Fw: On and Off

 

 

 

 

Hellooooo everyone!!!

 

I got all of your Christmas wishes and all that jazz, got to talk to family on Skype, and it was an awesome Christmas!

 

Christmas day we got invited to three different homes, so we spent a little bit of time at each place. I not only got stuff from home, but some of the members got us stuff, too, so it's going to be real fun to figure out how to pack everything eventually. :P

 

Yes, I had a very lovely Christmas, and this whole week has been good. Well, mostly.

 

I was sick again this week. Same symptoms as the sickness I got last week where it started with a sore throat and then I got a feverish headache and had to sleep all day. It's really irritating since it's like I just got the same illness twice. So it's sort of been on and off sick for a while. Almost like I got better just in time for Christmas, then got sick again. -_-

 

It's kind of weird that Christmas was only this week. It feels like that happened forever ago. And now we're straight on to the New Year!

 

Being on a mission has made me question the point of staying up till midnight and screaming at the top of your lungs banging on a pot to start off every new year, but I don't have to do that this year, so cool. It just means it might be difficult to sleep through it.

 

Anyway, I don't actually have a lot to say for this week. Most people were out of town for the holidays. We did get a new investigator who's pretty solid, but that's about it for the week. Many thanks to all of you who sent Christmas cards and holiday wishes! You are all awesome and amazing! I'll try to send return letters if I can, but that may or may not happen. But again, thank you to all, and I hope that all of you had wonderful holiday times!!!

 

~Sister Richelle Jones

Fw: And then it was Christmas

 

 

Ho!

 

It's Christmas time!!! You know what that means?! I've been on my mission for six months now! Crazy! This time next year, I'll be home. Aaaaaand I get to skype you all!!! YAAAAYYYY!!!

 

So I got your Christmas package on Saturday. There were four packages inside and four days until Christmas, so I decided to open one present a day. On Sunday, when I opened the first gift with the earrings Mom made, one of them was broken. :( Must've rattled around in the box too much on the way here. So I super-glued it back together and all is well. :) This morning I opened the pretty blue scarf you sent. Thank you!! :D

 

Also, Grandma Nancy, I got your package you sent with the warm skirt in it. So again. THANK YOU!!!

 

I feel kinda bad since my companion hasn't gotten anything for Christmas from her family. I'll probably get her something nice later today.

 

So I'll skype you guys Christmas Eve since it sounds like Christmas day is a little on the busy side for you. That means I get to see you tomorrow night! Exciting, huh? We have to keep the call under 40 minutes, though, and I won't be able to see Pip and Tess unless you bring them with you to Grandma's place, but so it goes.

 

So this week went by rather quickly. Mostly because I was out of it for a good three days. Wednesday morning, I got up, did my normal studies, then my body told me to go back to bed, so I did. Thursday, I was doing better until the evening and I had to go home early. Friday, I woke up with a fever and I couldn't eat anything, and that lasted all day. Then in the evening, one of the members wanted us to come with her to bring gifts to less active families, so since she was driving, I sort of tagged along behind blearily. Saturday I was feeling a lot better, though, and was able to get back to work.

 

Last night, the members who lent us their old farmhouse, the Hillyer family, went Christmas carroling, so they took us with them, and that was a lot of fun. I was the only person in the whole group who could actually carry a tune, so they had me sort of lead and everybody else sort of followed along.

 

Aaaaand that was the gist of this week. Merry Merry Christmas to you all, and I'll see you tomorrow and such!

 

~Sister Richelle Jones

Fw: Old Maid

 

 

 

 

Dear everyone,

 

As many of you know, my birthday just happened! I'm now old enough to drink, not that I would ever want to. I spent my birthday doing an excellent thing. Missionary work! Yay! I didn't get any cake, but I did get some chocolate silk pie, so that makes up for it. :D The farmhouse has this giant "Happy Birthday" banner strung up on one of the walls that's been there for ages, so I took pictures in front of it for my birthday. That was pretty much the extent of my celebration. Yup.

