Week 13 Elder Jones

Hey, that's awesome that Tyler finished his Eagle project! Oh my gosh that brings back stressful memories. And Congrats to Allie! That's so awesome. I remember the summer before 8th grade cross country was when I really decided to dedicate myself to cross country and that's really cool that Allison is doing so well and she likes it. Dan- that`s so great, keep with the violin!!

Okay so this week was great.  Tomorrow is transfers, but I'm pretty sure that Elder Torres isn`t going to leave, which is great because he`s my best friend. I got the package Wednesday! Thank you so much. Seriously. It felt so good to eat something that wasn`t rice, potatoes, or chicken. I'm sending some pictures. Oh my gosh American food is so good.

Friday nights here are the worst because all the Peruvians in Caja de Agua all have e a party starting at 10pm and it goes until 10am. And the music they play is soooo loud, it`s like the equivalent of having a stereo in our room blasting Peruvain music. Then Saturday after the party is over they all sleep for a few hours and then play soccer the rest of the day.

So we found a Cornelius this week!!! (someone that wants to be baptized right away). On Saturday we had 3 people that wanted us to visit them at 11am, and all 3 of them weren`t in their houses, so we decided to knock on a door. An elderly man, Jesùs Pachas, answered the door and when he saw us he was really happy and he was smiling a lot. He invited us in and showed us that he had a Book of Mormon from 10 years ago when the missionaries visited him, and he wanted to know what the Book of Mormon was about but his eyes are bad and he can`t read it. He said he always sees us walking around Caja de Agua and that he had been praying for a long time that we would knock on his door and that God had answered his prayers.

He told us that he had been baptized as a Catholic and Pentecostal but he doesn`t believe they have the authority to baptize and he told us that he believes that we have a truth that is from God and that if the Book of Mormon is coupled with the Bible, and the Bible is something great, then the Book of Mormon must be something great too.  He wants us to come to his house to teach him and to read the Book of Mormon to him.  He`s always wanted to go to our church but he can`t walk very well because his nervous system doesn`t work very well. He wants to get baptized the 27th of September. Yesterday we had told him that we were going to come pick him up and take him in a taxi to church. An hour before church started, he was just so excited to go to church that he tried walking to church on his own and we found him half way on his way to church when we went to pick him up. He loved church so much. He knows so much about what we believe, but he`s still so humble and willing to learn from other people. Last week we weren`t able to go to the temple because not enough people were going to go, but this Friday there are enough people that want to go and we`re going with Jesùs to stay outside the temple and talk and walk around while the ward members are inside.  Amazing that it's just 6 days after his first visit with the missionaries, and he's visiting the temple.  I`m really excited for him. He`s going to have an awesome experience at the temple and so much is changing for him so quickly and it makes me really happy.

So yea it was another really good week, hope you guys have an awesome week!

Week 23 Hermana Jones

I hope everyone is doing super great this week! I loved getting all the pictures.  It is funny to see people from home and sounds like you had a great time at the bee party and during Tyler's eagle project.

So this week was a little hard, but it was good. At the beginning of this week I made the goal that I was going to be the best missionary that I possibly could. I am just going to tell you that's a bad goal as a missionary because it almost guarantees that the week is going to have lots of challenges. This week we pretty much walked to Africa ha ha ha, just kidding! but it was super far, looking for investigators.  I got so sunburnt, but luckily not on my face.

Also, I stepped on a rusty nail so...I had to get a shot.  After I stepped on the nail, it started healing and then I got the same foot run over by a taxi! What are the chances of it happening to the same foot? We also had a lot of investigators drop us this week, which was a little hard, but I am sure we will find more this week! Anyway, I know that Heavenly Father was helping me be the best missionary I could be this week because we showed what kind of person we are going to be in our trials not in the easy times.

I also got the package this week, though, so that was super awesome :) I am sending you guys a package and it actually is all of your Christmas presents because I have no idea how long it will take since your letters still haven't gotten to you. If you get it early though, you can't open it until Christmas!! just kidding, I wouldn't do that to you, you can open it when you get it.

