Elder Jones week 79

Hey guys! good luck to Allison! Also congrats to mom and dad! We had a great week! Alejandro and José are progressing really well for the 26th. We had several investigators attend church yesterday and we´re starting to see a growth in the ward. The secretaries also have several people that are progressing. The young men are helping us with the teaching of Alejandro and José. The bishop is more involved with their progress now. There is a good atmosphere in the ward. 

On Saturday we went to the temple with the ward and Alejandro came. He stayed outside with the bishop. José is a lot less agnostic than he was when we met him. He´s exercising his faith. We still haven´t been able to teach Milagros but she came to church for the second time yesterday. Hopefully this week we´ll be able to find her. This was Elder Montoya´s last week in the mission, and on Thursday he had a self sufficiency training, so I was with Elder Ramirez from Trujillo for the day. He just barely started his mission. He´s awesome. We found 3 new investigators who are all family. Brian, 20 years old, Bryan, 18, and nayeli, 14. They are all really prepared. Things are starting to pick up in the sector and it should be exciting to see who is going to be my new companion tomorrow. Elder Price and Elder Figueroa are finishing their missions this week too, but Elder Figueroa´s flight leaves on Friday, so from Tuesday until Friday he´s going to be in a trio with my new companion and I. I´m excited to teach with Elder Figeroa again. He was my companion exactly a year ago. I´m happy. I still haven´t heard anything about my release date. It´ll probably be either the 7th or the 14th. 

I had a really interesting experience this week. The secretaries are teaching someone with brain cancer that wants to get baptized. Her name is Mayte, and she is going through chemotherapy every day, which I assume is really difficult. The secretaries want to help her get baptized because she is reading the Book of Mormon and watching Mormon messages and she seems like she is progressing. They asked special permission from the president this week to baptize her because she can´t attend church in the mornings because the chemotherapy is really hard on her body. So president Larson wanted Elder Hulet and I to visit her with the other secretaries, interview her, and make a decision based on what the spirit tells us. When they told me about her situation it seemed pretty reasonable that we let her get baptized without having to attend church, but when we visited her on Saturday I felt strongly the impression that she needed to attend church to prepare herself for baptism, regardless of the toll the treatment takes on her. I invited her to attend church on Sunday morning. I promised her that it would be difficult, but that she would find the answers to the questions she has and that she will better prepare herself to get baptized. I felt that this was the trial of faith that Moroni talks about in Ether 12, that she needed to gain a testimony of this church, and that instead of trying to take away the trial which was given by the Lord, I should encourage her to overcome it. She came to church yesterday. And she stayed for the 3 hours. And now I know that when she gets baptized, she will have exercised the faith necessary to arrive at baptism. 

I hope you guys have a great week! 

Elder Jones