 

I got the music note scarf you guys sent in the mail, plus it's twin. I got two of them. Not sure why. I'm probably going to give the extra to Sister Moa. It's really pretty and I like it. :)

 

This week was a little bit warmer. It only got below zero a few times and stayed around 15 degrees on the warmer days and actually got up to 20 at one point. The weather forcast says it will be warmer still this week and might actually get above freezing! :D Looking forward to it!

 

So Lizzie got baptized this Saturday which was super exciting. There were actually 7 baptisms that happened in our stake this Saturday, one of them was the person who Sister Moa and I taught and put her on date but then she moved. So we got to go to two baptisms on Saturday. It was pretty awesome. That was pretty much my birthday gift right there.

 

This week was transfers, but both Sister Moa and I will be staying in the Fruita 4th ward. I'm really happy about that.

 

Earlier this week, Sister Moa and I were doing our regular studies in the morning when suddenly we get this phone call from the housing department saying that they're around the area and checking all the missionaries' apartments. We then panicked, ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, and speed cleaned the apartment. Gotta love those days. Then when they came, they walked in, glanced around, proclaimed it good, and left. :P

 

Speaking of chickens with their heads chopped off, wikipedia Mike the Headless Chicken. I think you will find it amusing.

 

I think that's all I have for you this week. :/ sorry, it was pretty uneventful. I love you all, and I hope you have a good rest of the week!

 

~Sister Richelle Jones

 

P.S. we should probably arrange a time that I'll skype you on Christmas since that's coming up soon. I think we'll probably skype you towards the evening. Sister Moa is also checking with her family a time to skype. Just whatever works. I dunno. I'll check with you more about it as we get closer to that day. :) Looking forward to it!

The brown scarf is one that I made. I finished it this week, so I had to get a picture of it. :)

These were all taken before the snow. Oh, and the one picture that shows a bunch of blobs on the ground. Yeah, that's our basement. We might have a LITTLE bit of a wasp infestation, and those just MIGHT be all the dead wasps that are down there from when the basement got sprayed with wasp killer. :P No harm done. The wasps seem to have disappeared with the snow, though occasionally they show up in the kitchen. I've washed a few down the sink already. Muahaha.

 

Fw: Snow Angels

 

 

Greetings!

 

Winter seems to have settled in to stay. We got a bad snow storm on Wednesday (The schools canceled which doesn't happen very often down here apparently) but the missionary work trudged on. It was a good thing I got those boots when I did, but even with them, my feet have been freezing. The below-zero temperatures don't really help. (It's currently -3 degrees outside right now...) The Fruita and Grand Junction area is supposedly the warmest place in the mission with the least amount of snow. And certainly, it held out longer than Eagle did. But even still, it's really really cold.

 

It's only been a week and I'm already quite sick of it. It's apparently one of the coldest winters they've had since Fruita usually doesn't get snow this early in the year, but the snow we have isn't supposed to melt till late February, so I'm just going to have to get used to it. It's funny, after the snow storm, they were pretty good about plowing most of the streets, but then it snowed again Friday night and they never bothered to plow any of the roads from that. The roads are pretty slick and it's been an interesting experience driving in it, but I think I'm getting used to slipping and sliding on the ice. Definitely all those times that Dad forced me to go out and drive in the snow to get the experience has helped, otherwise I might have freaked out by now.

 

I have discovered that one of the most amusing things to do is break off the gigantic icicles that are almost big enough to create spears out of and javelin throw it against the ground and watch it shatter into a thousand pieces. SO much fun.

 

I have to admit, I'm not a fan of the cold. I never have been. I suppose it was a tender mercy that I was removed from the mountains before the winter or else I would probably refuse to go outside. It's COLD. I kinda feel sorry for all the cows that have to stay outside in the freezing cold.

 

So this morning, one of the members took us up to the Grand Junction Monument, which is the giant Grand-Canyon-like rock formation on the south side of Fruita, so I got lots of pretty neat pictures.

 

Also, I got to sing in the Ward Christmas Party last Friday. I'm getting more confident standing up in front of a bunch of people and singing. It's still not my forte by any means, but my voice doesn't shake so bad anymore.

