Elder Jones Week 24

Hey guys! wow I feel like missionary work in Buffalo Grove has never really been this rapid or successful. God really is pressuring the work all over the world, not just in Caja de Agua. Today we hiked up the hill San Cristobol, which is the hill that my sector is on, with Elder Escobar, Elder Bruton, and Jacky. It was crazy, you could see all of Lima. Lima is so big because it`s the number of people in New York but in 1 and 2 story buildings. 

This week we were trying to focus on finding new people to teach because we don`t have very many people progressing. So we decided to do a day of talk with everyone. Literally everyone. We talked with everyone we saw on Wednesday, and we had been praying and fasting that we would find people that had been prepared to receive this message. Honestly I was expecting Heavenly Father to try our faith and not give us any success but we found a TON of prepared people. So we now have 8 people with a baptismal date. We found a family too on Saturday. They have 3 sons and a daughter. Isabel, who is 22, Miguel Angel, 18, Yoseph, 16, and Oliver Jefferson, 11. When we knocked on their door, the mom, Delia, and Isabel were there and they let us in and immediately they had a ton of questions for us from the restoration, the plan of salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ, fasting, and basically everything else we teach. We tried our best to answer every question but the questions just came one after another after another and it wasn`t possible to answer them all. Then after about 30 minutes the mom told us that just a few hours ago that day they had found out that her husband has terminal cancer, and that she doesn`t know what to say to Oliver Jefferson. So we decided to teach them about the plan of salvation, and temples, and what it means to have a sealed family in the temple. At the end of the lesson we invited Delia and Isabel to baptism for January 3rd and they accepted, and they want to get sealed in the temple as a family. Then Miguel Angel, Yoseph, and Oliver Jefferson entered the house and they all want to go to church.  Delia and Miguel Angel had to work this Sunday but yesterday Isabel and her two younger brothers went to church. Isabel signed up to sing in the stake choir for stake conference next Sunday, and she also signed up for three years of the Liahona. The only problem she had yesterday was that she wants to get baptized sooner. She can`t wait till January 3rd. So she`s thinking more like 2 weeks from now. So yea we`re really excited to see her grow. Also on Wednesday on the day that we were talking with everyone we met we found a young man from the other ward, and he told us that up until two weeks ago he had been planning on serving a mission and had his papers all ready, but he had an experience with one of the other members that offended him and he didn`t want to go to church and he signed up for a job with the police and paid for all the medical exams which are really expensive, and that he wasn`t going to go on a mission anymore. We talked to him for a long time and we told him that he needs to ask God about what it is he needs to do, and why a mission is so important, and then the next day we saw him again and he had decided that he`s going to go on a mission. 

I`m also really excited this week because on Thanksgiving I`m going to be in the Temple with all the recent converts in our ward and Angelo! We`ve been working a ton with all of them this week to make sure everyone has a family name to do baptisms for, and I`m really excited because I miss the temple a ton. 

I hope you guys have a great thanksgiving and also with respect to skyping on Christmas, I don`t know if it can be another day other than Christmas and also I think but I`m not sure that 3 way skype is possible. But yea I`ll figure out. This is my last week with Elder Torres who has been my companion since I got here in Lima so that`s too bad. Have a great week!

Elder Jones