Eler Jones Week 25

Oh my gosh DAN!! I`m really glad you`re okay but that really scared me. I`ll keep him in my prayers. I`m sorry you guys got the stomach flu too. 

This week was great though. We went to the Temple with Jesùs Pachas, Jacky, Estephany, Harold, Mara, Consuelo, and ANGELO. All recent converts and Angelo who was recently reactivated. They all did baptisms for family members and it was a really awesome experience. Jesùs got baptized for his father and he was so happy while I was talking to him afterwards. 

I made Thanksgiving too! I made Lùcuma no-bake cookies, mashed potatoes, and I made alfredo sauce from scratch for pasta, with peas and carrots. It was sooo good. Even the leftovers were amazing. And I made all of it with our tiny electric heater that we have for a stove. 

Isabel and her family are progressing really well. On Wednesday we had a lesson with Isabel and her mom Delia and we asked her if she had been able to read recently and she said "no I haven`t been able to read yet today", but all the other days she had been reading a TON. Her book of Mormon is completely marked up and she always has a bunch of amazing questions for us. So yea she`s going to be a convert. We had a really awesome FHE with the familia Fonseca and the family of Isabel and Delia. We played killer frog as the activity!

Sometimes I feel like it`s not fair for other missionaries in other parts of the world how many people God has prepared in Lima. We`re the smallest mission in the world and we have 250 missionaries in our mission. Tomorrow we`re getting 24 more missionaries. In January there are going to be 6 missionaries in our ward. It`s just crazy how much the church is growing in Lima. We had a training from one of the 70 a couple weeks ago and he said that every 15 minutes, someone is baptized in Perù, Ecuador, Colombia, or Venezuela. 

So tomorrow we have transfers and Today is my last day with Elder Torres. It`s weird that I`ve only had one companion in my mission so far except for the CCM. Oh! I almost forgot! We found another family that is going to get baptized. It`s a mom and her two daughters. Celestina, Brisa, and Rosilla. They`re so awesome. They live really really high up in the mountain and we teach them on the rocks outside of where they live. Yesterday we taught them at night and we could see the entire city lit up. I think once I leave Caja de Agua one of the things I`m going to miss most is teaching lessons with an airplane view of the city. 

But yea tomorrow is transfers. I just really hope I get a companion that wants to work and loves the people. I`m excited to talk to you guys! It`s going to be so sad when I wake up in the morning on Christmas. I hope you guys have a great week and you all start feeling better! Bye!

Elder Jones

 

Sister Jones Week 35 in Mexico

Wow sounds like you guys had a crazy week!!! I hope you guys are feeling better.   Especially Dan Dan. I got food poisoning on Thanksgiving so I was sick too! Looks like we are twins :) We went to D.F on Wed. for a training meeting.  I ate street food with all the other missionaries, which was probably a pretty bad idea.

Anyway this was a really good week. On Wed. we spent all day in the city and then on Thanksgiving we had crazy cambios.  They mixed up everyone in the whole zone and we went to different areas and had different companions for the day. Luckily I ended up with an American so we celebrated Thanksgiving at night. It was kind of weird to have no one even know about Thanksgiving but it was good. In the mission we only have little hot plates to cook on.  However, these other hermanas bought a waffle maker. So we made brownies and then cooked them in the waffle maker. It was actually pretty good :)

Then on Saturday we had a baptism!!! It was super great because it was a whole family getting baptized. I still can’t even explain how different they are from when I first met them. The first time we went over the parents were fighting, the kids were crying and the parents were at the point of getting divorced. Then the mom started listening and went to church for a while.  However, she gave up hope because her husband didn’t want to come to church. Then about a month later a miracle happened the husband also showed up to church with all his kids. Then over the next month there was the biggest change I have ever seen in anyone. They started to be soooo happy and the husband and wife went to a church dance together and then.  They  accepted to be baptized. It was soo cute because their whole family was just so happy. They wanted to be baptized on Saturday so they could be confirmed on Sunday.  So it was one of the best Thanksgiving ever.