I have been watching the Doctrine and Covenants movies because I haven't been able to sleep very well this week, and they are so good. One of my favorites is about forgiveness and it is the story of W.W Phelps.  It tells how he was the cause of a lot of Joseph Smith's hardest trials in his life but when he asked for forgiveness, Jopseph freely forgave him and asked the church to let him back into the fold.  Then my favorite part of the story is that W.W Phelps wrote the Hymn"Praise to the Man." There are so many stories in the Doctrine and Covenants movies and history of the church that I didn't even know and they are so good.

One of the ones that I have watched at least ten times now is the one about Emma Smith and it shows all her trials and her hardships and I think I cry every time especially when she is standing with Joseph and he tells her that it is his time. I just love watching it, though, because I just think if she can make it through all of that I can easily make it through anything that I am experiencing in my life. I also love the story about how when the Saints' water was poisoned a lot of people started to complain but Joseph just went and started digging for water. I love that example for us because when hard things are happening we shouldn't complain, we should trust in the Lord and go out and do something.  I just have a lot of random thoughts from my studies but a quote I loved was " We aren't obedient because we are blind, we are obedient because we can see."

This week I also had a great experience. The Reyes family has not been to church in three weeks, so we went to look for them, but we went last week in the rain and mudslides and after we were thoroughly wet and dirty we gave up.  We looked again this week and still couldn't find them when we ran into a investigator who knew where they lived, and when we got there the bishop was there. Then five minutes later someone yelled "Good Afternoon!" and another family came to visit and then another and then another. We ended up with 20 people in their little tiny house on top of a mountain that cars couldn't go up.  Some of the members had walked ten miles from their house to get there. It was one of the best experiences I have ever seen because this family did not have money to come to church that week but the Mom was just crying she was so happy that her "Family" had cared enough to come visit her. I know that it was the Holy Ghost that gave us all the idea to come visit her and there were so many things that had to come together to be able to find her house. I think that was one of my favorite experiences here in the mission because the world would call it coincidence that we found an investigator who knew the way, or that we had all had the idea to visit this family at the same time but I know that Heavenly Father loved this family and he needed them to know he loved them so sent us all to show his love for them. I hope you have a great week and love you all!

The pictures are fiesta bread and another creature visiting our home.

Love Hermana Jones

Week 12 Elder Jones

Hey! this week was great! Still loving it. So I keep forgetting to tell you guys this but  there are 2 languages spoken in my mission-- Kichwa and Spanish.  There are a few old people that only speak Kichwa but pretty much everyone here speaks both Kichwa and Spanish so I'm learning a little bit of Kichwa every day. It`s really, really difficult.  It`s not that important to learn Kichwa, but I am interested in it and want to learn.

Okay, so something really funny about the people here.So you know how when Americans say they can speak Spanish when they really can`t and they just put o at the end of every English word? Peruvians do that too only they put "ation" at the end of every Spanish word. So yea if you`ve ever wondered what English speakers sound like to people who don't speak English, that's what we sound like

Last  preparation day our zone all got Peru Soccer Jerseys and we went into the city where there's a Mormon church with an outdoor soccer court and we played against Elder Baker`s zone who had Colombia jerseys and it was so fun. I hadn`t realized it, but my soccer playing was improved after playing with Mexicans for 6 weeks.

We get to go to the temple this week and I'm really excited to see the Lima temple and to go through a session in Spanish.

So a couple experiences this week. Elder Torres and I were having our weekly planning session and for our goals for the week  I wanted to put 0 for baptized and confirmed because all our investigators either aren't married or don`t have enough church attendances to be baptized this week. But Elder Torres said no. He said that we`re never going to put zero for the week. He said that we needed to have faith that something would work out. So we put 1 and 1 for baptized and confirmed. Later that day, Hermana Katherine called us.  Hermana Katherine has been taking lessons with the missionaries for over a year, and her mom, sisters, brother, and grandmother are all members of the church.  She also has an amazing testimony of the Book of Mormon and the gospel of Jesus Christ, but she couldn`t get baptized because she lives with her boyfriend.  She told us on the phone that she had made the decision to separate from her boyfriend for the safety of her two little boys and that she wanted to be baptized as soon as possible! So now all we need is a baptismal interview with the district leader and she`s ready to be baptized.

Alfredo and Evelin are progressing really well, they keep all their commitments and they have a desire to learn more. The only thing is that it`s difficult for them to attend church because they`re very old and they live on the top of the mountain, making it hard to walk that distance. It`s hard for Elder Torres and I to walk up to their house to meet with them.  But they do want to come to church.

