Week 90 "More Attacks, but I'm Safe!"

March 28,  2016

I'M SAFE!!!

                         I sang Amazing Grace with Elder Trotter, and
                           two other sister missionaries last night for an easter concert. It

                          was really amazing, we felt a good spirit and I love singing!

Well, I can say that this week went well, despite all the terrorist attacks in Belgium.  The week ended on a great note.  I am just happy that all of the Missionaries are safe.  We worked hard again this week, and I am sad to leave Torcy, but oh, am I happy I'm going to Blois.
  Elder Trotter and I had a nice kick-off to our week, went to the Crucy family's house.  One of their kids got baptized this Saturday, so we went to teach him a little more about baptism. Speaking of which, we have two investigators who are still progressing toward baptism, Y and K.  Y is fighting to overcome some addictions and sleepiness, and K is also battling against sleepiness - the biggest obstacle for church attendance.  If we could get your prayers and support for K and Y that would be great, thank you!

  Tuesday morning we had district meeting.  As we were finishing up, I did a quick look through my emails and noticed my Mom had sent me an email about the terrorist attacks in Belgium, and we quickly learned about the four missionaries hurt in the attacks.  I spent a lot of the week thinking about those missionaries, some of whom I know very well.  My thoughts especially go out to Elder Norby, the Senior missionary, who taught the 'My Plan' course.  I thought I'd get the opportunity to receive instruction from him in the course, starting this transfer, but with all that happened to him, I think someone else will take over the program.  I attended the introduction to the course a few weeks ago, and he invited us to ask ourselves some very poignant questions in regards to returning from a mission, such as, "What life skills have I acquired in the mission field?  What resources will I use to fund my education?  When I'm a father, what will my Saturdays be like, what will my Sundays be like?"  All of these questions point to the importance of continually developing mission-learned skills, and I am thankful for Elder Norby's inspired teaching that led me to ask myself these questions. Although I only heard him teach once, I was touched by the power and spirit of his teaching, and he, along with his wife and the other missionaries involved in the attacks, have been in my prayers daily.

Elder Richard Norby, and Sister Pamela Norby 

They were teaching Jamison "My Plan" 

Elder Empey 

Jamison's original group with Elder Empey. Fourth one over from the left on front row. Jamison is 7th one over from the left on front row.

President and Sister Babin. First day arriving in Paris. Elder Empey is pictured 4th from President Babin and Jamison is sitting across from him. 

   I reflected quite a bit about the recent events that have plagued our mission;  Charlie Hebdo last year, Friday the thirteenth this past November, and now the Brussels attacks, which involve people I know.  It just goes to show that you never know what may happen.  The bombings have reminded me of the beauty and delicacy of life, and that we need to treasure every moment we're breathing. God does not keep his missionaries from all harm and danger, but he always enables them to accomplish His work. I don't know why Elder Norby, Wells, Empey, and Sister Clain had to go through what they did, heck, it could have happened to me...all I know is that the Lord has granted them their lives, and we should all be thankful for that!  I am thankful for my mission, I am thankful to be at a distance from these attacks, but still close enough to receive the Lord's reminder of how fragile we are, and how important it is to make good decisions with each moment he grants us.

   I'm happy that President Babin has received strength from God to keep this mission afloat and running.  Shortly after the attacks a lot of you back home thought we would stay cooped up inside, but we received the order to continue on as usual preaching the gospel.  Why,  many people may ask, when It's so dangerous?  Because there are souls who need this gospel.
   J, another one of our amis, gave an insight that I will remember.  During our lesson, a member we taught with was curious why he wanted to be baptized and J said,
   'you've seen what's going on in the news, with all the attacks.  My family has also been victim to this same violence, and I just see so much pain and fighting, and no peace...I feel like following Jesus Christ is a peaceful way".
I feel for J It would be really hard to see so much fighting, I am so happy though, that he feels peace when he comes to church, reads the book of Mormon, and prays to God.  God loves all of his children, he loves you, he loves me even when I struggle to acknowledge His love.  I reiterate the words, "Jesus Christ is a peaceful way". His followers are not perfect, but they are trying.  Jesus, however, is perfect.  He is brave, he is loving and kept even in the heat of his own scourging and crucifixion.  He laid his life down to give us new life every day, and I testify that the life he gives feels, and is, renewing and refreshing.  Happy Easter Everyone!
I love you all!!!