Also on Sunday it was a miracle because we had a family of two, a family of 4 and one of our single investigators come to church. It just made me sooo happy. The family of 4 has become some of my favorite people here in the mission. One day the mom and the dad were in their car and they passed by us asking if we could give English lessons. They wanted to pay us but we told them if they would let us teach about our church for a half hour we would teach English for a half hour. So we went and they were amazing!!! They had so many questions about the church.  We were starting to move it to English lessons because we had been teaching about the church for 45 minutes but they just kept asking questions about the church. Then after about an hour of teaching we moved to English.  Then they just spent their time asking questions about the church in English hhahah. Then they came to church with us this Sunday and it was an interesting experience. In gospel principals we were talking about the spirit world but then it went really down hill.  The teacher started talking about spirits and people started sharing really weird experiences and dreams. Then the mom of the family was super disturbed.  It was a good thing her kids had gone to the other classes because I think the mom would never want to talk to us again.  However, her 9-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son loooooved their classes. The son wanted to go to an activity with the church on Saturday. I could tell that she didn’t want him to go because she was so confused. So that night we went back over to her house and explained the plan of salvation to her and she ended up loving it. I was so grateful because I was so nervous we were going to loose her as an investigator hahaha the great things that happen in church sometimes :) Just goes to show that the church is perfect but sometimes we as humans make mistakes.

Anyway I have a lot to be thankful for this year. Oh also it is really funny because tons of people here ask if they can come visit us in Chicago when I get home form my mission. So maybe next Thanksgiving we can just have a house full of people from Mexico!!!!! hahahahaha anyway I hope that you guys have a great week and know that I am super grateful for everyone of you!!! I will definitely keep you guys in my prayers!

Love Hermana Jones 

p.s- a Jones never gives up :)

that's the photo of all the new missionaries and their trainers this cambio

intercambios on thanksgiving

our object lesson

Baptism on Saturday!!!! The last one really describes the kids really well!  So cute!!!

Elder Jones Week 24

Hey guys! wow I feel like missionary work in Buffalo Grove has never really been this rapid or successful. God really is pressuring the work all over the world, not just in Caja de Agua. Today we hiked up the hill San Cristobol, which is the hill that my sector is on, with Elder Escobar, Elder Bruton, and Jacky. It was crazy, you could see all of Lima. Lima is so big because it`s the number of people in New York but in 1 and 2 story buildings. 

This week we were trying to focus on finding new people to teach because we don`t have very many people progressing. So we decided to do a day of talk with everyone. Literally everyone. We talked with everyone we saw on Wednesday, and we had been praying and fasting that we would find people that had been prepared to receive this message. Honestly I was expecting Heavenly Father to try our faith and not give us any success but we found a TON of prepared people. So we now have 8 people with a baptismal date. We found a family too on Saturday. They have 3 sons and a daughter. Isabel, who is 22, Miguel Angel, 18, Yoseph, 16, and Oliver Jefferson, 11. When we knocked on their door, the mom, Delia, and Isabel were there and they let us in and immediately they had a ton of questions for us from the restoration, the plan of salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ, fasting, and basically everything else we teach. We tried our best to answer every question but the questions just came one after another after another and it wasn`t possible to answer them all. Then after about 30 minutes the mom told us that just a few hours ago that day they had found out that her husband has terminal cancer, and that she doesn`t know what to say to Oliver Jefferson. So we decided to teach them about the plan of salvation, and temples, and what it means to have a sealed family in the temple. At the end of the lesson we invited Delia and Isabel to baptism for January 3rd and they accepted, and they want to get sealed in the temple as a family. Then Miguel Angel, Yoseph, and Oliver Jefferson entered the house and they all want to go to church.  Delia and Miguel Angel had to work this Sunday but yesterday Isabel and her two younger brothers went to church. Isabel signed up to sing in the stake choir for stake conference next Sunday, and she also signed up for three years of the Liahona. The only problem she had yesterday was that she wants to get baptized sooner. She can`t wait till January 3rd. So she`s thinking more like 2 weeks from now. So yea we`re really excited to see her grow. Also on Wednesday on the day that we were talking with everyone we met we found a young man from the other ward, and he told us that up until two weeks ago he had been planning on serving a mission and had his papers all ready, but he had an experience with one of the other members that offended him and he didn`t want to go to church and he signed up for a job with the police and paid for all the medical exams which are really expensive, and that he wasn`t going to go on a mission anymore. We talked to him for a long time and we told him that he needs to ask God about what it is he needs to do, and why a mission is so important, and then the next day we saw him again and he had decided that he`s going to go on a mission. 