One more thing. We had a meeting downtown this week with our whole mission. It was going to be with Elder Christofferson,  but he had to go back to Utah earlier than expected, so it was with Elder Suarez from the presidency of the Seventy and his wife and Elder C. Scott Grow.  It was really good-- they all gave really good talks. Sister Suarez talked about how if your investigators have trouble with their commitments they're probably going to have trouble with covenants. I feel like I remember Elder C. Scott Grow from General Conference because his face looked really familiar.  I think I remember Dad pointing out that his name is a sentence.  It was a good conference.

The busses are always super packed here and not all the people can reach the bar to hold on to, so there were people holding on to my arms and shoulders and there was a little kid holding on to my leg. It was actually very funny.

Hope you guys have a great week, I'm still really happy and I still really love the people.

Elder Jones

Week 22 Hermana Jones

Ok, so I am trying to send some pictures because some pretty crazy things happened this week!

It sounds like things are really exciting with the Bee Party and I really liked the talk that dad sent :) This week was pretty funny/hard and so many things happened I don't even know where to start.

Well, I guess I will start with the really funny old man who asked my companion to marry him. She contacted him in the street and he was probably 70 years old.  He spent half an hour telling us how we were from the devil and evil and then he started speaking Masagua which is a different language here in our area, and said if we had the spirit we would be able to understand him, and then out of nowhere he asked my companion if she wanted to marry him! It was so funny because it came out of nowhere and her response was so funny! So that was great :)

Also this week, we were working on getting Adriana and Laurdes baptized. Laurdes' daughters are the people that I am sitting on the hammock with in the photo. Also, we had to go clean the baptismal font because the room doesn't have a roof so leaves and dirt and bugs get in the baptismal font and it is pretty nasty.

 Then the craziest part of the week was the giant parade. We were walking through the street in Santa Rosa and we saw all kinds of flowers hanging up and all kinds of balloons and we were like-- "oh how pretty"! Then all of a sudden we heard like chanting and drums and all kinds of yelling. We got a little freaked out and thought about turning around when all of a sudden thousands of people started walking towards us carrying crosses and altars and they were all chanting. That was when I got pretty freaked out and was positive we should turn around but then we found Diana and she told us everything was ok.  She said it was just a parade for the Virgin of Santa Rosa.  I guess different pueblos have their own virgin they don't just celebrate the virgin Mary. So that was the first day of working on Friday where you couldn't move through the streets because there were so many people.  The second day wasn't as bad because there were just little shops that covered all the streets so it actually made contacting easier because people weren't as crazy-- just buying things.  It was good because everyone was out of their houses so we could talk to them.

Also on Saturday we went to look for an investigator and I figured out we walked close to 7 miles to find them which doesn't sound like that much, but when you are walking up a mountain you really feel like you are going to die! hahah! It was super sad because when we got there she wasn't home, so we had to walk back and we thought all that work was for nothing, but then it was crazy because I guess a lady had seen us walking there and wondered why we were there.  So when she saw us in El Oro she asked what religion we were, if she could have one of the pamphlets that we have and said that we could come visit her at her house! It was a miracle because I was really feeling bad this past week with the lack of people to teach. Looks like all it took was walking up a mountian :)

One thing I have learned in the mission is that is called missionary work for a reason but at the same time it can be one of the most rewarding things you ever do. You can have the desire, you can have faith, but if you aren't doing the work, and if you aren't doing your part you can't ever see miracles.

This week I was reading a lot about John the Baptist, and I think he is now one of my favorite prophets. I love how it talks about in Jesus the Christ when his father Zacharais went to the temple no one expected him to see an angel because they thought visions and angels were a thing of the past ( just like people today) but he saw the angel Gabriel and he told him he was going to have a son. I think my favorite thing about John the Baptist was how humble he was. He had lots of people listening to him and people asking if he was the Christ, but he never let it go to his head he said that there was someone else coming who he was not even worthy to unlatch his shoe. I also love when Jesus comes, John tells two of his disciples that this is Jesus the Christ and tells them to leave and follow him. How many people, when they have power and followers are willing, tell them to leave and follow someone greater. Finally my favorite part about John is when it says that he never performed miracles but fulfilled his calling of testifying of Christ. I thought a lot about that last part about how many times in the mission or in live we want miracles,we want signs but John's greatest calling was to testify of Christ through his words and his deeds, which is everyone of our callings here in this life. That's to testify of Christ. It says great things about John the Baptist in the bible dictionary and also in Jesus the Christ if you want to read a little of it it is so good.

