Letter from Elder Dyches, Europe Area, 2nd Counselor

Dear Jones Family,

I had the pleasure to interview your son during the recent mission tour and have enclosed photos of him

with me and also with his companion. Enjoy!

What a cheerful and wonderful young Elder! He is a great influence for

good among the missionaries of the Norway Oslo Mission.

All the Best,

Timothy J. Dyches

"YOU JUST LOOKED LIKE ANGELS AS YOU WERE TALKING TO HIM!"

Heia!

You are going to have to tell everyone there hei for me!  It was super cool to get to hear from them all!  It really won't be that long till I come home and see them all.  that is so wierd for me to say!  I had a dream last night that I walked through security there in the united states and met all of you there at the airport.  It was super, super wierd. I have felt super awkward all morning because of it...

Anyways, about the last week. We had lots of crazy stuff happen again, so I feel like it has been a pretty average week.

One of the more fun things that this week was that Elder H and I got interviewed by one of the biggest newspapers in Norway!  We had like a 1 hour interview with a reporter on tuesday in preparation for Elder Bednar's visit. The writer is going to focus on the exciting things that have been happening in the church with relation to the missionary age change and the growth of the church around the world. After the interview we got to go out with the reporter and proselyte a little bit.  There was a photographer with him too and so they were taking pictures the whole time.  The photographer said they would send the pictures to us later.  (so I will have some really good pictures for you soon!)

While contacting though we had a really good teaching moment.  we found a person sitting on some stairs and so we stopped and started teaching him.  We showed him the book of mormon and read out of it with him.  He accepted the book of mormon and said he would read and pray about it.  The reporters were really impressed with what we did!  The photographer afterwards looked at us and said, "You just looked like angels as you were talking to him!"  So needless to say I think they were touched by the experience.

Other than that we had two more workshops here in the east. Those meetings went really well.  We worked on planning skills pretty much the whole day.  Elder H and I spent the majority of the time teaching the material.  By the end we were just exhausted.  We will be doing that again except this time we are going to be doing it in Stavanger and Trondheim.  So that should be pretty fun.  

In the middle of the workshops we are going to hike preikestolen as well. I am super pumped about that too!

Our proselyting has been kind of put on hold in our area over the past couple of weeks just because of how much stuff we have had to do, but we had some really good moments out on the street this past week that were just amazing.  We got let into houses and we got to teach people.  I don't think that I will miss anything more than that, the feeling of having taught someone the gospel.

I love learning and growing I am super excited to see what the next week has in store for us.  

Jeg elsker deg så mye!

Din sønn,

Eldste Jones

WE SPENT ABOUT 2 HOURS THERE JUST SITTING AND TALKING WITH PRESIDENT AND SISTER EVANS AND ELDER AND SISTER DYCHES. IT WAS JUST AMAZING TO SIT BACK AND LEARN FROM THESE PEOPLE.

heia!

Well I only have limited time today so I am going to cut to the chase.  Elder Dyches was amazing.

Elder H and I got to spend a ton of time with him on the road and in meetings as well as just being with him during personal time. So I will just try and pick out some of my favorite things to tell you.

We got to have dinner with him at a restaurant in Bergen, it was called Bryggenaften. It was super nice and super old.  The building dates back to the 1600's and is literally right on the water there in bergen.  We had the best food!  We had Moose and whale and steak and caviar and all sorts of stuff.  It really was just amazing.  We spent about 2 hours there just sitting and talking with President and Sister Evans and Elder and Sister Dyches.  So it was just amazing to sit back and learn from these people.

The meetings were great too. We did not need to do anything for them, we just got to be there and listen. So it was awesome to hear that and get to learn from them all that time.

But the whole experience took quite a bit of time.  We were with him all day wednesday, thursday, and most of the day friday.  Then after that we went to Drammen and had a missionary preparation course that we taught to all the youth in Norway.  So that was special.  I got to see a lot of old faces, among the which was Jørgen from Bergen and President Berg!  I loved getting to see both of them!

We got to meet with our investigators.  S had good news about the cancer, she does not have to undergo chemo, it will just be radiation. So she was very happy when we got there. the lesson went great with them as well.  They are quickly becoming some of my favorite people. I got to drink some more Mate with A as well, so it was a nice visit.

We are still working with J.A..  We have one more week to really get him ready.  There have been plenty of challenges and we are going to be working as hard as ever this week to make this happen.  We will see though.

Life is so good, I have never been more happy of tired.  I love it!

Jeg elsker deg så mye!

Eldste Jones

PS  Sorry to hear that!  That sounds like no fun!

Grammy sent me an email last week telling me about your back and how you are having problems with it!  I hope that you are feeling better!  I wish I was there to help as well, that is one of the things that is hard about being on the mission, not being able to help at home.

Anyways, right now Elder H and I are just writing home quickly. We are going to the chocolate factory on Wednesday so we are taking most of our p-day then.  I am super excited, I can order a bunch of chocolate there and have it sent home.  So you guys will get some of the best chocolate in the world when i come home!

This past week has been insane.  I have loved every second of it. It really has been such an awesome experience.  

let me know if you are still awake,

I love you!

