Week 42 "Baptism!"

"T"s Baptism April 25

Hello one and all! 
The highlight of the week was "T"s baptism!  I feel proud of him, for all the difficulty he has come through. He reminds me of the man on the Mormon Message, 'The Hope of God's Light'  In which he made a big change and now has the brilliance of the restored gospel to brighten his life.  So Cool!  Elder Bigelow baptized him and I confirmed him, and I, interestingly, have done the conversion of each individual baptized during my mission. The members continue to support T.  like a good ward family should.  The Desmedts invited him over for dinner and I really enjoyed their company (and the Indian food they made) as well.  T. loves the things he's learning and even wants to help us do missionary work, woohoo!

This is my district. Holding up number of transfers

The week started with a cleaning of our member list, figuring out who moved and who to visit.  That activity led to a miracle later in the week, but I'll tell you about I pads quickly.  After a quite climactic build over the last six months over news regarding IPads, we all felt taken back a little when we heard the announcement, we wouldn't be getting I pads at the conference.  Fortunately they will come in a week, but still a little humorous.  Elder Kearon and Nielson of the Quorum of the Seventy led the conference.  They told us how we will be using IPads during this new age of digital missionary work, and I'm really looking forward to using the IPad as a way to share the gospel, and reach farther than ever before, and to more people and hearts than we have been able to.  I'm glad I have pretty good french grammar because I want my online posts to look legitimate.  I have been impersonating elder Kearon's british accent because it sounds so cool, ha.  The IPad is going to change missionary work for the better.  

Abby made this shirt for me in graphics. Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of my favorite places!

On Monday, we had a Family Home Evening two people came, Sister Ledru and T. our investigator!  We had fun making an activity consisting of an Iron Rod, and analogies from Lehi's Dream...with ice cream and desserts at the end of the rod.  Despite the low attendance we had a fun time and taught well. 

Enjoying some French Chocolate Ice Cream

 One of the difficulties I encounter is my tendency to 'se freigner', or in english to stop or sell myself short.  It is easy for me to feel like I'm acting humble but really just acting self-demeaning.  I have received a lot of help from Pascal, a really kind member, and he told me I need to not sell myself short, but instead take pride in my accomplishments and be myself.  I personally get caught up in attempting to be a perfect missionary, but it's not really possible in this life.  I have to do my best at loving myself and loving others, and I know by taking credit for my accomplishments and giving Heavenly Father credit too, I can become a more confident and happy missionary.  I love learning out here in the field, and I encourage anyone who's debating about the decision to serve to do it.  The Lord will bless you and teach you such wonderful lessons, through everything.  I love you all so much!  Moroni 10:5  The answer comes like Bednar says, like a sunrise, and I know I'm growing in the firm testimony that this gospel is TRUE!

Love you, have good week!

Elder Jamison Jones

Package my Dad sent me!

This is what was inside the package along with some other things like peanut butter and deodorant! We gave some of the beef jerky to Pascal.

Bug and Butterfly Museum 

Week 41 "Spring in St. Quentin"

Hi! 
Once, again, the week has gone very well, despite the very normal and rewarding challenges.

Started on Monday with a canceled family home evening at the church, due to the fact that no one came......okay! We'll just go out to find more people to teach...so, we go up north, and initially we were going about, some apartment complexes looking for a woman who we had talked to a couple weeks back about the importance of the family in the church, we could not get in touch with her, so we stayed in the area...as we were walking back from the apartment complexes we started talking to a man, and he was interested to know more about our beliefs and come to church! Until that point at night I had a feeling, 'there has to be a reason we were led up here' and we discovered that reason before the night finished. Woohoo!

Sunday dinner with Elder Bigelow's family

   An interesting phenomenon this week; we went looking for people to teach and we had many different occasions where we would meet someone who went through a tragedy, such as the loss of a son, or brother, or daughter. What really surprised me was they said, 'this is a really difficult time for me, I can't deal with religion right now'  Well, if you knew, this IS THE PERFECT time for religion! The plan of salvation explains where we were, why we're here, and what's going to happen to us after!    Through sharing with various people the plan of salvation we saw some cool miracle lessons on the street.  I really like sharing The Plan of Salvation! It's great. 