I have also been studying the sacrament a little which is super interesting but I still haven't found my answers so if you find any good talks about the sacrament I would love it if you could send them to me! Also this week I think I heard the best talk in church I have ever heard in my whole life. It was all about exaltation and my favorite line from this speaker was "Everyone talks about how salvation is personal. And that's true. But exaltation is not personal. To receive exaltation you need your family". I just loved the talk so much because she talked about how often we worry about ourselves, are we reading our scriptures, do we have a testimony, are we being obedient? How often do we worry for the welfare of our family members? Are we helping their testimony grow? Are we helping our family to be a celestial family? We don't want to make it to the celestial kingdom only to have Heavenly Father ask us where our family is. It was such a good talk! Anyway I hope you have a great week and have fun at school :)

Love,
Hermana Jones

ps. the fruit in the picture is prickly pear.  The name is "tuna" here.

Week 21 Hermana Jones

OK when Dad told me it has been 46 degrees here in El Oro, I could not even believe it because it seems so much colder. I think its because it rains almost every day so then we are wet and cold.

Sounds like everything is going great with schoool picking up again. I love it that there is school again because it is easier for people to meet with us because they actually are home. El oro looked like a ghost town during the summer.

This week has been good.  On Sunday I felt like a proud parent because they called on Diana, my new convert, to say the closing prayer in sacrament. She forgot to say in the name of Jesus Christ but there is just something so happy to see someone who just a month ago didn't know anything about the church is now up there giving the prayer. We also take her out teaching with us all the time because she loves to walk and she loves to talk which is pretty much perfect for coming out with us because that's pretty much all we do all day. Also we have been having a lot of success with inactives coming back to church, which is super good because if we can get our attendance to 170 people they will start building a chapel.

I am trying to send lots of pictures because I have not met one missionary here who has not gotten their camera stolen. One sister missionary has been robbed 8 times in the mission!! I was in shock when I heard that.  Some pictures are to show what is like after seven straight days of rain and us hiking around and some are because my companion likes to get pictures of me when I'm doing weird things.  The one hiking with us is Diana, and we were hiking to visit some investigators in Santa Rosa.  One picture is the view of our back yard.  The flower picture is a neat real flower that looks like metal.  One shows what most of the houses look like here in the pueblos-- they all have these metal rods sticking up all over the roof just in case they ever want to build a second story but they put plastic bottles on them because there is a ton of lightning here and they don't want it to strike their house.  The others are of a cactus tree, my companion, and my best friend-- the donkey that bit me!

Anyway, this week has been good but it is always a little hard to find new people to teach. Especially because a lot of the members are afraid to give us names of friends or family.  This week, though, we changed what we were asking.  Instead of asking if there was anyone we could teach we asked if there was anyone who needed help.  Painting their house, doing their laundry, doing dishes, any type of service and all of a sudden we started getting lots of names of people we could visit.  So this week we helped paint and lots of other type of service but it was so worth it because we have people to teach! People are so much more willing to listen when we do some type of service for them first.

There are a few areas here that are a  little hard to teach like the Jordana and Santiago Ixtempan because there are a lot of churches that were started by ex members there. One of the churches in the Jordana was started by an ex missionary so it is a little hard to teach people because they believe in a lot of the same things that we do like the plan of salvation, baptism by immersion, the priesthood. So that has been one of our struggles here.

Anyway, we were talking to the only member of the church in Tapaxco and she has been a member for 15 years but her story is crazy. She was talking about how when she first joined the church all of a sudden pastors from all types of different religions would start coming to her house to try and convince them that what they were doing was wrong and then when they wouldn't listen the pastors started telling people not to talk to this family because the church they belonged to was of the devil. Then their water, lights, and gas all got shut off for being members of the church and she said this all happened in the first 4 months of being a member of the church. She talked about how parents would tell their kids not to talk to her sons in school and all types of hard things. It was just so sad to hear but at the same time she is one of the strongest members of the church I have ever met so it just shows that realy our trials do make us stronger. She said that she has been a member for 15 years and just recently people started talking to them again but it was because she was hit by a car and had to have half of her face reconstructed. Every time I listen to people's stories here in Mexico I am just amazed at how easy my life is.

