Sounds like everything is going great with schoool picking up again. I love it that there is school again because it is easier for people to meet with us because they actually are home. El oro looked like a ghost town during the summer.
This week has been good. On Sunday I felt like a proud parent because they called on Diana, my new convert, to say the closing prayer in sacrament. She forgot to say in the name of Jesus Christ but there is just something so happy to see someone who just a month ago didn't know anything about the church is now up there giving the prayer. We also take her out teaching with us all the time because she loves to walk and she loves to talk which is pretty much perfect for coming out with us because that's pretty much all we do all day. Also we have been having a lot of success with inactives coming back to church, which is super good because if we can get our attendance to 170 people they will start building a chapel.
I am trying to send lots of pictures because I have not met one missionary here who has not gotten their camera stolen. One sister missionary has been robbed 8 times in the mission!! I was in shock when I heard that. Some pictures are to show what is like after seven straight days of rain and us hiking around and some are because my companion likes to get pictures of me when I'm doing weird things. The one hiking with us is Diana, and we were hiking to visit some investigators in Santa Rosa. One picture is the view of our back yard. The flower picture is a neat real flower that looks like metal. One shows what most of the houses look like here in the pueblos-- they all have these metal rods sticking up all over the roof just in case they ever want to build a second story but they put plastic bottles on them because there is a ton of lightning here and they don't want it to strike their house. The others are of a cactus tree, my companion, and my best friend-- the donkey that bit me!
Anyway, this week has been good but it is always a little hard to find new people to teach. Especially because a lot of the members are afraid to give us names of friends or family. This week, though, we changed what we were asking. Instead of asking if there was anyone we could teach we asked if there was anyone who needed help. Painting their house, doing their laundry, doing dishes, any type of service and all of a sudden we started getting lots of names of people we could visit. So this week we helped paint and lots of other type of service but it was so worth it because we have people to teach! People are so much more willing to listen when we do some type of service for them first.
There are a few areas here that are a little hard to teach like the Jordana and Santiago Ixtempan because there are a lot of churches that were started by ex members there. One of the churches in the Jordana was started by an ex missionary so it is a little hard to teach people because they believe in a lot of the same things that we do like the plan of salvation, baptism by immersion, the priesthood. So that has been one of our struggles here.
Anyway, we were talking to the only member of the church in Tapaxco and she has been a member for 15 years but her story is crazy. She was talking about how when she first joined the church all of a sudden pastors from all types of different religions would start coming to her house to try and convince them that what they were doing was wrong and then when they wouldn't listen the pastors started telling people not to talk to this family because the church they belonged to was of the devil. Then their water, lights, and gas all got shut off for being members of the church and she said this all happened in the first 4 months of being a member of the church. She talked about how parents would tell their kids not to talk to her sons in school and all types of hard things. It was just so sad to hear but at the same time she is one of the strongest members of the church I have ever met so it just shows that realy our trials do make us stronger. She said that she has been a member for 15 years and just recently people started talking to them again but it was because she was hit by a car and had to have half of her face reconstructed. Every time I listen to people's stories here in Mexico I am just amazed at how easy my life is.
Also something interesting is I have been looking at the Bible Dictionary and topical guide in English and Spanish and there are some things in the English one that aren't in the Spanish one and some things in the Spanish one that aren't in the English. It is great knowing two languages just lets you learn more about the gospel hahaha!
Anyway, we also have the best family ever that we are teaching and they are progressing so well. I don't remember if I told you about the family that has a daughter who is 15 and has a 1 year old baby but they are just so excited about the gospel and it is just crazy how prepared they were for the gospel.
Sometimes we experience trials but it is to put you on the path that Heavenly Father planned for you. There have been so many days on the mission where I just think that nothing else could possibly go wrong but thinking back on those experiences we either found someone or learned something that we needed to.
I had a good experience with that this week when it was probably the worst day of my life. I was super wet and cold and no one wanted to listen to us, the people we were contacting were being super rude and I just wanted to go home, so we were about to cross the street when all of a sudden one of the stray dogs tried biting my legs. I was getting annoyed and tried to cross the street when all of a sudden it bit my dress and started pulling me back. I was super annoyed and tried hitting it with something when all of a sudden it pulled on me so hard I fell off the sidewalk into the mud. So I was completely covered in mud. Almost the second I fell over, though, a car passed half on the sidewalk half on the road where I just was. I just sat there and was amazed. The car passed exactly where I was just a few seconds ago and even though I was cold and wet and now covered in mud , I felt like I just needed to give a prayer of gratitude right there.
Sometimes it seems like our challenges are never going to end (and they probably won't because just a new one will happen) but our trials and challenges are always strengthening us and preparing us for the future. I was super annoyed that I had to experience the trial of the dog but it helped me to avoid the bigger problem coming that I couldn't see which was the car. The trials of loneliness help us to be more compassionate when someone else is feeling the same thing, the trial of sickness helps us be more grateful when we are healthy. Jesus Christ experienced every trial every temptation, and every problem but he overcame it all and because of that he is able to understand and have compassion on others. He is able to be our Savior because of the trials that he had. When I think of all the people I look up to here in Mexico and at home I can say that they are the people who have not had a life was easy because the majority have suffered a lot but that's what made them the people that they are today. I hope you guys have a great week and remember that miracles are the resuly of obedience (I have definitely needed to learn that here on the mission).
Have a great week!
Love Hermana Jones
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