Week 89

Hey guys! glad to hear that everyone is doing well. Hopefully Ty`s call comes in soon!! I hope mom  and Allison feel better. We had a great week! Johan and his family are ready for baptism. I have never met someone so excited to be baptized like Johan. It`s hard to describe in worldly terms how good I feel when we teach his family with the bishop`s family. I can`t deny that the spirit is there when we are with them. They really enjoyed church yesterday as well. During the Gospel Principles class the teacher broke us up into 4 groups to talk about different parts of the lesson about prophets. Johan, Ericka, a recent convert named Cesar, Zulema, Elder Bates, and I were in a group, and we had a really good discussion about prophets. It hs been a little hard for Ericka to accept some things because she has been raised by jehova`s witnesses and we needed to clear up some misconceptions she had with the bible. Now that she is starting to understand, she is able to come some very important conclusions by herself. So Johan will be baptized on Saturday, and on March 5th he will baptize his family. Please pray for him that everything will work out this week. What worries us is that there hasn`t been any type of opposition to his progress towards baptism, and it will probably come out this week, because there must needs be an opposition in all things. So please pray that he will be able to superate any type of opposition that comes this week.

Iris is doing well. It`s hard for her because she`s going through depression and other health problems because of the separation from her husband. When we met her I don`t think it had really hit her yet that her husband was gone, but now it`s really taking a toll on her. We`re trying to help her understand the importance of baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost who will give her comfort, but with all the things she is worrying about right now it is hard for her to make baptism a priority. She came to church yesterday but only for the first hour because she was sick. So please pray for her as well. 

On Wednesday we had the multi zone conference and I had the opportunity to learn from my mission president and his wife and it was an edifying experience. In the night we had our meeting with the stake president, President Larson, and Elder Alvarez, the Area seventy in charge of our mission. He was connected by via Skype. He helped us focus our attention on the vision of the area presidency and also that of the prophets. He gave us some good advice and we left the meeting with a clearer idea of how the missionaries in the stake are going to work with the members. I`ve said it before in earlier emails, and I`ll say it again. I feel so blessed to be here in Magdalena and learn from the leaders here.  

 

I hope you guys have a great week! 

Elder Jones,

Yea that would be awesome to be in your ward if it`s possible! yea it hasn`t really hit me yet that I have a lot of time in the mission. I`m probably going to get transferred in a couple of weeks, and I think that In my next ward I`m going to tell everyone that I extended and that I`m not going home until July, so no one tries to make me trunky. No we`re not allowed to, but I`ll read it in a few months! Yesterday Elder Godoy was in sacrament meeting. It was the first time in a few months he wasn`t traveling somewhere on sunday. After the 3 speakers gave their talks he felt impressed to stand up and say a few words. He told the story about the Israelites after the death of Joshua, when Judged were appointed to lead them. The Lord commanded them to destroy the Idolatrous groups of people in the lands the Lord had prepared for his people. They took over the lands, but didn`t destroy all the people there. They began to intermarry with the people there and started to worship false gods. This resulted in the withdrawing of the Lord from them and they fell into the captivity of the Midianites. The Lord sent an angel to an Israelite man named Gideon and commanded him to fight and free the Israelite s from captivity. Gideon said that he couldn`t because we wasn`t a warrior, and they didn`t have even one sword, but the angel said that Jehova would be their sword. Gideon had 10,000 men and he was commanded to shorten that to 300 men. He was commanded to give each man a trumpet and an empty pitcher with a burning lamp inside. The 300 men were to surround the Midianite camp at night and all of them in unicine blow their trumpets and break the pitchers revealing the light from the lamps. When they did so it gave the appearance of an army much greater than 300 men, and the Midianites started freaking out and falling upon eachother`s swords. The Israelites were able to overpower the Midianites despite their number. Elder Godoy said that we as members of the church preach the gospel with our trumpets and our lamps. When we blow our trumpets, we proclaim the gospel to the earth and make it known to everyone that we are members of the true church of Jesus Christ. The light from the lamp is our example. Our ability to let the spirit work through us. Sometimes we don`t break our pitcher, and we only blow our trumpets. A pitcher that can cover our light is the impurity. Any act of impurity such as participating in pornography, immorality, not observing the Sabbath day dutifully, blocks our light. He said that pride can also be another pitcher that doesn`t let our light shine. When Jesus told us to be a light unto the world, he wasn`t talking about blowing the trumpet, he was talking about breaking the pitcher and letting the light shine.  Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. He said all of that and more in 4 minutes. It was brief, profound, by the spirit, clear, and exactly what our ward needed. Hopefully someday I can get to that level of teaching. Have a great week!