We found a couple people on the street this week, and it was too bad that they didn't want to learn more after we explained this amazing plan.  :(   But we're still going hard to work here, even if I feel pretty tire.   It is good to shake up the routine, and that keeps us happy.  Our lessons with T, and visits with less actives and members in the ward help to boost morale.  

   T continues to progress, and the members of the ward are surrounding him and that makes our job much more comforting! I assume having a kid go off to school and be included and loved by the other kids works for a parental analogy.  Man, I just want T to feel included because the ward should be a family, and thank you ward! You're doing a great job.  We need to keep people in the church, not just baptize them, or else, what benefit comes from unlasting conversion? None really.  So, we are preparing T for baptism this week, and I am thankful for his choice to be baptized, he's making such a big, good decision!

I love all of you!  If I had any advice this week, it would be: do good and be good! Congratulations to my cousins going to Malaga Spain and Milan Italy on their missions! Also to Stephie going to Australia! The Lord will bless all of you so much!

Good week, here we come!

Elder Jamison Jones

Week 40 "France is awesome"

               Spring in St. Quentin

I had another awesome week!   We had really great exchanges with Elder Brown and Elder Christiansen here in St. Quentin.  I made Chinese stir fry with rice, and fruit punch flavoring in the water.  Watch out everyone, I'll probably be a professional chef someday.  That leads me to a side conversation I had with elder Bigelow this week:  our future jobs.  I figured out I want to be a painter, and sell ice cream when I need a break.  I guess cardiology is too much work, haha.  Well, even if that isn't too true I really thought about what I would like to do as a future career...  It's still a toss up, but hey, I'm glad I'm here in France right now.  

   St.  Quentin broke forth from the clouds and we got a couple days of sunny nice weather this week.  We shed our coats and walked around with that angelic glow our white shirts produce.  It felt kind of liberating to wear just that, and look so different from everyone else.  Sometimes people try to discreetly avoid us in the street, but I find it humorous more than anything.  

Playing the piano with Elder Bigelow

    

Church went amazing this week.  We'll have a new bishop, Frere Seube, and I know our ward will be in great hands.  Also, there were two less active families and another less active sister that came, we had visited them all the last couple weeks, so that was a great little victory!  T. our ami came to church and he is doing really well as well.  He had a struggle at the beginning of the week, but with the love of God, we were able to pull him back and he is really kickin'!  Meaning, he's progressing really well.  The best part was teaching The Plan of Salvation w/whiteboard and having members help.  Another miracle:  the Sunday School lessons were exactly what we needed to brush up on with him.  Alors, I'm really looking forward to the change that's coming in his life.  

I saw this RV today, the Mimi '74, Pretty cool!  Maybe mom should get one.

We had some opportunities to help out members through service, namely yard work and cleaning the church building. Oddly enough we got to help a member in high school understand the economic ruts of the United States, namely the 2008 crisis.  The French vocabulary for explaining that was a little difficult but we figured it out, haha.  I enjoyed that, and overall, wow, I'm blown away about how miraculous this whole experience is.  I'm excited for anyone who wants to or decides to serve a mission, you're in for some amazing experiences!

Dad, thank you for going to the temple on my behalf.  I feel so blessed out here right now.  The blessings just keep coming and I feel like I forget to be thankful enough for all of them.  Things are going so well out here.  I have an awesome companion who works hard and is kind.  We are teaching T and he is getting baptized, we have a wonderful ward, we are improving and working hard, I have two awesome cousins who are also going on missions.  I have parents who care about me and love me so much.  I love the work, the Lord is blessing me in so many different ways.  I don't deserve all this, really.  I feel so much happiness right now. Thank you for your prayer in behalf of our investigators. 

