Shocker on the Street

so this week we commenced operation cookie delivery! we made over 180 delicious chocolate chip cookies to give to all of the members that lived in our area! aint it beautiful??? :) the members (especially the new ones!) just absolutely loved us! their faces just lit up when we were standing there with those golden cookies! that took 2 whole days to get all of those rascals out of the door! then the rest of the week was spent trying to coordinate who was teaching who, what needed to be taught to help all of these other investigators that we havent met yet to progress! lots of telephone calls and going on a whim! we got a really cool investigator from the semoran sisters named J. who really wants to change her life with baptism! she is so awesome but she is living in a very tough situation where it is impossible to teach her in her house because the spirit will not enter there. so we are struggling to figure out what to do...

we have another investigator named O., who lives in orlando! haha who would have thunk! who was taught everything in uruguay but didnt get baptized when his wife did  because of 1 nephi 4 in the book of mormon. he said that with out a doubt he would get baptized as soon as he recieves an answer on the book of mormon! so please pray for him! he is so close and he just needs to take that one step of faith! 

its so hard to work our area because we have one chunk at the north-east part of our area from the semoran sisters, and then we have a chunk at the south west part of our area and we live in the southeast area of the ward outside of our actual area! so we are just chewing right through our mile alottment

we also helped a recent convert get back into church! we had dinner with him one night and he opened up to us about being lonely since his divorce and feeling so down cuz he was the only person living the gospel standards in his life and it was just so hard! but we were able to share a message of hope with him and schedule a service project at his house that saturday! it was sweet we had a ton of the ward come and help as well! and boy did that yard look nice! (you would have been proud dad! you guys taught me well with your gardening slave labor!) 

the only sad news of the week is that rafael after our pass off lesson with the sisters disappeared off the face of the earth! :( please pray for him as well and also the fact that we can keep going and progressing with our area!

random fact! elder jacobsen's parents were in orlando this last week and they dropped off a huge package at the mission office for him. which means that she was 15 minutes away from where we were! haha elder jacobsen was freaking out! it was great!

hope you have a great week! much love!

-- 

Love Elder Jones

Readers Theatre

Of course, we had to do the pose too!!!

Welcome to winter!  It was down to 12 this morning and it is not supposed to get above freezing today.  Brrrr!  We are ready though, we have our pellets and the canning is done.  Halleluja!  Jeff and I were asked to be part of a readers theatre for our stake this fall.  It just finished on Saturday.  Jeff was Samuel Smith and I was his wife, Sweet Mary Bailey.  We were really not thrilled about this to begin with, but after a few weeks we were excited to go and have "our" time to play together.  We are sad it is ended, but we made some really good friends and had some wonderful experiences.  Mason's science teacher from 8th grade was in it also, so that was fun for him to see a different side of others.  Then yesterday, the "bad guy" from the play was our high council speaker and Mason leans over and says "He was the bad guy from last night!"  He was paying attention!!!  Yeah.  Enjoy the pictures.  I am sure they will come back to haunt me some day!  Have a wonderful day!

Whitewashing Our Own Area

so this week was amazing! we saw tons of miracles! on monday we went to the church building by the temple to hang out with all of the other missionaries! when we got back we had dinner with the G family and then we taught P and then we were going to teach another member, bro R, but a whole bunch of his nonmember family was there! so we taught them the restoration! the next day was transfers, but we werent getting transfered so we just sat at our apartment doing studies waiting for the meeting to be over to see where all of our friends had gone! :) well we finally get a call and we find out that none of the spanish missionaries moved!!!! its crazy! (something that we do as spanish missionaries is we try to predict where everyone is going to go even if we dont move!) there are now some companionships that have been together for 4 transfers! that is 24 weeks! like 6 months! i cant imagine how hard marriage would be! she would have to be the best fit in order to live together for the eternities! this is me and elder jacobsens 2nd transfer together now! and we are really excited cuz we are seeing tons of miracles! its weird as a missionary because regular time doesnt make sense anymore! we measure things by 6 week incriments! haha. our new district is us the semoran sisters and the windy ridge sisters! so now me and elder jacobsen are sister training elders! we now have a SISTRICT! haha ;) its awesome though cuz we have our district meetings completely in spanish! wednesday we had temple service again! always super fun! district meeting was on thursday. friday we weekly planned and prepared ourselves for the stake conference this weekend! that night we made a trek all the way out to see these members that live super far away, but it was so worth it! they are the leon family and they are the best! they are both RM's and from venezuela. she cooks the best Arepas ever!!! shoutout to all the missionaries in spanish speaking countries if you like arepas! :) she is insane! when i asked her what her name was the first time i met her she said, "hermana leon, GRRrrrrrrrr!" (lion in english)........ :O

but they were super funny at the end of the lesson when we asked if there was anything that we could do they jokingly said oh wash the dishes and all of that! so we jumped up super quick and started doing them! (that is like unforgivable to let someone else clean your house in spanish culture!) she started laughing and got red in the face and tried to stop us but we were a service train that just wouldnt stop! haha :) it was great and their liking for us just skyrocketed! #membertrust!

