What Is Oatmeal Cream?

This week was a very good week! I feel like I say that every week, but the MTC is a wonderful place.

WEDNESDAY: We had a lesson with Виктор today, and it went very well! We taught him about the restoration about Joseph Smith. I recited the first vision in Russian, and it was just so powerful. Joseph Smith is truly amazing, he went through so much so that we could have the church we have today and the Book of Mormon. So yeah, the lesson went well, but afterwards Брат Hayden said we taught well, but we sounded like children because we didn’t conjugate anything, Whoops.

THURSDAY: Thursday was so fun because it was rainy all day! And that was a good thing because Sister Gehring and I got to run outside in the rain! It was the most wonderful thing. We were freezing and soaking wet, but it reminded me of cross country runs in high school, and I just felt so alive! I didn’t realize how much I really loves running until I got into the MTC:)

FRIDAY: We had another lesson with Виктор on the first part of the plan of salvation, which went much better than our lesson on Wednesday. Брат Hayden said 5at we conjugated a lot better and made it very personable. We asked him a ton of questions about his life and how he thinks the plan of salvation fits into that. A ceremony also happened on Friday. We have these water bottle filler things above the drinking fountains and every 8 oz or so of water that is used from them gets recorded. So there’s a little counter at the top that says like 967 water bottles saved or whatever. Well, the one on our floor has been close to 10000 for a bit and Friday was the night that it finally reached 10k. A speech was made. It was a joyous occasion.

SATURDAY: Every Saturday morning, we get sack breakfasts and eat on the floor of the residence hall with all the sisters in our zone. This week was particularly memorable because A) it was the last “sack nasty Saturday” the three sisters that have been here for longer than us would have and B) we talked about everyone’s real names! “Sister” and “Elder” are titles we have, and we are supposed to use them for everyone, so it’s weird that I’ve known some of these girls for 3 weeks and didn’t know their first names. It’s also strange how everyone’s names fits them.

SUNDAY: Sunday was a sad day because the two older districts in our zone left the next day. We took so many pictures and we all signed each other’s bye books (just a journal we write notes in, kinda like a yearbook). We had a wonderful devotion on Sunday by Brother Mitch Davis, who is a film director. He directed “The Other Side if Heaven” and showed us a sneak (unedited !!!) peek at “The Other Side of Heaven 2”.  He talked about how there is no such thing as an ordinary person. We all have the potential to become Gods and Goddesses and we should be trying to see everyone in that light.

MONDAY: Oh wow, Monday. Monday, we had our first Skype TRC, which is where members of the church from Russia Skype in and we teach them a lesson. Sister Maccabee and I Skyped with a girl who is from Ukraine but is currently living in Salt Lake City. She loved to talk, especially in English which was difficult because we were trying to speak in Russian. She started talking about this rash she has and

Sister Maccabee started a 10 minute conversation with her about oatmeal cream and how it will help her rash. We ended up only getting 5 minutes to “teach” a lesson, during which she corrected every single word that came out of my mouth, which was absolutely terrifying. It also made me kind of sad. We were trying to teach her about the Book of Mormon, which is something that (especially here) I have grown to love, but she seemed more interested in what I was saying wrong versus the ideas I was trying to get her to understand. But I mostly think it was a really funny learning experience so it’s all cool! The next one will be better!:)


TUESDAY: We had the most amazing devotional on Tuesday night. Elder Carlos A. Godoy and his wife spoke. They are from Brazil, and it was just so wonderful. One of the big things that struck me was when he finally found the sister missionaries that baptized him when he was 16, and he had the opportunity to seal her son in the temple. He said he just kept thinking, “everything I am is because of your mom”. It got me thinking about how I can be a faithful missionary and how I can be an instrument in Gods hands like this sister undoubtedly was. How can we all be more Christlike, be more kind, be more humble?


Thank you so much for all the emails, packages, letters, prayers, support, everything! I feel so blessed to have all of you in my life. I love you all!


Сестра Jones


1. Russia shirts!
2. My zone. We are all going to Eastern Europe, and people are
speaking Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Georgian, Latvian, Armenian,
and Estonian.
3. Our cute relief society!
4. The girls that welcomed us into the MTC that left this week:(

Что??

Что?? (means WHAT??)

Crazy crazy week!

