Email Received April 20, 2011: We Are The Champions Right Now

Ok, I sent a snail-mail last Thurs, but just in case it hasn't gotten there yet:

I HAVE MY FLIGHT PLANS!!!!

I mean, AHHHHHH! It's real! I'm really going home! This is worse than High-school graduation! I'm never going to have this experience again! I mean, yah, I plan on serving again with my husband, but that's not the same. (BTW, y'all heard the Elder Holland quote saying we need every able member to serve 3-4 missions? I'm one down, 2 to go. ^_^) this was GOLDEN. I'm sure going to miss it, but at the same time, I can't wait to get home! I'm an emotional mess. I can't wait to get out of here, but I don't want to go at the same time.

Oh yeah, mentioned my departing testimony last week, right? Well, it was such a rush. The spirit was so strong. I don't really remember what I said, aside from the fact that it was not at all what I was expecting. But a week from now, I'll be on my way to the Chicago temple one last time. EEEEK.


OK, emotional outpouring over.

Had a great lesson with Imelda and Everardo yesterday. We reviewed the first lesson, because they didn't really get it the first time. but this time, at least for Everardo, it seemed to hit home. he got the significance of the apostasy, the miracle of the restored church, and he specifically talked about how just studying the Book of Mormon or the Bible alone would not be enough. I think he might make it. Imelda is still like, "God is good, but I'm catholic. I go to mass when I can." Problem is that they might be deported soon. Grr.

Had our first lesson with Rosa in a while. She's still good. She's shy about the whole baptism thing with her parents around, but she still really wants to be baptized. I just hope she doesn't disappear when I leave.

Ruben is in Mexico again. Hope that the new missionaries will get back with him again.

Hermana Walser is making herself known with the members. She's getting better with her Spanish. I hope she gets a native companion at some point. I know it helped me a lot. But there aren't any natives; it seems in the newest group.

Today, we're going to a sports complex for a zone activity. I'm happy. I'll get to see all my elders and sisters one more time.

Not much else going on, except me freaking out. It still doesn't seem real, all the time.

Love,
Hermana (not going to be able to claim that for much longer) Maren M Jones

Email Received April 13, 2011: One Last Shot

Second to last e-mail.  Creeeepyyyyy.

We went to the city today, my last time in grand old Chicago. We went to Navy Pier again. I really liked it. Hermana walser spent most of the time talking with her past companions. She and I have bumped heads a little recently. I feel like I'm walking on eggshells around her a lot. Still, we're getting along well enough. She’s really frustrated with the area, and I don't blame her.

Flipping through my past e-mails, I feel strange. 18 months summed up in 70-odd pages. Huh.

Found Rosa the other day. She’s still being mobbed by her family, but we had a few minutes to talk with her. We met her mom, officially, and we are going to see if we can start teaching her too.

I'm working hard, trying to give Hermana Walser a good introduction to all the members possible. Even if she can't speak the language, I'd like the members to be familiar with her, because (not sure if I ever mentioned this) president Doll has basically promised her that she'll be training, either this transfer or the next, most likely this.

We have Zone Meeting tomorrow. I get to give my departing testimony. I hope I know what to say, and how to say it.

Stray thought: Most of the other missionaries have had a topic for their homecoming talk before they go home. I wonder if I will get such a luxury.

Miss home, miss you guys, can't wait to see you.

Hermana Maren Jones.

Email Received April 6, 2011: "Not ready! Not ready! I'm out of here!"

Ok, so day before yesterday evening, I was looking at the calendar app in our new phone (more on that later) and I realized something:

COUNTING TODAY, I HAVE THREE MORE PREPARATION DAYS IN THE FIELD!!!

And ever since then, I've been in super-freak-out mode. I'm so shaky; I can barely walk straight most of the time. I'm sleeping better than I had been, but it's from sheer exhaustion, I think. I certainly can't type straight. Random things I'll be able to do, or have to deal with, keep popping into my head at random moments.

Using Facebook? Not having someone back me out of my parking spot? Looking for a job? Playing Video Games? Looking for a school? Not having a companion? Looking for somewhere to live? Church callings? Watching TV? Dating (did you listen to general conference)? Answering the phone in English? Not wearing a skirt?

I'M NOT READY!

Ok, Joking aside, I'll probably be OK, but I'm more nervous/excited than I've been since I was, like, 10. I feel woefully unprepared for the real world, but I'm excited to be home and do all the things I love. I'm nervous that Hermana Walser won't be ready to take over the area, but excited to move on and start my life.

Eeeeeeeeeek.

Ok, in terms of the work, we still aren't doing much. We’re trying to get creative in terms of contacting, but after we've tried everything, we're right back to knocking doors again.

On a lighter note, Ruben and Rosa are back. We have a narrow window to teach them together before he heads down to Mexico to help another of his daughters move, since her husband has been deported. But I think it might be good to be able to teach Rosa by herself.  Ruben's so shy about meeting members, but Rosa isn't. If we introduce her to some members, she might start coming to church without him.

Ok, we also got new phones. Before, we had a junky, but indestructible brick. I rather liked it, but it simply could not hold up to the intense texting loads. And it dropped calls a lot. Now we have the LG Remarq, a wide phone with a slide-out keyboard. Of course, when it was first announced, P. doll pulled his whole, "getting new iPhone," trick. I think he's played that one like, 7 times since I've been on the mission. And shortly thereafter, her joked about getting new iPads in July, teasing Elder Senator. I'm a little nervous about the full qwerty keyboard. I'm afraid it'll be easily broken. Of course, that will fall under the "not my problem" category, but all the same...

Email Received March 30, 2011: "Oh Mr. Sun"

Well. This week really kind of stank, in terms of missionary work. It was a long, boring, unproductive time, made up of knocking, mixed with being dropped by our last few investigators.

That said, I think I feel Ok. Now, at least.

