Last Week of Being 19

Dearest Family Members(and anyone who reads my letters),

How are all of you? How`s the heat? How`s Mesa? Is everyone adjusted to the school schedule again? How`s Kayli doing at her school? How`s Annie doing? It sounds like she`s not like a normal Jones baby. She sounds too small. That`s alright though. She sounds cute. I`m looking forward to seeing pictures of her.

Dad, you said that the Interstake Center is being remodeled. When did that start? Is it a major renovation, or is it just something minor? I guess it was time for that. That building is old. Have fun overseeing all that.

That`s awesome that Mr. Hekekia is in the ward now. Hopefully he`s still lives there when I get home. I bet finding out that I`m on a mission made him feel really old. Anyways say hi to him for me.

This is my last week of being 19. ¡Què triste! I`m getting old. No one in the branch knows that my birthday is this Sunday. We eat lunch with the branch president and his family every Sunday. This coming Sunday, my plan is to get on the topic of birthdays and then mention that it`s my birthday. Nothing will probably happen. They will probably just say, "Feliz Cumpleaños". Elder Watson and I are going to make microwave brownies and vanilla ice cream to celebrate. FYI: microwave brownies are actually quite tasty. We eat them quite a bit. As a missionary, I love microwaves. I can make so many things with it. I`ll take some pictures and send them to you all just so you can all see how awesome my birthday was.

As I mentioned before, Elder Arnold(new area president) was going to have a conference with us. He met with all the missionaries in Uruguay . Our mission was his last stop. I imagine he`s doing a tour of all the misisons in the area. So, if it hasn`t happened already, Tyler will probably be getting the same training that I got.

Anyways, last Wednesday night, Elder Arnold held a fireside. Missionaries were invited to bring their investigators as well. Elder Watson and I invite ours, but, because we live an hour from Montevideo , none of them could come. None of them can afford it. I was actually expecting that. Anyways, we went to fireside without our investigators. (We had to go to Montevideo anyways because he was having a training meeting with us the next day. Elder Watson and I didn`t want to get up early so we spent the night in Montevideo ). Right before we got to the fireside, Elder Arnold announced that if missionaries didn`t have investigators, they had to leave and go find some. So, we weren`t aloud in. There were about 16 Elders outside the stake center. We all went and did some contacts. I sang some hymns with some other Elders. It was fun.

On Thursday morning, we had our training meeting with Elder Arnold. It was about four hours long. It was really good though. We talked about obedience. We talked about how to make our lessons more spiritual. We practiced introducing the BOM to our investigators. One of the things Elder Arnold suggested was to have us kneel when we pray at our lessons. He also told how important it is to address the importance of prayer to our investigators. He also told us that we all get to start over. We all have clean slates. All in all, it was a great conference.

Elder Arnold also told the district leaders, zone leaders, and AP`s, in a separate meeting with them, that he wants senior companions to stay in their areas for five changes. He is strongly urging all the mission presidents to do that. If that really happens and I go up to senior comp next change, I will only have two more areas in my mission.

We applied a lot of the things we learned in a lesson Thursday night. It was with our investigator Antonio. We talked about the importance of praying to receive a testimony. At the end of the lesson, we got Antonio to say the prayer. It took a little persuasion, but he finally did it. He had never said a prayer before at our lessons. Elder Arnold`s training already paid off. He talked about those thigs for reason. I`m gald he was in tune with the Spirit and recognized the importance to talk about the things he talked about.

This morning, I set a lot of personal goals for myself. I`m struggling with some things, so I set some goals to fix those things. I spent my entire personal study studying about goal setting. I learned a lot. I can accomplish so much more when I set goals. I`m really excited to start working towards accomplishing the goals I set.

I think I`ve written enough for now. I`ll talk to you all next week.

Les quiero,
Elder Ethan Jones

P.S. Tell Jason Flynn ¡Felicitaciones! for me.