WEDNESDAY: Not a super eventful day, but we did go to the temple which is always a highlight! Also, we met a girl that entered the MTC that day who is from Ukraine! She spoke to us in Russian, and I was very happy because she told me she liked my dress (in Russian) and I understood her because I learned how to say dress a few days before.

THURSDAY: Wow, Thursday has a story. So, we all come out here on missions right, and a whole section of the mission rules is devoted to no flirting and things like that. WELL, some Spanish speaking sisters apparently didn’t get the memo. We have two British elders in our district, and when these three hermanas heard their accents, they would not leave them alone. This week they took it too far, even if we weren’t in the MTC. They decided it was smart to look through the desks in our classroom to figure out what room the British elders are in and write a little message on the board (attached below). The poor British elders did not know what to do, so when the hermanas came up to them again after this happened, another elder in our district held out a glass of water and said “do you need a drink? Because you look pretty thirsty.” They left us alone after that.

FRIDAY: I’ve already told some of you this, but I read the best talk on Friday called Beware of Pride from the April 1989 General Conference. It changed my whole outlook on pride, what it really means, and how we can be more humble. One of my favorite lines is “Pride is a damning sin in the true sense of that word. It limits or stops progression”. I think that is so interesting to think about. Not all of us are super prideful people in our own eyes, but everyone does have some amount of pride. It’s something that we can always work on. If we learn to be more humble, we can progress further, avoid contention, and just lead happier lives. I focused a lot on being humble this week, and the progress I’ve made and the happiness I have felt makes me so excited to continue to work on being as Christ is.

SATURDAY: Saturday I was sad. I was running with a cute girl in my zone from Germany, сестра Richter. We were just talking about our week and everything and then I found out that she and her companions are leaving for Russia this week! So now I’m sad:( But I’m also so excited for them! They actually get to go out and do the thing, not just learn about doing the thing!

SUNDAY: We sang the best song in choir called “A Marvelous Work”. It has such a strong missionary message, and also has a little part with the words from “The Spirit of God”. It makes me really excited to be here and to be gathering Israel! We also got a new MTC presidency which is pretty exciting!

MONDAY: So Russian is confusing! We were talking about all the different cases for Russian, and there’s a case called dative case, the refers to indirect objects. In Russian, instead of saying “John needs a car”, they say “to John is needed a car”. Because they say it like that, the “to John” becomes an appendage, or the indirect object, and the subject changes from John to the car. Half of the things we ask our teacher why? And she just tells us to embrace it so I’m embracing it. Also, numbering things is weird. If you want to say 1 book, you say 1 книга. But if you want to say 2-4 books, it’s 2 (or 3 or 4) книги, and if you want to say 5-20 books then you say 13 книг. I don’t understand why there needs to be so many words that mean the same thing but oh well.

TUESDAY: We had such a great devotional on Tuesday. Elder Gay from the 70 and his wife spoke. Sister Gay talked a lot about her and her husbands experience serving as mission president and wife in Ghana. Over and over again, she talked about how we need to love the people. We are going all over the world to change peoples lives and bring them joy. We need to teach them, serve them, and love them. Elder Gay mentioned that none of us are here by accident. God is aware of ALL of His children individually, no matter where in the world they live or how invisible they think they are. He knows all of us and He loves all of us with a most perfect love. Because He loves us so incredibly much, He has a plan for each of us. His plan for us may not seem perfect, and we all have many trials and things we are struggling with, but God does not give us any hardship that we can’t handle. He gives them to us so that we can overcome difficulties, and learn how to be better than we ever thought we could be.

I hope you all had an amazing week!! Я очен люблю вас!!!

Сестра Jones

1. Me and сестра Murton (from the Netherlands)

2. Love note for the British elders (see Thursday)

3. Proposal printed on a Vitaminwater bottle?

A Month Already???

A month done! Woooohoooo! Just got another 5 weeks but we’re getting there!

WEDNESDAY: We got to go to the temple, finally. The temple has been closed for the past couple of weeks, but we got to go through it this past week! We also ordered mission shirts and we got them in today! I’ll attach a picture at the bottom, but it’s a shirt that says Russia, Novosibirsk mission on it. We also got everyone to sign a little card for Сестра Maccabees birthday!