By the time Saturday rolled around, I felt awful. I was disappointed, frustrated, and energyless. (I haven't slept well in almost two weeks. Grr.) Our coordination sheet had two names on it. We got to missionary coordination, and I tonelessly and emotionlessly went through the motions of trying to find members to come with us. Well, the district leader noticed, and after the meeting, asked if we were OK. Well, we basically went through the whole "absolutely, mostly, kinda-sorta, maybe, no." Well, he gave us a mixed motivation/chew out, and as the day went on, and I began to feel better. (P.S. I have learned in the mission that I'm not happy if I don't get chewed out on occasion.) Since then, things... well, they haven't picked up, but I feel better about it. I'm back to feeling good about doing missionary work.

More about Herman Walser: Born and raised in Utah, she's seen a lot. Her dad makes movie sets for a living and is currently applying for a job to manage church productions. She was an English major, currently is an entertainment management major (something like that) and is, according to Brigham Young, a "menace to society." She's sweet tempered, and just recently decided to find her way back to the church. Her greatest accomplishment in her mind right now, is that she's been sober for two years, a fact which she proudly shares every chance she gets. She's happier now, she says, than she's been for much longer than that. She's a classic pale beauty, with dark, curly hair, ivory skin, and a beautiful smile. Trouble maker and daredevil, she likes motorcycles, swimming, and movies. She's struggling with Spanish more because she struggles with grammar in general.

Slowly warming up out here. Can’t wait to get home, though, and back to the desert. Never thought I would want to, but so it is.

Sincerely,
Hermana Maren Jones

Received March 23, 2011: Hanging In There

I really don't know what to say about this week. It's been rough. We're having a hard time getting in to see people, and I've been hesitant to set appointments these last few days because Hermana Walser has been sick. But more than that, I have a huge problem.

Hermana Walser does not speak Spanish.

Not her fault. I totally understand how it happened. But the issue remains that I'm doing everything right now. She bears an awkward testimony in every lesson, but that's all she can do. I have to take all the phone calls and teach all the lessons. So I have to teach her the area and the language before I leave. Yikes.

In all other ways, she's a sweet girl. Not much teaching experience because she can't, but really willing to serve these people any way she can. She's lived a rough life, and she's not sure what to do about all the changes she's going though now that she's gotten active in the church. Hope I can help her be a strong teacher.

In happier news, we have a new investigator who just showed up to church this Sunday. Issue is, he lives in the middle of nowhere. We're going to have to adjust our schedule to go see him.

Not much else this week. It has been really slow.

Sincerely,
Hemana Maren Jones

Received March 16, 2011: "I Wonder Where The Birdies Is?"

So, I figured I would send about 65 emails during the course of my mission, if I remember correctly. I'm going to have over 70 I am pleased.
So, to begin the craziness of this week, (which I will recount in reverse order) I will say that today is over 50. I'm thrilled. I am DONE being cold in skirt.

To continue, we had a shock yesterday.

We were set. Hermana Lockwood was sure she was going to be in Woodstock for a while, at least, until she killed me. We even had full appointments on Tuesday and even one today. We were so sure we were staying.

Ha.

Hermana Lockwood has been called to serve in the Westchester 2 ward. At first, I was heartbroken. She and I had gotten to be really good friends, and we had (I know, stupidly) planned a lot to do together this month. Now we're on opposite corners of the mission.

The weird part: She is going to be working with Hermana Gailey, who is going home the same day as me, and in turn I received Hermana Gailey's companion, Hermana Walser who is going to kill me off. I guess the good part is that we're sure to see each other again at transfers next month. Still weird.

So, moving backwards.

We haven't seen Rosa in a week. Her family has been driving her nuts with non-stop visits. Ruben is still out of town, so we’re really struggling with lessons now.

Moving back in time, our district leader, Elder Rapier lost his companion, Elder Swenson, a week before elder Swenson's birthday in an emergency transfer last week. He was kind enough to not eat the three epackaes of candy that came in for his lost companion.

That’s about all for now. Still reeling from transfers.

Love,
Hermana Maren Jones.

Email Received March 9, 2011: "...and it was good."

OK, fun week.

Ruben, who had surgery, is now wearing pants again (his last excuse for not being able to come to church was because his belt rubbed his stitches, so he couldn't wear pants.) but has taken off to Saint Louis to see his daughter, and may be going back to Mexico again. I hope we don't lose him, and I'm afraid I might not be here for his baptism.

We had two amazing lessons with Rosa, the mother of the troubled teens I mentioned last time. Salvador (Her husband who spontaneously stopped drinking) has left the house for a while, because he doesn't get along with Rosa's mother, who is visiting for the next month. But he has and is reading his book of Mormon.

But getting back to Rosa, the last we had seen of her, we had started the 10 commandments, which she vaguely remembered from catechism. (BTW, she insisted on using the BOM - she says she understands it better than the bible.) This time, she UNDERSTOOD them. We got to "graven images" (the words for Image and idol are the same in Spanish) and her eyes got huge, and she explained the whole thing to us. We just had to say yes, you understood correctly, we should not have idols in our house. And then we got to the Sabbath day, and she was shocked. She, of course had learned the Spanish Catholic twist "Remember thy fiestas, to keep them holy." So when we read the whole thing, she promised, without any prompting on our part, not to take overtime on Sundays any more. Well then we got to adultery, and she had the typical, don't cheat on your husband sort of understanding. When we explain, she gets this sad look, and says, "You know what? I never got married." Hermana and I have out heart attack, and then Rosa gives us this long explanation, in which it comes out, that they are married civilly, but not by the catholic church. Well, we calm down, but we're out of time.

