Week 16 Hermana Jones

That’s crazy that Allie broke her toe. I hope she is feeling better for your  vacation. Are you guys doing a big kid hike? I feel like I am on a big kid hike everyday with all the mountains :)

This week was super good, first of all, because we got our water back! Also this week was super amazing because we baptized Diana!!! It seems like every baptism has tons of problems beforehand though. We went to visit her on Saturday, and her sister said she left really early in the morning.  So we went back to see if she was home at about 7:00pm and she still wasn’t home. Her sisters had been calling her phone but it was going straight to voice mail so they were all worried. We called her sister before bed, at about 10:30pm, and she still wasn’t home! We were super super worried because there have been people going missing around here for the past couple months, and it didnt help that her family was frantic with worry. I think this was the hardest that I have ever prayed in my life-- not that she would be baptized, just that she was safe and nothing bad happened to her!

Finally we decided that we would visit in the morningto see if she was there, but church starts early and it takes about 20 min to get to her house in a taxi, and then once you get there we sometimes have to wait an hour or more to get back because the taxis dont leave until they have 5 passengers. We went and visited her and it was the biggest feeling of relief when we saw her and she was excited for her baptism.  It turned out that she was only planning on being gone for a few hours, but her car broke down in the middle of nowhere and she had to walk 15 kilometers to find a place to fix her car and then drive back. She was going to just sleep at a place there, but she remebered that her baptism was the next day and said she needed to come back.  It is amazing how hard Satan works against people who are trying to do something good.

Anyway, we picked up Diana and while we were waiting for the taxi to fill up, I was writing a talk because the Bishop called in the morning and asked my companion and I to give talks because the speakers called in the morning to say they wouldnt be able to make it to church. It was a pretty stressful morning but it was all worth it in the afternoon to see her finally baptized after tons of work on our part and on Diana’s part. I will send a picture of our baptismal font because it makes me laugh a lilttle. This week I talked about repentace in my talk and how sometimes we have more confidence in ourselves than in the wisdom of God so we do our own will but it isn’t until we suffer the consequences that we look for repentace. How much greater is a person who can repent before they feel the consequences.

I used an experience from my last area when my companion and I were walking home in the dark when all of a sudden there was a car full of teenagers in our path. The boys started trying to get our attention and yelling and all I could think was I need to walk faster becasue if I can get past the car I will be safe because the town was ahead. The boys started getting out of the car when my companion said “Hermana wait!” All  I could think in my head was WHAT A TERRIBLE IDEA! If I want to die here in Mexico I will wait. I started walking really fast when one of the boys started running right at me. I realized in that moment that I should have listened to my companion because I had left her behind and was now alone with danger running straight towards me. How easy was it in that moment to be humle and want to repent and ask for the help of my Father in Heaven! I had no where else to turn!

After this experience my companion told me afterwards that she said wait because there were three people that could have helped us walking a little bit behind us and if we would have waited for them to catch up with us we would have outnumbered the boys in the car. The boy tripped really bad and pretty much fell on his face and then my companion and I ran home because in the center there is a police man every 10 feet. I thought though about how Heavenly Father can see the big picture much clearer than we can and sometimes we recieve promptings from the Holy Ghost like, wait! but we trust more in ourselves and we think we see the picture clear enough to make our own decisions. When we dont follow the promptings of the Spirit though he leaves and we are left alone and it isnt until we suffer the consequences of our actions that we really realize how alone we really are.

Also I told the story of the two taxi drivers who wanted the job and the person asked how close to the edge can you drive and save the car from falling off and he gave the taxi driver the job who said I don’t know..I never drive close enough to the edge to know.

Oh, I also learned how helpful scripture mastery can be because we were talking with a Jehovah’s Witness for about an hour because we kept wanting to leave but he had a way of making us want to defend what we believed. My head kind of hurt after talking to him, but he was talking about how Jesus wasn’t resurrected as a body but as a spirit, when I remembered a scripture mastery in Luke 24 which specifically says that he has a body not a spirit. Anyway, I dont have much more time so I hope you have a great week and I hope Allie feels better!

Love Hermana Jones