Received Monday, January 20, 2014

In last week's letter, you said: he was gone a lot of last transfer in different areas because his companion was the one Mandarin speaker in the mission and they needed to go teach the mandarin speakers other missionaries were finding. So we're meeting a lot of people for the first time together here.

Was Elder Jones called to an English speaking mission? I think it interesting that he was paired with a Mandarin speaking missionary. I thought both the companionship were called to speak the same language! Talk about that!

Elder Jones' last companion was Elder Yu (probably cousins to Mi Park and probably Mr. Who, the famous baseball player that always seems to be one 1st base)

Elder Yu is from Hong Kong, called to the Massachusetts Boston mission, English speaking. Being, from China though, he does speak Mandarin and those talents were put to good use. They are opening a new mandarin branch in the stake (I think the only one in NE) and he was transferred there

QUESTIONS:

Are the youth invited to the Saturday night session of Stake Conference?

we did not have stake conference. Not sure when we will. I think back in my last area they'd be having it about now, but not here in Cambridge stake.

Do you remember talking to a man who used to live in Monrovia?

Brother Acosta, I spoke to him at church, and then we had dinner at his house, he did show some pictures. It was really funny. Also something we're doing in lynnfield is that the bishop is going to have us teaching the lessons to active families to help foster the missionary spirit (PMG suggests something basically just like that) and that family is one of those we'll be at, so we'll be seeing them a number of times in the coming month or so. Great family, and doing good missionary work too.

have you heard about the new teach way...20 minutes?

never as like a new program or anything. I've noticed whenever President talks about the ideal timeing for a lesson he always says "30-45 minutes" kind of emphasizing the usual 45-60 mins is not the ideal.

How long do your normal lessons take??

I think I'm usually in the home for about an hour, but the actual "lesson", like from prayer to prayer, is pretty close to 45 mins

did you get my picture of where google says you live? Was it right? Is it several apartments, but just looks like a big house?

yes, it was very close to our place, but not exactly. It is 1 house away. It is the same style though, looks like a giant house, but really is like 4 apartments. Ours is 3 stories. It's white. There are 2 front floors, each with a different address

Have you had the opportunity to be the "backup Elder" this week, like have you gotten out of the car and let the driver know it was safe to back up?

generally we switch every day, so every other day i'm the backup elder. Don't worry, my backup skills will be well honed when I get home. I wonder if Quinn will get to do that. I heard they haven't invented cars yet up there, so they only use snowmobiles and ski's.

What have you done for your exercise this week? You are supposed to do that every morning, right?

most often I do 200 crunches then lie on the floor for about 20 mins. We have a pull-up bar and I like to do those, but it's hard to do them at 6:30 AM. I try to do pushups as well. We have some old off-brand ghettoy'ish perfect pushups, and I tried to do them once, but as I was pushuping one of them slid across our hardwood floors and I almost faceplanted so I don't trust them anymore. I am stuck with only doing imperfect pushups for a while I guess. Also, not having a car had opened the doors for us to have some running adventures

It was actually a week from last thursday we first hurt the car. We were driving (and by we I mean I was in the passenger seat) in a busy area and there was a biggish rock on the road that we hit. It looked like a plastic bag so it was sneaky, and would be hard to avoid anyway on the busy, narrow new England streets. We knew we'd need to take it in to get fixed, but we had so much stuff we waited until last Tuesday to actually take it in. The alignment is way off. the front left tire is tilted weird. By the time we took it in, to drive straight we had to hold the wheel past 45 degrees to the right. It's been a giant hassel trying to live without a car and getting progress on the car getting fixed. They haven't even started repairs yet! for things like this you need approval from SLC and it's been kind of ridiculous, we had to do some online paper work, then had to get pictures and whatever. Hopefully they'll start tomorrow and it won't take too long. When we dropped it off we dropped it 4.1 miles from the house at the shop and ran home, which was our first running adventure, and today is our 2nd.

What are the plans for today?

run to church. email/reporting. either get a ride back or slow jog home. Get a ride down to the stake center with a member to do a baptismal interview there for a DL's investigator. Get a ride back to our area from some Sister missionaries who will be going back to a close area (they are Spanish, so there area overlaps ours. There is a lot of overlap in our zone, with English, Spanish and Portuguese). There we'll teach a lesson in an investigator who is moving to Utah (because he's engaged to a member there) in a members home. Get a ride back to home from the member's whose house we were teaching in.

Do you know if the Arcadia missionaries try to set up lessons with investigators in the members homes? I always appreciate it when members say they are willing/wanting to have us to have lessons in their homes, it helps a lot (you could ask the Arcadia elders about it if you want)

Congrats to Quinn! I think Toronto would be a fun place. Is that where President Monson was mission president? If it is then Brigham Young also went on at least 1 mission there as well. I wonder what languages are up there, That's cool we gets to go to the Provo MTC too, I've always heard good things about the other ones, but I really liked it in Provo. I think my friend Janna has some family up there. Where were the Salmons from? I feel like the Bluejays might by a little too weak sauce to get very excited about but theres probably a good hockey team there worth liking.

I've meet a lot of big Bruins (hockey) fans out here, and they say Bobby Orr is definitely better than Wayne Gretzky, which I didn't think you were allowed to even think about saying as a hockey fan.
Moral of the story:    NE>CANUCK

This is actually the first I've heard about the results of the football game. Thats too bad. I was really hoping for the Pats. I wanted Tom to go all the way this time. I don't really like Manning very much. Some of our pass along cards have somebody that looks like him though. If he joined the church I could root for him.

I'm, trying to think if anything else exciting is going on. I thought of one last thing (besides the struggles of trying to get by without a car in an area far to big to do much walking)

I don't think I have have mentioned President's Book of Mormon challenge he gave us in a webex 2 weeks ago. He loves the book of mormon more than anyone I've ever known. He's read it 100s times. He gets emotional when he talks about the story in Alma where all the recent converts of the area, and the scriptures get piled together and burnt to a crisp, and Amulek (who's family was surely in the group) so wishes that they could do something to help or stop it.
Anyways he told us all to get a new copy of the BoM and go through it 20 mins a day during personal study (we cover 6 pages) and mark every reference to Christ, his attributes, and his words, and count/tally them in the corner. It has been really good. It is everywhere and on every page. I need to read a little faster then my usualy pace to read 6 pages in 20 mins, but I really appreciate the assignment. It's neat to see really how much you can learn about Christ through the Book of Mormon. At that pace we'll all have read it in 2 transfers.

Ok that's everything for now!

And good job on your missionary experiences, we should all wear slippers a little more often!