Elder Jones week 59

Hey guys! I had a great week!  On Tuesday I went back to Rímac to baptize Brian.  I felt so happy to be back in Rímac and see Elder Price and the members of that ward.  I felt like I had been gone for a very long time.  While I was there, I got to see Juan Carlos, the 8 year old that we met in the street and invited to church and came by himself.  He and his mom got baptized on Saturday.  I can´t even describe the feeling of joy I had when they told me that they were going to get baptized on Saturday.  They´re such a good family. 

This week we´ve been getting Magdalena ready for her baptism, which was on Saturday and our other investigators ready for August now that July is pretty much over and we´ve met our goals for baptisms and reactivations.  Our goals for July were 3 baptisms and 3 reactivations, and we ended up with 4 baptisms and 4 reactivations. This was actually the first month of my mission that I´ve actually reached my goal for baptisms and reactivations. But we didn´t reach our goal as a district so I´m a little disappointed about that. 

We´ve been working with Elder, the 12 year old with less active parents who wants to get baptized.  No one in his house wants to repent or go to church so we decided to drop him as an investigator even though he wants to get baptized.  It would be almost impossible for him to endure to the end if the other adults in his life teach him something completely different with their actions.  So that´s a little sad.  We´ve actually dropped quite a few investigators that have been investigators since before I came here.  They have a lot of confidence with the missionaries but they aren´t willing to make the changes in their lives necessary to follow Jesus Christ, so we don´t want to waste their time nor our time.  Something I´ve learned this week about dropping investigators is that you always need to tell them that you aren´t going to come back to teach them. We explain to them that they aren´t completing the commitments and that they should do what we have taught them to do, but until they do those things it doesn´t make sense for us to continue teaching them.  It´s a lot more effective than to just stop visiting them without explaining why. 

Colin and Jerico are progressing very well.  They had their 3rd church attendance yesterday and they´re getting ready for their baptism on the 8th.  For the first time yesterday we were actually able to teach a lesson to the parents of Colin and they are soo prepared.  They are really impressed with Colin, and how dedicated he is to progressing in the gospel.  On Sunday morning he is the one that wakes up early at 7am and goes to all his cousins´ houses to wake them up.  Whenever we have a teaching appointment with him and his cousins, he tells his mom that he needs to finish his homework right away to be ready for the lesson with us.  He always comes to the lessons with his Book of Mormon marked up and annotated at the chapter that we left him to read.  His parents have never seen him so interested in anything before, so they were willing to listen to us.  And they accepted the baptismal invitation at the end of the lesson!.. but they´re not married.  So we told them to talk about the possibility of getting married on August 22nd. There is a massive marriage that is completely free that day.  They have a 6 year old daughter as well. 

Marco and Hilda are progressing so well.  It makes me so happy every time we are able to visit them.  Before his baptism, Marco wasn´t able to understand very much in depth of what we were teaching because he forgets things easily.  He would read something and forget it almost instantly.  So that was a source of quite a bit of frustration for him, and he almost didn´t get baptized because he felt like he didn´t understand enough to get baptized. But now that he´s baptized and he has the Holy Ghost he´s learning little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little.  He´s just really happy in the church with his wife.  It´s a great testimony builder for me watching the Holy Ghost teach him.  Josael is doing well too.  In the lessons that we are giving him after his baptism we are using a lot of Mormon messages to reteach gospel principles.  It´s working really well.  He has a really big TV with Internet and YouTube on it so we have access to all the Mormon messages.  That´s something a little strange about Callao, everyone has a big TV with internet and large speakers.  It´s a human need for them. 

I had a great week and I´m learning a lot. I hope you guys have a great week! 

Allie - wow that´s a crazy story.  Glad to hear you´re okay.  I´m really jealous that you guys were able to go to the open house.  We had interviews this week with the mission President and I was talking with his wife outside his office waiting for my interview and she was talking about the open house of the Indianapolis temple and I was wondering if you guys were going to go to that.  I remember very little of the Nauvoo open house.   Just that you had to put white slippers over your shoes and that I walked up the spiral staircase with grandma Linda.  That´s a really neat opportunity that you guys had. I can´t wait to go there when I get back.  Send me PICTURES of the temple. I love to see the temple. Hope you have a great week! 

Dan - Catch more fish and send me pictures of them.  Today we´re going to catch some crabs on the beach and I´ll send you some pictures next week.