 

Anyhoo, I think that's pretty much it for this week. It's cold. Really cold.

 

~Sister Jones

Fw: Holiday Schniffles

 

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

 

This week was kind of a slow week since most people were out of town for the holidays. We were asked to take care of two people's animals while they were away which has been fun. Chasing down chickens. That keep escaping. Five minutes after you round them up into their cage. Curse you, chickens.....

 

We're really excited for Lizzie who is getting baptized in a few weeks. I think I mentioned that last time. It's weird, I turn 21 soon... How odd. Yeah, Lizzie agreed to be baptized the day before my birthday, and she's doing really well and will be making it to that date. She will be the fourth person I've helped bring to baptism. I've been able to help Jess, Susanna, Ricardo, and now Lizzie. The promise given in the Doctrine and Covenants is really true when it says that when you reap with your might, your back will be laden with sheaths. I love all the blessings the Lord is able to give to his children, and it's been my priveledge to not only witness it, but be a part of it.

 

Thanksgiving was fun. We got a day to hang out and relax until dinnertime, where we went to a member's house and hung out and relaxed. It was great! A rare occurance indeed!

 

Then on Black Friday, I caught a cold. We tried to go see people anyway, but nobody was home, so when we got to the point where the only thing left to do is tracting, I gave up and we went home. I've been sick ever since, but we got some spray stuff that helps with sinus problems, and that's been helping. Hopefully it will be completely gone by tomorrow.

 

There was a cool thing that happened, I went on exchanges the week before with one of the Sister Training Leaders, Sister Jones. (We confused the heck out of people. It was fun.) But while we were out tracting, we ran into this guy who was from our area in Fruita who was looking for some help moving. So we got to help him. That was pretty neat.

 

I also got your package! I am enjoying it. :) The white chocolate Reese's are really good since it's all just basically peanutbutter and sugar. DAAAAVIIIIID!!!! Thank you for the music CD. Hearing you play piano brings back good memories and I love you. I think it's funny that in most of the recordings, you can hear Tess in the background walking on the wooden floor in the front entry room. Some of the recordings got a little maxed out in the sound in places, but it still makes me really happy. I laugh at the parts where you mess up. Bahahaha!

 

Yeah, so today we went to the mall and I got myself a pair of boots that will keep my feet dry. I have no idea how I'm going to pack said boots, but I'll figure it out when that time comes. All of the snow we had last week it completely gone except for the melting snowmen in front of people's houses, but I'm sure that we'll be getting a lot more this winter. I'm lucky to be in Fruita where they don't get as much snow as up in the mountains.

 

While at the mall, I also decided that my hair needs a trim since the ends were pretty dead. The person there told me that to get rid of all the dead ends, I would have to cut six inches off my hair. I wasn't willing to do that, but I still had to chop off three inches. :( That's basically all that I grew while on my mission so it's the same length as when I left. I also decided to try out some bangs. I figured, hey, if I don't like them, they will be grown out by the end of my mission. I cut them to be chin-length, so they're not too horribly short and I can still pull them back if I so desire, and the rest of my hair is still nice and long. I'll send you pictures eventually.

 

I kind of wanted to get a picture of me all decked out in black with my sunglasses on and carrying a book of mormon and posing all matrix just because I mentioned it last week, but I never got the opportunity to do so. Too bad. Then I could have sent the picture to you and you could put in the caption of "Bringing Souls to Zion" or "Are you the One" or something amusing like that. Maybe I'll get the picture... Maybe.

 

Well, I think that's all for this week! Happy holidays everyone! December is here! Whip out all your Christmas trees, santa outfits, and credit cards! Yeah! :P

 

~Sister Richelle Jones

Fw: Cold, Wet, and Blind

 

 

 

 

Dear family and friends and all you wonderful people out there who are reading this.

 

This week was a very interesting week. I don't have much time, so I'm going to attempt to be fast.

