Week 10 in Mexico

I can't believe how much everything is changing. I feel like my graduation was yesterday, but it was a year ago! I hope you guys had a great time with all the visitors for the weekend with Hal.  I am glad that Hal passed all his stuff and it is crazy that he got to go through the temple. I was a little overwhelmed the first time I went through the temple too but it just gets better and better every time. I like how Allie is wearing my dress in the picture :) Things never change - ha ha ha!
I was also thinking about how so many people in our family are sharing the gospel with Mexicanos! I am here in Mexico, Hal is about to spend 6 weeks teaching the gospel in Mexico, mom gave away a Book of Mormon to a lady from Mexico, and because of Dad teaching world religions, a girl in the Spanish branch with her mom joined the church. It just makes me so happy because the last line of the blessing I got before I left on my mission was that my family would be blessed with the spirit of missionary work.  I have only been gone for three months, and it is already happening. I can't wait to see what happens when both Hal and I are on missions. Thank you for his email! I will be able to write him in Spanish pretty soon when we are both here in Mexico :)
I was also thinking about how every decision we make in this life has an effect. I remember I didn't know what other class to take, and world religions seemed to jump out at me and at the time it didn't really mean much but looking back it has been a great missionary opportunity. I don't know how many people Dad has gotten to talk to about the gospel because of that class, but it has been a lot. Every time I hear what the sisters are doing in the ward it makes me so happy. It always makes me want to try harder and teach more people because I want to teach someone's family the same as the sisters there are having the chance to teach.
This week I really learned what kind of member I want to be when I get back from my mission. There is a lady here who is the best. She comes out teaching with us every week, and when there is an inactive member or investigator at church she is always the first person to go talk to them and invite them to sit by her. It is so amazing. I don't remember the name of the talk but it is by elder Bednar and it is a talk he gave at the MTC about Christ. If you guys can find it, it is honestly one of the best talks I have ever heard. He talks about how when people get up and bear their testimony about their ancestors and the things they did in there lives, he always thinks that's good for them but what have you done recently? I thought a lot about that this week, and that we constantly have to be working on our testimonies and faith. One thing I really loved was when I was reading in the Bible dictionary about faith it says that miracles don't strengthen your faith. It is obedience and righteousness that cause people to have unshakable faith.
In the talk by Elder Bednar he talks about a woman who in all sincerity showed Christlike characteristics when her daughter and friend were in a car crash and her daughter died and the first thing she did was call the other mom to tell her that her daughter was still alive but in the hospital. Then in the talk he goes on to say that the woman was a Relief Society president and the day of her daughters funeral a lady called and was mad because she had a cold and no one had come to give her a meal. So the Relief Society president didn't say anything just made a meal and on her way to her daughters funeral dropped of the meal at this lady's house.
This week was pretty good.  We spent our P-Day at one of our recent convert's house. They were confirmed my first week here. It was the Dad's birthday so the family, the elders, and us made lots of food and spent time with them. It was so great-- there is something really amazing about new converts. They just have an excitement that I think a lot of us start to forget. We have the restored gospel of Jesus Christ here on the earth! It was really funny this week because a big problem we have here in trying to convert people is that a lot of people here worship Mary more than Jesus. My companion asked a good question to one of our investigators though.  She said "When you are sick do you go to the doctor or the mom of the doctor?"
Anyway, this week was great. I will send a picture of me finally on top of the mountain. One of our investigators lives on top of a mountain that takes us about two and a half hours to walk up every time we go to visit and unfortunately no taxis can make it up so you have to walk. A lot of people have donkeys that they ride to get to their houses. This week also our zone leaders had us have a zone fast. It was really interesting though because they talked about how when we fast we are always asking for something but they had the whole zone hold a gratitude fast for all the things that we are grateful for. It really does make things very different when you are giving up food to show your gratitude instead of asking for blessings. Anyway, i hope you guys have a great week. I know Hal will :)
Love, Hermana Jones

Week 9 in Mexico

Ok so first of all happy birthday to Dad and Hal!  I am so excited that Hal is going to the Mexico MTC.  He gets to experience two different countries on his mission!  I heard that the México MTC is great!  So he shouldn’t worry.  It is also nice because a lot of Americans go there.  They have one American teacher and one native Spanish teacher so it is easier to learn.  It sounds like these next couple weeks are going to be crazy!