So, Monday we come back, and most of her extended family is there. For benefit of all we decide to review the 10 commandments... but we didn't have to do much. Rosa ran the whole thing, from calling on people to read to explaining the scriptures. Our only job was to keep things moving and on topic. Rosa just taught the whole thing, and bore testimony of the Book of Mormon the whole time. We gave out a whole bunch of copies, and Rosa committed everyone to read. I wanted to cry for joy - She's just so amazing! I don't really know how many of her family are in our area, but I'm sure this had a lasting impact on them any way you cut it. It was such a miracle. We committed her to be baptized, and she said yes, without any vacillation, right in front of her whole catholic family.

She also has a deep testimony of the Proclamation to the World. It was what we shared with her the first time we met her. She knows it's true, and she pulled out her copy to share with the rest of the family, and we pulled out our extras. She spent five minutes just talking about, basically bearing testimony, of that. Herman asked me if having a burning testimony of the Proclamation was enough to get someone baptized.

Other than that, most of our time has been spent knocking. It's tough, because it's cold and damp. But we saw a big sign the other day that said, "Spring is coming! So Thank God!"  With flowers and a little angel on it. It fit my mood well at that moment.

Don't worry about me. I do get moments where I feel weird about going home, like when I found out my MTC companion is going home next week (which is transfers, BTW,) but I'm all here. Just have my bed ready.

Love,
Hermana Jones

Email received March 2, 2011: In The House Of The Lord

(OK, so I ran out of time last week - the library was packed and computer times were shortened slightly. I'm sorry this didn’t gets out till today this will be a combination of what I meant to write last week and what I want to say this week.)

Yes, I know I'm late. No, I'm not getting transferred. We went to the temple the morning of the 23, so we got back late. Because we're so far out of the way, we have to ride in with a member or take the Metra and a couple three buses. Well, luckily, we got a member. We and the English sisters headed out to the temple, and the session was just packed. At least, the sister’s side was...

I've heard that many of the brethren don't like to go to the temple because the workers can be less than humble sometimes. I find that disheartening to think that the temple can be an unpleasant experience, but to the brethren, I say, man up! You know members aren't perfect, and to let a little brusqueness get in the way of the blessings of the temple is just silly. I always wondered why there were three times as many sisters as brethren in the sessions, and from what I've heard, there isn't any really good reason for it. Gentlemen, take it like the man's duty to ask the girls to dance. It's slightly uncomfortable at times, but it’s well worth the result.

Anyway, it was a great session. I wish we could go more often.

This week has been pretty good. We've got some amazing progressing investigators, and we really think they will go all the way. They're already making huge changes in their life! And they want to come to church so bad. But things are just so hard for them. They have two sons who have been into drugs (one just came back from rehab and the other is just going in) and from their tattoos, I'd guess they're into gangs as well. Her brother is getting deported this week, and she's being asked to work Sundays now, on a job she can't afford to lose.

Another one of our investigators just read the "Testimony of Joseph Smith," which is basically JS-H with notes for non-members, and it sent his mind spinning. We spent most of the lesson trying to calm him down, because he wasn't making much sense. He acted like he had never heard the story before (ignoring the fact we had told it to him twice before) and was freaking out about what that meant about his membership in the Catholic Church. We focused on getting him to "try the fruits," (Read the BOM, come to church, etc.,) and praying to know if it was true. He said he needed to study and pray some more, but I have a lot of hope for him.

Things are melting out here, if not necessarily getting warmer. The skies are clear, so the snow is melting, but it's still extremely cold at night. We've had freezing rain several days too. Hermana keeps trying to ditch her coat, but I don't think we'll really be able to get rid of coats for a while. I'm just glad we can leave our boots at home.

We have a new ward mission leader, and he's on fire. He had been working closely with the elders for the last few months, and is taking to his new calling like a fish to water. We’ve always struggled with getting members to lessons, but things have really picked up, now that he's really keeping track of what we're doing. It feels good to work with him, too. Our old ward mission leader is doing fantastic as a Sunday school teacher. I think the branch is building strength in its callings, and I hope that means the lord is preparing us to grow soon.

That's about all here. BTW, it's P. Doll's birthday this week. Just so you know.

Love,
Hermana Maren Jones

Email Received February 16, 2011: "Still Hanging In There"

I want to apologize for all I wrote last week. I know it was largely negative, but it had been a hard week. We had a couple of spiritually strong lessons where the investigators dropped us, knowing very well they might be closing the door on God, followed by a contentious lesson with the husband of one investigator, which had been our only member present lesson in weeks. When the Holy Ghost is sad, you're sad too, and it can be hard to keep going. We were feeling really down, and it was just one of those weeks where there really isn't much good news.

Thanks for offering to send me new stuff, but I think I'll manage. Last week was really cold, didn't get above 10 degrees and one day didn't get above 0, but it's snapped really warm these last few days, 30s and 40s. We're thrilled, because we've wanted to wash the inside of our car windows, and vacuum our floor mats, but that's just impossible in below freezing weather. Just in time too, we have vehicle inspections tomorrow.

This week was good. We're getting new investigators, and dropping some others. Ruben went in for surgery this last week, so we're going to have to re-think when he could get baptized. I think He's worse off than he expected, so maybe he won't be going to Mexico after all.

We've had some interesting knocking moments. People here in Illinois are generally too lazy to yell at us, but one lady gave us a 3-minute discourse. Which is nothing compared to when we knocked into a Jehovah's Witness pastor who sermonized to us for over an hour. He was very polite, and did an excellent job inviting the spirit of contention. He was especially annoyed when I knew what Zion, the kingdom of god, Free agency, and several other things were. The deeper he found my understanding of the bible to be, the more annoyed he became... while continuing to be polite. (My poor companion. This guy had a thick accent, and spoke too fast. He directed several questions at her that she simply could not handle in Spanish, and he kind of scorned her for it.) When he finally realized he could not sway us, he let us go. We bore testimony of the living prophets and apostles, and got out. Gah, I hate those. The Jehovah's Witnesses have contention down to an art.

