It was great to
talk to you guys and hear your voices! I´m glad you´re all doing fine!
Hope you all had a great Christmas with all the cousins. This week was
great. On the 23rd we went Christmas caroling as a Zone and it was so
amazing. We visited so many families and we visited a small children´s
hospital too. On the 24th in the morning we had a breakfast as a Zone
and we made banana pancakes, and then we played games for a while. We
weren´t able to go to the temple this last week but we are going this
week on Thursday. I´m very excited.
On
Monday we had a lesson with Oliver, the 11 year old brother of Isabel,
and It was the best lesson I´ve had on my mission so far. When we got to
his house he was crying because Isabel had been trying to teach him
from the pamphlets that we teach from and he still couldn´t understand
them. He told us that he didn´t go to church last week because he didn´t
think he understood enough to be baptized and that made him scared for
the baptismal interview. We taught him about the gospel of Jesus Christ
and how before baptism all you need is faith and repentance, and you
need to have a heart willing to follow Christ and his commandments. I
realized that the week before we had been focusing on teaching his
father, mother, aunt, and cousin, and they had really complicated
questions with really complicated answers and we kind of forgot about
Oliver. So after explaining to him that he doesn´t need to know
everything before baptism and that baptism isn´t the end but the
beginning, we played a game with him and Isabel to memorize the steps of
a prayer. Oliver and I were on a team and Isabel and Elder Figueroa
were on another team. Oliver and I won and that made him really happy.
We read from Ether 12:27 with him and explained to him that God gives us
weaknesses, but if we learn to trust in him he will make our weaknesses
our strengths. And we promised him that even though right now he
doesn´t understand a lot of what the scriptures say, if he learns just
one new thing from the scriptures every day, by the time he´s 18 he will
know more about the scriptures than any other young man in our stake.
And we told him to pray about when he should get baptized and he
immediately told us that he wanted to get baptized this Saturday with
his sister. So on Saturday we had 2 baptisms, Oliver and Isabel. Also 3
others from our stake got baptized the same day. Oliver and Isabel went
up to bear their testimonies at the end of the service and I was so
proud of them and how far they´ve come. I know they´re going to be great
converts. Their mom came to the baptism too because she is planning on
getting baptized in January, and she found work that doesn´t require her
to work on Sunday!!! Their father wanted to come to the baptism but he
can´t walk. He´s been in bed this week and they think the cancer is
getting worse because he left the hospital. We´re teaching him and we
gave him a priesthood blessing. He and his family have a lot of faith.
We
didn´t do very much else this week since we had 3 days off. Yesterday
during sacrament it was very cool because the 3 people passing the
sacrament were Jesús, Angelo, and Jairo. One of my converts and 2 of
those who I reactivated.
I hope you guys have a great week and a Happy New Year!
Elder Jones
p.s. I have scriptures, as promised, for the kids to read and tell me what they learn: Tyler: 1 Corinthians 15. Allison 2 Nephi 31. Dan: Alma 32: 21-43
No comments:
Post a Comment