First Photos from Houston

Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while. Things have been crazy. Elder Chuch sent us a bunch of photos. He also sent us a written description for the photos. Each of the comments below are his words. Norm.

In the mission home

Our place.

Some of the hurricane damage in Lousiana.

This guy's house was hit by a tornado as well as a hurricane. We were cleaning up all of the stuff from his car port and putting it in piles. It was sad, there were trophies, video tapes, clothes, the family's life in there.

Elders Vaz, Beach, Chuch, Rich.

This picture was taken at a member family's house, the Davises. They had a rat in their attic and so they let the dogs loose up there and they caught it and brought it down. I haven't seen much game besides that. I've seen TONS of squirrels! They're scamperin' around everywhere! I even saw one squished flat on the road but I didn't have my camera with me. I haven't seen any armadillos. I did see a possum in the church parking lot the other day but it was pretty far away.

Dontrell, Elders Jones & Vaz. Dontrell lives somewhere around here. He is working on his mission papers and he helps A LOT of the missionaries. He knows TONS of them. He might know all of them. He is an AWESOME guy. He is very friendly, we are good friends already. Down here your trainer is called your "Dad" and so Dontrell explained how I'm related to all of the other elders. For example, Elder Webb is Elder Vaz's "brother" and so Elder Webb is my "uncle" and the missionary that he trained is my "cousin". One day I was telling him how much I like Bluebell ice cream and the next day when we were by a store he bought me three half gallon containers of banana pudding, chocolate chip cookie dough, and strawberry. He's very generous and is driving missionaries everywhere. I'm going to be fat because of him.

All of the elders in my zone = standing up (L to R): Elder Rich, Elder Abel, Elder Beach, Elder Setterberg, Elder Chaney, Elder Pirente, Elder Tanzie, Sister Maycock, Elder Huish, Elder Maycock, Elder Earl. Kneeling (L to R): Elders Jones, Vaz, & Webb (my uncle).

Elder Pirente - going back to BYU-I.

Thanks for the pumpkin. It adds to the halloween decor.

A tradition around here is to trade ties with your companion. This is how many ties I had before we traded.

My one missionary mall tie on the left. Elder Vaz said this is what he'd trade for it (on the right, 15 ties). He said that that's what he'd remember Elder Jones by. I really liked that tie, but I couldn't pass it up for 15 ties. So now.....

... I have about 19 ties.

My first Texas rainstorm!

October 26 Update

Here are excerpts from Justin's latest letter:

"Today we went and played football at a field at the University of Houston. It was a nice break. It was nice weather too! Guess what! It actually was COLD here the other day! It was crazy. We hopped on our bikes to deliver a media referral and we were chilled to the bone. But today was really nice."

"I think if the astros lose i will tell everyone that they are being called to repentance, but i don't know how well that will go over."

Ummm..... No, I don't think that would be such a good idea. Trust me on this one.

"We have been helping a member in our ward fix up one of his houses that he is going to be renting out. We have been cutting tree limbs and loading them in his truck. We did that last thursday, friday, and maybe saturday. We had the adult session of Stake conference on Saturday for the Houston East stake. It was REALLY good. It was about being spiritually and temporally prepared. Thank you all for helping me to become spiritually prepared. It really is what we should all focus on. We still only have two investigators. We taught our first second lesson to ____ on monday. He took it pretty well, but he had a lot of questions. He told us he is a democrat and asked what our position was on gay rights and all that stuff. We're teaching him again on saturday or something.
Our other investigator is a woman whose sister joined the church. She actually asked us to come and teach her. We're teaching her again on Thursday."

"By the way, I cleaned the bathroom today. It was DISGUSTING!!!!! I took pictures so you could see the difference."

Woohoo!

Chuch in Astro-Land

Justin sent us a new message on 10/19/05. He now has an official e-mail address:

texas_mc@myldsmail.net (mc-mother chuch...get it?)

Please use this from now on. Also, it appears that anyone can send him e-mail, but he can only send e-mail to his family. However, I believe he is allowed to send regular mail to anyone. If he includes a shout-out to any of you in one of his e-mails, I will forward it to you. I will also post excerpts from his letters on this blog.

Here are some excerpts from this week's letter:

"Anyway, this past week has been great! I have been doing pretty well at adjusting. Thanks again for all of the letters and the e-mails and the love. I will try to get letters out but i don't have too much time."

