First Email

Welcome to the weekly Elder Jarret Jones’s email! I hope to be consistent with sending a quick update each week throughout my mission! 

This week hasn't been too crazy! I had a wonderful blessing from my stake President and that made me an official missionary! Crazy times! Very surreal! Never thought this time would come! I started out my week on a p-day so that was funny! After Monday, it's been zoom call after zoom call! I am on calls for at least 8 hours a day! The weirdest thing is that after I finish the day, I am exhausted. I literally fall into bed each night and fall asleep instantly! I don’t know how that's possible after sitting all day doing nothing! I feel like I am getting fat. I sit on a call then get a 30 minute break for food, then I get on another call, then more food…the cycle just repeats. So I am trying to make sure I don’t eat too much food between calls. But my mother makes such good meals that I can’t help but chow down. I get up each morning and go play basketball in my backyard which has felt so good to run around for a couple minutes, before sitting for the next 8 hours straight. I have also had to figure out facebook! It has been hard because I have no idea what I am doing. Never had social media before, so it's a weird experience. They want us to post a spiritual thought before we enter the MTC and I have no idea how to do it haha. Then, once I get to Australia, I will have to post spiritual thoughts in Chinese! So wish me luck as I try to figure out how to work facebook! 

My district is awesome! I love them! They are all very smart and all wanting to be good missionaries! I am in a three-some currently! One of my companions has been in the dual immersion chinese program with me for the past 12 years! So we know each other really well already! The other companion is also awesome! We are making a great team! We struggle to focus when we do companionship study because we are just laughing and teasing each other the whole time haha. 

Learning lots of chinese! I realized that I didn't know as much as I thought I did. A very humbling experience! The Chinese language has all these different tones! For some reason, my teachers in school didn't put much emphasis on these tones. However, the tones are apparently super important! So I am having to re-learn all the words I know with the correct tones! This is very tedious haha. I am also learning a ton of new gospel words each day! My notebook is filled with so many words! I love this language, but it requires all my brain power! It's fun to see what my brain is capable of doing! But most of all, I am having to rely on our Savior Jesus Christ to help expand my brain! I am already having to lean on him as I learn this difficult language! It is humbling to put all my trust and reliance on him! He is the only way I am going to get through this mission and learn all the Chinese I need to know! They are treating my district like we are all native speakers! So everything is in chinese! I am hearing more Chinese than English everyday! So I am starting to think in Chinese! All my prayers are in Chinese and my thoughts at the end of the day are in 80% chinese haha. It's weird but also awesome thinking in Chinese! 

The worst part of this week has been that on Sunday night I got sick and had a rough night. Then I woke up this morning and I feel deathly sick. Really, really lame! I literally haven't been sick for over a year! I can’t remember the last time I was actually sick. I didn’t get sick all senior year! Now I think the stress and everything has culminated and now I am sick as sick can be. Very unfortunate timing! However, there is one major blessing and positive -it is that I am getting sick now and not in the MTC! So I am thanking my Heavenly Father that he allowed me to get sick now and not when I am in the mtc. But it is still lame to be sick. I had forgotten how it felt to be sick and man it's not fun. Hopefully I can wake up tomorrow ready to pack my suitcases for the next 2 years! 

Funny moments throughout the week:

–My district had a pushup contest in the middle of one of my zoom calls! It was how many pushups can you do in a minute…and I won with 50 pushups in a minute! All the Elders were a little mad about that and are vowing to do pushups everyday so they can beat me when we get to the mtc haha. 

–During one of the zoom meetings the instructor left for 5 minutes to go do something. We were supposed to memorize the missionary purpose in Chinese during those 5 minutes. A minute passes in silence then one of the sister missionaries unmutes and says “I know we are supposed to be memorizing right now…but I really need to know how tall everyone is.” The other sister missionaries are like yes! With zoom it's just so hard to tell haha. Us Elders didn't really know what to do…the question kinda caught us all off guard because it was so random haha. So the Elders start going through saying their heights. For some reason my district is short haha. I wait a second then say I am 6 '3 and jaws drop all around haha. It was so funny! Then one of the Elders said “I knew Elder Jones was gonna be tall”. Don't know how he knew that but I thought it was funny. Then the conversation quickly turns into basketball and what position everyone could be when we play at the mtc haha. The Elders all thought that question was a little weird, but it just made me smile. 

–We had to teach a lesson over zoom to a supposed “investigator”. Our companionship thought we would do great! But it was an epic failure haha. Teaching the first lesson in Chinese to someone who has no idea about the gospel was harder than we thought! Thankfully the second time we taught it went a lot better. The first time was to make sure we are humble! If anything, I am learning that missions are very humbling! 

This week has been awesome! It's been so much fun to just give my whole life over to the Savior! I have been waiting for years for this moment! And I am not going to waste a single second of it! I am just so excited to make it to the MTC wednesday! And then to Australia 19 days later! I just want everyone to remember to Trust in the Lord! Read Proverbs 3:5-6! It states “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding; in all thine ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths”. Take time to ponder this scripture and what it means in your life! Trust in our Savior and everything will become better! The word trust in Chinese means to “lean on”. So I invite everyone to lean on our Savior a little bit more this week! 

–zhang zhanglao (Elder Jones)