Elder Jones week 57

Hey Guys! Glad to hear everything is going so well. 

We had a great week! It went by so quickly because I spent two days in La Punta.  One day was with Elder Mann and another day was with Elder Jordan.  We got a lot of work done.  I learned a ton from both of them.  We had the district of excellence this week. 

When I was with Elder Mann on Tuesday, our main focus was to try to baptize Fergie, a nine year old girl that has been ready to be baptized since May, but is afraid of getting into water.  Every time she has a baptismal date, she isn´t able to get baptized. So we filled up the font and invited her to the church and showed her the full font and asked her if she wanted to get baptized.  She said yes, but as soon as she touched the water she decided that she didn´t want to do it.  So we didn't pressure her.  I wanted to try and use what I had learned as a swim teacher to try and get her to feel more comfortable in the water, but I can´t do that as a missionary. 

So they tried every day this week to baptized her, and on Wednesday they were able to preform the baptism, but her hand didn´t go into the water and they had to do it again, and she didn´t want to try again.  So she still hasn´t gotten baptized. But other than that, we had a great day on Tuesday.  

On Wednesday, with Elder Jordan, we visited an 11 year old recent convert named Dominic, and his 12 year old friend Claudio was over at his house, and we taught him a little and invited him to baptism and he said yes, and he came to church yesterday. And he knows a few of the young men in La Punta.
   
We baptized Josael and Marco! I´m sending pictures.  It was really funny in the baptism because Marco is really old, and the water was ice cold, and I was afraid that he wasn´t going to be able to handle the cold.  But I baptized him and when he came out of the water, he dove back in, then dove back in again, and then wiped the water out of his eyes and shouted "the water feels great!". Josael got baptized and it was a great baptismal service. 

Magdalena is also getting baptized on the 25th.  Yesterday when we went to pick her up for church she was really sick and she didn´t feel like she was going to be able to go.  But I told her that if she wants to get baptized she still needs to go.  And she came! She exercised a lot of faith yesterday.  Brillit, Colin, Jerico, and Melani are all progressing really well towards their baptism also.

Only Colin and Jerico were able to attend church this week because Brillit and Melani had to leave with their parents.  But they are all reading the Book of Mormon every day and asking in prayer if it is true, so I´m happy about that.  This week we found a 12 year old boy that has been attending church since March and isn´t baptized and somehow we didn´t notice him.  His parents are inactive members and we still haven´t been able to talk to them about his baptism.  He wants to get baptized.  His name is Elder. 

I´m really enjoying my time here in Callao.  It´s crazy here but the people are so great.  There are a lot of prepared people.  I hope you guys have a great week! 

Elder Jones

Hermana Jones week 66

So this week was super fun and we had transfers this week, so I was super curious to know where I would be in my last transfer. And I am super happy because I am staying in the same area with my same companion. I am pretty happy because there are still three couples that we are working with who need to get married and baptized, so it makes me happy that I will be able to be here for all of their weddings and baptisms. 

This year the 4th of July actually felt like the 4th of July because the Brady family (the family we were with when we talked on mothers day) had us come eat with them that day.  It was fun because the Elders in our ward are both American and so is this family so we ate super American food that they don't have here in Mexico because their dad just got back from a business trip in the USA and brought food for all of us. We had smores, salt water taffy, hamburgers, coleslaw, Twizzlers, Swedish fish, pretzels, and Goldfish.  Sometimes I forget how different the food is here in Mexico because they don't have any of those things here.  It was great. 

Also this week was hard because we were working with our investigators Viviana and Eric.  They are both great and were going to get baptized on Sunday and married Saturday, but I feel like Satan is working super hard against them. They were going to get baptized about two weeks ago, but their baby who is one year old got really sick and was in the hospital all week and they couldn't get married and this week in the same hour they were going to get married, the wife who is pregnant had the beginings of a miscarriage so they had to run to the hospital.  When we went to visit them on Sunday they were really discouraged because they know the church is true and they are trying to do whats right but didn't know why every time they were about to be married, something terrible happened to keep them from doing it.

Also their family has pretty much abandoned them now that they are going to church, which is really hard for them because they have so many medical bills they can't pay. We have been praying a lot for them, but I know they are going to be great members.  If not, Satan wouldn't be fighting so hard against them. 

Also I liked Dad's story about the Mexican who makes fun of the work of other Mexicans.  It reminded me a lot of a lot of people I know here.  They are always making fun of themselves and other people from their country.  Well usually they are just making jokes about everyone, but often about people from Mexico and people from the United States. 

 

Anyway I hope you guys have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Jones

Elder Jones week 56

Hey guys! I had a great week! I met my new mission president, President Larson, and his family this week. They´re really nice, and I can tell that I am going to learn a lot from them. 