Also something interesting is I have been looking at the Bible Dictionary and topical guide in English and Spanish and there are some things in the English one that aren't in the Spanish one and some things in the Spanish one that aren't in the English. It is great knowing two languages just lets you learn more about the gospel hahaha!

Anyway, we also have the best family ever that we are teaching and they are progressing so well. I don't remember if I told you about the family that has a daughter who is 15 and has a 1 year old baby but they are just so excited about the gospel and it is just crazy how prepared they were for the gospel.

Sometimes we experience trials but it is to put you on the path that Heavenly Father planned for you. There have been so many days on the mission where I just think that nothing else could possibly go wrong but thinking back on those experiences we either found someone or learned something that we needed to.

I had a good experience with that this week when it was probably the worst day of my life. I was super wet and cold and no one wanted to listen to us, the people we were contacting were being super rude and I just wanted to go home, so we were about to cross the street when all of a sudden one of the stray dogs tried biting my legs. I was getting annoyed and tried to cross the street when all of a sudden it bit my dress and started pulling me back. I was super annoyed and tried hitting it with something when all of a sudden it pulled on me so hard I fell off the sidewalk into the mud. So I was completely covered in mud. Almost the second I fell over, though, a car passed half on the sidewalk half on the road where I just was. I just sat there and was amazed. The car passed exactly where I was just a few seconds ago and even though I was cold and wet and now covered in mud , I felt like I just needed to give a prayer of gratitude right there.

Sometimes it seems like our challenges are never going to end (and they probably won't because just a new one will happen) but our trials and challenges are always strengthening us and preparing us for the future. I was super annoyed that I had to experience the trial of the dog but it helped me to avoid the bigger problem coming that I couldn't see which was the car. The trials of loneliness help us to be more compassionate when someone else is feeling the same thing, the trial of sickness helps us be more grateful when we are healthy. Jesus Christ experienced every trial every temptation, and every problem but he overcame it all and because of that he is able to understand and have compassion on others.  He is able to be our Savior because of the trials that he had. When I think of all the people I look up to here in Mexico and at home I can say that they are the people who have not had a life was easy because the majority have suffered a lot but that's what made them the people that they are today. I hope you guys have a great week and remember that miracles are the resuly of obedience (I have definitely needed to learn that here on the mission).

Have a great week!
Love Hermana Jones

Week 11 Elder Jones

Hey guys! So this week was still so great, still being productive, still insanely happy, still love the people to death, still doing a ton of service, but somehow I`m still way happier than I was last week and last week I was so much happier than I was the week before.  I`m just not eloquent enough to express how happy I am now.  Especially since English doesn`t exist for me any more. I'm really glad that I'm in a foreign language speaking mission because sometimes I have these moments where we`re having a conversation with a person or a family and I'm on the same page as everyone and it`s an awesome conversation and it just hits me that the language I`m speaking isn`t the language I`ve been speaking for the past 18 years of my life. 

So yeah, the mission is great.  Sometimes I feel like I`m doing something wrong because before my mission all I heard about missions was how hard they are and how there are going to be times when you`re really discouraged or that it`s just really difficult all the time.  In all the training we have they tell us to just get past the first few months and then it starts to get easier, but I can honestly say that so far I haven`t ever felt discouraged or frustrated or felt like I wasn't able to do this. I look forward to every day and honestly I'm just so happy. 

So with our investigators and less actives that we`ve been working on, they`ve all been really receptive and have a desire to progress, but very few of them have been progressing because they haven`t been attending church. But yesterday out of nowhere almost all of our investigators showed up to church and all of our inactives, and also a bunch of members just decided to bring friends that we had never met before. It was amazing.  There weren`t enough seats in the chapel for all the people that showed up. And we hadn`t really done anything different-- it kind of just happened. Oh so I got a letter from sister Dawson this week and it sounds like our ward is really getting serious about missionary work and that`s awesome because it`s so much easier to find people that have been prepared to receive the gospel through friends of members than by knocking on doors. 

