Monday, September 22, 2014

Elder Jones Week 15


HEY!

First of all WOOOOOOOO!!  That`s so exciting about Hayden!!!! So he`ll be speaking Portuguese?  We`ll kind of be able to communicate because Portuguese sounds almost exactly the same as Spanish and when people are talking in Portuguese I can pretty much understand them.  But yea that`s so exciting about Hayden! Okay so this week was great.  For my 3 months on Wednesday Elder Torres and I made clam ceviche and it was the best.  I`m so happy I have a companion from northern Peru because he knows how to make seafood.  I`ll send some pictures. 

Also on Saturday we, the missionaries in our ward, planned an activity and it was so fun.  It was called "el avion" and we separated the back half of the chapel with paper and organized the seats to look like an airplane.  Then for the activity we pretended that we were all in an airplane going on a trip to Hawaii.  It was really funny because first Elder Gutierrez would give the airplane instructions in Spanish and later I would give them in English.   Then once we landed we had a bunch of rooms with a bunch of different activities.  There was a room with board games, a room with a bunch of food and music, a room with a service project, a room with a fortune teller, and a room where the missionaries were teaching about the gospel and singing hymns. Each time you enter a room you get a colored card.   Then later we returned to the airplane, but this time the airplane crashed and we all died, and depending on which colored cards you had you either went to the Celestial kingdom, Terrestrial kingdom, or Telestial kingdom, each with varying degrees of light in them.  I was in charge of the terrestrial kingdom.   I taught them what this activity was about and what it represents and how we have our agency and we don`t know when our life on earth is going to end.  So every minute we have on this earth is an opportunity to exercise our agency wisely and that we shouldn`t waste our time with things that have little worth to us.  A ton of people showed up and it was really great because we have so many new investigators now. 

Also this week one of the young men is leaving on his mission to Paraguay.  His farewell talk was 30 seconds long.   He has a really strong testimony, he goes on teaching visits with us a lot and he`s going to be a great missionary.  Our sacrament meeting is a little bit different than in the United States because the members of the congregation don`t give talks.  The bishop gives a talk for the entire time every week.  I`m not criticizing the way our bishop runs the church meetings because I realize that he has the priesthood keys to lead this ward and he receives revelation for our ward.  I don`t want to be like the priest that died trying to steady the arch of the covenant because he thought it was about to fall. This young man’s farewell meeting was last night and a ton of people from our ward showed up and bore their testimonies.  He`s the only active member in his family and he`s going to bless them with his service. 

Yesterday we got 5 new investigators with a baptismal date! They`re all family members of the Gonzalez family and they`re perfect investigators. Yesterday we taught them about the restoration and they asked us all the questions that we normally ask our investigators.  When we asked them if they would be baptized if they received an answer that this is the truth they all said no.  So we talked a little bit more about how to receive an answer and why it is so important.  Then Sister Gonzalez and her daughter Tracy that is about to go on a mission both shared their testimonies and how they know this is true.  Then later they all agreed to be baptized when they receive an answer from God.  That`s really great because we know that their motives for doing this has nothing to do with us the missionaries.  They actually want to find out for themselves.  If they all get baptized with their own testimonies they will be such a strength to each other during trials and it will be really unlikely that they`ll go inactive.  We`re also teaching another family, Luis and Dalia, who have a 1 year old daughter, Britani, who never changes the expression on her face, and we think they have a lot of potential too. 

This week was great. Glad to hear that you guys are all doing so well!

Elder Jones










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