 

First on the agenda: My glasses broke. :( I didn't notice until one morning I opened my glasses case and discovered that one of the screws had come out and the lense was gone. I scoured the farmhouse, the car, the surrounding areas, the people we visited the previous day, and there's no sign of the lense. So it's quite sad and I will need new glasses. I've gotten permission from the zone leaders to wear sunglasses until I get new ones. With the sunglasses and the long black coat I have, plus my black boots, I kinda look like I belong in the matrix.

 

Second on the agenda: It snowed. It's melted by now, but it's freezing cold outside, and I discovered that my boots are not water proof. They soaked through pretty fast. :( I will need to get new ones I think.

 

I am SO out of time. The library is crowded today and I have 3 minutes left.

 

We had one of the investigators on baptismal date move to a different ward which made us very sad. But the other investigator on baptismal date is super solid and moved up her date to December 14th, so it's like a birthday gift to me! :D That was really a miracle.

 

I'm sorry, I'm out of time. I love you all!

 

~Sister Richelle Jones

Fw: Prophets, Seers, and Revelators

 

 

 

Hello, everyone!

 

Sorry about last week's short email. We went to the library to do emails and it was closed due to labor day. But we had to get the car checked (because the headlights are being dumb and will only turn on the brights for some stupid reason) and while waiting, there was a computer in the waiting room, so that was what I used to email. Then we got permission to email on Tuesday instead of Monday since the library was closed, but I had already sent my email and stuff, and I discovered that I have this fun little time limit while on the computer here.

 

So first on the agenda, I sent you guys the wrong address. It's only wrong by one digit. I sent Darcy the correct address on Tuesday, but I want to make sure everyone gets it.

 

Sister Jones

2048 1/2 J Road

Fruita, CO

 

All of the addresses here are weird and there are lots of fractions included in said addresses. I think J 2/10 road is the weirdest one around here, but yeah...

 

I'm less lost than I was the first week of being here. I still haven't connected all the dots of where everything is yet, but I'm getting the hang of it, and I'm learning more about the people in this area and whatnot.

 

So I mentioned last week that we got to see M. Russel Ballard, which was pretty cool. It's like how Elder Oaks came to the Lacey stake a few years back. It's a pretty rare thing, and I got the priveledge of being transferred to this area just in time to see it. I thought that was pretty nifty. Elder Ballard is a pretty funny guy, and he actually met with all the missionaries after stake conference was over. So I was sitting only about five feet away from an apostle of the Lord. That's pretty significant.

 

A lot of what he talked about was how we need to hasten the work. Members are being asked to contribute more to missionary work, and as such, it's also up to the missionaries to step up the pace to make sure that none of the effort of the members is being wasted. It's still our job to find, to teach, and to baptize. He challenged us to talk to at least ten people a day on the streets in between tracting and teaching appointments. It was pretty intense. He basically looked each of us directly in the eye and told us to work harder. He also talked about how he, as an apostle of the Lord, could go out into the world and declare who he was and what mantle he had, and he could find 30 people on the street for us to teach, but that isn't really his role, it's our role, so go out and do it. Basically.

 

Anyway, there's a lot of things I could talk about. Sister Moa, my new companion, is awesome (She's Tongan, so that's pretty neat), and this new area is awesome. It's actually comprised of more farmland than Eagle was, which was a bit surprising to me, but alright. Eagle wasn't fully farms, it was just out in the middle of nowhere. Fruita is a bunch of farms, but it's right next to a big city. And it's close enough to Utah that there's still a great influx of members here. You ask people where they're from and the answer is usually "Vernal Utah." so they have a joke here that all of our less actives moved from Vernal over to here.

 

I actually live in this creaky little farm house. It's pretty legit. There's a red barn and a bunch of cows next door, all of the floors are made of wood and they squeak and creek wherever you walk, there's talk that the place is haunted (Tom says hi), it's nifty.

 

I don't think there's really anything else to talk about. It's going pretty good here. There's people to teach, things to do, we're doing significantly less tracting over here, we have two people on baptismal date who are going to make it, it's great. Yup.

 

I'll talk to you all next week! Byez!