We also got in with this non-denominational lady who was polite, but not interested, but also deathly afraid for us, walking around at night. We hit up a nice little Buddhist lady, who told me enough that , adding things up, I've realized that most American Buddhists, or at least the ones out here, do not practice anything remotely like Buddhism as it is practiced in Asia. IE, when I asked about sutras and Bodhisattvas, they knew nothing. Shouldn’t surprise me... it makes sense that Buddhism would be as varied as Christianity. Anyway she was thrilled to look at our website.

(BTW, I encourage you all to check out the new Mormon.org, and if you're a member, to consider making a profile. The church is suing it to jump-start online proselytizing techniques.)

The final and best one was this poor guy who was disillusioned with all of Christianity. He started out by trying to give us a donation. We refused it. Confused, he kept on trying, and we repeatedly told him we couldn't take his money. His eyes got really big, and said, "You guys are for real, aren't you?" We replied that we were. We offered to have someone come by and talk to him, and he said he wasn't interested, unless he could teach us. We decided to open the can of worms, and ask him what it was he wanted to teach. He spoke generally of the second coming, (he was very correct, by the way) and then mentioned that the big sign that it was the last days was that the Jews were back in Israel. We solemnly agreed, and his eyes got big again. "You guys believe in that?" We said we believed in the literal gathering of Israel, that it had started and wasn't finished yet. He was surprised again and said most people just looked at him crazy when he said stuff like that. "Us too," we said with a smile. In the end, he still wasn't interested.

That's about it for the moment. Hope things are looking better for you guys too.

Love,

Hermana Maren Jones

Email Received February 9, 2011: Grrrr....

So. My thumb drive just died.

I was downloading a song from the new LDS youth site, when my drive started getting hacked. Not even a little hacked. I think someone tried to install some sort of boot-on-plugin junk, because windows kept telling me things like, "Could not download file e:?#E.rk, data has been lost."  I tried to eject it, but couldn't, so I yanked it and restarted the computer. now I can't do anything with it - windows always says that there is a program accessing it. I might be able to fix it on a 98 or Vista machine, but not on the silly locked down XP's the library has. I feel awful, because I had a lot of the music you guys sent me on there, and all the fliers I've made for baptisms and events and stuff, not to mention a whole pile of articles that P. Doll sent me. I've already lost everything on it once before. So I'm pretty upset.

That said, this week has been OK. Not much has happened since I last e-mailed you, aside from the fact that it's gotten COLD. We went out knocking last night at about 0 degrees, and we lasted 45 minutes before we decided we could afford to show up at the next appointment 10 minutes early. It feels very weird to lose sensation in your knees.

In other news, one of the dryers in our laundry room is not working right. It's shrunk several of my things, including my footie pajamas, my gray jumper, and a few of my sweaters. Not to mention that it melted one of my sets of fuzzy socks so that they're not fuzzy anymore, as it did to Hermana's blanket.

I'm going to stop now before I think of other bad things that happened, or before my spelling deteriorates any more.

Love,

Hermana Maren Jones.

Email Received February 3, 2011: Brrrrrrr.....

Ok, so I'm properly disappointed. My whole mission gets declared a National Disaster area, and I get NO EMAILS? I mean, GRR!

Seriously!

Ok, so Preparation Day is on Thursday due to the snow. So are transfers. We took movies, and I hope to send them to you next week. I left my camera at home.

About 10:15 Monday night, we had already been talking about preparations for the so-called life-threatening storm, when we got a text from the assistants, telling us not to go to bed for another 30 minutes, because they were going to be announcing transfers that night.

We all were staying in my district, but, we also found out transfers were not going to be until Thursday.

So, Tuesday was blowing really hard. We briefly went up to Harvard for a lesson, but decided to come right back home, because the wind was getting stronger, and we were afraid of drifts across the roads and loss of visibility. We stayed in the apartment all day; we got a text from President, saying he didn't want us driving between 4:00 PM Tuesday to 4:00 PM Wednesday. We got a little cabin fever, and that's when we started taking movies.

About 5 at night the storm really started picking up. It got nasty, so we adventured outside for a movie, and then went back in. We played around a little, texted everybody to see how they were, and then went to bed.

We get up. Our car, front porch and apartment door are all under about 5 feet of snow. We just stare at it. We're not going anywhere for a while, especially since our snow shovels are in the trunk of our car.

About 10:00 am the apartments start getting to us, plowing things out. Out building really pulls together and gets all the cars unburied and moved, so our spots got plowed nice and clean. Everyone else only dug themselves out enough to get out, and then re-parked, so the parking in front of the rest of the buildings is miserable. We tried to help out, but there was only so much we could do, since nobody except our building was working together. We went to a local appointment that evening, but did not go knocking. The roads were horrible.

I think Woodstock is the only city in our area that's open, right now. Harvard should be opening tomorrow and Hebron in three to four days. (That's where the English sisters live.) McHenry is officially closed, with no date set to open, and the elders are thoroughly stuck. Their road is still not plowed.

In the city, they have to remove truckloads of snow, because there is nowhere to put it, and ship it to "snow farms" outside of town. I don't know how that works, but I'm betting the city elders are stuck, too.

Other than that, I don't know the damage is. Between transfers and the disaster, P. Doll has not updated the mission blog.

Last week was amazing, but the storm has kind of blown it out of my mind. Today we are going to play in a snow mountain next to our apartment.

Love you, and totally safe, thanks for asking.

Hermana Maren Jones.

Email Received January 26, 2010, A Little Growing Up

So, time for a little growing-up story.

No matter what you do, after a certain period of time, you fall into habits. I've been out a year, and I admit, I had developed some unhealthy missionary habits. We had a zone meeting on the new Standards of Excellence. I admit, I felt rocky about it, but I swallowed it and said, without much thought, it's got to be possible, so let's see what I can do.

Well, then I got sick, as you recall.

