So this week has been
probably one of the hardest weeks of my life but I feel like it has also been
one of the most rewarding. My testimony
has probably grown more in a week than it has in the rest of my life. When we started the week we did not have a single
person to teach because the missionaries had dropped all the other
investigators. The investigators weren’t
keeping their commitments. It seemed
that every person we talked to in the street didn’t want to listen to us
because they all believed in their own religion. The two most common religions here are
Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses. To make
matters worse the family that my companion had baptized the week before called
and said they didn’t want to see the missionaries again and weren’t coming to
church for their confirmation. Understandably
my companion was in a pretty bad state that day and both of us were starting to
give up hope.
We decided that we
were going to find a family to baptize this change. So we started praying every night that we
would find a family and decided we would contact every family we saw. We started practicing how to contact families
during companionship study and pretty much doing everything that we could
possibly think of to find a family to teach. Finally one day we were contacting a mom and
her little boy who was about 7 years old.
We asked if she wanted to hear more and if we could come to her house
one day to talk more about it. She was
about to say no but all of a sudden her little 7-year-old boy said, “Momma, si!” She looked at her little boy and said, "OK, you can
could come". So we have been teaching her
and she came to church this week! It was
a testament to me of why we need to be like little children. The little boy could feel the spirit and it
was because of him that we were able to teach this family.
After this experience
for some reason just everything started going right. We visited the family that said they didn’t
want to be confirmed and they said they were going through a hard time. After the lesson they agreed that they needed
to be confirmed. We also found a man to
teach who is a rock star at giving us other people to teach. Every time we go over he gives us a new
reference. Of the 15 references he has
given us we are now teaching 10 of these people. This was also a testimony to me of how much we
need references from the members, investigators, and less active members
because it is so much more effective than contacting people on the street.
This Sunday made
everything worth it because we had 5 confirmations and 4 other people come to
church with us. We are only in a tiny
branch so the ward mission leader is only 17.
There are two sets of missionaries in the branch so sometimes there are
more investigators at church than members.
They called me as the
branch pianist...it was weird because they didn’t even ask if I played the
piano. Also now on Thursdays for an hour
they have me teaching piano lessons at the branch. So when I leave some people will at least
know how to play the right hand to the hymns. It is a little hard to teach though. The people I teach didn’t even know that in
the hymnbook you read the first line and then move to the second for the first
verse. So one word of advise for Hal
before he leaves on his mission is to learn a few hymns. It is a little hard to be the ward pianist
and not have any time during the week to practice. Anyway things are going great here.
My companion wants to
move to Idaho and go to BYU after her mission.
She wants to learn English really bad so all throughout the day she is
asking me different words in English.
She also has me translate English songs into Spanish and they are so
funny sounding. After a few songs she
said she preferred not to know what it was saying because it sounds better in
English. One of her first words was
donkey because they are all over the place here. She told me they were evil but I didn’t
believe her. Then one day we were
walking and a donkey was loose. I got too
close and now I have donkey bites on my arm :( It didn’t hurt that bad but I have big bruises
on my arm. When ward members asked what
it was from, I told them they were donkey bites. They just started laughing.
Tell Tyler happy
birthday for me! We ate some Mexican
food the other day that I think Tyler would love. It is a ball of cheese that was wrapped in a
slice of ham. Then that was wrapped in another
slice of cheese. Then that was wrapped
in a giant piece of chicken around it. Then
it was cooked and put it in spaghetti sauce. It was so good but it just made me laugh
because I was like my brother would love this food.
Also a scripture that
I read this week that I really loved was Mormon 9:31. I
really liked this scripture because when we see faults in others either we can
get annoyed, complain, get angry or we can use it as a blessing to make
ourselves better. Also the people we
live with will be blessed. If we point
out something in a loving way and try to be an example of it ourselves, the
other person is much less likely to get mad.
My area is pretty fun. It kind of feels like I'm mountain
climbing every day. There are some
houses that are on top of hills that cars can’t even get up. So sometimes we help people push their cars
up to their house. The best is when we
get to the top of a hill, you can see so far and the entire city beneath you. It is really beautiful. There aren’t a lot of lights here either so
you can always see the stars. Also there
is the biggest farmers market I have ever seen in my life! It goes on forever! Every Monday they sell in the streets anything
you could think of to buy! Also learned
my new favorite food is guavas. I don’t
have a lot of time and I am going to try to send pictures so have a great day!
Love,
Hermana Jones
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