 

~Sister Jones

Fw: One field to the next

 

 

 

 

Dear home peoples,

 

I don't have a lot of time. So this will be short. Sorry.

 

My new area is Fruita, a suburb of Grand Junction. I'm serving in the 4th ward. There are significantly more members here than there were in Eagle, and we're right next to a fairly large city. It also doesn't snow nearly as much here and the temperature went up significantly, so I'm not freezing to death here. All the members keep telling me that I left Eagle just in time before the snows set in. Fruita is right along the border of Utah and is mostly desert, rock, and cow farms. Yup. I live on a cow farm now. I went from sheep to cows. Yaay. Sheep smell better than cows do.

 

The streets are ratherly interesting here. We get things like J 2/10ths road. The streets are lined up on a grid, so one way is letters, the other way is numbers. So when I say that I live on 20 1/2 road, that means that I am 20 1/2 miles from the Utah border. Yyup. It's pretty interesting.

 

I also discovered that it is incredibly easy to get lessons here. I worked extremely hard just to find people in Eagle and barely scrambled one or two lessons a day, but I came out here and we pretty well get lessons without even thinking about it. Let's go over here and teach these people. Ok. Let's go over here and teach these people. Ok. It actually makes me appreciate just how hard I worked in the Eagle area.

 

Anyway, I'm just about out of time here. Before I leave, I need to tell you my new address.

 

Sister Jones

2040 1/2 J Road

Fruita, CO

 

I think that should be right. I'll double check it next week. Anyway, that's all for me. This Sunday we're having another stake conference here and M. Russell Ballard will be speaking at it, so that's pretty cool. I'll keep you more updated next week.

 

CYA!

 

~Sister Richelle Jones

Fw: Eagle Wings

 

 

 

 

Dearest family and friends,

 

First of all, I want to say YAAAAAAAAA Congrats, Mrs. Darice Sowers!!

 

Ahem.

 

Anyway, I'm sure you all had a more enjoyable week than I did. This was a very depressing week for me, and felt like one of the longest weeks I've experienced here on my mission. We had time after time of appointments falling through, we had one investigator drop us altogether, and many hours of having nothing to do but knocking on doors, and multiple times, we went through an entire street and had only one person home and they weren't interested. I got so discouraged at times, I didn't even want to go out.

 

On Tuesday, I had my doctor's appointment. They said that the cartilage in my knee had a rough spot on it that was rubbing up against the bone, but other than that, I was healthy and fine. They sent me away with a slap on the knee and a piece of paper prescribing some physical therapy to take the weight off the rough spot. In my opinion, it hurts more than "just a rough spot" but I'm not the doctor I guess. At least I don't have to do anything extensive like surgery or anything like that.

 

For Halloween, we went over to the mission leader's house and baked cookies and Polish Apple Pie for the remainder of the night, so that was fun.

 

Friday afternoon, I was feeling really down. The schedule for the day was like, "Tracting in black bear, tracting in cotton ranch, tracting by the Luchycky's," stuff like that for the whole day. And all the while, I kept thinking to myself, "My sister is getting married and I'm not there for it and I'm not even accomplishing anything while doing it." This lasted all through Saturday. Sister Mayne and Sister Henderson were both like, "Don't think about the fact that you're missing it, think instead about how happy your sister is!" and "You'll see her eventually. You have the rest of your life to see her." But I was still very down.

 

Then, late Saturday night, they gave the transfers phone call. I've been transferred. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going somewhere. I then had the hard task of saying goodbye to a great many people here, members and non-members, that I've grown to love.

 

That was a VERY depressing night.

 

Sunday was fast and testimony meeting during church. And during that, the Lord answered my prayers as one person after another got up and bore their testimonies and many of them included experiences of how they were grateful for the sister missionaries in the area, one member who came out with us to a lesson and had his testimony grow, one member who we had dinner with who's husband wasn't a member and said we touched her husband's heart, a previous less-active family who are returning to church and planning on going to the temple again who thanked me personally for all that I did for them. Then we had a fireside after church that a few of our investigators came to, one of which gave me a scarf to show how grateful she was that we were able to help her, and then we visited Susanne and Ricardo who (In Spanish) told me how very thankful they were that Sister Pfeifer and I had found them.

