our house.  It was a lot of fun and a nice tradition to start with the beginning of a new Women's conference.  So with that over, it was time to start focusing on the birthday fun.  Mason wanted spaghetti and meatballs.  We made homemade meatballs on Thursday and froze them until ready to use.  I started my sauce Sunday morning and let it simmer in the crock pot until after church when we added the meatballs.  Needless to say, it was a winner winner "meatball" dinner.  We had a wonderful salad to go with it and of course homemade french bread.  We had Mason's bestie over for dinner and then they had a fireside to go to.  After the fireside, they came back for dessert.

Well, unfortunately, Jeff was having a food coma, and residual headache from earlier, so we decided to have a little fun with the cake.  Mason suggested they eat the cake without cutlery, so we said go for it.  Please follow the link  Cake eating contest to see the results on You tube.

Oh, and by the way, did we mention there was a veritable blizzard yesterday on top of all the fun?  Well, yes there was and here is the proof!  We have at least 3 inches of snow, when earlier we had none.  I hope this week finds you well and you have a wonderful day.

Birthday Week!

So this last week was filled with miracles. I forgot my iPad in celebration at a members house, so the next day we had to use to bus to go up there. Once we got it we decided that we would bike back home and just contact people along the way. It was awesome!!!  We contacted 39 people and got a ton of potentials! The whole bike ride was like 2 hours and 30 minutes long. There was an awesome experience that I had at least. We were contacting a Spanish woman who really wasn't that
interested in talking to us but we were just giving her a card. Then when we were about to leave an Asian woman who I didn't even notice tugged my sleeve. She was deaf and so she couldn't talk to me, but she motioned for a card. I wanted to just cry and give her a hug! Such a blind act of faith on her part is so amazing. The fact that she recognized us as representatives of the lord and decided to act on that and to decide that that was what she wanted took extreme faith.
So I showed her the website at the bottom of the card and we left...I will probably never see her again but she left a big impact on my life. we had a miracle this week where we were praying specifically for a specific person that we made up and decided that we wanted to teach, and the key thing was that they were going to give us "zephyr hills water bottles" so we were tracting and we came across this one lady who was pretty cool and she wanted us to come back and so we were like cool! and we were walking away and thought that the contact was
over when she came out of the door again and she was like "wait!!!" and so we turned around and she gave us water bottles and they were zephyr hills!!! MIND BLOWN!!! :D God is awesome! The church is true and don't ever doubt it! This PDAY we had a birthday party for 3 members of our district who have the same birthday! It was so fun! Love you guys and thanks for all the support!

Love elder jones

Update on the Fam...

Hey all, hope your spring brings you good tidings...  We have been very busy here at the home front.  Last week we finally got the last part of our house insulated.  They fixed the over hang on the patio, so now we won't have anymore cold floors and the basement should be much cozier.  We could actually feel a breeze through the outlets downstairs.  So they reinsulated the cantilever over the patio and then insulated the ceiling in the play room.   Since that was done, it was time to sheet rock!  We HATE sheetrocking.  I finally started bribing the YM in our ward to come over and help hang sheet rock in return for sugar cookies and bagels.  It worked and now it is done, the ceiling that is.  Then we had fun putting up a few wall sheets too.  I will be so glad when this is all hung!

We have been able to see our yard for the last month or so, so it is time to start gardening.  The deer usually don't come until the middle of May, but they are back already.  A Kiddie pool blew into our yard and they have started using it as a drinking fountain.  We had 14 come through the day of this picture.

Morgan was asked to Prom, by the same guy that took her to sweethearts.  Tyler left this note and picture on our front step.  Morgan freaked out, screaming and saying how awesome this is etc.  Unbeknownst to her, Tyler was sitting across the street in his car watching.  Way to go Morgan!!!  She loves Lord of the Rings, so he played on that, where Tyler loves Star Trek.  So we made a play on that to respond to the invitation.  We went and got a flat sheet and pillow case.  She wrote on the pillow case "Dammit Jim, she said..."  And then on the sheet, she wrote in huge letters "YES!".  He was gone for the week-end, so we had his sister make his bed with the new linens.  Apparently it was a big hit at his house.  He should be getting his mission call, not this week, but next.  So he is a great kid and we are so appreciative of the respect that he shows to Morgan.

And finally, Sydney cut her hair.  We were at Ryan's baptism and one of Ryan's cousins had a cute chin length bob.  Sydney leans over and tells me how cute that hair cut is, and would it look good on her?  I said of course, so finally on Friday, the kids had a day off of school for end of term, so we took her in to get it cut.  They put her hair in a pony tail, so we could send it in to Locks of Love.  Then it was time to cut!  It turned out absolutely adorable!  All Friday and Saturday she kept telling me she loves her hair, feel how soft it is... etc.

Hope you all have a wonderful week.  We are looking forward to the women's conference this week-end.  Sydney and I get to go together.  Morgan will be gone for Choir Tour, but we will still have fun without her!