This week we found a lot of really prepared people.  We were teaching Josael who is going to get baptized this week, and his 15 year old cousin walked in and we invited her to participate in the lesson.  Her name is Brillit, and she was really interested in the lesson and agreed to let us teach her and her family the next day.  The next day Josael accompanied us to teach Brillit´s family and they all accepted the invitation to be baptized!  We left them a copy of the Book of Mormon and an appointment to come back in two days.  When we came back, they told us that they weren´t able to read because another cousin of Josael, Colin, came to their house and saw the Book of Mormon and wanted to know what it was about, so he took it.

 

This entire family lives in the same alley, so we went where Colin lives and invited him and his family to join us in a lesson, we also found another cousin named Jericho and invited him and his family as well. We ended up teaching 5 families in the same lesson. We taught about faith, repentance, and baptism. We invited all of them to baptism and they all said yes.  But the ones with the most desire to get baptized were their children, Brillit, her sister Melani, Colin, and Jericho.  They´re all under the age of 18 but their parents gave them permission to get baptized. 

 

Yesterday Josael came to church with his four cousins and they really liked it and the ward did a great job of receiving them and making them feel welcome.  They want to get baptized this month. Tomorrow we have a big family home evening in the church with all of their families and the families of the ward leaders. 

Marco is also going to get baptized this week on Sunday, with Josael, so they can both enter in the temple.  The ward is going to the temple on the 15th.  So we have to help them out with their family history this week.  Marco is almost 80 years old and he forgets what we teach him easily, so while we´ve been teaching him I´ve really been focusing on teaching with simplicity and having short but frequent visits with him.  He has a lot of desire and he has a lot of friends in the church.  We reactivated his wife Hilda yesterday.  He has two grandchildren that are missionaries. 

So I think my favorite thing about Callao, that I haven´t seen in Rimac and Caja de Agua, is the fried squid.  It´s so good.  I´m trying not to eat it every day because I feel like it´s not that good for me, but it´s probably my favorite food now.  And it´s also really cheap so that makes it harder for me to avoid eating it. 

We had a good week as a district.  In La Punta, they had a few baptisms fall through this week (but not Flor) and that has been a little disappointing for them but they´re still working hard. 

I hope you guys have a great week! 

Elder Jones

Hermana Jones week 65

That's pretty cool that Dad gets to work with some Mexicans in his job.  One thing that I never noticed before in my life is how hard they work.  In all my time here in Mexico, I have never seen a person begging for money, even though there are some people who are super poor.  They will take whatever job they can find or sell things in the street. 

I am super excited that mom got a job!  Also it makes me sad that Sister Smiley lost her mom.  I am sure that was very hard, but at least she got to come home and see her. 

This week was hard because I spent a lot of time out of my area and was going to bed super late and waking up super early to go to other areas.  Finally, on Friday I got a  really bad fever from not sleeping and getting wet in the rain every day.  So they sent me home early on Friday but I slept and now I am all better.  So new goal for the week is it doesn't matter how many areas I have to visit, I am going to get my sleep.  Good life lesson haha!

The picture of the super thick fog was when we were in exchanges. We left super early in the morning and there was a trail in the corn field to get to the main road but when we came to a fork in the road we couldn't see more than a foot ahead of us so we were wondering where the iron rod was to show us the way to go.  

I was super super super happy hermano Moctezuma was able to be baptized.  If you would have seen him when we first met him, you would not believe he is the same person.  He was an alcoholic and had a lot of rough things from his past.  But he hasn't drunk a drop for 2 months now and had his interview and was able to be baptized!  I think it was one of the happiest days of the mission to see such a difference in someone and to complete a family in the gospel!  What a blessing to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives and the gift of full repentance.  

Also, we have another couple who was supposed to get baptized and married last week but their baby got really sick and went to the emergency room with heart problems and pneumonia.  Their baby got better, though, and it was super funny in church because they had all the people who had less than 6 months in the church stand up and introduce themselves.  Viviana got up and it made me laugh because she said hello I am Viviana I am getting married Saturday and baptized Sunday and you are all invited and then sat down.  She is also the one who cut up all the pamphlets we gave her and taped up all the pictures of Jesus in her house.  

Also we are teaching a family with three kids and the parents are Petra and Jose.  Petra has 2 months straight coming to church by herself with her kids and their story just amazes me. We showed up at their house and they had nothing.  Her husband had no job and they had nothing to give their kids to eat.  We promised them that if they came to church her husband would find a job.  So they went to church Sunday and he found a job on Monday.  Ever since, they have not missed a Sunday.  They will not be able to baptized until December because her husband was married before, so the divorcement process is long here, but they have their plans to get married in December. What amazes me the most is they are not even baptized but they asked us how they could pay their tithing. People like that just make me so happy I want to cry.  They are so humble and so teachable it makes me want to be a better person every day.  