Okay so the lady that I told you about last week that recently became inactive because she was listening to one of her antimormon friends, we didn`t give up on her. We visited almost every day this week and each day she wouldn`t let us into her house and would try to fight with us about something new her friend had told her like how interviews with the bishop to enter the temple are evil because only God knows your heart and she was under the impression that you had to pay a ton of money to receive endowments, and I`m pretty sure you only have to pay for the clothing which is dirt cheap in Peru. But anyways, on Friday our goal was just to enter into her house and we were persistent and eventually she let us in.  The difference was immense. She didn`t try to fight with us or anything. We shared a message about the Book of Mormon and testimonies, and it turns out that she didn`t even know what the Book of Mormon was. She didn`t know what a testimony was. Her whole life she had been attending our church because the members where nice and they have fun activities.

And she had been reactivated several times in her life by the missionaries. We shared the parable of the man that built his house upon the sand and the man that built his house upon the rock. And we explained what a testimony is and how it`s like a house. If we build our testimony upon things that can change, like the members and the activities in the church, when the rains and floods (anti-mormon friends) come your house will fall. But if your testimony is upon things like the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ, things that can not change, when anti-mormon friends come you will be able to testify of what you know to be true. And usually when I`m teaching I usually try to be sensitive and tender towards people but I had the impression that I needed to be direct with her and I told her that the only way this can be the last time she is reactivated is if she receives a testimony of the Book of Mormon. And we explained Moroni`s promise and how she can receive a testimony of the Book of Mormon and if she does that also means she will have a testimony that Joseph Smith was called as a prophet of God and that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and that the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints is the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, because it`s impossible for the Book of Mormon to be true without those things also being true. And she`s going to find out for herself and she`s going to pray about it. And she came to church yesterday. 

So we`ve given four priesthood blessings this week and I`ve always been the one that does the anointing with oil because I`m not experienced enough to give the blessing in Spanish, but I feel like I`m ready now. Even though I`ve only ever given one priesthood blessing in the CCM and it was super short and I was scared to death the whole time I feel like I'm ready to do it. I`m ready to magnify my calling and use my priesthood to bless others and I`m not afraid to do it anymore. 

Okay so I'll tell you something crazy that happened this week.   There is a 3-story tall house that is on one of the staircases on the side of the mountain, and they have this huge dog, probably 150 pounds,  that is always standing on top of the building and is barking at us whenever we walk past.  One day this week we were walking up the stairs and the dog got really excited and started barking and lost his footing and fell 3 stories onto the staircase and then started rolling down the staircase. And we were freaking out because we seriously thought this dog was dead but no...it just got up and pretended like nothing happened. The next day it was on top of the house barking again. 

I`m feeling a lot better than I was last week. I think I`ve gotten used to the bacteria or whatever it was that was making me so sick, so yeah-- that`s good. I had cow stomach and cow heart this week! I never find out what I`m eating until after I`ve finished eating it.  It was pretty good. I also had blood, I don't know from what animal or anything just straight up blood with some plants baked into it with some sweet potatoes on the side.  I liked it, and apparently it`s good for you. 

Okay, so the earthquake I don`t know anything about, but a couple weeks ago there were some weird noises coming from the mountain that we`re on and it turns out that it`s actually a volcano. Supposedly it`s dormant and everyone`s freaking out that it`s going to erupt but I think we`ll be fine.  

Oh, one other thing-- the way the transfers work out, my group is going to finish our missions 3 weeks earlier than 2 years, so I'm going to be a 19 year old returned missionary! 

Glad you guys had such a great week that`s really exciting that Tyler Allison and Dan are starting school I hope they have a great year.

Love you guys, bye!

Week 20 Hermana Jones

Six months in the mission!!  Thanks for all the emails. Especially Dad for the talk. Usually I don't have time to read all the emails but I just print them out so I can read them when I get back to the house.

This week was super good. We went to the doctor in Taluca and he checked out my foot and said that I just have to keep it wrapped every day and gave me all kinds of things to put in my shoes to keep the stress low so that was good.  It was really weird because I loved the city in my first area but after three cambios of being in an area where there are hardly any people I felt really uncomfortable being surrounded by so many people. When the sister training leaders came here to visit, they said "wow, why does everyone know you here?" and I just said it was because I have been here for 3 cambios and there is hardly anyone here.  There is this one dude who said "Guera de la Jordana what are you doing here in El Oro?" which means white girl who lives in the Jordana. It's super funny though, because every pueblo  thinks we live in their pueblo. We just work there every day.