I am so glad to hear that grandma listened to the missionary’s lesson and tell her that I love her!  Also I was wondering if you could give me Catie and Abby’s email.  Also Hals once he gets his missionary email.

So this week I got a new spark of hope.  The mission president came for interviews.  He interviews every missionary before he makes the list of new changes.  He told me that he feels really strongly that I need to be here in El Oro and possibly for a long time.  So my companion and I are staying in this area for another change.  That means the minimum amount of time I will be here is for 15 more weeks.  At first I felt like crying because this area is so hard but then I felt excited.  There are people here in El Oro that Heavenly Father needs me to find.  It’s pretty much a scavenger hunt to find the people that God has prepared to hear the gospel.

Also amazing news is that in Jan. the branch here in El Oro had 30 members and ten of them were active.  This week the branch president sent in the papers for our branch to become a ward!  Just goes to show that the work of the Lord is hastening!  

Ok another piece of advice I have for Hal is to have someone write down his blessing when he is set apart as a missionary.  I look at that blessing almost as much as my patriarchal blessing because there is a lot of much needed help in these blessings.  

This week we had a miracle with some members who were willing to come out and teach with us!  One of the members and her little girl who is three, Yaretzi, proselyte with us.   Literally she touches the heart of every person we talk to.  We shake their hands and then she reaches out to shake their hand too.   Then while I was talking to the investigator she started singing “Soy Un Hijo de Dios”.  Every single person we talked to said that we could come visit them at their house.  We also found another family who wants to be baptized!  They haven’t even listened to the missionaries before now.  Then there is Max who was inactive for 18 years and then this year started coming to church again.  Now he literally talks to every single person he meets about the gospel.   It just goes to show that the members are the key in missionary work.

I also learned that when you are truly hungry everything you eat is amazing.  Fasting here is really hard.  We are high up so it is really dry.  We are constantly walking in the mountains.   While fasting I feel like I am going to die.  When we got to the members house, we ended our fast.  Then she brought our this soup with eggs, tomatoes, and chicharone.  Pretty much every food that I can’t even get down without starting to gag.  The weird thing was that it was possibly the best food I have ever eaten in my life.  I EVEN HAD SECONDS.  On your mission you really start to just loose all sense of taste because you are eating for pure hunger.  

I have found out that here in El Oro there are the best people and the worst.  You find people with unshakable testimonies.  Their whole lives they have been surrounded by the temptations of the world and their testimonies are constantly tested.  This week I made the goal that I was going to be the best missionary I have ever been.  What do you know?  Everything that could possible go wrong did go wrong.  This was a good lesson to me that what makes people strong and good isn’t times where everything is easy.  Everyone can be kind when people around them are being kind.  Every member can share their testimony when they are surrounded by people who feel the same way.  It is the times where there is opposition that you find out who you really are and how strong your testimony really is.  

This week I feel like Satan was sending everything he had at us.  There were terrible people that we had to work with for three days straight.  We had to have the branch president come and bless our apartment. We lost our phone.  The lights and gas don’t work even though we prayed for both.  It rained every day.   We had to stay with a Hermana from the ward one night because there was someone following us.  By the end of the week I just felt like crying.  Then the other night as we were saying our prayers my companion just started laughing really hard and smiling and singing.  I was so confused.   I thought she had finally snapped.  When I asked her why she was so happy, she said, “Hermana Jones we are about to experience some major miracles here in El Oro!” I was still confused.  Then she said Satan wouldn’t be working so hard on us if we weren’t doing something right.  If we weren’t on the path to find people and bring people to baptism.  This is one of the major reasons I love my companion.  If we were outside the mission, I know for a fact we would not get along at all.  She is really loud and really straightforward with investigators.  She says things I would never think about saying.  For example, when investigators ask if their baptism in another religion is invalid, she just looks them right in the eye and says, “Si”.  I know that there is a reason that we are in companions.  With us you get two different witnesses of the truth.  Sometimes people need someone to be blunt with them and sometimes they need someone to be gentle and soft with them.  I have never had such a good friend in my life though.  I know it’s because of the trails we went through, the scriptures we read together and just the attempt to be better people.