Getting back into the work on Wednesday evening, I just couldn't seem to find my rhythm. Planning for a lesson that night, I saw in a moment good things to share, but when I got down to it, I couldn't even explain my ideas to my companion. So I gave up, and agreed with her ideas instead, even though I didn't particularly care for them, especially as she wanted to give an exceedingly short lesson to a family we were hoping to baptize this month. (More on them later.) She saw I was frustrated, and felt like I was just spitefully caving. I pointed out that she had several good arguments for why she wanted to do what she did (talking about how PMG says we should keep lessons down to 30-40 minutes, and leave with the spirit following us out the door) and that I couldn't even put my ideas into words, even though I felt that they were excellent. I was upset, but I was swallowing my pride and letting her take the lead, because I really couldn't offer any argument. Well, things kind of devolved from there, her upset because she felt we weren't planning as a companionship, me still trying to swallow my pride, just wanting to move on, and hoping that a full day working would help me feel better again. We didn't really fight, but we were both frustrated.

The next day was weekly planning. I still didn't feel particularly with it, and being on the couch for three days had made me homesick. I mechanically led the process of setting numbers and planning for our investigators. For some reason, we ran out of time, and had to wait until Saturday to finish.

We start planning again Saturday after I felt a little better, and Hermana asks me a very important question.

"Why don't we ever reach any of our goals?"

I was a little stunned. "What do you mean?"

"Look at our member-present goals - we set for three every week. We discuss who we can bring to each lesson, and plan to have twice that many, but I've only had 1 member-present lesson my whole mission. And look at our contacts - we don't get anywhere near our numbers. We just set contacting as something to do we can't find anything better. We barely get our less-active lessons, and we haven't reached out lessons with supers goal in weeks." she went on to explain how she was studying goal planning in PMG, and how she thought we needed to seriously re-evaluate what we were doing, not only in planning, but in our efforts during the week, and why.

So, I guess I'm a prideful person. I got mad, and felt she was attacking everything I had learned on my mission to that point. But there are two huge things I've learned in my mission:

1. When two people are not on the same page, ask questions before you speak your opinion.
2. If my companion says something that makes me feel bad, there's a good chance there's something to what she's saying.

So, rather than defend myself I swallowed my pride, again, and asked her to explain what and why she thought the way she did. She saw I was upset, so she was hesitant to explain, but I insisted. So she laid out a logical, well thought out, and totally founded argument, and by the time she was done... I felt absolutely awful. Not because I disagreed, but because I couldn't help but agree. I had been doing an absolutely horrendous job planning of late, and I had been had definitely not been striving to reach my goals. I mean, I had felt like I was struggling a little in that department since the beginning of the holiday season, but her words really shocked me and made me realize how far off I was. It was a full-fledged call to repentance, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Of course, I have no poker face. She starts getting upset because I'm upset. We have a little bit of a breakdown together, (does that happen with elders?) and we move on, setting better goals, and resolving to be more diligent and consecrated. It was awful. I still feel bad about how casual I had gotten with the work. I'm repenting hard, and hoping I can relay be better.

So, I said I would talk about Ruben and Rosa. We found them around Christmas, and we were thrilled. They were so prepared, and so enthusiastic. But Ruben has been out of work for months. He went down to Mexico to make an attempt to sell their house down there, to no avail. We had a couple more lessons with them, and then he missed one. While not unusual, it was unexpected, because they have never missed a lesson before. (Tangent) I think it has to do with the fact that we general teach lesser- educated migrants, but flaking out on lessons is an everyday occurrence. And getting both the investigator and the member to the lesson at the same time is nigh impossible.(/endtangent)

Well, two days later, they call us, with the standard, "We're super busy, we don't want you to come over because we're never home" sort of drop. We were heartbroken. Usually when we get dropped, we feel OK, because they don't really understand some point or another. Typically, they just decide they're happy where they are and aren't interested in learning a new religion, not really understanding the apostasy or the restoration. (Teaching the idea of authority takes weeks of repetition of the ideas involved most of the time. the false doctrine that 'all churches are true and good because they all worship the same god' is too soundly entrenched.) That was not the case with Ruben. He knew exactly what we were about. He knew exactly what the claim to a modern prophet meant, and agonized over it. He had now answer yet (Still had not asked. The idea of asking a QUESTION to god is a foreign as divine authority.) But he knew it was huge, one way or the other. So when we dropped us, we felt awful. He knew too much. If he didn't make the change here, his chances in the spirit world were slim to none.

Well THEN he called us back again, from some random number in Chicago. He says he's reading the Book of Mormon, but he's looking for work. He doesn't know when he'll be back, but he'll call when he is, or on the off chance they decide to move to the city. He calls two other times to talk to us, and we encourage him as best we can. Hope things go well! Maybe he'll find someone to teach him in the city.

Well, that's my novella. Love you all. Keep being amazing.

Hermana Maren Jones.

Email Received January 19, 2011

Well, just when I was finally getting better, Sunday night/Monday morning, I got super, super sick. I emptied my whole digestive tract in about 3 hours between midnight and 3 AM. Needless to say, I think that was the worst night of my life. I was so incredibly sick, and a little scared, so we finally ended up calling Sister Doll about 1:30. (My companion did. I was busy in the bathroom.) Sister Doll just said I had a really bad flu bug, and I just had to let it run its course. I couldn't take any medicine, of course, and I was so thirsty, but couldn't drink. So I basically just lay on the couch all night (morning) long, curled around my stomach. The next day I ate very little, and yesterday, a little more. Just me, the couch, and my scriptures... and let me tell you, when your brain is mush, the parable of the olive branches is just not going to cut it. I was bored out of my mind, drifting in and out of sleep, with an intelligence score of about 7 not counting situational modifiers. (D&Drs should get that).

I sent a letter to Bishop Lott a while back. Hope he got it. How goes the stake reorganization, by the way?

Um, afraid not much else has happened. That's what happens when you're bed-ridden for 48 hours.
If you could put a gentle petition for letters in the blog, I'd appreciate it. I think everyone thinks they're in touch with me because they know what's happening in my life.

