well well well.
Im home.
Not sure how this really happened or where the time went but its good to be back in my beautiful sunny southern california and see all the people i have missed.  However, after giving a presentation today to an older crowd about my mission and as I sit here preparing a talk for tomorrow my heart is starting to ache for the things I have left behind.  Ive been living in a cloud for the last couple of days, a happy one, but i think the reality of the situation has begun to sink in.  My mission is over.  Im home.  my life is changed completely once again.  at the moment i feel extremely numb.  mostly due to the fact that i havent really been able to adjust to the time difference or truely relax yet, but im sure soon i will be my normal very much alive self and ready to see you all again!

so anywho the reason I came on here, probably for the last time (and first since my fam and friends were the ones updating this blog every week) was to let you know about my homecoming(s).

1st one is tomorrow.. so no one will see this before than but its in my home ward in Los Alamitos.  dont worry, you wont be missing much.
but next weekend, June 23 i believe, at 1pm in the eldorado ward I will speak and then most likely have  a little get together at my place so i can see more of your pretty faces.
so leave a message on here, send me a message on facebook, call me (same number), or find some way to update me on your lives!
thanks for all your support in the last 18 months, its meant more to me than you know!
veel liefs,
jen (zuster) Jones

soo i dont know how many more of these entries you will be seeing.. ill be home in a little more than 3 weeks and right now dont really even want to be emailing, ive got things to do and see! :) but i thought i could share at least a miracle and leave a picture or 2 maybe.. ill write another 1 or 2 of these before home and give you all info for when i will be actually home and ready to see you all again! too crazy.. 

soo.. the miracle: we are going to have a baptism before i leave! (if everything goes as planned of course). tuesday morning our appt cancelled and on our way to our back up plan we had the feeling to stop by an apartment from a former the elders had told us about.  we had been a couple of times but she was never home.  this time we belled up with no answer and then were about to leave on our bikes when the door to the apartment building opens! so we got to go up to her place, she let us in to talk and we found out she has a 5 week old baby! Her life is finally at the place she needed to be at to start living the gospel. she told us it was so weird that we came by because sunday she had tried to come to the church but it didnt work out! she is so ready to be baptized and change her life now and were here to help :) she is a MMA (mixed martial arts) former olympian in training and her father was a NBA basketball player (rudy jackson) so she is a verryy tall woman who you wouldnt want to mess with and then she has this adorable teeny tiny (premature) baby and they are both just the sweetest things ever.  im excited to get to teach her for the last few weeks! 

blog:

this week has been the strangest but one of the coolest of my missions since im kind of just making up what were supposed to do right now.. lets see Tuesday was the coolest, queens/now kings day! so fun and I ate raw haring :)  wasn't too bad! then Wednesday was the big day! went into the mission office around 9:30 and then met our greenies and had a training in this super classy hotel across the street. the greenies all stay in a hotel now since the mission home isn't big enough to house groups of 30 and then we have all trainings in a conference room.  these new girls are amazing.  the quality of missionary has totally changed and im sad that I wont be a part of it for too long :( but glad that im still here to see all these changes take place.  after a long training and a super fancy lunch, we got my comps luggage and headed to Groningen! 3 1/2 hours later.. we made it to the train station and a girl in the ward picked us up, gave us dinner and got us settled in our new area.  by this time it was 8pm.. a very long day! the next morning we realized the maps on our phone don't work and we had no other map of where we were and only knew that one member... so we were sitting in our house with no idea where we were haha thankfully im good at directions and just went to the store and bought a map and weve been just fine ever since.  it was hard for the first few days not knowing anyone but thankfully we have 2 amazing elders here who take care of us! now weve met tons of potential investigators, taught our first 2 lessons here and have found 5 people that are officially meeting with us to find out more! all in 6 days :) and one of those days we had to go back to the mission office so we traveled for 7 hours.. im loving this city and am so grateful to be here for my last weeks.  that still does not seem real. I think its going to be harder to come home then I thought.. but im excited to see you all of course!

Pics!

we were not in our city much this week which was fun but crazy. monday we went to zaandam, tuesday amsterdam, wed i was on exchages in den haag, thurs we exchanged back in dordrecht and fri we were in the mission home in leidschedam.. ohh my what a week, no wonder i am sick right? but all of it was great and somehow we still do alright in our city with work too.  so you might have heard about the change in missions with sisters being involved in leadership positions..  friday we had our first mission leadership council and i was lucky enough to be one of the first sister to ever attend :) i dont know exactly yet what our duties will be but well find out more info this week.  its an exciting time to be a missionary :)

other than that i really just enjoyed teaching families this week, helping prepare kids for baptism and realizing how much i really do love kids.

so this coming week im looking forward to being healthier, going to the temple and keukenhof, planning 2 baptisms and hopefully enjoying a little more spring like weather! (which means rain and 60's here but thats better than snow and 30's :))

love you all!

zuster j

blog:
im blowing away!!
on to this week! all that i remember was this last weekend.. but it was a fantastic one! we set 3 baptismal dates, 2 that will happen next weekend because theyre children from a member and were just lucky enough to get to teach them a little, and then one for the end of next month with peter! my fav! im really praying this one goes through on that date cause ill be transferred the next week so im being a little selfish! but this man is great and i love teaching him and getting to know him better! he has really taken a hold on the gospel and i love reading scriptures with him and seeing how well he applies them in his life.  the gospel just makes so much sense and he is loving that.  we also received lots of referrals this week that are all going places! and should be setting 2 more super positive baptismal dates this week. the only bummer is one of our progressing investigators that i really loved just moved to amsterdam so we had to give him over to the elders :( but im feeling super blessed right now with all the work im able to do and the difference im able to see in the lives of others.  were teaching one man (rene) who lost his wife about a month ago (i think of mentioned this) who has already started planning his own baptism! the ward has already picked him up and all we have to do is say hello at church and teach him during the week :) im hoping to see quite a few baptisms here before i leave and i love it! 
i just wish the wind would stop blowing!! oh my! weve had crazy crazy winds that freeze your face off! im not sure how fast they are but the wind chill has been around -15  to -20 and its not so fun.  we cancelled our pday plans today so we wouldnt have to go out in it.  i guess this is the coldest march they have ever had here.  i want to see pretty flowers! i live in the tulip field part of holland and am ready to see all the colors! but it will be here soon enough since time seems to fly by! 
ok thats all for now! tot volgende week!
love zuster j 

Even More Pics!