Also my district leader is so funny. He and his companion had lots of problems this week too.  They cover half of El Oro. He got super sick this week but still went out to work every day. He would just pause every ten minutes to throw up.  He sends us a scripture every night and the next day we were going to have a district meeting.  The scripture he sent was Jacob 7:16.  It is a little sad on the mission when you start getting your humor from the scriptures :)

Anyway I am learning a lot.  I can already tell when I get home from my mission that El Oro is the place I will want to visit.  I think this is the place where I’ve developed an unfaltering knowledge that this is the work of God and that through his help all things are made possible.  Have a great week!  Try not to be too stressed with all the things happening!  I love you guys

 Oh I forgot one thing that made this week so great!  At the end of the week the mission president visited and after everything that happened during the week I was feeling a little down.  Then he brought me a package from the Kurihara’s, letters from the Chapman’s, Grandpa, Rachel, Pat/Amber, and ones from home.   Mail here is so slow.  All the letters just made me so happy.  It was so good to hear from everyone after a rough week.  

The best though was that I finally got the Liahona in English from the most recent general conference.  As much as I love to hear the words of all of you guys, the opportunity to hear the words of the prophet was so comforting.   I read the whole Liahona that day.  I know that the words of the prophet can always comfort us in our times of need.  Love you guys!  Continue to help the missionaries because the work moves so much faster with the help of members!!

Love Hermana Jones

They have tons of chicharones because a lady in our ward gave us a bag with at least 50 of these little bags in it! So we gave them some :)

Week 8 in Mexico

I can't believe all the crazy things happening this summer.  Pretty soon both Hal and I  will be out in the mission field. I can't believe that everyone is getting so old. It kind of makes me sad because I remember all the times at Grandma Rain's house with all the cousins.

Also, Allie's cake was amazing! My companion didn't believe that she made it. She was confused because she thought that Hal and Audrey were the ones getting married. Sometimes we have a little difficulty comunicating :) I think that I figured out how to send pictures so I hope they send. 

Every week here seems to get harder and harder, but more and more rewarding. This week our goal in the zone was to have 20 baptisims, which was 4 baptisims for every companionship. This seemed pretty impossible because you need 4 assistances to church to be bapized and we had 2 investigators with one assistance. We decided to look htrough our carpeta for people with assistances and we found one girl and taught her. Although we didn't have any baptisims I learned that when you have a goal in mind and are constantly praying for inspiraion you are so much more productive. We had 3 new investigators come to church and 3 inactive members come to church with us. It was so amazing. 

I think my testimony of eternal families grew so much this week. We have an investigator, Angeles, that we contacted and all I said was somos representantes de Jesucrito y nosoros compartimos como es posible para su familia vivir junta por eternidad and she started crying after one sentence. It turns out that she has a little girl who is 2 and she is 7 months pregnant. About a month ago her parents and her husband were coming to pick her up and they were in a car crash and all three of them died. She is one of the most amazing people I have ever met and she came to church with us this week. Also we are teaching another familia. La familia Maya and they have 4 children. We have been teaching them for 2 weeks but this week their 6 year old boy was playing in the forest with his brothers and a tree fell over and smashed him. By the time his brothers got his parents, he was already dead. It was one of hte sadest experiences to talk to his parents aferward but at the same time I could tell them with all my heart that they could see their son again. 

My new town of El Oro is like the Bible Belt of the U.S.A.  There is every Christian religion I have ever heard of, and much more, and the people know their Bible so well. So that is one thing I think I have learned a lot of in this area is my Bible.  Especially the New Testament, I finishewd reading in two weeks. I never knew that I would have to find scriptures in the Bible saying that Jesus is Jehovah or anything like that. There are a ton of Jehovah's Witnesses here.  Even when we started talking to this 16 year old girl, she started whipping out Bible verses. Sometimes I don't think I would even be able to say anything in resonse in English, not to mention Spanish, so I am so happy my companion is a pro. 

This week was also hard because there are a lot of people here who are really against our religion. I was spit on for he first time in my life, there have been people who just say terrible things to us and make my companion cry. Luckily, the vocabulary I learned is nothing that they say, so I don't understand any of the bad things they say and my companion won't tell me what they say. People invite us into their houses, just so they can insult us. We had people let their dogs loose on us. All I can say is there have been some days this week that I wasnt exactly feeling great, but a scripture that I love so much is in Alma 26, which is a scripture that I have probably read a lot, but I have never read a scripture that has  helped me so much. I especially love verses 27 and 30. 

