Week 50 - 1 Nephi 17:50 And I said unto them: If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them. If he should command me that I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth; and if I should say it, it would be done.

Dear Jordan,

 

 We have snow on the ground now. Not too much but it is still staying. The temperatures have been in the 30s and 40s for most of the week. We hope you are doing well. Any snow on the ground for you yet? Mom was surprised when she found out that you have been writing to other people (friends, etc). She was a little sad that you hadn't written to her last week. 

 

 As you can see by the week number, you are coming up on a year. To me it has been going by very fast. I hope you have enjoyed it. Now that you are no longer a teenager, do you feel any different? I didn't think so. Did you have a great birthday?

 

 On Monday we had Family Home Evening and Mom taught the lesson. It was on our bodies as temples and keeping them clean. On Tuesday the girls had Young Women in Excellence. Mom attended. The Young Men had their court of honor so I was busy with that. After I was done I was to the YW program. You may not have heard but Rachel finished her requirements and earned her Young Women's medallion. Hannah is still working on it and Bekah is just beginning. On Wednesday Hannah and Rachel had their interviews to receive their patriarchal blessings. On Thursday I ran some errands. On Friday I had the day off to prepare for the scout camp out. We went to Ken Wood's cabin. Everything worked out very well. It was a little cold but we didn't have to drive through any snow to get there. We ate dinner and then had a scouter's minute. The boys and most leaders them played games for a while. On Saturday we ate breakfast, packed our gear, and cleaned the cabin. We then spent some time planning for next year. Just as we finished, the snow started falling so it worked out very well. We came home and dropped off everyone. Rachel then went to How the Grinch stole Christmas with Robert. I went shopping for food. 

 

Will Stamps then came to our house. He will be staying until next Sunday. He let us know that Reilly Stamps decided to come home from his mission in Chile. We don't have much more information because he arrived back in NC a couple of hours after Will had left to fly out here to Utah. On Sunday Will went to church with us. After church we went to Robert's house for dinner.

 

 I finished reading The Book of Mormon again as part of my daily reading. I love the book and I am so grateful to have it in my life. I know it is true and I am grateful to have the teachings of it available in my life. I am grateful that you are able to tell the people of Korea about it so that they can know that God loves them and wants them to have the blessings of the gospel in their lives.

 

 We are grateful to have you as our son. You are great. We appreciate the choices you have made in you life to become the person you are. We love you.

 

 Please keep up the wonderful work you are doing. We continue to pray for you and your safety and success for what Heavenly Father wants you to do. I will now let you get to all of those other emails you have. Love you again.

 

Love,

dad, Mom, Sarah, Hannah, Rachel, Bekah

Happy birthday 11/21/94!

Dear Jordan,

♪♫ Happy Birthday to You! ♪♫

♪♫ Happy Birthday to You! ♪♫

♪♫ Happy Birthday Dear Jordan! ♪♫

♪♫ Happy Birthday to You! ♪♫

Hope you have a wonderful birthday!

 

Love,

Your Family

Korean War plane

The Korean Children's Grand Park... free admittance

Visit to the zoo

Jordan's week 49 response

Sorry to hear about the challenges with plumbing. That reminds me of the time in Imun that the bathroom sink rusted out. I had to form a make-shift pipe out of yogurt bottles and a 2-liter. I guess there are a couple ways to do house repairs. ;)

Great to hear about a fun stake conference! I look forward to understanding it fully again. Maybe next year. ;) It's really great to hear that Benn is going to do a mission. I can't wait to see what happens with him! 

Also, I'm willing to bet the Pilot is going to be quite the blessing. ;) 

This week has been the coldest yet. This last Saturday was apparently -5 degrees Celsius. That was quite an experience. Still no snow, though. The humidity is mostly gone now. It is still much more humid than Utah, but it is not even close to the levels we saw in the summer. That has been quite helpful since extra layers don't exactly help with wet air. ;) We have been able to do a lot more street contacting this week, doubling our goal of 140 people given gospel material. I guess it helps speed things up when people really want to get out of the cold. I have no idea what dad did in the heat all year round. I think it's nice to have a bit of cold to split up the heat. Any fun stories there? 

Things are going well. The people are still as nice as they have ever been and the weather is letting my trench coat get the most usage it's had in nearly a year. The suits are doing well. The sock and shoes are holding on. I realized the other day that I can sew the socks back together if I really need to... so I've done that for a while. I will survive until the whole socks come to replace the "holey" socks. I am very grateful for your help on that front. :) I will be buying a jacket for something lighter than a trench coat and a hat for my ears, so if you could transfer maybe $100 that should do it. Thank you so much. :)

It is really great out here. I wish you could come visit! I would recommend early summer or autumn, but it's great all year-round. :) I hear it is even better down south. It's at about the same longitude as St. George down there, so I think that's a safe bet. 