"For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved"  - The Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 6:4
Elder Jones

Ps. I'm going to Blois in the middle of France, and serving with elder Gavin Smith, this will be such an adventure!

I went on an exchange with elder Ho,

from Taiwan.  He was the funniest guy to work with!  He wanted to take

a picture of this guy with a mustache at a bus stop. So he says mr.

Votre mustache, c'est especial.

Week 89 "Wow 7 New People to Teach"

March 21, 2016

Frere Piquet, Elder Trotter, and Me; he gave us beets from his garden!

Hello, this week went very well.  My companion and I worked through some tough spots, some very tough spots, but the Lord brought us out victorious!

Chapon Chocolatier.

First off, I am amazed that Trotter and I have such a difficult time working together, but the Lord still provided a way through which we could move his work forward.  This week we set a goal to find three new people to teach, and believe it or not, we found seven! Multiple times, I did a double check on that statistic, wait...did that really happen?  So often we get stuck in the mindset of 'things are hard, we will see success but it will not be that great.
'O [me] of little faith, wherefore didst [I] doubt!'  This week I
learned anything is possible, but that 'anything' must happen on God's time. So let me tell you all how it happened.
It started with dinner at the Mejia's house Monday, where we ate lots of Peruvian food and had fun teaching the family, the spirit was really there; Elder Trotter and I are learning how to switch off teaching better, and that really helped.

Lagny contacting on Consecration day!

Now, Tuesday we had our Consecration Day.  I will say that the concept of this 'Consecration Day' was so inspired.  An entire day devoted to finding new people helped me to mentally zone in on just that.  Elder Trotter and I planned and scheduled it for the district, and at first I felt anxious because not every detail was planned out. We were following more of Elder Trotter's 'go with the flow' mentality, but we eventually settled on middle ground by planning some basic details, like where we would go, and which members we would work with.  We spent the entire day working with members!  The morning, while the Sisters contacted with Sister Cuenot, we found a really promising Ami while contacting on the road.  The afternoon we went 'speed porting' with John and Laura, two young adults. Speed porting is trying to knock on over fifty doors in an hour or less, and hey we found a lady for the Soeurs to teach.  At night we went contacting with Mauro, a
former Paris missionary, and man, he taught really well! 

Contacting with Members: John and Laura are in the Middle.

 At night on the bus, I saw this man with cross earings, and I was like, "Hey, those are really cool. You must like Jesus."  And then we started talking and he wanted to see us again! At night we grouped up to get kebabs and tally points from finding checklist we'd created.  The Sisters won and the prize was free kebabs on me and Elder Trotter. So then things continued to get better.  At this point we're still working out every day, so I think that helped us keep energy, or else
we wouldn't have been able to sustain all this work we were doing. We taught an Evangelical lady who was super spiritual.  She told us, as we finished speaking, that we showed the fruits of the spirit, and not everyone you talks to you like that...Wow! 

Meeting with Investigators

  
We our investigator who's getting baptized soon about tithing.  I taught a lady on the bus, slowly I'm getting better at trusting God and just going for it as I contact.....It's fun!

Helping a Family Move

 Friday and Saturday were more of the same.  Just throwing ourselves out there and teaching, talking to more people.  And we're not even professionals.  I know what I write makes it sound like we're perfect contactors or fearless studs, but honestly we experience a lot of feelings of inadequacy and drudgery along the way.  I'm just highlighting the good. So when I'm writing this remember all the difficult that's underlying that we're trying to overcome. I still feel nervous before I go and talk to people, but I just have to say, "OK,  I'm going to go for it," and just DO, that's the hardest part to force yourself to act, and then God will pour out blessings on you. So Act!

Helping a family move!  Ha, I'm getting squished. I feel so thankful for these three transfers I've spent with Elder Trotter.  OH MAN IT IS SO HARD, but why would God give me HARD without a good reason behind it.  I sit here and realize that Elder Trotter has helped me to grow in so many ways.  He's helped me because I'm more accepting of other's faults, I'm more concerned about what really matters in missionary work, and I'm much more patient - or at least I feel like. I love the Lord, I love what he teaches me.  I feel a lot of inner peace and little things don't stress me out as much.  I just have to pray sincerely for me and for my companion, and God pulls through.

God pulls through!
Love

Elder Jones

I Love This Artwork: I Love Street Signs

Finding our friend at the RER

Funny Mirror at the Torcy Gare

Soirée Selfie by John Londoño

Elder Trotter at the Lake

Week 88 "Go Out and Have An Adventure!"

