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. :)