Despite all the hard things I have experienced, some of the most amazing things have happened here, too. There was a member of the church that when we walked into her house all the furniture she had was two folding chairs and a piece of wood on bricks for her kitchen table.  She had no lights in her house, and her walls were the side of the mountain with a dirt floor.  We talked to the Branch President about her situation, and he made an announcement, asking all the members if there was anyone who could donate any used furniture they didn't want because there were some members of the church without furniture.  I was in shock when after church, the woman came up and talked to the missionaries and Branch president to offer one of her two folding chairs because she felt so bad that someone didn't have any furniture. I seriously almost cried right then because she was someone who literally had nothing but she was willing to give more.

Also we got tons of investigators from teaching piano lessons, which has probably been one of the most fun things I have ever done in my life. I also conduct choir and play the piano, which didn't sound like it was going to be much fun, but I have never had so much fun in my life. For some reason, in our tiny branch we have more youth than we do in our ward in Chicago and everyone in the choir is 25 and younger.  There are tons of little kids in it too.  It is so fun because they sing so loud and so badly, but you can still feel the spirit because they love what they are doing and they want to sing so badly. I think if I could make a list of decisions that changed my life it would definitely be going to BYU and going on a mission. I hope you guys are great and have a great week!

Love, Hermana Jones

Allie's latest cake creation for a Ward wedding reception!

Allie is perfecting her cake decorating skills.  She made this cake for a couple that just got married in our Ward.

Week 7 in Mexico

So this week has been probably one of the hardest weeks of my life but I feel like it has also been one of the most rewarding.  My testimony has probably grown more in a week than it has in the rest of my life.  When we started the week we did not have a single person to teach because the missionaries had dropped all the other investigators.  The investigators weren’t keeping their commitments.  It seemed that every person we talked to in the street didn’t want to listen to us because they all believed in their own religion.  The two most common religions here are Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses.  To make matters worse the family that my companion had baptized the week before called and said they didn’t want to see the missionaries again and weren’t coming to church for their confirmation.  Understandably my companion was in a pretty bad state that day and both of us were starting to give up hope. 

We decided that we were going to find a family to baptize this change.  So we started praying every night that we would find a family and decided we would contact every family we saw.  We started practicing how to contact families during companionship study and pretty much doing everything that we could possibly think of to find a family to teach.  Finally one day we were contacting a mom and her little boy who was about 7 years old.   We asked if she wanted to hear more and if we could come to her house one day to talk more about it.  She was about to say no but all of a sudden her little 7-year-old boy said,  “Momma, si!”  She looked at her little boy and said,   "OK, you can could come".  So we have been teaching her and she came to church this week!  It was a testament to me of why we need to be like little children.  The little boy could feel the spirit and it was because of him that we were able to teach this family.  

After this experience for some reason just everything started going right.  We visited the family that said they didn’t want to be confirmed and they said they were going through a hard time.  After the lesson they agreed that they needed to be confirmed.  We also found a man to teach who is a rock star at giving us other people to teach.  Every time we go over he gives us a new reference.  Of the 15 references he has given us we are now teaching 10 of these people.  This was also a testimony to me of how much we need references from the members, investigators, and less active members because it is so much more effective than contacting people on the street.  

This Sunday made everything worth it because we had 5 confirmations and 4 other people come to church with us.  We are only in a tiny branch so the ward mission leader is only 17.  There are two sets of missionaries in the branch so sometimes there are more investigators at church than members. 

They called me as the branch pianist...it was weird because they didn’t even ask if I played the piano.  Also now on Thursdays for an hour they have me teaching piano lessons at the branch.  So when I leave some people will at least know how to play the right hand to the hymns.  It is a little hard to teach though.  The people I teach didn’t even know that in the hymnbook you read the first line and then move to the second for the first verse.  So one word of advise for Hal before he leaves on his mission is to learn a few hymns.  It is a little hard to be the ward pianist and not have any time during the week to practice.  Anyway things are going great here.  

