Week 9 in Mexico

Ok so first of all happy birthday to Dad and Hal!  I am so excited that Hal is going to the Mexico MTC.  He gets to experience two different countries on his mission!  I heard that the México MTC is great!  So he shouldn’t worry.  It is also nice because a lot of Americans go there.  They have one American teacher and one native Spanish teacher so it is easier to learn.  It sounds like these next couple weeks are going to be crazy!

I am so glad to hear that grandma listened to the missionary’s lesson and tell her that I love her!  Also I was wondering if you could give me Catie and Abby’s email.  Also Hals once he gets his missionary email.

So this week I got a new spark of hope.  The mission president came for interviews.  He interviews every missionary before he makes the list of new changes.  He told me that he feels really strongly that I need to be here in El Oro and possibly for a long time.  So my companion and I are staying in this area for another change.  That means the minimum amount of time I will be here is for 15 more weeks.  At first I felt like crying because this area is so hard but then I felt excited.  There are people here in El Oro that Heavenly Father needs me to find.  It’s pretty much a scavenger hunt to find the people that God has prepared to hear the gospel.

Also amazing news is that in Jan. the branch here in El Oro had 30 members and ten of them were active.  This week the branch president sent in the papers for our branch to become a ward!  Just goes to show that the work of the Lord is hastening!  

Ok another piece of advice I have for Hal is to have someone write down his blessing when he is set apart as a missionary.  I look at that blessing almost as much as my patriarchal blessing because there is a lot of much needed help in these blessings.  

This week we had a miracle with some members who were willing to come out and teach with us!  One of the members and her little girl who is three, Yaretzi, proselyte with us.   Literally she touches the heart of every person we talk to.  We shake their hands and then she reaches out to shake their hand too.   Then while I was talking to the investigator she started singing “Soy Un Hijo de Dios”.  Every single person we talked to said that we could come visit them at their house.  We also found another family who wants to be baptized!  They haven’t even listened to the missionaries before now.  Then there is Max who was inactive for 18 years and then this year started coming to church again.  Now he literally talks to every single person he meets about the gospel.   It just goes to show that the members are the key in missionary work.

I also learned that when you are truly hungry everything you eat is amazing.  Fasting here is really hard.  We are high up so it is really dry.  We are constantly walking in the mountains.   While fasting I feel like I am going to die.  When we got to the members house, we ended our fast.  Then she brought our this soup with eggs, tomatoes, and chicharone.  Pretty much every food that I can’t even get down without starting to gag.  The weird thing was that it was possibly the best food I have ever eaten in my life.  I EVEN HAD SECONDS.  On your mission you really start to just loose all sense of taste because you are eating for pure hunger.  

I have found out that here in El Oro there are the best people and the worst.  You find people with unshakable testimonies.  Their whole lives they have been surrounded by the temptations of the world and their testimonies are constantly tested.  This week I made the goal that I was going to be the best missionary I have ever been.  What do you know?  Everything that could possible go wrong did go wrong.  This was a good lesson to me that what makes people strong and good isn’t times where everything is easy.  Everyone can be kind when people around them are being kind.  Every member can share their testimony when they are surrounded by people who feel the same way.  It is the times where there is opposition that you find out who you really are and how strong your testimony really is.  

This week I feel like Satan was sending everything he had at us.  There were terrible people that we had to work with for three days straight.  We had to have the branch president come and bless our apartment. We lost our phone.  The lights and gas don’t work even though we prayed for both.  It rained every day.   We had to stay with a Hermana from the ward one night because there was someone following us.  By the end of the week I just felt like crying.  Then the other night as we were saying our prayers my companion just started laughing really hard and smiling and singing.  I was so confused.   I thought she had finally snapped.  When I asked her why she was so happy, she said, “Hermana Jones we are about to experience some major miracles here in El Oro!” I was still confused.  Then she said Satan wouldn’t be working so hard on us if we weren’t doing something right.  If we weren’t on the path to find people and bring people to baptism.  This is one of the major reasons I love my companion.  If we were outside the mission, I know for a fact we would not get along at all.  She is really loud and really straightforward with investigators.  She says things I would never think about saying.  For example, when investigators ask if their baptism in another religion is invalid, she just looks them right in the eye and says, “Si”.  I know that there is a reason that we are in companions.  With us you get two different witnesses of the truth.  Sometimes people need someone to be blunt with them and sometimes they need someone to be gentle and soft with them.  I have never had such a good friend in my life though.  I know it’s because of the trails we went through, the scriptures we read together and just the attempt to be better people.

Also my district leader is so funny. He and his companion had lots of problems this week too.  They cover half of El Oro. He got super sick this week but still went out to work every day. He would just pause every ten minutes to throw up.  He sends us a scripture every night and the next day we were going to have a district meeting.  The scripture he sent was Jacob 7:16.  It is a little sad on the mission when you start getting your humor from the scriptures :)

Anyway I am learning a lot.  I can already tell when I get home from my mission that El Oro is the place I will want to visit.  I think this is the place where I’ve developed an unfaltering knowledge that this is the work of God and that through his help all things are made possible.  Have a great week!  Try not to be too stressed with all the things happening!  I love you guys

 Oh I forgot one thing that made this week so great!  At the end of the week the mission president visited and after everything that happened during the week I was feeling a little down.  Then he brought me a package from the Kurihara’s, letters from the Chapman’s, Grandpa, Rachel, Pat/Amber, and ones from home.   Mail here is so slow.  All the letters just made me so happy.  It was so good to hear from everyone after a rough week.  

The best though was that I finally got the Liahona in English from the most recent general conference.  As much as I love to hear the words of all of you guys, the opportunity to hear the words of the prophet was so comforting.   I read the whole Liahona that day.  I know that the words of the prophet can always comfort us in our times of need.  Love you guys!  Continue to help the missionaries because the work moves so much faster with the help of members!!

Love Hermana Jones

They have tons of chicharones because a lady in our ward gave us a bag with at least 50 of these little bags in it! So we gave them some :)