My First Crash...

so yes i finally crashed on my bike...after 5 months it finally happened :( BUT it was pretty epic! (according to elder starks who saw the whole thing) i was going super fast on a dirt path and like somehow my front tire just slipped out from under me and my whole bike just catapulted in the air and i did like a front flip and landed on mi cabeza! oh and i was modifing a set of sweats that i had but never wore because it is just too hot here and so we made bandit masks for each other...SWEET!!! :)

Another Week in the Books!

so this week was filled with missionary experiences! i relate to one of my friends, elder butler, email a while back when he was talking about all the crazy stuff that happens as missionaries! this week we had a lesson on the street that went super well until elder starks said, "i know that everything my companion said is true!" then the man stopped us and said, "WAIT?! did you say companion??!!" so then we had to explain to him that we werent...you know....and that just made things really awkward. the other day we went tracting for almost 3 hours straight and only had 1 person invite us back! (it was a wicked cool neighborhood though! HUGE trees were everywhere! and they had all sorts of vines growing up them!) one night we were woken up by some of the stray cats in the neighborhood outside our door making little kittens, yeah. we also decided to drop 4 of our investigators to give them some time and breathing room to see what they really wanted, and that is always disappointing. our baptism last week didnt show up to get confirmed this week. but what can you do! just keep working hard and trust in the lord! we still have one really solid investigator who is coming to church regularly now!

 and we found other ways to stay positive too!  me and elder starks one night decided to give each other haircuts! hee hee hee (it was my first time, but he was a pro!) so you can imagine what his hair looked like compared to mine! mine was actually good, and his.....well it was pretty great until i started trimming around the ears...yeah he wouldnt even let me take a picture of it! haha but the only difference between a good haircut and a bad one is 2 weeks so!!! only 1 investigator has commented on it so far!  also one of the highlights of the week (at least in my eyes!) was that the ward had like a cake auction mixed in with a spaghetti dinner to raise money for the scouts! not an exceptionally large ammount of people showed up and so one of the members pulled us aside and said that he would sponsor us up to 30 dollars to get the crowd going! so me and elder starks start bidding like crazy! (always pulling out at 30$) anyways elder agor was also there on exchanges, but he wasnt being sponsored, so he just thought that we were using our own money! so he starts bidding too!? now there was one cake in particular that we wanted! it was a british barbie cake! (kinda like the ones you made for morgan and sydney when they were younger mom!) so this cake comes on the auction block, and me and elder starks start bidding for it all the way up to 20$ right off the bat, and elder agor (not wanting to be outdone by his other missionaries) shouted, "25$!!!" and then it just went DEAD silent! then somebody said, "let the missionaries have it!" then elder agor realizes that he is going to have to pay 25$ for a cake, and starts freaking out! Long story short, since we didnt buy anything, the member sponsored it for him and we got a british barbie cake!

 Love being a missionary even though it is tough sometimes! i love hearing from you guys back at home too! thanks for all the support that i have gotten! i wouldnt have gotten to where i am now without you guys! i Love you and the lord loves you! in the words of bill and ted, "be excellent to each other" until next week!-- 
Love Elder Jones

My New Area

well i finished training! and i got transfered! transfer meeting was great! i met alex Laurizten who went to Salem hills with me and that was pretty cool! and then we actually had the transfers! i was really curious because all of the elders in our four-man were making predictions on who was going to get moved! so as the meeting progressed and the choices got more and more limited i realized that there were only 2 spots left that i could go, back to poinciana or to pleasant hill north spanish! (which is just up the road to poinciana, still the same district!) and the guy who was in pleasant hill north spanish was also getting transfered and he had the same 2 options as well! it was CRAZY!!! we just swapped spots! my new companion is named elder Ashton Starks, some call him tony, or by his stage name ironman, and some just call him kirk, james tiberius kirk that is! ;) he is super cool! he grew up in Gunnison Utah and loves the outdoors. he is the second oldest of 12 kids in his family and his mom is still going strong! Take that Jansen Brockbank!! haha ;D AND the coolest part is that he was companions with my trainer right before i got to the mission! something unique about his mission is that he has had 13 companions in a mission only lasting 16 transfers, and he always seems to leave an area right before he has a baptism! (remember the girl, when I first arrived, my first baptism on my second day in the mission? yeah he taught her everything!) i love my area! its a little weird going from a branch back to a regular ward but this ward is really good and really missionary focused! AND i get to speak more spanish since we are only allowed to teach spanish people! YAY!!! also something else that is cool that happened this week was that i got to see mini-me's baptism! and i got to confirm him!!! i love that kid! it was the best! :D :D :D also...

Just this week we had a miracle with a self media referral where we called him and he told us that he wanted us to come over the same day! when we got there he basically said that, "i want to join your church! what do i have to do?" and so now he has already been to church after only the first lesson and we are teaching the other ones to him now too! really cool guy! Next week i will have pictures for you guys and just know that i love you all!!!! :)