My companion wants to move to Idaho and go to BYU after her mission.   She wants to learn English really bad so all throughout the day she is asking me different words in English.  She also has me translate English songs into Spanish and they are so funny sounding.  After a few songs she said she preferred not to know what it was saying because it sounds better in English.  One of her first words was donkey because they are all over the place here.  She told me they were evil but I didn’t believe her.  Then one day we were walking and a donkey was loose.  I got too close and now I have donkey bites on my arm :(  It didn’t hurt that bad but I have big bruises on my arm.  When ward members asked what it was from, I told them they were donkey bites.  They just started laughing.  

Tell Tyler happy birthday for me!  We ate some Mexican food the other day that I think Tyler would love.  It is a ball of cheese that was wrapped in a slice of ham.  Then that was wrapped in another slice of cheese.  Then that was wrapped in a giant piece of chicken around it.  Then it was cooked and put it in spaghetti sauce.  It was so good but it just made me laugh because I was like my brother would love this food.

Also a scripture that I read this week that I really loved was Mormon 9:31.   I really liked this scripture because when we see faults in others either we can get annoyed, complain, get angry or we can use it as a blessing to make ourselves better.  Also the people we live with will be blessed.  If we point out something in a loving way and try to be an example of it ourselves, the other person is much less likely to get mad.  

My area is pretty fun.  It kind of feels like I'm mountain climbing every day.  There are some houses that are on top of hills that cars can’t even get up.  So sometimes we help people push their cars up to their house.  The best is when we get to the top of a hill, you can see so far and the entire city beneath you.  It is really beautiful.  There aren’t a lot of lights here either so you can always see the stars.  Also there is the biggest farmers market I have ever seen in my life!  It goes on forever!  Every Monday they sell in the streets anything you could think of to buy!  Also learned my new favorite food is guavas.  I don’t have a lot of time and I am going to try to send pictures so have a great day!

Love,

Hermana Jones

Week 6 in Mexico

Hey!

I have time to write!  Ok, I was so wrong about what my new area was going to be like.  I thought I wanted to stay in the city my whole mission but after coming here I never want to leave.   It is honestly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen!  We live on the top of this mountain with flowers all over the place.  Our apartment is this cute little two story house.  There is a huge garden and then there are 5 little houses that surround it.  Three of the 5 houses have church members living in them.  There are grocery stores, a bank, a giant market right in the middle where they sell all kinds of food and fruit.  I was thinking that my area was going to be really different but it is so cute.  It reminds me a little of Vancouver except all the houses are small and super colorful.  There are cobble stone roads.  The only thing is everything is either steep uphill or steep downhill.

I think my Spanish is going to get pretty good this change because my companion doesn’t speak a word of English.  My last companion didn’t speak that much but she pretty much always understood what I was saying.  If I spoke English to her when I didn’t understand something, she could figure it out.  

I wish I could describe just how cute this place is.  I don’t think I will have to worry about safety very much because there is a police station just down the road.  The bus ride wasn’t bad at all because I didn’t go to bed until 1am.  I had to pack all my things and then we had to wake up at 4:30 to make it to the bus station.  So I just slept the entire 4 hour bus ride.

My companion is super nice though.  She has only been a member for 2 years and has been on her mission for one year.  So she is super excited about sharing the gospel because she joined the church just from a missionary street contacting her.  She is from Oaxaca, Mexico.  I am her first American companion.  She said before I got there she was super nervous that I wouldn’t be able to speak any Spanish but she says my Spanish is very good.  So I think that is a good sign :) 

Anyway I hope you guys have a great week and keep listening to the Hermanas in your ward haha!!!  Oh and I ate lizard tacos today without knowing it...that’s what happens when you don’t understand what the person is asking you.   My companion thought it was so funny though when she saw my face while I was eating them :) 

                                                                                  

les amo,

                                                                                    

Hermana Jones

Week 5 in Mexico City

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The computers here are all older.  So I don’t think I will be able to send pictures until my next area.  I don’t know if I’m transferring yet or not.  It isn’t easy to use a computer here.  We have to go to this one store where they have 10 computers.  People just come and pay to use them.  Very few people have computers in their homes here.  It is also funny because there are whole areas here where people just go to pay to play video games.  It actually looks more fun than playing in your home.  There are always tons of people to play with.  