I`m also really excited this week because on Thanksgiving I`m going to be in the Temple with all the recent converts in our ward and Angelo! We`ve been working a ton with all of them this week to make sure everyone has a family name to do baptisms for, and I`m really excited because I miss the temple a ton. 

I hope you guys have a great thanksgiving and also with respect to skyping on Christmas, I don`t know if it can be another day other than Christmas and also I think but I`m not sure that 3 way skype is possible. But yea I`ll figure out. This is my last week with Elder Torres who has been my companion since I got here in Lima so that`s too bad. Have a great week!

Elder Jones

Week 34 in Mexico for Sister Jones

So this week was another great week. It is crazy that it is Thanksgiving this week. It was funny because all week all the members were telling me that there were storms and lots of snow in Chicago. Makes things seem a lot warmer here. Winter is kind of weird here because we are at such a high altitude.  In the afternoon it is deathly hot but then at night it is pretty cold.

This week was super good we had three whole families at church on Sunday. One of the families is getting baptized next week so I will have lots to be thankful for on Thanksgiving.  Another family is super cute because it is the wife, husband and their cute little baby. The wife’s name is Yantze.  She loves when we visit.  She likes to hear about the message but also looooves to teach us Spanish.  It is so funny. The other family who came was one of the ladies who lost her husband this year. I was sooooo happy because the topic in gospel principals was the plan of salvation! She absolutely loved it.

We went over afterward to see how they liked church and they all loved it. They have a girl who is 16, a boy who is 15 and then a little boy who is 6.  All the kids loved it so much. They have visited lots of churches but never wanted to go back to any of them.  However, the little boy loved primary and the two teenagers loved young women and young men. I love that our ward has a really strong youth program.  It really helps so much when there are new kids there. There are about 32 young women and about 37 young men. I think it will help a lot that her kids loved it so much. After church my companion invited the family to baptism (it was her first time) and they said yes!!!! It was super funny because she asked and the 15-year-old boy.  He said yes in a second which really surprised the mom.  He usually doesn’t want anything to do with church.

This week was super hard and we were working a lot. I pretty much passed out in bed every night.  However, when you have people at church it is the best feeling I have ever had in my whole life.

Also it was super crazy because a girl just showed up to church by herself.  A member called us out of second hour and told us we needed to talk to someone. The girl had passed by the church in her car and just really felt like she needed to pull over.  We started talking to her and realized pretty fast she didn’t know Spanish.  She was super confused talking to the members who had spotted her in the hall.  She was on her way out when we started talking to her. It turns out that she is from Bulgaria but knows English!!! She is here to teach English to some people here in Mexico. Good thing we are two American missionaries!!!!! So we started talking to her and are going to visit her this week. I hope I know how to teach the gospel in English hahahah!!!  We will see how that turns out.

Anyway there are tons of things to be thankful for and even though it doesn’t seem like Thanksgiving I am sure it will be super great! I hope you have a great week and tell everyone how much I love them!!! Have a great week!!!!!

Love Hermana Jones