Elder Jones week 64

Hey guys! I had a great week. We´ve been doing some interchanges and on Tuesday I did a companionship interchange with Elder Dayton, the mission financial secretary. We had to stay in the office until 6 o clock. I spent most of the time putting rubber bands on packs of contact cards. It was a unique experience. But once we got out to teach we did a lot of great work.

On Wednesday Elder David A. Bednar came to our mission. I learned a lot. He knows how to teach, and he´s hilarious. He talked a lot about learning by faith. He didn´t give a talk, it was more interactive. What I got out of the meeting was that I teach too much application of correct principles and I don´t do enough to allow my investigators to be their own agents and learn by faith by learning how to apply what the spirit teaches them. He talked about how there are two types of god´s creations, like it talks about in 2 Nephi 2, things that are acted upon and things that act upon other things. I have to turn my investigators into agents instead of objects. I learned how to get better at using questions and getting out of the way of the spirit´s teachings.

I´m really glad that I learned those things on Wednesday because on Thursday we found a family. It´s a father (Lucio), mother (Sulema), and 3 daughters: ages 19 (Aranza), 18 (I don´t know), and 4 (Ariana). Their 18 year old daughter is in Utah studying in Snow College, but none of them are members. They visited Utah last year to see Utah and they had a really great experience and they say that everyone in Utah was so nice to them. Also the sister of the mother was recently baptized in California. The father´s cousin is a member in another ward in Magdalena. We met them on Thursday and they´re all prepared to receive the gospel in our lives. We applied what we had learned in the meeting with Elder Bednar and we had a very spiritual lesson. As well on Saturday. We were able to gain their trust very quickly and they express what they feel in the lessons so it´s a lot easier to teach according to their needs. They all came to church yesterday and the ward just attacked them with kindness. I´m serious this is the best ward ever. Several members invited them over to family home evening or dinner during this week, without us even having to ask them to do it. They have a goal to get baptized on September 19th. Three days before Elder Anderson goes home. 

  

We also met an investigator that listened to the missionaries 16 years ago. His name is Mario. He´s about 50 years old. We couldn´t teach him for very much time because we had an appointment, but he accepted the invitation to get baptized on the 26th of September. He came to church yesterday and he really liked it. The ward also helped us out a lot with him. 

So we didn´t make our goal as a zone for baptisms in August. We had a goal of 22 baptisms and we made 12. We´ve been talking about what we need to do to get better this coming month and I´m really excited for what lies ahead in these next few weeks. I hope you guys have a great week!