 

I was very weepy during the experience, and it was the Lord's way of saying, "You are doing great things out here." Just as the knee thing was like the Lord's way of saying, "If I wanted you to go home, I could very well send you home. But I chose not to because I need you out here."

 

And apparently, I'm not needed in the Eagle Valley anymore. I'm going to move forward to new areas, meet many more great people, and continue to have awesome experiences out here while on the Lord's errand. I'll tell you my new address next week when I'm in my new area.

 

Darcy and Josh (Hosh) I love both of you and I wish you the best! I will see you when I get home at the end of my mission!

 

~Sister Richelle Jones

Fw: the air of autumn

 

 

 

 

Hello everyone!

 

I wanted to start out by saying how much I love Fall. It's always been one of my favorite seasons. You get all the pretty colors in the trees and whatnot. It's gorgeous, and this past week has been sunny so it didn't get quite as cold as before. Last Monday after we were done with emails and whatnot, I took Sister Peacock up hanging lake, so I've gotten to see it in both the summer time as well as in the fall. There was snow on the path in some places and mud in other places, so it was a bit more treacherous than before, but it was beautiful all the same, and I got to slow down and enjoy the hike a little more because I wasn't having to catch up with my companion this time. Then on the way back down, we got to talk to some people we met at the top, and we had a nice missionary discussion all the way down the mountain. :D

 

This week I've been feeling significantly better health-wise, though my knee started protesting against stairs again after going on that hike. Don't worry about that, Sister Peacock finally pestered me into calling the mission office and I have a doctors appointment to get that checked out this Tuesday. One thing that worries me is that I was talking to one of the sisters in the ward that just had surgery done on her knee, and it sounds like what happened to her is the same thing that happened to me. It popped funny and hurt from then on, though she could still walk on it, but when she got it checked out, they discovered that some ligament in her knee had snapped and she had to go in to surgery, and that prevented her from walking on it for a full month. If that happens to me, there is a chance I may be sent home. :/ I'm not ready to go home yet... But maybe I can beg to do online missionary work instead until I heal enough to go back to regular missionary work. But all of that really depends on what the doctor says this Tuesday. Basically everything depends on that. At the end of this week is transfers, and I was thinking I would be staying in Eagle since I'm training Sister Peacock, but depending on what happens with my knee, I might be sent somewhere else. That in and of itself would make me very sad because I have grown to love so many people here in the Eagle Valley. But we'll see. I'm crossing my fingers and praying that I'll be hopefully staying.

 

So I did finish my sketchbook that I've been using to take notes in during things like the MTC, district meetings, zone conferences, zone trainings, general conference, and Sunday school. There aren't any sketchbooks like that one to be found in the general vicinity of this area since we don't have a Michael's store here. So if you could send me a new one, that would make me happy. However, you should probably wait until after this week. Not only would that put you to a point after Darcy's wedding, but it also gives me time to know what's going to happen this transfer. In the meantime, I'm glad to hear that Darcy has been reading the finished sketchbook I sent home. I'm hoping that it will help inspire you as some of these things have helped inspire me.

 

Anyway, this has been a very nice week. Not only did we have zone conference in Grand Junction this Tuesday where we got to hear Elder Baxter from the first quorum of the seventy, but we also had exchanges with the Sister Trainer Leaders this Wednesday. It was a good week full of good stuff. :)

 

And that's all for this week I think. Have a good week and I'MSOEXCITEDFORDARCY'SWEDDING!!!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

 

Have a good one! :D

 

~Sister Richelle Nicole Jones

Fw: Simple Blessings

 

 

 

Hello all!