March 14, 2016

 Heading to church early Sunday morning - church started at 9:00am!

                We went to visit the Piquet family, a couple who lives an adventurous life hiking the alps, vacationing to the Far East, and taking care of their Grandchildren.  They reminded me of many of my young men's leaders: John, Ken, Kent, Craig, Ron, Alan, Mike..... all great examples of hard work and having fun at the same time. We ate goulash with potatoes and cream, definitely good.

                A Rendezvous with the doctor meant that Elder Trotter had to go to Chelles, so I came with (naturally).  While walking to the appointment, we saw a beautiful chocolate store and had to walk in, and I bought some real fancy ones, about a euro a piece.  Even though Chelles lies outside our area, we decided to make use of our time and talk to a couple people, which was literally a couple people (two people) but we just decided to be extra direct with them, and though the contacts were very short, we told them about the restoration, and they gave us their phone numbers, which we then gave to the Nogent missionaries. 

                That night we saw K. our Ami.  He wants to be baptized! So we taught him about following the prophet and obedience, and he asked for me to draw on the chalkboard the organization of the church.  So twenty minutes later I drew up a whole chart with all the prophets, apostles, presidencies, and other quorums.  I enjoyed that. 

                J. another Ami of ours also wants to get baptized, but the process goes much much slower with him because of him Muslim background.  He is one of the most courteous Amis I have ever taught, usually coming to the lessons we set, and previewing us if not.  He recently gained the beginnings of a testimony of prayer!   J. Speaks English as a second language.  Picture our conversation: "But, Jones," He says at the end of our lesson "I have an experience, I pray and I got an answer.  "What was that?" I said.  "Right now, waiting for my interview (his interview to get legal)...no sleeping. I pray, 'God help me, give me more time please'. And last week, lawyer he calls and say, interview move back a couple months. God answered my prayer."

 Wow, simple and powerful!  God answers our prayers!

 On another note, we had zone conference and learned a lot about contacting.  The assistants said our street contacting should consist of five things: confidence, customization, conciseness, commitment, and a cadeau (aka present).  I also attended a post-zone conference for returning missionaries! Ah!  I got to think a little about what God has taught me in these short years, that aren't over, and one thing I thought;  'Life is full of hard things, and we shouldn't just assume that life is going to be easy and stress free, nor should we constantly work for the end goal of having no work left because if we think like that we're going to be disappointed. Instead, we should go forward with the mindset that: OK, life is going to be hard, bring it on! Just accept that you're going to have challenges at every turn, but enjoy during the challenges!'     Out of all people, I may be one who struggles most to enjoy during trials and see challenges as normal, but at least I recognize that!  There's so much good in the world despite so much bad!  I started listing my blessings this week, and I only had to write down a handful to realize how many more blessings I have than I could ever possibly write down. Our investigators receive answers to their prayers.  We find new people to teach when we put forth effort (not always immediately but always on God's time).  Our Heavenly father will always help us!!!! Always!  

       I had a wonderful exchange this week with Elder Tibbetts, we decided to be bold and just go for it, and we taught quite a few lessons even though the rejection was equally intense as the good things that happened to us.  One guy, with his dogs jumping up on us, yelled at us, 'SORT!' (= get the heck off my property) Because we forgot to ring his doorbell. Oops. On the contrary two lovely older French Women let us in 1- because we were American, and 2- because they really wanted us to pray for them haha! Wow I just love how intense it is serving a mission.  Either you can sit inside all the time, and have an alright mission, thinking 'French people are probably mean, that's what I've been told' Or you can go find out for yourself.  So go out and have an adventure!

 And to top it all off this week, Everyone in our apartment got up to work out today, Yeah!

I love the mission it's hard but so good for you!

Love you all, 

Bisous

Elder Jamison Jones

                                                                       Reese's Puffs: No greater temporal joy!

Week 87 "LOTS of Miracles"

March 7, 2016

Les Pain au Chocolats et des Croissants

Isn't it interesting how all the good things of a week seem to stick out when you look back? Of course the mission's hard - I couldn't feel happiness without my struggles, but those struggles, in hindsight, help me to see the good.