Since I have few minutes left, I thought I would write second e-mail detailing some of the things I've learned about my companion.

Hermana Lockwood is, at 5'8", the shortest in her family. She an outdoor enthusiast, and watches almost no TV. (Outside the mission, of course. We don't watch any here.) She enjoys weekend long backpacking trips, mountain climbing, and hiking, but not so much swimming. She claims to have superior genes (to which the elders always reply, "We’re not allowed to wear jeans in the mission,") and since she has not caught anything I have, I believe her. she has webbed toes, and is in awe of how wearing a missionary name tag is somehow liberating (the phrase, "we're missionaries; we do whatever we want" has been our theme this week, refereeing to the fact that we can do a lot of bizarre things that 'normal people' would never consider) and instantly adds +4 coolness, and allows us to use ugly skirts and ties to add to our coolness score, rather than detract. She studied Spanish for 5 years before the mission, but is having fun learning that there is a lot you quite simply don’t use in a real conversation. ("Baloncesto," despite what the teachers think, is not equivalent to "basketball.") She's perky, funny, and geeky, (her boyfriend is, absolutely no joke, an electrical engineer,) and we have a lot of fun together.

On a side note, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but knitting is a huge thing among the elders out here. I mean, HUGE. They get together and they're all talking like "circular needles, front stitch, yarn gauge, cable knit, PURL!" I've seen some pretty AMAZING beanies out here, and knitted ties are all the rage. Knitted camera cases are common too, and I've seen a few scripture bags that are knitted too. We all think its Hilarious.

Lots of Love,

Maren.

Email Received January 12, 2011 "For Health and Strength and Daily Food, we praise thy name O Lord."

So, I'm feeling much better. I just have lingering cough that causes trouble sometimes. And It feels so good to be out and about and teaching again. Loosing you voice is frustrating when you job is talking to people all day long.

Even though we've been inside all the time (we've contacted a grand total of 3 people in the past two weeks) we feel like we're making huge progress. We're seeing our investigators often, even if we can't seem to get lessons in. We' have 4 new investigators in the past 5 days. (Don't look at me, I don't know where they came from) We've tracked down some formers as well. I'm so thrilled to be working again, and our teaching pool is a baker’s dozen, full sized, and full of potential.

I might have at some point mentioned that the English sisters and us (we call each other "the sisters' and "the hermanas", in case I get confused) built a snowman a while back. (Pictures will get to you at some point.) But the snow didn’t roll up like normal, so we ended up making a pile and packing it into the shape we wanted. In fact, the snow here is so much like that, that sister Murphy, who is from California, is convinced that when we talk about rolling up a snowball, we're making a joke, and that rolling a snowball doesn't work at all - It's something we made up. Well it snowed yesterday, so we're the right kind of snow, so we can show her how to make a snowball the "right way."

In other news, Hermana Lockwood and I have come to the conclusion that we don't know how to shop... or eat, for that matter. Any and all suggestions for missionary recipies and shopping hints are welcome. That said, all in all, we're better off than the Sisters or the Elders of our district, because they have been this whole week without a fridge. Wish them luck.

Love you all, miss you all, and I think I'll be very happy to come home.

Sincerely,

Hermana Maren Jones.

Email Received January 5, 2011

So, this week has been less than spectacular for me. Although I'm very ill, we've gone out and worked almost every day. Started New Years Eve, and has carried on. I think the general issue is I'm not resting like I should. My voice is basically gone (which makes lessons very interesting) and I probably would have been fine by Tuesday, except we had to take the car in to get it fixed, which took forever, so we ended up (Myself, my companion, and the English Sisters, who also had to get their car fixed) wandering around Crystal Lake in the freezing cold all day, looking for somewhere to sit down and study. Needless to say, when we were all done at 5 PM, I went home and to bed. Yesterday I was feeling better, but last night, I spent coughing all night long. If I don't feel better tomorrow, I'm going to call Sister Doll and get to the doctor.

The punch line to all this is that I'm not running a fever. My average temperature is 97.8-98.0, at least with my current thermometer. All this week I've been running 96.2-96.8, and that's when I haven't taken Tylenol all night long. Suggestions welcome.

We had an interesting lesson the other day. It was at the end of the day, and I being sick, was pretty much out of it. We were wrapping up a plan-of-salvation lesson, when my companion, out of the blue, asks this lady to be baptized. Well, I start paying real close attention. The investigator says yes immediately, and we begin to promise her blessings.  Her face clouds over a little bit as we go along, and she finally says, "Wait, I've already been baptized. Is this going to be OK?" We're out of time, but we tell her it is, and we will explain more of the hows and whys of baptism the next time. (We were already planning to give a lesson 3, which is the 1st principles and ordinances.) She still is unsure, but I found it interesting that, when all she was doing was following the spirit, she said yes, but the moment she began to think about everything else. She doubted. I still think she'll make it. We've just got to get the idea of apostasy through to her in a real way.

that's all here. Love you. Miss you. Wish you the best.

Hermana Maren Jones

Email Received December 29, 2010

I was so thrilled to talk to evermore for Christmas, and I was happy the gifts got there in time. I am glad you all liked them.

I'm not sure what there is to say. Not much has happened since Christmas.

Loved all the gifts I got. Thank you so much for the pencils. I tried them our right away. And the paper you gave me makes my frog pattern come out looking like poison-dart frogs. Very cool.

As I mentioned the weather here is very cold. The fun part is, how cold it is has little to do with what the thermometer says. Let me give you a sample scale:

1. 45-38 Feels cold, but not unpleasant. Days are likely to be damp from mist or rain, possibly foggy.
2. 38-32 - Cold. Likely to snow.
3. 32-25 - Ridiculously cold! I mean, like, throw on 7 layers, icicles in your nose cold! Even worse if it snows! Moisture in the air is killer!
4. 25-12 - Cold, but way better than 32-25. The moisture freezes out of the air, so you can be fine with your regular winter stuff, although at the low end your face gets cold and tingly. Will not snow, and clear skies.
5. 12 and lower - Really cold, good idea to try and stay inside.