 

So periodically this week, I was having some serious stomach issues, just like the day I had eaten those eggs. It wasn't an everyday thing, but it was frequent enough that it was disrupting missionary work. So Sister Peacock and I were very concerned for my health. On Saturday, when I was again feeling sick to my stomach, I think I finally figured out what it is. Every day I've gotten sick, I had eaten Sister Mayne's scrambled eggs for breakfast that morning. Sister Mayne makes breakfast for us almost every day, and her cooking is really good. I'm not normally a big fan of eggs, but I've been eating hers, but since the incident where I ate bad eggs, it's like my stomach goes, "Oh, no, not these again," and rebels. Plus, I believe that I remember Mom saying something about David previously being allergic to eggs. I think it might not be so far-fetched as to think that perhaps I have the same thing, but I haven't really eaten enough eggs in the past to really tell, or maybe it's a recent thing my body has developed. In any case, I'm going to avoid eggs for the next week and hopefully my mysterious stomach flu will disappear.

 

Despite me being sick (again) we had a pretty decent week. We're not hitting the high numbers I was hitting when I was with Sister Pfeifer, but I think that part of that has something to do with the change of seasons. We don't get as many people just randomly wandering around the streets that we can stop and talk to, and it gets ratherly frigid outside quite often. There hasn't been snow that's lasted on the ground for a full day yet, but the mountains all around us are covered in snow, so it's certainly on its way. The clouds look really interesting when they're snowing on the mountains around us because it looks kind of like they're eating the mountains. Nomnomnom. One of the pictures I sent you guys was actually a picture of that as taken from the Mayne's back porch.

 

Anyway, I got your package. It made me happy. Sister Peacock also got a package at the exact same time, so that was fun. I love the gloves. :) They're my type of gloves, all nice and warm and fuzzy inside. :D And I'm glad to hear that you guys got my package. I had meant to write you a note to include with it to explain what everything was, and I also meant to clean out that container and fill it with fudge, but the bottom line is that I ran out of time. You're lucky I stuffed all the stuff in a box and sent it. :/

 

So an explanation for the contents of the box. First, the pot holders. Bishop's mom lives across the street from us. She is 91 years old. Grandma Bair spends all her time crocheting hot-pads to hand to people. Pretty much everyone in the ward here has a collection of hot-pads. They're really quite good. She has a unique stitch that's really thick so your hands don't get burned. So most of those pot holders are made by Grandma Bair that she gave to me. Sister Pfeifer and Sister Peacock also have a collection of hot-pads. One of those hot-pads, though, the one that is made with a different stitch, that one is made by me. I was home sick throwing up and getting frustrated, so I asked for some yarn and a crochet hook. Thus resulted a hot-pad. Halfway through making the hot-pad, Grandma Bair walked in and saw me crocheting and she taught me her stitch which is really weird, but it's really cool, so maybe if I have time, I'll try my hand at making a Grandma Bair hot-pad. But I don't really have a use for pot holders while on my mission, and I figured that they make an excellent Wedding gift for Darcy. :D

 

The other contents... A T-shirt I got during the summer that Bishop Mayne gave Sister Pfeifer and I. Bishop Mayne is the head of the gun club here in Gypsum and got us T-Shirts. :) Also, the pumpkin I made with the Dodds. Also, one of Gus's tail feathers that he molted. Then my bag full of turquoises. I fully expect those turquoises to be shined up and pretty when I get back. I would do that myself, but I seem to have this distinct lack of time out here. (except when I'm sick and making hot-pads.) And, Mom, you're allowed to turn those turquoises into whatever jewelry you desire. :) And then there's the empty container you filled with Peanut Butter cookies before that have long since been devoured. So, yeah. :)

 

Anyway, I don't have much else as far as cool stories to tell you this week. Susanna and her son Ricardo, the Spanish people Sister Pfeifer found, are getting baptized next Saturday! :D So that's all kinds of awesome. Other than that, have a good week!

 

~Sister Richelle Nicole Jones

 

P.S. Oh, so Sister Peacock has this awesome CD that you all need to go out, purchase, and listen to. It's called the Lamb of God by Rob Garner. Go listen to it!!! It's SO good! :D

 

P.P.S. For David and Darcy. There's a song on one of Sister Peacock's CD's that you need to listen to and then laugh. Look up the Clarinet Polka. It's guaranteed to make you smile. :)