THURSDAY: Honestly, I was mostly really excited about exercise time on Thursday. I’ve been running with Sister Gehring (who is going to Georgia the country), and we did some interval runs and an ab workout. It’s good to have someone who keeps me accountable! We had TRC (training resource center) on Thursday, and we had a nice little lesson on prayer. We taught a student at BYU who recently got back from his mission in Novosibirsk, and a cute young couple; he is from Utah and had served in Kazakhstan, and she is from Moscow. Both of the lessons went really well! I’m finally starting to understand what’s happening in them a little more. It’s so crazy that I’ve only been studying Russian for a month, but I can already kind of understand!

FRIDAY: Waking up Friday morning was strange. I had weird dreams throughout the night and kept waking up, but I couldn’t remember anything in the morning. Most of the girls in my hallway had similar stories, and we were wondering if it was because they cleaned the carpet the day before. It was very weird.  

SATURDAY: Lots of funny things happened on Saturday, but the one that stands out most was because of a glove. Sister Eckery has these gloves, and sometimes when we get back to the room, she’ll throw them at me or at Sister Murton, or whoever. On this particular day, Sister Murton got ahold of Sister Eckery’s gloves. They were in the bathroom and I was in the room across the hall. All the sudden. I hear an ear piercing SHRIEK. I was very confused, but I didn’t investigate, I just hoped that no one was dying. Turns out, Sister Murton threw the gloves into a stall and they ALMOST landed in the toilet. It’s all good, there were no casualties.

SUNDAY: Wow, Sunday was a day. I bore my testimony and cried, which was actually very upsetting. These past 4 weeks I’ve really been trying not to cry over anything, and then I stand up at the podium on Sunday and squeak my way through my testimony... yay. But I really felt that spirit, and standing up there, I knew that this is where I need to be, and that people are counting on me being here so I can find them and bring them closer to Christ. Also it was my dads birthday!! I couldn’t email or anything but happy birthday dad!

MONDAY: Sister Maccabee got some upsetting news on Monday. I won’t go into details, but it brought us a lot closer together. I was able to comfort her, and we just talked. Sometimes, as missionaries, it’s hard to just talk because we are devoting all our time to the Lord. But, we are still people, and it’s nice to be reminded of that sometimes. 

TUESDAY: Tuesday was a full on adventure! A few weeks ago, I mentioned something about passport issues. It’s complicated, but on Tuesday сестра Maccabee and I got to leave campus in a CAR and drive a full 10 MINUTES away to a post office! I saw the real world! We talked to real people! I wanted to run away and go get a burger so bad but I didn’t! Anyways, the passport stuff is all good now (hopefully) so Russia, here I come in another 5 weeks! I also wanted to mention choir on Tuesday. This week is President Martino and his wife (the MTC president)’s last week at the MTC so we sang This is the Christ. For those of you who have never heard it, listen to it. It is one of my new favorite songs. It is just so powerful, and raw. This IS the Christ.

That is pretty much all for this week. I love you all!!

Сестра Джонз

1. My district at the temple:)

2. Сестра Maccabee and I

3. Sister Murton, Sister Eckery, Sister Gehring, me, sister Maccabee, and Sister Bowers

4. My Russia shirt (that I am currently wearing) !!

5. We have weekly cleaning checks for our rooms, and we FINALLY got a commendable rating!

6 & 7. A peek into our Russian classroom, these are some of the phrases we learned/memorized this week.

8. Сестра Maccabee and I in a CAR going to the POST OFFICE!

God Loves You!!

Happy New Year!! Just finished up week 3, and the weeks are starting to fly by a little faster. 

WEDNESDAY: Last Wednesday we had the opportunity to clean the Provo temple! I’d only been inside a few times and I didn’t realize just how beautiful it is. My companion and I mainly worked on the sealing rooms (where people get married). They were absolutely gorgeous, and everything was lined with gold. I’ve never cleaned a chair so intensely as I did in the temple. We had to wipe the gold part with a different cloth than the rest of the chair, and every leg got an individual wipe down. But it was really cool to be able to do that!