Mom, I am very proud that you gave away a Book of Mormon. The first week or so contacting was definitely the scariest part of the mission.  

That is really sad that Lisa’s niece had to go home from her mission in Mexico City.  At least she was well enough to go state side.  I guess it's a really big problem here with American missionaries that their stomachs start bleeding.  My mouth started bleeding the other day because I accidentally bit my cheek.  My companion started crying.  I guess that the food here sometimes messes with Americans stomachs so badly that they start throwing up blood.  My companion makes me eat yogurt every morning though.  The yogurt is supposed to help.  I guess one of her companions already went home for that.  So she doesn’t want it to happen again.  This week I have been great health wise.  I think it was because a lot of people were out of town this week for Dia de Los Ninos, 5 de Mayo, and they had spring break for two weeks.  So the bishop’s wife fed us every day this week.  She would just give us peanut butter and jelly or frozen pizza.   She was sorry about it but it was honestly the best thing ever because you start missing things like that on your mission.  

Anyway the second counselor has face time.  Since we are eating with them on Sunday, they said we can call you guys after we eat.  So church is over at three for us.  Then we will eat so I will probably be calling around 5:15pm.  I just have to figure out how to call you guys by face time.  

The second counselor’s family is one of my favorite families to go to because they are so funny. The wife loves to sing English songs.  She sang one for me and she was saying, “a won da won, a won da won.”   It took me awhile but I realized she was singing, “How Great Thou Art, How Great Thou Art.”  It was the funniest thing ever :)

Oh I got the letters this week from Grandpa and the kids from their family home evening. They were very funny.  My district leader was reading Tyler’s letter and he said, “awe, is this your littlest brother?”  Nope that’s my 16 year old brother.  He just started laughing so hard.

A bad story from this week was that I accidentally blew up a pigeon!  So we left the window open one day because it was super hot and there isn’t any air conditioning.  Then the next morning I went to turn on the furnace.  You have to hold down the gas and use a lighter to light the inside.  Then it kind of explodes with fire inside. When I did it though, all of a sudden tons of burnt feathers flew out.  Then a pigeon fell out the bottom....It was definitely one of the grossest things that I have ever seen.  So sad.

Oh another funny thing that happened this week involved my companion. One of the things that brings my companion more joy than anything else is confiscating investigator’s cigarettes, coffee, tea or anything else they have against the word of wisdom.  So on any given day she will have tons of things in her backpack.  We were at a member’s house though and everything fell out of her backpack.  It was so funny because all she could think to say was, “uhhh… this isn’t what it looks like.”

She taught me a great way to help sunburns though.  I got a really bad sunburn the other day.  That coffee isn’t good for drinking but if you make a paste out of coffee grounds it helps sunburns a lot.  The other day I got blisters on my face from the sun.  It was super annoying because I put sunscreen on three times a day!  But my companion put the coffee on my face before I went to bed.  When I woke up all the blisters were gone and it was just a little pink.  She is a miracle woman J 

One of my favorite things about México is the panderias.  They have them all over the place.  It is fresh bread stores that are super super cheap.  At first I was amazed at how expensive it was because we bought 2 cinnamon rolls, a loaf of bread, 15 rolls, and then 4 of these pieces of bread with caramelize sugar all over  them(they are the best).  When we bought it, it was 40 pesos.  I was like $40 dollars just for that!  Then I realized that was about equal to $4 in the US.  Also I have grown addicted to chili here in México.  They put it on pretty much everything.  At the beginning I hated it but now that’s the first thing I buy in the stores.  The best is when you buy a mango.  They will cut it down the middle with their machete and then they put chili powder in the middle.  Also pretty much every succor here has chili covering it.  My favorite is cucumber with chili on top.  

I have become a little addicted to the tiendas here too.  There is a tienda every 10 feet. They don’t have a front you just walk in, choose something, pay and walk right back out.  To buy a ice cream bar you just walk in give them 2 pesos which is about 20 cents and walk right back out.  

Oh another crazy thing I learned this week.  Last year in the mission there were only 18 hermanas.  As of right now there are 74 hermanas in the mission!  Anyway I am going to see if I can get the front person to send pictures for me.   I will see if it works!

Love,

Hermana Jones

Hermanas in our zone

Our whole zone.  The Elder on far right is from Peru.