Elder Jones 

Hey there!  

Well we have quite a week in front of us! We have Elder Dyches arriving on Wednesday and will be here through Friday.  So we get to spend a lot of time with him over the next couple of days. It should be really exciting!  

Anyways, I am super pumped about that but we had some good stuff happen this last week as well.  It seemed to go by super fast.  We had another day at MLC.  That was my 12th one that I have been to on my mission... so I feel like I have been there for quite a while now.  It was super good though.  We decided that we would do another round of workshops like we did in July.  So Elder H and I will be on the road the last two weeks in September.  We are going to Trondheim and Stavanger and then we will do two other meetings here in the east.  So that should be pretty fun.  

Other than that we went to Stavanger after MLC.  So I got to work with Elder E and Elder G again. It was super fun. We just got to work and do the normal stuff, but I absolutely enjoyed it.  We were there all day Thursday and then flew out on Friday morning.  On the way home we some serious trouble though.  We flew into an Airport called Torp. That is about 1.5 hours away from Sandvika.  So we would take a train from Torp to Sandvika once we landed.  Unfortunately we missed our Train when we landed and had to wait there for 2 more hours until we could catch another train. So Friday just turned into a travel day. That sucked... but we eventually got home and got back into the swing of things.

We had some teaches with Jon Axel this week.  He is doing the same as always.  He is not super sure about his date yet.  So we have asked him to pray about it. We hope that he can get an answer soon. We will see though.  We are praying with him still and are still working as hard as we can to get him to make the date.  

I never did get to talk to J, but we did get another Baptismal date! It is with this man named Nathan.  He is from Sri Lanka.  He has lived in Norway for 5 years and has a wife from Sri Lanka as well.  He was a referral from another missionary so we just went and knocked on his door.  We didn't really have anything super happen with him, but he said that if he gets an answer he would be baptized.  So are trying to work with him and his family now.

Other than that we worked really hard in our area this week are are trying to get stuff going.  It is not where we want it to be yet but we are sure hoping to get it going now.  

Pdays have been pretty busy because I am in the office.  I don't really get a pday because we are usually doing work on these days.  But in Oslo we did a lot of sightseeing and stuff. Today we are just going to work again because we have to get ready for Dyches. 

Anyways, I got to get going. 

Jeg elsker deg!

Eldste Jones

Heia!

Well it has been another crazy week here in Sandvika.

We spent a lot of the week preparing for Elder Dyches who is coming on the 13th.  So we were in the office doing that in our spare time.  But we really got to be out and doing things in our area a lot of the days. So we had some miracles happen and some other cool stuff as a result of that.

Unfortunately though we had some bad stuff happen to.  On Wednesday we got a text from J saying that he was not interested in continuing meeting with us.  That was a huge bummer.  He just said that he found out that Church life was not for him.  He really wouldn't explain more than that.  We committed him to keep reading in the Book of Mormon though, so we hope to call him later this week and see what is going on.  We hope to get him back.

We also lost our date with C. He had a lot of work and was just hard to meet with. We still get to meet with him though.  So we are trying to set up a good lesson for later this week to get him moving.

That was the only bad stuff that happened though.  We had some huge miracles too!  We had a day pretty well planned for Wednesday and then things started falling apart around when J texted us.  But we just kept working and the Lord guided us to where we needed to be.  We were in the car and we just got a pretty clear picture of where we needed to go.  We had one previous referral that we never got in contact with and another tryback that was somewhat positive.  When we got to the area we said a prayer and went to contact the people. They let us in right away and we got to teach them.  It was a pretty good lesson and they invited us back to have dinner with them on Saturday.  It was such a cool experience to be guided by the Lord like that.  On the way back to the car we were able to line up a couple other appointments for later in the week and we suddenly had a lot going on again. 

Other than that, we had a super cool teach with JA.  We took President with us to teach him.  We talked about baptism and how we could prepare for it.  I don't think we said anything special or got any super crazy commitment out of him but we definitely had the spirit there.  And that made it such a good experience.  We are really trying to help him get to his baptismal date but he just struggles so much with self confidence.  So we need some even more powerful lessons up ahead.

We also got some random assignments through the week.  We had to drive a car to Halden one of the days.  So we took a train to Drammen and took their car and drove it under the Fjord in a massive tunnel and got it to Halden.  It was a beautiful drive.  Elder H and I just got to sit and talk the whole time. It was actually way sweet!  Halden was beautiful to.  To get there you drive down into a valley and then at the end of the valley there is a huge hill and on the top of the hill there is a giant fort!  That is where Halden is, on the side of the fort.  I wish I had taken pictures but I didn't have my camera.

After we left Halden we went to Oslo and did splits with Elder S and Elder C.  That was pretty sweet.  Elder C and I worked together all day. We got to do a lot of stuff, and just had a great day to be out and working and teaching.  I loved it!

So yep, there was a lot of just random stuff we did there but it was a sweet week.  We finished it off by going to Drammen for a baptism. Elder H had found and taught the man getting baptized.

Anyways, that is about it for me this past week!

Jeg elsker deg så mye!

Eldste Jones