I'm feeling more peace and happiness every week.  The Lord is increasing my capacity to love and appreciate the mission and all of life, and I am so greatful for all of you.  Abby I loved you playing meg, Eliza, i'm sure you're just working hard and helping madsooski make cake.  Madeline maybe you'll be a patissiere one day :)  Dad and mom one last thing.  We were out contacting on the city limit and we wave to an old woman across the street.  She keeps walking and we notice that she is walking to the end of the sidewalk, where the road turns into the highway and I'm like, oh no, we gotta go help her!  So we go run and call after her, and turns out she only speaks spanish!  She was trying to go visit someone, and we turned her around to the right road, and I did my best to contact her in spanish, hah!  Well that was a fun story of rescuing an old woman.  That's it for me this week, I hope you all have a good week; and lots of love from europe!

Love you,
Elder Jamison Jones

Elder Bigelow

  Elder Jones new hair cut

Week 39" Conference in Brussels, Belgium"

Charleville early in the morning

Hello everyone! This week has been full of stuff, wow! The last three weeks of my mission have felt like the best.  Although a lot of difficult things happen and I have a lot to work on, I felt really inspired with all of the advice and counsel I got from our mission leaders, apostles & prophet, and encouragement from those back home.  Plus we worked hard this week and I always feel happy being able to give a solid effort.  

Elder Bigalow flying on the train 

A family night with our Bishop's family started off our Monday.  We shared a spiritual thought,  played games, and they let me play their ukelele and piano! In the morning we woke up early and took two trains to Brussels, Belgium for our zone conference.  I felt really grateful to hear the advice of our mission leaders as it was exactly what I felt I needed.  I was also very grateful to see some of the missionaries I had served with, such as Elders Rollins and Sanchez.  And Mom and Dad, I got your package from February, and I love the sweatshirt and cards, thank you! We are, as a missionaries,  working on following the spirit in contacting, and I definitely know we need it because we're doing God's work, and it's got to be done in his way with his power.

Reims Cathedral

This great lesson we were reinforced with received some awesome application the next day on our exchange in Charleville-Mezieres.  This is a city that reopened to missionaries a few weeks back, so there are plenty of curious people that have heard that the 'Mormons' are back.  The exchange was amazing, and I had fun with Elder Brown, who will return in three weeks to Utah.  We had fun getting up to a village on the hillside, so beautiful, and after we had done our work up there we went to take the bus back to town, which unfortunately didn't come.  So we took a jolly hour walking back to the main city, and we ate dinner that night with the Wilsons.  They're a couple with a cool conversion story from Canada.  We spent the night and got up early to get back to St. Quentin.   Throughout the week we had the opportunity to teach out Ami T. He is a person who's last ten years have really turned him toward the gospel.   He has true humility and desire in his eyes to have the truth, and we got to invite him toward that with a baptismal invite this week. We felt really good about the invite, the spirit was there, and he's preparing for twenty-fifth of April.  The coolest part is that we had the opportunity to have a really kind member family there in the lesson, it was the Desmedt family and the father and the  seven-year-old son came and wore his dad's mission tag.  It was really fun. 

Me in front of Reims Gare

   
Later in the week we got to watch conference!!! I loved it, and I think my favorites were Uchtdorf's atonement-based one, and Wilford B Andersen's dancing to the music of the spirit of the gospel.  It's true that the motions mean little to nothing if we just do them with little to no spirit.  Such an experience happened friday while we were contacting.  The weather was lousy and not many people were out and I just felt confused, so we decided to pray.  As we did, we felt like we should go visit an older lady in the ward.  As we arrived she was happy to have us because she could not figure out how to watch conference on her computer and well, who knows how to work computers better than young men like missionaries? She really was thankful for our help and company and I was happy we did what Heavenly Father needed us doing at that moment.  I also enjoyed eating lunch outside the church with the sisters between conference sessions  we went outside because we aren't allowed to be in the church alone with just us and the sister missionaries, and no members were there, but we had fun eating outside.  I want to say how grateful I am for atoning, enabling power, because I need it every day out here.  Despite the performance we have, we all can and must use the atonement if we want to be happy.  I have a hard time changing, but witht atonement I believe I can become better over the long run.  I love you all have a great week! Review conference!

Coconut cream pie with homemade crust

selfie on the train