Week 88

Hey guys! Glad to hear that everyone had a great week. Yes I´m getting dad´s letters. I´m actually surprised how quickly they arrive. They come in about a week from when dad sends them. Yesterday I was showing people the picture of Tyler´s missionary application photo, that´s so exciting that his mission papers are about to be sent in. Thank you so much for signing me up for calculus and Spanish and in the morning! I´m really excited. It´s going to be fun.

I had a great week! It was a little difficult because almost all of our appointments fell through, and a lot of the people we had with a baptismal date last week just stopped in their progress, which is sad. We still had a great week though. My first week here in Magdalena we met a less active member, named Gino, that had already attended church 3 times and had his interview with the bishop but just didn´t have any of the lessons to be reactivated, so we gave him all the lessons in one day, and we counted him as reactivated. After that he never  came to church again and was really hard to find. We found him again last week and we starting teaching him again, but this time we actually talk to him about what is important to him, what he wants to do with his life, and how the gospel can help him personally. He´s coming to church again like last time, but this time he´s starting to feel something. We´re helping him overcome his problems and the spirit is really strong in the lessons and the gospel is starting to help him. It was interesting to see the difference in how I treat the people I teach now and 6 months ago. He´s not a number anymore for me, he´s a real person with real needs. So Gino is doing well and is happy in the church. 

The Ramirez family is doing very well, I wasn´t able to teach them this week because I was on a companionship interchange with Elder Tomkins in the Venezuela ward. But they´re really excited to continue to learn and progress. Johan, the dad, is the most enthusiastic about the church, and that´s great because now that the head of the household is excited, he´s going to help his entire family. On Thursday when I was with Elder Tomkins we visited a family that they are teaching called the Rodriguez family. The parents aren´t married, but they and their 4 children are really excited about the church. When we visited them on Thursday we watched "Together Forever" with them, and they felt the spirit. We asked them if they had talked about marriage and they said that they hadn´t and that they still needed to wait more time (because 2 weeks ago when the missionaries found them they were about to get separated). We invited them to pray together to ask God if marriage was what He expected of them. They accepted. Last night I found out that when they arrived to church on Sunday they were both really happy and when Elder Tomkins and Elder Millward asked them why they were so happy they told them it was because they received an answer that they needed to get married! So the entire family is going to get baptized in a couple of weeks. 

I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Jones