then the conference! 

this stake conference was with 2 stakes combined. because they were making a new stake! YAY!!! :) we had Elder Don R Clark of the seventy come and guest speak! he is a fiery old man let me tell ya! and quick off the old whip! He talked a lot to us in the priesthood session about keys and using our priesthood to bless our lives! He challenged us to 1- Get a written fathers blessing. 2- give our wives or moms a blessing of gratitude! it was really inspirational and i left feeling uplifted! he also talked about missionary work and how we should do better! one of his quotes was "When was the last time you bought your wife flowers? something to think about...but what if your wife doesnt like flowers? well tell her that the celestial kingdom is full of them. and that if she doesnt like flowers she can prepare to go somewhere else!" HAHAHA i couldnt believe it!

well now here is the interesting part of the email...with the stake change our branch is now turning into a ward AND our areas are changing. the division in the ward used to be north and south but they changed us to east and west! and when they told us which side we were on we looked at where ALL (and i am not exagerating here when i say all) of the people we were teaching were and they were in the other area....

that means that we have to give R to the sisters 2 weeks before his baptism. that means that we have to give away all of the people we had been making such good process with. all of the people that we had come to love. this is one of the hardest changes i have had to make in the mission. But through prayer and the atonement of Christ i felt his love and peace come into my life and help me realize that this was a revelatory change.  so now we are whitewashing ( a term for when missionaries go into an area without any pre-knowledge or teaching pool or without a companion who was there before.) in our own area! it will be an adventure to say the least!

today we are making cookies for all of the members in our new area! (thanks for the idea mom! :))

i know this church is true and you better believe that we will have some more miracles coming your way next week!

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!! :D

Elder jones

Another Week for Wes

apparently, they are standing on a hill and with a little trickery
of the camera, they got the whole midget/giant thing going.

so  a lot happened this week! we went on exchanges with the portugese elders on monday after our district pday. for that pday we had a costume contest and carved pumpkins! and i got another person addicted to the slack line! yay! but when we were at walmart elder jacobsen got his bike stolen....yes we left them on the back of our car unlocked for 20 minutes. shame on us! so elder jacobsen had to get a loaner bike from the mission office. then we had lots of good days and we had our branch trunk or treat. then on halloween we had to stay inside. we couldnt go outside to tract or anything. so we did some planning and only got 2 trick or treaters! talk about lame! but then we had exchanges again and it was my first exchange with the zone leaders yet in my mission. and it was transfer saturday. so i got to see the transfer list and call some missionaries and tell them that they were leaving and stuff. it was super fun! i will be staying here in semoran for another transfer. that will make 4 transfers here! crazy! but i am super pumped to get work done and to help rafael get baptized!

i hope you have a great week!

Happy Halloween

It is that time of year again.  It has officially been over a year that our boy has been on his mission.  We went to see "Meet the Mormons" and I cried the whole last segment.  It was hard to relive those feelings through someone elses eyes.  But the other vignettes were really good.  This year for Halloween, it was rather anticlimatic.  Sydney was the only one going trick-or-treating and she specifically asked Jeff to take her since she was worried about the candy haul and knew he would push her.  So they took her friend Ashlyn and off they went.  They were gone for about 2 1/2 hours, but they made a very respectable haul, if I do say so myself.  Mason did have me curl his hair and spray it pink.  It was really funny, everyone thought he was wearing a wig.  It is so not fair.  He has Morgan's hair that just holds a curl to make any girl jealous.  His hair would hold the curl until he showered again.  Sydney wore the unicorn costume again, we have gotten a lot of mileage out of that one!  And we died her hair blue and pink so it matched the mane and tale of the costume.  Morgan had a bunch of friends over to watch movies and eat pizza, so we used them to help buck 2 tons of pellets into the storage area.  But since it is in the 40's today, we are grateful we are prepared.  Have a wonderful day!

A Miraculous Occasion

Well, here it goes kids.  Through the course of my day, a neighbor called and informed me about a sale at a men's clothing store.  Well, Jeff was in desperate need of some new dress shoes, so I told him about it and told him to go and check it out.  For those of you who don't know, Jeff hates shopping for clothes and when we got married he swore he would never, EVER wear another suit since he paid his dues on his mission.  Well, this retailer was going out of business and had GREAT deals on men's clothing.  So he went in and low and behold he came home with a receipt for a... get this... 2 pant suit and dress shoes for a great deal.  Yes it is still a lot of money, but for a tailored linen blend 2 pant suit, we got a screaming deal.  So let us know what you think!