Happy 4th of July

Hiya friends and family!:) It's been quite a crazy week! So this is going to be another random email:)

Thursday: Tracting! A full day of it! For some reason tracting is Sister Kovac's favorite thing to do so we do that... a lot! But I am grateful for it, I am pushed out of my comfort zone at every door (the ones people answer at least) and I can feel myself growing because of it! I heard once that there is no growth in a comfort zone and no comfort in a growth zone, and let me tell you how true that is!

Friday: Holy cow Friday... our whole mission got to go to the Yankees game and watch the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform and it was spectacular!! It kind of ate up the whole day though, we had to take a train from up here in Yorktown to Harlem, and then to the Bronx so we had to leave almost right after our morning studies. I still haven't fully processed the fact that I was in HARLEM and the BRONX! I might be the only person that would think that is cool... but it really was! My favorite part of the whole day though was the choir, not the performance but some of the missionaries had family in the choir and they got to see them and I was only a little bit jealous! One Elder even got to see his mom because she was in the choir (I was slightly more jealous of him;)) We had to leave after the 4th inning so that we could get home on time, but that didn't actually work out... The train schedule did not want to cooperate so we were stuck in Harlem at 10 at night, oh boy is it a different place after the sun goes down! A lady came up to Sister Kovac and I when we were waiting for our train and you could tell that she had had a bad day and that she was ready to go home. And she decided to take her frustration out on us a little bit, she started telling us what we do and don't believe and we were just taking it. She had been yelling at us for a little bit when I saw that some money had fallen out of her pocket so I picked it up and handed it to her. She stopped yelling, thanked me, and then went back to yelling. A few minutes later it happened again, some money fell out of her pocket, I picked it up and handed it to her, she thanked me, and then went back to yelling. Finally, her train came and she left and I was just thinking about how much that woman needed the gospel... Clearly she was not prepared for it right then! But I couldn't help thinking that that was not really her. I think the real her was the woman who thanked me for picking up her money for her, not the yelling woman. I was so grateful that God was able to help me see that, without Him I would've gotten angry at this woman! But He helped me to understand that this is still His daughter, she needs love just as much as the rest of us. So I hope that one day she might remember the nice Sister missionaries who didn't yell back at her, but instead helped her!:) 

Saturday: 4th of July! That was a fun day! We did a lot of tracting because we thought people would be at home with their families and they would be happy because it was a holiday, right? Not really:) We still had a lot of fun though! And we celebrated too! We couldn't do fireworks so we blew bubbles and ate spaghetti, it was great fun:)

Sunday: I loved Sunday! Last week was just a blur of faces and names that I knew I wasn't going to remember! But this week I actually knew what was going on, I had read all these names and it was so nice to be able to put faces to names! Something interesting happened on Sunday though, I said last week that half our ward is Spanish so we have Spanish Elders in our ward... but somehow the Spanish members got the dinner calendars confused and so all of our dinner appointments for this week are with people who don't know English! We tried to tell them that they don't have to let us come over, but they are just all too nice and invite us over anyway! I know like 2 words in Spanish so it has been really interesting! I love it though:)

Monday: More tracting! Our area doesn't have a lot of investigators so most of our time is spent tracting and trying to find some! It makes for some pretty long days but I am learning to love it, now I just laugh at the doors that get slammed in our faces!

Tuesday: We met with a lady named Sister Goss, she is so sweet! Love her to bits:) She is a member but she can't make it to church because of her health, so we go over once in awhile to read from the Book of Mormon with her. I look at all the struggles she has to go through and it amazes me the faith she has despite all of that! I know that we all go through trials and I don't want to say any is harder than another, but I know that we would all be much happier if we faced those trials as Sister Goss does. Always laughing:)

Oh how I love New York, my emails just can't do it justice! People always told me that a mission was hard, and I guess it is, but you end up just loving it too much to care! So if any of you are wondering whether you should serve a mission, DO IT! I can promise you that there is no way in a million years that you will regret it! 

God loves you:)

Love, Sister Jones

P.S. I heard about President Packer's passing and it broke my heart! What an amazing man he was, I am going to miss him! Could all of you go read the last 3 paragraphs of his talk in this last conference, "The Plan of Happiness"? President Smith told us a story about this talk, he was sitting next to the Church Correlation department and they had advanced copies of all the talks. So he was able to see them as the General Authorities were speaking, with these last 3 paragraphs President Packer went off script. They are words straight from his heart and it is what he felt was most important to tell us as he spoke to us for the last time.

Yankees game!

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

The Shire :)