Week 23 Elder Jones

Hey! Holy smokes Dan is so grown up. What. That's not allowed, when I get back he`s going to be taller than me. So this week was great as usual. The woman that got in the mototaxi crash, almost everyone in her family are new converts (2 of her daughters, her son, and her mom) and she has a little more than a year in the church. A couple of weeks ago we had lunch with them and Elder Torres casually brought up that Estefany, who`s 21 and will complete her first year of membership in February, can serve a mission if she wanted to. And she had actually already begun to make the decision to serve a mission a couple of weeks before and had already been talking to her friends and family about it, so she was really surprised because she hadn`t told anyone yet and on Tuesday we had a really great lesson with her about serving a mission. It would be really hard for her and her family because she`s the only one that works in her family, and her mom really didn`t want her to go because she has a really close bond with Estefany and it isn`t obligatory for sisters. Estefany told us that she had already prayed about it and she said she was reading a conference talk from a while ago and it said something like "take care of my family and I will take care of yours" and she took that to be her answer. And we read D&C 4 with her and talked about even though it isn`t obligatory for sisters, if someone has the desire to serve they are called to the work. We had another lesson with her mom Thursday and she told us all the reasons why she didn`t want her to go and how hard it was going to be for them but at the end of the lesson she was more okay with her going because she`s a convert and she realizes how important missionaries are. On Saturday we fasted with Estefany for her mom and her family and on Sunday we told the Bishop that Estefany wants to serve a mission and after church he told her that he wanted to talk to her. She thought she was in trouble for something but when she found out it was to start her mission papers she was so happy. She told the bishop all about her testimony of the Book of Mormon and why she wants to serve even though it`s not obligatory and we visited her and her mom last night and they were both so happy because she had officially begun her mission papers. We were so surprised that her mom was so happy because she was so against it at the beginning of the week but now they`re both so happy and excited. We read Alma 26 with them which talks about the joy that comes from missionary work and seeing the fruits of your labor. So I really hope I`m still here when she gets her mission call. 

Okay so other things that happened this week. There`s a 12 year old boy that we always talk with in the street named Jhon and after  like 4 months we were able to enter his house and teach his family. It turns out that Jhon is Elder Torres` 2nd cousin. Also we`re teaching one of Elder Torres` friends from Chiclayo that he used to play soccer with. He recently moved from Chiclayo to Caja de Agua, and when they saw eachother they were so confused. There are so many people from Chiclayo in Caja de Agua. Also from Tumbes. Theres a family from Tumbes in our ward and they have a very distinct accent. A Tumbes accent in Spanish is the same as a Chicago accent in English. They pronounce A`s the same. So when I teach them words in English they sound like they`re from Chicago. They have a grandson, Jesùs Smith, who`s 2 and trying to learn how to speak. This week for the primary program he was practicing how to say "I believe in Christ and I love him" in Spanish, and he couldn`t say it. So I said it in English and he repeated me perfectly in English. This week I tried tukush with is a potato that smells really bad, and most people don`t like it but I really really liked it. It tastes like cheese. One of our investigators, Marino, whose the father of Jean Pierre, one of the young men in our ward that`s also working on his mission papers, told us that he`s going to get married in January! so that`s really exciting. When we visited him on Monday we hadn`t visited him in 4 weeks and he told us that he`s been praying every day and he`s almost done with the Book of Mormon, and now the only thing holding him back is marriage. So we`re really excited because he`s definitely going to be a convert because he did all the things he needed to do to progress even though we hadn`t visited him. Yesterday we had a lesson with Jackie she`s doing great. Hope you guys have a great week. 

Elder Jones