THURSDAY: Thursday was not the greatest day, I’ll admit. One of my favorite things to do in the MTC is run on the track and unfortunately, I ran too hard earlier in the week without stretching and now I have a massive knot in my hamstring. So, I was only able to run a lap or two:( It worked out though, because as I was stretching, I started talking to this sister who does martial arts. She was like “do you want to learn some self defense?” And I obviously said of course!! I’m just hoping that I won’t need it in Russia, but if I do, I’ll be safe mom;) We also had our first TRC on Thursday. For TRCs, members in the area that speak Russian come and volunteer, and we teach them a 20 minute lesson. They went pretty well, the first one was wonderful (we taught the teacher because a volunteer didn’t show up) and he said that we had a good plan and spoke well! The second one was with this cute grandma from St. Petersburg, and my companion loved it, but I didn’t really understand what was going on and I didn’t say much either. But I guess it can only go up from there!

FRIDAY: Friday was a good day. Сестра Murton made me go to the trainer and roll my leg, which was good because it was hurting a lot. We had a conversation with a German elder in our district about wisdom teeth for some reason which was how I found out that other countries keep you awake for wisdom teeth surgery... ouch. They numb the area, but still! In class on Friday we had an amazing discussion on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I know for a fact that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Even without the confirmation of the Spirit, there are so many facts that confirm this. There are so many things in the Book of Mormon that people didn’t know were true about ancient America until after the book was written. Joseph Smith only had a 3rd grade education. There is no way he could have translated the Book of Mormon without Gods help. 

SATURDAY: I finished basic core! Basic core is this little book full of phrases and stuff we memorize to get the basis of Russian, and I finally finished it! Now we start on harder things !! Two of the elders in my district also witnessed some poor girl sliding down the hand rail of a staircase and fall off of it! She was fine and tried to brush it off, but they were laughing ridiculously hard for a solid 5 minutes.

SUNDAY: Сестра Maccabee was sick. In her own words, “I was a zombie this morning”. Сестра Murton and Сестра Eckery got called as Sister Training Leaders! They basically just check up on all the sisters and welcome the new sisters in when the come. They even got a flip phone! Our Sunday night devotional was so so good. Brother and Sister Coslett spoke. They are from Northern Texas and have the cutest little accents. Both of them had very hard lives growing up, and had parents that abused them and abandoned them. However, they both found their way to the gospel and I had never heard someone who loves Jesus as much as Sister Coslett does! God cares about every single person on this earth, and we are all precious in His sight. No matter what others say, you are of infinite worth.

MONDAY: I made Сестра Murton run a mile;) She loves horseback riding, but she wants to get into better shape, so I told her, “ok, today we are going to run a mile.” She didn’t like that. She kept saying over and over “I can’t do that, a mile?? That’s so long! I can’t do that. I won’t do that.” It was actually the funniest thing! I convinced her by saying she could blame me if she fainted, and she didn’t! Afterwards, I kept saying “now don’t you feel good? Running is just so amazing!” And I think she’s starting to believe me! We also began learning conjugations in Russian, which took me all the way back to middle school Spanish. Conjugating is turning out to be the easiest part of learning Russian! But probably for not much longer. We decided to celebrate New Years at 10 pm because it was midnight where my family is (and we weren’t allowed to stay up), and I made makeshift sparkling apple cider out of apple juice and sprite from the vending machines:)

TUESDAY: We started the year off right with service at 6:25 AM! My companion and I were in charge of taking out the trash all the bathrooms in our building. It took forever to do because almost half of the MTC left to their actual missions, so there were lots of boxes and trash. The choir sang in the Tuesday devotional. We sang “Jesus Once of Humble Birth”. When we were practicing, the choir director was telling us all about the second coming of Christ (in the Book of Revelations). The devotional was by Tad R. Callister and his wife, Kathryn. They spoke on receiving revelation, and how God is eager to share his mind and will with us, we just have to be more eager to listen. 

It was a wonderful week this week, full of ups and downs. But this week was also a good reminder that I am not here for me. I may be having troubles learning the language, and not being able to say what I want to say. Being a missionary is hard. If I were here just for me, I wouldn’t have come in the first place. But I am here for other people, and to teach them about Jesus Christ and His infinite, eternal love for them. No matter what choices they make in this life or what kind of person they are, we are ALL precious in His sight.

Thank you for all the emails and prayers this week!

До свидания

Сестра Jones

Pictures:

1. My name tag in front of the Provo Temple

2. Snowball fight! It snowed a lot this week

3. A random picture someone airdropped me during the devotional. I don’t know who this person is...

4. Сестра Murton with the makeshift sparkling cider