Friday, November 11, 2016

Elder CJones: Queme Los Barcos!!

Hello Everyone!!

First of all I want to apologize for yesterday, this week our P-Day was moved to Friday. This morning we had to go down to a governmental building and get our fingerprints taken and sign a bunch of documents for residency here in the Mexico. So I am sending it all out today.

I have to say there has been a really big highlight of my week!! Last Friday, I began reading the Book of Mormon again, just to refresh myself of all the information and doctrine that is jam packed in it. I finished on Wednesday and I will tell you all that I know for a fact that the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on the face of the earth and I know that you and anyone who reads it will become closer to God, our Father in Heaven as you work hard to understand His will for you!

I testify that the gift of tongues is real and that is really is a gift from the Spirit. I am still not fluent and need to learn a lot more vocabulary, but it's coming! I can form sentences in my head and say them pretty quickly out loud, I think in Spanish at times and sometimes I can't think of what the word is in English and I can in Spanish. I testify that the gift of tongues is there for those who really pursue the language and want to know it, even more so if you are a missionary.

Sundays are the greatest days here in the mission field, we have our meetings at 9 and then have the rest of the day for personal study and meetings. We have a devotional at 4 and then another one at 8, they are always so beautiful and the Spirit is tangible in the room, as well as our district testimony meeting afterwards.

We love to tell stories and hang out at night with all the guys in our house and district. A little bit more about my district. there are 10 Elders and no sisters. 9 of us are heading out to Reynosa on the 28th, the last is going to the Oregon Salem Mission on the 29th.

Elder Heiner, the one going to Oregon, is from Ogden, he reminds me of the twins, he like the trendy stuff and is great!! He is different than them tho, he really is an awesome guy, he loves breakfast food, watches, floral ties and glasses. Floral ties are kinda the thing down here.

Elder Chidister, the comp of Heiner, is a stud he is from Spanish Fork and loves to swim and sing. He is a great guy to get to know and he wears a robe around the house when we are all in our pajamas and relaxing! He is having a really rough time physically from being here, he has had a headache for over a week and is going to see the neurologist on Monday, pray for him!

Elder Pratt, he is from Gilbert, Arizona. He is the cousin of Scott Urry. Pratt is our district leader and such a great guy. He has some great stories from back home. He is a car guy, loves them to death and has driven sooo many really expensive cars and we love to talk about them together. He really knows how to lead our district, he is really smart and a real gentleman.

Elder Richardson is from Pleasant Grove. He plays soccer and is one great kid! He loves to talk about music and just loves talking to people about all the great things about the mission. He is a great example, he left the church a few years ago and was inactive for a while, but as he came back and decided to go in a mission, he knew that it would bless him and his family.

Elder Payne is from League City, Texas. He is really tall and probably one of the smartest kids I know. He loves to learn about really anything and is really spiritually in tuned. He knows a lot of Spanish and works really hard to learn more. He has some pretty cool stories about living in Texas. League city is about a 30 minute drive south of Houston.

Elder Martineau is from Snowflake, Arizona. He is one of 10 kids and is the oldest, just like me, his comp is Payne and they get along really well and work hard to teach. He is a great kid and I don't talk to him much.

Elder Hargis is from Safford, Arizona. He is a blonde/redhead, he is 6'6" and played basketball during high school. He is a really really hard worker and works probably the hardest to learn the language because it's difficult for him to speak it. His dad is a doctor at the local hospital and he has 4 siblings, the crazy part is this, his dad is a twin, his mom is a twin, he is a twin, and has two siblings that are twins. His parents both went to Ecuador on their missions and that's where they met. His twin sister is going to the Spain Malaga Mission, which includes the Canary Islands!

Elder Cole is from Riverton, he lives really close to us and he is an amazing story teller, his stories could be made into books and movies, him and Hargis probably have the best relationship out of all the companionships in the district. Elder Cole is the king of guy that you really want as a comp, he works really hard but also knows how to have fun!

Elder Jennings is my companion. He looks like Napoleon Dynamite without the big hair, he is a great kid and loves to talk. I've had to learn how to listen and just let him do his thing.

Our district is awesome, we love to sing, and with our bathrooms right next to each other with a thin wall in between, we can hear each other in the bathroom and Elder Richardson and I love to sing duets at night when we both shower. There are 5 rooms in each house and 4 missionaries per room, one of the guys, Elder Pannell, I went to school with! He is a great guy and loves to sing. He is going to the Merida Mexico mission.

Not much is happening down here because of Trump, we are all just glad that Hillary didn't win.

One of the coolest things down here is that people volunteer to come into the MTC and we get to teach them, solely in Spanish, it can get really nerve racking but it is way cool!!

We love to learn idioms in Spanish and in turn we talk to our teachers in Spanish about all the things we say in English and they laugh at what we say, I really love the teachers that we have.

Our district has a motto that we talk about. This last week, we started talking about the ancient people in the Americas and it got into how the Spaniards came and started taking over the land. Cortes was not a very good guy but he started conquering the land, but his men wanted to go back home and wouldn't give an 100% effort to the work, so Cortes, burned the boats and ships that they used to get to the Americas, so "Burn the Boats, we're all in" came to be, is a saying that reminds all of us that we need to keep moving forward and we can't turn back. But I mean, we can't just say it in English, so it is, "Queme los Barcos".

Mail takes about a month to get here to the MTC, if you want to send me a letter that I can read anytime during the week, there are a couple of websites that you can use to type it up and then they print it out here and give it to us.

I testify that as we work hard and endure to the end, that we can conquer any challenge ahead of us as we work hard and have faith. An important part of faith is work, and we need to be working in order for God to bless us.

--
Elder Corom Jones

"[I'm] out here grindin', [I] workin'"
-Jamesthemormon (Workin)




L to R: Elders Payne, Martineau, Richardson, Pratt, Heiner, and Chidester

Lto R: Elders Hargis and Cole

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