Elder Jonas Gridley's mission

Time is cutting shorter and shorter! So many awesome things ahead. I'm just doing all I can to enjoy NC. So glad I have another 3 weeks and I'll go to the temple 2 times before I go home it'll be great. Pray Zach gets baptized soon and David can overcome the word of wisdom! Love yall  

This week we had our p-day on Saturday so that we would go to the temple and watch an endowment and sealing from Elder Naluai's old area. A super cool special moment.  I'm getting transferred so that's wild. I'm going back to Elizabeth City! It's more or less exactly what I wanted I'm glad to have this happen. I'll be companions with Elder Hill that's going to be a blast. Friday is transfers it will be a lot of driving.  We played some disk golf this week again and I found some poison ivy evidently so. So just putting up with that.  It makes the everyday moment more interesting.  The Elders in our district had their car in the shop and they stayed over almost all week! We had a crazy few days. The downtown part of Suffolk is a 14-mile drive about 30 minutes. We took the bus there and then biked home. That was a fun day. A total of 23 miles biked that day we were dead! So fun though, I want to do it again.  Gunna be horrible to say goodbye to my friend Sa...

 

  Tuesday the 6th Today started out with interviews with the mission president; which is always really fun. We have seen President Hutchesen a lot recently. Zone conference, stake conference, and interviews. There has been a big focus on trying to talk with everyone and you'd think after being on my mission for 20 months I'd be a natural by now. Well as of 4 weeks ago I'd still kinda dread talking with everyone it's scary as many might agree, but I love it now so much more fun. With the focus to talk with everyone we have also just talked about being focused on our missionary purpose (Inviting others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel by faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost). So what I think of now is do you want to come closer to God? Some people say yes others say no. Among the people who say yes we go further if you are wanting to come closer to God, I know how or I believe...

So much happens every single week here in Chesapeake zone. We went up to serve again at the temple Monday and Tuesday that's why you are receiving this email on Wednesday. The temple is fun to serve at. We removed or put on shoe covering so people can enter the temple. Nice to hear everyone's thoughts on the temple both members and nonmembers of the church. I also love hanging out with the other missionaries and just having fun together. We had 10 Elders spend the night with some local missionaries it was all 10 of us in 2 bedroom apartment so that was a blast. My air mattress had a hole so I moved to the couch what a blessing that was actually slept really well. They had 7 missionaries in one room and 3 in the other I liked being in the 3 the other two missionaries are a lot younger in the mission and it was nice to just chat with them about how they are doing. Super fun though. We had a great lesson with a part member family. They have all been coming to church for years the ...

 

  So this week was pretty cool couple of good things. Lots of the people we have tried to start teaching have stopped wanting to meet because they find crap on the internet saying things that we do not believe and they just assume it's right and stop talking that's annoying but it's really frustrating Elder Wade so that's just great.  Princess Anne an area in our district which has the sisters Boldt, Ross, and Horne. They had 3 people ona date for baptism, and I did the interview and well it had some ups and downs doing some calls Sunday to talk about different things for the confirmation was kinda stressful but it worked out.  I got a cool new shirt today and that was fun went to a cool store. Played a little D&D and got sushi so super fun. Second to last pday with E. Wade so wild. We should have a fun week ahead of us. Meet this awesome guy named Lloyd he had us come over it was 7:35 we were there till 9:15 it was so cool. We taught lots of stuff he agreed with so...

  Tuesday  We went knocking and ran into a few cool people. One dude names James was really interesting. He's been living life like the eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Asked what he does for peace and he said smoke outside just chill that's my peace. Things just seemed hard for it I felt bad but hope he's happy. After him we talked to an Antwon he was cool! Gave him a Book of Mormon and a paper with the questions of the soul. It was great I loved it and hope to meet with him Saturday. We had dinner with the Worthins they moved here in January. They had some food for us I loved it. I really appreciated it very hungry. Saturday we had a fun exchange it was Elder Timmons, Beacham and I going around finding all day. We ran into 3 cool people two of them we are going to start teaching. It is really nice to have learned so much more since I came out I feel way more confident and ready to teach people but also be personal with what people need. I made French toast for ...

  Wow oh wow We had 2 exchanges this week and dang they were pretty great! The first one was with Elder Lafleur he came out 6 weeks after me. We had a good time together not too much happened Elder Lafleur on the exchange it was fun to go around with him though we used their car which was great.  The next exchange was with Elder Davenport and that was really nice to do. I got to hear his story of why he came out he's had a more difficult time but knows this is where he is supposed to be. Elder Viehweg and Wade wanted to go to their area but I felt we were supposed to stay. Well, we saw why we had a great day meeting lots of wonderful people and meet 2 of the best people I've ever found. So we meet Ty and Gab they asked a lot of great questions we taught about how God called another prophet how we believe in the book of Mormon and how the Bible isn't perfect it's written by prophets but they can make mistakes. Ty liked that made him want to read the book of Mormon more s...

  One thing that sucks is just getting out voted. Sorry ive sucked at emails but here we go for today. This last week has been tough to get things going with our people. We have a guy named Matt who we have met with again for the first time in like a month. He is cool not sure what kept him so busy but I guess I did learn more. He is interested in the stock market so ill hit him up about that when I get home. We are trying to help him get a testimony of the Book of Mormon so we are just trying to read with him and inviting him to read. Tram our Vietnamese friend has been learning and practicing English with us. She is going over to a member's tonight for the family home evening and yesterday she was at the Walker family's house with us we had dinner and just talked it was good I'm glad she's getting to know the members more. Transfers seem like they are coming up quick! Not this Saturday but the next one seems so quick they just fly by.  One thing that's good and ba...

  Okay well, let me go over the favorite parts of my week. On new years eve, we went out tracting (nothing new). Well, when we went knocking a guy was getting out of his car and was about to head inside and we were just like hey man we are going around talking about Jesus Christ visiting the Americas got a minute to talk? Guy says no heads inside. We keep going after like 3 minutes we are walking down back toward his house he comes out trying to put his shoes on saying I've got time I'm bored teach me about Jesus in America. He is agnostic and we talk for about 5-10 minutes he said he would read the book of Mormon. Super cool that he came back and we had a really good conversation and he was willing to listen and wants to learn more it was awesome. Almost right after this we taught another guy got his number and taught pretty simply about the book of Mormon. It was awesome.  We have almost completed Blanche's after baptismal commitments so that's been good. I'm stil...