My Final Email

I can't believe that my mission is over. Due to the coronavirus, I am being sent home from the greatest country in the world. I have dreamed about this and dreaded it since I very first arrived in the great land of Russia! All I can say is that I hope I never forget what I learned here. My mission has hands down been the greatest experience of my life. I have learned what it means to be the Savior's hands. I have learned what it means to love and serve everyone around you. I have felt the Savior's love and have been supported by Him every day. I have felt the ministering of angels bear me up. I have seen the gift of tongues at work. I have seen miracles. I am so grateful for what I have learned and the memories I have made. Now it's time to apply it to the rest of my life!

with love,

Sister Jones

Corona Virus And Flower Fridays!

Hey everyone!

So things are fine here. Honestly, there are not a ton of corona virus cases over here in Russia (thank goodness), but we do have some stricter restrictions after this week, like we are now not allowed to use any public transportation including taxi's and things like that... the world is going crazy!!

Anyways, back to my week! This week was good. On Friday, Sister Epperson had the idea to buy flowers and pass them out to random women on the street, so that's what we did! We handed them out to older women and especially those who looked sad. There was one lady who gave me the weirdest look, but then looked at her flower, and smiled so big! We called it Flower Friday, and we kinda want to do it every week now so that's going to be fun!

We had zone conference this week and exchanges. I was with Sister Scott, who served in Novosibirsk with me for a little bit! We went to a grandma named Svetlana and she was SO cute! She had the most out of tune piano I've ever heard! We read the scriptures with her, a verse talking about how we are all beggars. We are all children of God, and we all have our own problems and things that we are struggling with, so we need to be kind to eachother! We are all trying our best, and it will be so much better if we are all unified.

Sorry for the short email this week (and no pictures... whoops) but everything is fine over here and no one has corona virus yet!

Love you all!

Sister Jones

Happy International Women's Day!!!

Привет всем))))

This week was a crazy week (but not as crazy as this upcoming week is going to be, oof). We had a competition with the Elders to see who could make the most friends in a week and we made 4 friends in the first two days! We already met with 2 of them, Liza and Toma. Liza is working here in a bakery and is studying English. Ultimately, she wants to become a translator. She is also planning on going to China at some point, as she speaks some Chinese too. She was really cute! She showed us all her favorite places in the city, including a music theatre and a cool church:) Toma is here studying finance. She works at a waffle shop (where we met her) and we went walking with her and her sister who was in town. I am just really excited about our new friends:)))

We had a few meetings with some of the members this week as well. We went over to visit a really cute (mentally insane - like literally) grandma on Tuesday. It was so much fun! We literally just sat for an hour and sang her songs from the hymn book. It's crazy how much songs can calm people and bring the spirit.

This week was also March 8th! International Women's Day! The men in the branch set up a surprise for us after church. They made food, had presents, and gave us flowers:) For the presents, they had a bunch of balloons. We were supposed to pick one, pop it, and a piece of paper inside would tell us what we won. I won.... toothpaste! It was really funny! 

Just like I did at the beginning of my mission, I have been thinking a lot lately about how grateful I am to be here as a volunteer. I have learned so much that I never would have been able to otherwise. I have grown so much as a person, and developed a relationship with my Father in Heaven that I didn't realize was possible. I could have done these things at home, but I don't know if I would've chosen to. Being here has been wonderful because each and every day, your purpose is to live as the Savior did and to follow His gospel. 

I hope you all had a wonderful week!

Sister Jones

Pictures:

1. Me riding a bull

2. Papa John's is spelled JUST LIKE Jones in Russian

3. a pretty temple:)

Transfer Week

Hey everyone!!

This week was insane. It was transfer week, which meant that we had a ton of people coming in and out of Novo that we had to manage. It also meant that I had to say goodbye to everyone in Novo:((( It ALSO meant that my trainee came into country! Her name is Sister Epperson, and she's from Lehi, Utah. She is wonderful, and is already really excited to be here and do her best! My other companion is Sister Campbell from Scotland. (She had us try this Scottish drink called Irn Bru and it was realllyyyy gooood) She is so much fun and I really want her to teach me to speak with a Scottish accent. 

Honestly, this week was a blur. We had a really fun time when the trainee's came in though! Me, Sister Richardson, our trainees, and Sister Campbell all went to a dog cafe! We wanted to go to a racoon cafe, but like I'm really never against playing with dogs! We went with two of our friends, Anya and Sonya, and we all just played games together and pet dogs. It was a wonderful time!

Ok, I am sorry that I am cutting this email short but really not much happened. It was a ton of traveling and things like that, but this week I was thinking about how grateful I am for the Savior's Atonement. I was a bit stressed this week (I'm mostly just excited now), and tired, and a bit nervous in general, but I thought a lot about Jesus Christ. His atonement makes it possible for us to feel peace and joy in the midst of stress and hard times. Because of Him, we can be happy. 

I love you all and I am sorry for the short email!

Sister Jones

Pictures:

Me and Sister Richardson 

Dog cafe!

Schnitzel Pizza

Hello everyone!

This week was a crazy week. We did a ton of walking around and talking to people on the street because a lot of our plans fell through, but by the end of the week everything worked out!