Not really anything out of the ordinary to report this week. The language is still coming. There are fewer and fewer misunderstandings between Elder Ahn and I, and he is having daily revelations about English grammar. It's good. ;)

I will try to send some pictures right now. :) Love you all! Thank you!

Press forward with steadfast faith in Christ.

Best wishes,

Elder Jones

Week 49 - Doctrine and Covenants 42:49 He who hath faith to see shall see.

Dear Jordan,

 

 Happy Birthday this week! You are no longer a teenager. We hope you have a great day on you birthday.

 

How are you doing? We finally got a little bit of snow on the ground on Saturday. It was gone by midday. We still have snow in the mountains and it is cold (at least to us). The highs are only in the 40s. When we were walking from Stake Conference last night the wind was blowing so it felt very cold. I know in MN they received more snow and had much colder temperatures because they had a big storm roll through from Alaska and it had Arctic wind with it.

 

 On Monday we had Family Home Evening and everyone was there. It has been a little while since everyone has been able to attend. Most of us are still fighting colds. We are coughing quite a bit. On Tuesday it was Veteran's Day so I had the day off. I still had to wake up early to put out the flags. None of the young men came to help so it was just Bruce and Ann and me. The ground was hard because it was so cold. All the the girls had school so they couldn't help. I then had a doctor's appointment and since I am 50 years old, I had him check everything as well as fill out the scout health form. 

 

I then went to lunch with Trent Goddard, one of my old co-workers at CoreLogic. We ate at Crown Burger and talked about our callings, our families, and how we are doing. He is the bishop in his ward now. I told him about when I was the ward mission leader and we had the ward FHE. He liked that idea. I then did some shopping for some plumbing material to replace the shower handles in the upstairs bathroom and the faucet in the downstairs bathroom. 

 

It was a training session on anger management. 

 

Trying to remove the old stuff was a pain and I had to go back to the store a couple of times to get the right materials. I had turned off the water to replace everything. When I turned it back on, we didn't have any water pressure. At first I thought there must be a leak because of the replacement parts but I checked everything. Fortunately, there were no leaks. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the pressure regulator. I wasn't going to play with that so I called Dan Merrill (Dan the Man Plumbing) to find out what the issue was. He came over and said that he could work on it on Wednesday. I had asked him to teach the plumbing merit badge a while ago and he was teaching it that night. We then went to the church and he made it through all of the requirements that night but it was about 9 pm when he finished. 

 

On Wednesday I went to work, the girls went to school, and mom went to work. Dan was able to take care of the problem. We now have better water pressure. That night the girls did homework and I went to bed early to try to get rid of the cold. On Thursday we didn't do much either. On Friday after work I cut some of the long pieces of rebar from the flags in half. Pete was able to bring me a big bolt cutter to use. It still took a lot of strength/weight to cut the steel. Robert bought a new Pilot but it won't be delivered until next week. We get to buy his used Pilot when his new one arrives. On Saturday I bought the merit badges for the scouts because we will have a court of honor this coming week. I had to make a couple of trips to get everything. I also bought the groceries. When I came home mom asked if I bought clothes detergent. I hadn't so I had to make another trip. 

 

We had the adult session of stake conference that night. It was about "hastening the work." They had three families talk about what they are doing. It was interesting to me that they are setting good examples to their neighbors but they aren't doing anything special. President Cook talked about a family trip they took this year to Scotland. They were having trouble finding information on a particular person who lived in Scotland so they went searching. They didn't find anything where they thought they would. They took a drive and were inspired to ask if there were any cemeteries nearby. There was and in the cemetery was the headstone of the person they were looking for. When they got back to the hotel they were staying at, they talked to the host who had the same last name from the headstone. He brought out several inches thick records of family history for them to use. 

 

On Sunday the speakers talked about faith, hope, and charity. President Hilton talked about the rules of three with time. For example 3 seconds to change a thought, 3 weeks to make a habit, etc. We will go to Robert's house early because we are doing the burritos and we will cook them at his house. One final thing about stake conference but not our stake conference. Mom said that Karen and Lance took Benn Stamps with them to their stake conference which also happened to be on "hastening the work." After the conference Benn decided that he will submit his mission papers.

 

 I asked the girls to send you emails for your birthday but to send them today. Hopefully they will.

 Keep working hard and studying the language. How are your language skills now? Do you hold your own conversations with others or do you still want others to help? How is Elder Ahn doing?

 

 We love you. You are always in our thoughts and in our prayers. You are great.

 

Love,

Bekah, dad, Mom, Sarah, Hannah, Rachel