Beautiful Sunrise 

Friday was consecration day, probably the best day of my mission. Right now we set aside one day of the week committed solely to finding new Amis, and we did this Friday.   At first the day didn't look promising; gloomy, cold, dark rain at the outset, and some people like Elder Trotter, just don't work well with bad weather. So there we were, a whole day ahead of us to find new Amis and nothing on our schedule but 'finding day'.  I felt pretty good about it, though.  The Sisters, Jones and Mattson from Murrieta CA, planned out the day because we work as a district, and we went to get the schedule from them in the morning.  The morning contacting session was not so productive, Elder Trotter was feeling really sick so he sat down on a bench for awhile while I tried to contact people. After lunch things went better, the sun came out, and we all headed to St. Thibault to do some porting (knocking on doors) and we saw the Bishop on the bus going there.  Coincidence because the Sisters had called him to plan which streets we should all go to, and we got to do a huddle on the street with him before separating.  I saw one street that the sisters had marked and felt like we should go there, so we did.  We met three people who opened their doors and let us teach them. One lady, upon seeing us, said, "Oh you're here, finally! I've been waiting for you to come by...But it's been so long since you came by last, why is that?" She then invites us into her home and has us meet her son and her dog. "So we haven't been over here before, how do you know us?"  "You're the Jehovah's witnesses, right?" "No, not really"  She let us explain a little bit about The Church, and woah she talked a lot, but hey, she wanted us to come back again!

Cool nature pic I took in the morning while contacting

All this time me and Elder Trotter were in a competition against the other companionships in the district.  The Sisters created a checklist of things to do during the day with a reward at the end for the winner (i.e. Talk to someone in a car 15pts, Say the word yellow in a conversation 5pts, have a lesson and fix a return apt. 20pts), Elder Trotter and I made up our minds to win and crush everyone else, haha, so we actually had lots of fun contacting and porting, and I felt more happy and motivated to contact than ever before! We were actually enjoying contacting together.  At the end of the day we got 425 points, had taught four lessons, and successfully crushed the other companionships (the Sisters came in 2nd with 120), thus winning the competition and the attached prize which was kebabs on the Sisters.

That was a super solid day.

Beautiful Sunset

Eating then playing the paper game with the Gao Family

For the rest of the week it's kind of a blur but I'll try.
We went to St. Merri to set up for Zone Conference for some other zones, meaning I didn't go to zone conference to listen to President. We went to prepare all the food grabbing 80 croissants and pain-au-chocolats and reheating 25 pounds of pancakes, eggs, and hashbrowns.  Pretty fun!
Thursday night we met the coolest guy.  He was coming home from work and he was so excited to meet us, he said
"I respect you guys so much for your service as missionaries, tell me your message!"
Woooah, we don't get asked that by all the French people.
Saturday we visited a Chinese family.  Following advice of another member, we played shared a short spiritual message on family, then played a game.  God called me here for a reason because I thought of that paper game, Mom and Dad, that we play with the family, where you can't say the word then you act it out. They laughed so hard, the game ended in the Mom trying to mime out the word Christmas, and no one could understand what she was trying to do. 

Chinese Food

  It snowed an inch in 30 minutes this week! Need I say more? I love snow! We ate amazing food at the Festal's house, the dessert was a giant bucket of yogurt with patisserie chocolate and sugar. Trotter and I are still getting up on time, except for Friday, all three of our alarms didn't go off. We taught the E. Family with a member and it was kind of crazy, I thought the lesson was pretty mediocre, and Mr. E. Keeps telling us the same thing that everybody has their own religion and as long as we're helping others it's all good. Uggh.

I LOVE SNOW!!!  Snowfall after 30 minutes

K. an ami who I've worked with since I got here (5 months ago), started our lesson with the words,
"Okay, I have a little concern; I want to get baptized, but I don't know how it all works, could you explain that to me?"
(Calm down Elder Jones, don't freak out). I was like Buddy the elf when he heard Santa was coming to town. So you could say I feel pretty happy.  I can't wait for him to keep progressing, there has been such a change in this man, there's so much more light in his eyes, literally.  This gospel is real.  IT'S REAL.  Even though we all have our doubts, it's real. So we will set a baptismal date with him tomorrow. 

Can I say again how much I love the mission.  I'm sitting here just watching the crazy things that we experience, crazy-good things, and I'm like woah how on earth are these things happening. Like, what on earth just happened?
Trotter and I went contacting and found new Amis and enjoyed it! We are teaching some people who want to get baptized. We are really slogging through this third transfer, but hey we're seeing amazing things in the meantime.
I thank god every day for it.
Love
Elder Jones

PS. Tell Miles Congrats on his mission call to Milan Italy!!!

Add caption

Food I made. Honey glazed chicken w potatos

 I love My New Cookbook