Also common around here is a type of freezing fog I've never seen before. It only happens at night when the temperature drops rapidly from about 22 to 12. Although, the fog lasts several hours. The fog does not cover things in ice, as you might expect, but instead freezes and keeps hanging in the air. (At least, I think that's what happening.) The result is a fine mist that sparkles brightly as it floats around. And I as you know, suffer from a bad case of SOS (shiny object syndrome.) It's distracting as all get out when I'm driving.

No one came to church this Sunday. I mean no one. It was really kind of sad. I ended up leading relief society, but whatever.

Um. Really don't know what to say more. Hope you New Year is bright.

Email from December 22, 2010

Well Hermana Lockwood wrapped all my presents. It is a tradition in her family to try and make presents as unidentifiable as possible, so I've been having fun trying to guess. It was funny because she told me when I could come look, and just looking, I said, "Well one of those little ones is a matchbox car." she immediately goes into panic, saying, "Oh man, where did I put it?" and starts looking around frantically. I see the little car on the floor first, unwrapped, and forgotten. she insists on wrapping it anyway.

Since then, she has forbidden me to feel any of my presents. Once I identified the chocolate orange and the boxes of Pocky, she then forbade me even to look at them. It has become a game in the evenings when we're writing in our journals for me to peek and try to figure out what is in the packages before she stops me.

I will be calling Christmas night, probably at 8:00, my time (which I believe is 6:00 pacific time), in accordance with what Daddy told me. I hope that does not clash with plans you may have had to go see Grandma. I will be calling the house number (509.545.5129) since I don't remember any of the cell phone numbers. If you want me to call another number or need me to call another time, you'll have to call the office and let them know.

We had the great opportunity to do a service activity this week. While knocking, a woman had asked us if we could help her sister for Christmas. She said that they had no work and no money, and would not have Christmas. She had called several churches the area and all had told her that "the lists are closed." We said we would think of what we could do to help. We talked to the relief society, and expected perhaps one dinner, and one by toy and one girl toy.  Well, we got a HUGE basket of food, and 75 dollars in wall-mart gift cards for toys. (Our additions consisted of a "Joy to the World" DVD and a Book of Mormon.) Holy Cow!!! The family was so thrilled, and surprised, and we just felt happy. We don't know if we'll ever see them again, but we hope they felt the love of Christ through us.

Sill hasn’t mailed the package. Sorry. Will do today.

Love,

Hermana Maren Jones.

Email from Maren, December 15, 2010

First off, some notes from President Doll:

Christmas Phone Calls:  You’re all allowed to make calls on that day using your mission cell phone as long as you adhere to the Missionary Handbook:  You may call your parents and the call should not be longer than 40 minutes. (Maren's Note: also, as minutes are free after 7PM, we are encouraged to wait until after that.) No calls to friends, girl/boyfriends, or other family unless you have permission from the mission president. No international calls should be made from the mission cell phones.  However, you may receive an international call if your parents are outside of the U.S.  You may call on either December 25th or December 26th. We’ll be checking the phone logs to be sure calls are made according to these guidelines.

Christmas Activities: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are wonderful times to share the joy of Christ and His gospel.  Look for innovative ways to share the joy of Christmas – singing on doorsteps, shoveling snow, sharing “Joy to the World,” visiting the aged and the lonely or a nursing home, baptize someone.  Missionaries may accept invitations to a member’s home for a meal, but you should not spend more than two hours at the home.

Right now, It's looking like I'll only have a little over a half hour to talk to everyone, since I don't really know of any members willing to let us use their phone. Do you want me to call Christmas or Christmas Eve?

My presents will probably be coming late, and it's going to be smaller this year. I'm doing a little Indian gifting, as many of them are things I picked up from members and investigators, or things I've had for a while that I think would find more use at home. Mommy and daddy get to share what will probably be the oddest thing you'd get from a missionary, but I think you'll like it.

I re-read some of my Christmas e-mails from last year, and I think I can see the growth that Father was pointing to. On the other hand, I'm not sure If I have matured, or if I just got better at hiding the fact that I'm still a silly little girl.

Christmas zone conference was fun. By sheer luck, I was the first to receive my Christmas stuff (the box DID make it). Since you wrapped all my stuff last year, I assumed it would be wrapped again, but My companion suggested I be more careful. In fact, since we had the English sisters at the apartment, we did this thing where we took turns opening each other’s boxes to see if the contents were wrapped.

One sister in our zone, Sister Falikakala, got seven boxes. She had a hard time getting everything home.

I really don't have much else to say. I'm looking forward to calling of Christmas.

Love, Maren.

Weekly Letter from President Doll to His Missionaries

Maren forwarded this, calling it "Awesome!"  I think it is very good too.  It makes me appreciate how lucky Maren has been in getting the Mission President she has. -  Ty

The Mighty God

Many times during the Christmas season we hear the lament that Christ has been taken out of Christmas.  Indeed, much of the celebration of the birth of the Savior has been lost amongst commercialism and gift giving.  But, perhaps more troubling is how Christ himself has been diminished in the eyes of many, including those professing a belief in God and Jesus Christ.  Too often he is relegated to the position of teacher, philosopher, leader of a movement, or martyr.  We, of course, know better.  He is and was much more than this.

King Benjamin and other prophets foretold the coming of the Messiah, describing his role as the Son of God and the Savior of the world.  But, they also knew he would be diminished and rejected by many.