"So, you want more of the nitty gritty eh? Well, I have heard about the astros. Boy have i heard about the astros. Did you hear about that game that went into eighteen innings? Well we had a dinner appointment that night and the father of the household would go outside and cook the chicken only when the game wasn't on. It was kind of funny. We ended up staying there longer than we were supposed to. Then about three nights ago we went over to another dinner appointment that was during an astros game and the people there didn't even stand up to greet us, they just said, the food's over there, help yourself. Then two nights ago our neighbors had a huge crowd over to watch the last game, the one they lost in the ninth. and they were partying and shouting and clapping and carrying on until they lost or something...we didn't know that they lost until the next day. All we knew is that there partying kept us up for a while. But that's okay."

"We have a lot of inactives in our ward and we have tried to visit a lot of them but many aren't home. That's kind of discouraging, you drive all the way out there just to find that they're not home, you feel like you're wasting your time. But as long as we're working hard. There's one inactive lady that has a sign on her front gate that says, "No Trespassing" then below it she has written in, "especially mormons/lds" it is HILARIOUS. We will have to get a picture with it sometime."

"We are in a car share area, which means that Elder Vaz and myself share a car with the other companionship in the area. We always end up going over our alloted amount of miles so we might have to take a few extra bike days before the transfer is over."

"Yesterday we had a combined district meeting and we talked about sacrifice. We all went around and told about something that we sacrificed. I remembered that before my mission i was so pumped up and didn't consider it a sacrifice at all...and i took strength in that. I know that the Lord can make so much more out of me than i ever could out of myself. My mission is finally here, and as I give it my all, and move forward with faith, the Lord will make more out of me than i ever could of myself. I want to be the BEST i can be."

First Letter from Texas

We just got our first "letter" from Elder Jones in the form of an e-mail message. Here are some excerpts:

"President and Sister Lake are AWESOME. ... Then we went to the mission home and we had some briskett sandwiches that were really good and some BLUEBELL ICE CREAM!!! Oh man, that stuff really is the best! I've had it about twice now and i LOVE it."

"Anyway, then we went to a nearby chappel and we were assigned to our new companions. My companion/trainer is Elder Vaz. He has been out for ten months. He is from brazil and can speak portuguese. Since spanish and portuguese are very similar he usually takes care of our spanish contacts. ... He's a really nice, easygoing guy."

"The first day we placed four copies of the Book of Mormon and those four people told us to come back and teach them. When we came back to two homes they weren't at home, we haven't visited the other two yet. When we're tracting people mostly just say, 'thank you but i'm not interested,' or 'thank you but i'm baptist.' But i know that i can't let it get me discouraged. I have to be like moroni and mormon who knew that the people wouldn't accept the gospel but they preached it because God commanded them to. It just seems like the field is not so white down here. It's more like the song, 'Ye elders of israel', 'We'll gather the wheat from the midst of the tares...'"

"Yesterday we went and volunteered at a soup kitchen like the food and care coalition except it was at the Methodist Church. I've already seen a few cockroaches, one or two big ones in our house. I even took a picture of one that my companion stepped on."

Also, Justin's new address is as follows:

Elder Justin Jones
8423 Glencrest
Houston TX, 77061

He is still waiting on his lds.org e-mail account. For the time being, he is using his gmail account (bluesteel86@gmail.com).

Norm

Mormon Boot Camp

Justin was scheduled to leave the MTC for Houston on September 27th. However, on the previous weekend, Hurricane Rita went ripping right up the heart of Justin's mission. Beaumont, Lake Charles, Port Arthur and all of the other cities you hear about on the news are all in Justin's mission. As a result, the entire mission relocated to Austin for a few days and Justin and his fellow Houston-bound missionaries had to cool their heels in the MTC for one extra week. He finally left on Tuesday, October 4th. At the time of this writing, we still have not heard where he ended up. We will make a post as soon as we hear something.

Here are some photos he sent us from the MTC:


Striking the pose



Honing those grinding skills



The ever-popular map photo



Singing around the "tree of life"



Hmmm.... How did they do that?



Self-portrait



Justin's MTC companion, Elder Bills



Justin's MTC district

The Sendoff

Justin entered the MTC on September 7, 2005. It was a bittersweet day. We were happy and proud of Justin for making this choice and preparing himself. But it sure was tough to say goodbye. Here are some photos from the fateful day:


Justin's homeboys giving him a fond farewell on the night before.



Packing the bags with the family.



The obligatory photo in front of the MTC entrance.



Just before the final departure.


Elder Chuch with his brand new nametag.

Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where...

This is Justin's dad, Norm Jones. Justin is currently serving a two-year mission for the LDS Church in the Texas Houston East Mission. I have decided that the best way to keep everyone up to date on Justin's mission is to create a blog for him. I will use this blog to post excerpts from his letters and e-mails and to post photos. I may even throw in a few tidbits about the Jones Family in general. If you have any comments or suggestions, please drop me a note at njones61@gmail.com.