First of all, big news! We got transfer calls this week, and I will be moving to the city of Irkutsk! I will still be an STL, but I will be in a trio with Sister Campbell from Scotland, and a trainee who I do not know yet. My STL companion will be across lake Baikal in Ulan Ude which will be a challenge, but I am really excited!!

This week, we had GERMAN NIGHT! Right now, we have two German elders serving here in Novosibirsk, so we decided to have a night celebrating their german-ness. It was a really big success! We actually had quite a few of our friends come, and they thought it was great. The elders organized a presentation about Germany, we did a scavenger hunt, and had lots of German food. We made two german cakes, had schnitzel (we put it on pizza, idk why), and pretzels)) Also juice, because Russians never have a party without juice.

We also celebrated a holiday this week, Men's day! Pretty much, we congratulated all the men for being men. We also won a stuffed cat from a claw machine and decided to give it to the Elders as a present. But, one of the Elders is allergic to cats, so we also put some allergy pills in there for him.

Lastly, we had a record week in our mission this week and had 6 baptisms this weekend!! There was a family baptized here, and the baptism was so wonderful. Basically, there are two members who are sisters, but they stopped coming to church a long time ago. They had their own families, but the elders found them, and now they decided to be baptized! The two talks in the baptism were given by these two sisters and they were so powerful. Both of them cried more than once, and expressed their sincere joy and peace they had from seeing their children and husband decide to follow Jesus Christ. It brought them so much closer together as a family, and it was just such a wonderful, joyful day.

I hope you all had a wonderful week! Love and miss you all!

Sister Jones

Photos:

Members crazy dog

old pic of me and sis richardson bc I took not many pictures this week:))))

I Don't Know What To Put Here This Week, Lol

Hello everyone!!

This week was such a blast:) First of all, REALLY exciting thing happened on Sunday! We were at church, and an older lady walked in that we didn't know. She said her name was Lubov, and it was her first Sunday at church. She has a friend who is a member that lives in Norway and she just wanted to come to church, so we are probably going to start working with her! We are really excited:))) It's not often that people just walk into church wanting to learn more.

We also had exchanges this week with Left Bank. I was with Sister Horgmo, the one from Norway. It was really so much fun! She has only been in country for 5 weeks, so it was kinda fun to be a senior companion and to have to know all the Russian and stuff. I felt very blessed, because we went to visit a grandmother and a family and I understood everything! The Russian comes! I've been here for a year now so it's about time. We also had a hard time ordering a taxi because he went to the wrong address and was like "I'm by the stoplight!" and I was like "There is no stoplight!" and he just kept saying it over and over. He eventually found us, lol...

Another fun thing this week was the hockey game we went to on Saturday with the Elders and their friend Kirill. It was the Novosibirsk team, Sibir, against some team that I can't remember the name of, lol. Sibir won though!! 3-2/. No fights, but it was so much fun!

This week, I studied a lot about the freedom to choose that each of us has and the role it plays in our lives. I am so grateful that I am able to choose between right and wrong. Each of us can choose to change. To be a little better each day. To believe. To act. To serve. It is one of God's greatest gifts to us and we should be taking advantage of it each and every day. Choose the right!

I love you all:)))

Sister Jones

Pictures:

Hockey game

Sister Richardson with a crazy dog at a members house

Me at a cafe

Conference, Conference, Conference

Hellooooo everyone!

This week was a crazy week! We had tons of conferences. We had exchanges with the sisters from Omsk on Tuesday, zone conference on Wednesday, and district conference on Saturday and Sunday. It was crazyyyyy and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little tired.

We had a really fun week this week though! We had a meeting with one of the members, Lubov, this week. She's a grandma and she is the sweetest lady ever! Her husband passed away about a year ago, so we go over every once and a while to spend time with her and talk about church. This week, she taught us how to make some wonderful Russian pastries (picture attached) that were SO good! We made these roll things stuffed with cabbage and some cottage cheese type pastries. I don't know how everyone here knows how to cook, but they literally all do and it's wonderful!

We also met with Sasha, a recent convert. She's currently working 3 jobs, so it's a miracle that we finally met with her! She didn't really want to meet but she came anyways. We got to the topic of prophets and apostles, and Sasha started asking a ton of questions about them and about the history of the church, and when we told her we could do lessons with her about it she was really happy. So she's really excited to meet with us now! She came up with a whole plan of topics she wanted to learn about and we are going to go through them every Wednesday.

District conference this week was wonderful! We had church leaders from Moscow (Elder Golden) come and speak to us. I loved the talk given by Sister Golden in the Saturday session. She talked a lot about the importance of scripture study. She compared it to going to the movies. If you want to go to a movie, you set aside time for it and go to the movie. If you want to learn piano, you make time for lessons and time for practicing. It's the same thing with scripture study and church things in general. If we don't make time for it, it won't happen. If we don't make time to pray, we won't. If we don't make time to study our scriptures, we won't. If we don't make time to go to church, we won't. It all depends on where our priorities are. If we something is really valuable to us, we will make time for it. How valuable to you is your relationship with God? Are you willing to make time for it?

That's all I have for this week! I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying life:)

Sister Jones

Pictures:

-Zone conference!! 

-Our really good Russian pastries, we made with Lubov

-My hood covered in snow