“And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of men. And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people. And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary. And lo, he cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the children of men even through faith on his name; and even after all this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and shall scourge him, and shall crucify him.” (Mosiah 3:6-9)

A favorite quote of mine comes from the author and philosopher C.S. Lewis:

“I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I am ready to accept Jesus as the great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic … else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”  (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

That is how we should feel about and teach about Christ.  There is no middle ground.  He either was and is all that he proclaimed to be or he was a madman.  We either believe everything about Christ or accept nothing.  And, further, we either accept all of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ or we accept none.  There is no middle ground.  That has not been left open to us.

What a thrill it is to hear and contemplate the titles of the Savior as proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah as he foretold His coming to earth.

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

Let us all have deep love in our hearts for the mighty God who is Jesus Christ.

Your fellow servant in Christ, President Doll

Email Received December 8, 2010

Editor's Note:  I need to make a quick comment on this communication from Maren.  She references a letter I sent telling her how proud I was of her and that I could see profound changes in her.  She starts out arguing, for most of the letter,  that she hasn't changed much and is not a very good missionary.  She then ends by disproving all she said before this.  All I could do was laugh.  How little we see the changes the spirit works on us.  How terribly proud I am of her! -- Ty

OK, so my dad wrote something interesting last week: "I was proud ... (of) your desire to just get in and do the work.  That is a change in you that I'm very proud to hear about.  In fact, I'm just proud of all the changes that have happened to you and the maturity and commitment I can see in your life."

Ok, to be honest, I try to sound pretty suave and self controlled in my letters. Not that I'm dishonest, I just leave out the most annoying details.

I'm not that great of a missionary. I hate waking up at 6:30 AM, and I don't, if I haven't slept well. I struggle to force myself to study the language every day, and our companionship studies are not very focused at all - we talk about the work most of the time, but rarely what we planned to talk about. When we do, our conversations are kind of dry.

And I really do not like knocking. We plan it out, modify our approach, but when the moment comes to actually get out of the car and knock, I feel absolutely sick. I have to pray every single time for the help to make that simple act of will to just get out of the car and do it. We see miracles, and it's not actually that bad once we get started, but I feel awful at the start of every session. if I don't watch myself, I'll make stupid excuses not to do it, or to end early, or whatever. And when it gets down to 7:00 in the evening, I really struggle to keep going, because, really, no one wants you on their porch at 7 PM. (BTW, I'm not sure how or why, but by 4:30 PM, it's fully dark out here.)

Most of the time, I'm pretty sure that if I didn't have a companion, I wouldn't get much done. I know... and I'm working on it, and I've improved somewhat, but I'm still pretty much the lazy me I was before. Ok, maybe not the same lazy me: a wiser, more experienced, but still lazy me.

Don't get me wrong: I am working hard, but I could be working a whole lot harder, and every day I try a little more to reach that level, but I'm nowhere close.

Take for example, this week: we went and did what we call shovel-tracting. You go knocking, but while one of you knocks the door, the other one shovels the walks of the people. Surprising enough, we get a lot of mixed reactions (you'd be surprised how angry people can get when you shovel their walks: "Why are you shoveling my walk?!? Don't do that!! My Husband can do it!!") Well we came back, and we found that someone had quite purposefully buried our car, and had carefully packed snow around all the wheels. My first reaction: anger, sadness, disappointment. Well, my companion just laughs. She thinks it hilarious. well, I start to smile, but I still feel kind of bad. She takes a few pictures, and we dig ourselves out. Reminded me of the part in Stranger in a Strange Land when Michael first discovers a sense of humor - and how he explains, that laughter is there for those upsetting moments - because when things go wrong, sometimes you just have to laugh, because otherwise, things are just too tragic, and we'd never survive.

[endrant]

We're doing well. We had 4 new investigators this week. Exciting as well is the fact that a lot of the investigators who were given to the elders are also shaping up. And Araceli Saldana, our most recent convert, got over her nerves enough to give her testimony (she's unbearably shy). And she went to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. We're feeling really good this week. We know that miracles are happening. The people who came to church just showed up out of the blue. We're finding people left and right, and while many of them are going to the English program, we feel good about it.

For example, we were knocking some apartments, and we get this girl who's out on her won for the first time. She doesn't speak any kind of Spanish, but we're here, and the sisters aren't, so we go and give her a L1. She asks great questions, and even though her family is American Moorish (Muslim - and just that morning I had the section on teaching to people with a non-Christian background - not planned, it had just caught my eye) she is wide open. She asks about priesthood authority, prophets, obedience to the law of chastity, and so many other things. It's so great, and we commit her to be baptized the end of January. Well, imagine that call to the English sisters:

"How do you guys feel about the end of January?"

"Huh? Why, do you guys have a baptism then?"

"Nope, YOU do."

Miracles happen. And we're happy to be part of them any way we can.

Love you all, and hope that things are amazing for you.

Hermana Maren Jones

PS. The Christmas List:

• 1 box Pocky, and one dark chocolate (orange, raspberry, whatever you feel is good. I'll split it with my companion.) Any more candy than this will simply be given away. (nuts will be gladly accepted.)
• 1 hat (use own judgment. Red or black beret suggested)
• The Statedler pencil I requested last year (I've forgotten the model number to my sadness. I know it was a 20XX, the Xs being unknown numbers. It was noted in a snail-mail, not an e-mail, otherwise I'd have record of it.)
• Scarves, gloves, socks, not really suggested. I have a lot.
• Thigh-high nylons, and maybe some thigh-high tights, socks, leggings, whatever, too.
• Music, with judgment (ask to see someone's copy of the missionary handbook.)
• Pictures welcome, as is money, although at this point, I'd rather that all money goes into my savings account.
• Referrals: not necessarily to me, but I would consider it a great gift for you to give the missionaries someone to teach. Even better if you let the missionaries teach them in your homes.
• Flannel board: a lot of investigators we have right now can't read, so we need a portable way to teach them. Stories I'd like Include: The First Vision, Lehi leaves Jerusalem, Noah and the ark, the birth and death of Christ, Moses and the 10 commandments. Also, It'd be nice if I could get a plan of salvation diagram.