Literally no one calls me Hermana Jones here. Everyone either thinks my first name is Jones and calls me Jonita or they call me Guera( white girl) Everyone! Even the ward members.  Now I respond more to Guera than Hermana Jones.

It's super funny because no one thinks my companion is from the United States because she is Tongan. One day there was this guy who asked in really bad English- "Where is she from?" and my companion was really annoyed afterwards because people think she doesn't know English. She just says "I can speak better English than that dude! Hahah!  It is super funny to have an American companion because I ask myself if I was I like that when I first got here to Mexico.

We lost our water again and my companion was super distressed! Also I love the food here because I have been eating it for like 4 months straight. Cactus (nopales) are my favorite food here but i remember how gross it was when I first got here. Because the people are so poor it is super rude if you don't eat all your food but my companion cant even get it down without gagging so when the hermana leaves we trade plates and I eat her food. It kind of hurts my stomach though because it is a ton of food. The only thing I still don't really like here though is chicharone because it is just like pieces of skin in your soup so I still make her eat that :)

Oh I also learned this week that corn stalk is edible.  We ate so much of that this week.  The best thing ever though is agua de horchata! If you ever get a chance to drink it, it is delicious.  It looks a little weird because it has rice in it but it is super tasty. Oh, I also got a letter from a lady from Dad's mission.  It was probably the most interesting letter I have ever read. I felt like I was reading a general conference talk and was sitting there highlighting parts hahah.

This week we had intercambios with the sister training leaders and because we are so far away it was for two days. I was with sister Garcia and she is probably the strongest missionary I have ever met. She was engaged to be married before her mission but then the changed the age of sister missionaries and she felt like she needed to go on a mission so her boyfriend said he would wait.  They had their house ready and everything for when she got back and then two months into her mission she got a letter from his mom saying that he had died in a car accident and it was all her fault for leaving him and going on a mission.  I nearly started crying when she told the story but it really goes to explain why I have never met a more focused or compassionate missionary here on the mission.

I had a really cool experience with her though. We have an investigator, Hector, who we visit at his house but when he isn't home his dad answers the door and is a little rude and just says Hector isn't there and shuts the door. This time though, it started raining and lightning harder than I have ever seen here on my mission which is saying a lot because sometimes it rains so hard it breaks our umbrellas here. We went to look for Hector and only his dad was home but because it was raining so hard he let us in and we started talking. He said he didn't believe in God because of everything that has happened in his life. He took off his hat and showed us a huge missing piece from his head because he had a tumor removed, last year his wife died from diabetes, and then a month later his son died from too much alcohol. Just listening to his story was painful but we told him that he could see his son and wife again and that God loved him. Then Hermana Garcia told him that tonight he was going to have a dream and his wife was going to tell his to go to the church of Jesus Christ and when that happens he should go to church the next day. I have never heard anyone say anything like that before in my life but the rain stopped and we left and then the next day came the miracle. He came to church! I feel like even our challenges can be blessings. If it had not been raining he never would have let us in and we never would have had the chance to talk to him.

Also it's crazy that we learned that two of our investigators that are preparing for their baptisms are the wife and daughter of Hector's brother. I feel like this family needs the gospel and they are coming together in ways that we never could have seen. Also I learned that if you ever feel like you should do something just do it. We went and visited an inactive member and when we got there, they just smiled and said "I prayed you would come today."  Also I felt like I should write a note to a lady in our ward. I did but it felt kind of weird because when I got to church she seemed super happy and was talking to everyone so I almost didn't give it to her because the note talked about how everything is easier with Christ and this life is difficult because we are disciples of Christ so in this life we will feel some of his pain. I gave it to her, though, and when she read it she started crying a lot and said that she has been having a lot of family problems and when she told me about them all you never could have seen it just looking at it. I don't think I have heard someone with so many problems.

I just learned this week first always listen to the spirit and second everyone has problems. EVERYONE. It doesn't matter how happy they look there is something you can help them with. With Hector's dad he was super grumpy and rude because he has had a hard life and then the hermana at church was super happy because she was trying to cover up how sad she was. Everyone needs help. Anyway we have been looking for ways to serve this week to find people to teach so if you have any good ideas let me know :) Have a great week! and have fun at school hahaha

Love,
Hermana Jones