Anyway I got a letter this week that really made me think a lot.  It was talking about the experience of one of the apostles in his mission when he was discouraged he found a stone that said whatever thou art, act well thy part.  Under are numbers in a square and whatever way you add them up they will add up to 18.  The letter I got said that we should not waste time trying to be a 9 if we are a 6 because it will mess up the "magic" if we are a 6 we need to be the best 6 that we can be because that is the plan Heavenly Father has for us.  That is who he needs us to be.  Whatever situation we are in, wherever we are, we need to bloom where we are planted.  We need to use who we are and the trials we have to make us better, to help others.  Also, the letter went on to say the difference between Nephi and Laman and Lemuel is 1nephi 2:16 that he had his own personal conversion so when hard things happened, he didn't need to think what he should do-- he had received his answer.  He knew that God existed and what he wanted from him and he would never do anything to go against that.  I hope you guys have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Jones

 

 

Elder Jones Week 55

Hey guys! I´m so glad to hear that everything is going so well! Everything is going great here.  I´m learning a lot, and we´re preparing a lot of people to get baptized in July.

 I had my first baptismal interview this week!  It was such a great experience. The baptismal candidate´s name was Flor and she´s about 50 years old and she had been sufficiently prepared to be baptized, but she still didn´t feel ready.  She felt like she needed to learn more about the church before getting baptized.  She wanted to wait until September or October.  So Elder Patiño and Elder Jordan had me give her an interview.  The spirit was so strong in the interview.  It was the only time in my mission where I had to teach someone by myself, without a companion.  But what lacked in number of missionaries was made up for by the power of the spirit. At the end of the interview, I was able to tell her that she was ready to be baptized and that she could be baptized right now if she wanted.  Somehow she changed her mind and she´s going to get baptized this Saturday. 

We´re finding a lot of people to teach.  On Friday one of our appointments fell through and we were walking towards the house of a recent convert and from the other side of the street a 20-ish year old man was looking at us and walking in the opposite direction and when I made I eye contact with him he nodded.  So I felt like we needed to talk to him, and we followed him into the alley where he lived and knocked on the door he entered, and the mother of the man who nodded at us answered the door.  We explained that we saw her son and we felt like we needed to talk to him.  It turns out that he is deaf and he lives there with his mother and his sister.  She let us in and we quickly found out that her husband recently died and we taught them about the plan of salvation and his mother, Yoni, wants to get baptized on July 25th. He taught me how to say Jesus Christ in sign language when I gave him a pass along card of Jesus Christ. 

We had a similar experience with one of our recent converts, Milagros.  She and her sister are both members but her parents and other sister aren´t.  We came last week and taught the father and the sister that aren´t members and they weren´t interested in what we had to say.  The next day the mother died.  We came back this week and taught the father about the plan of salvation and temples, and he wants to get baptized so he can go to the temple and get sealed to his deceased wife. 

We also found three really prepared people that are going to get baptized on July 18th.  Magdalena, Josael, and Marco.  We´re trying to have daily contact with them because they´re basically just waiting until they have enough church attendances to get baptized. If the could, they would get baptized today. 

I continue believing that I have the best district in the mission. I´m really grateful for how hard they work. 

I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Jones      

Hermana Jones week 64

So, first off-- Happy Father's Day!  I don't really know when it is in the U.S, so I am just going to assume that it was on Sunday like it was here in Mexico.

This week was suuuuper good.  I think I gained like 20 pounds though, eating so much food.  What a shame that I am going to gain all my weight here in the mission right before coming home hahaha. So Saturday someone from church was going to have their birthday party for their little son at church and so they invited the missionaries.  It was super fun because we could talk to all the parents who were there with their kids and we even have some new people to teach now from the party.  I am not going to complain about the cake and ice cream either.  It was a pretty good idea of those members.  I think I am going to do that after my mission.  Just any party that non members are going to show up to I am going to invite the missionaries. 

Also on Friday I completed 16 months in the mission and it was the best day ever because the parents of the Moctezuma family got married.  It was really interesting to see a marriage here in Mexico because you just go to the office of the judge and sign papers but it was still pretty exciting.  

Then Sunday was the best day ever.  There were lots of baptisms. The bishop was super happy because he teaches gospel principles now, so all the investigators love him.  He always ends up baptizing almost all of our investigators.  Our gospel principles class has gotten huge.  So huge that there is no space for the people, so now you graduate from gospel principles after 2 months and there are still over 30 people in the class each week.  It makes me so happy to see how much this ward focuses on missionary work because it really just brings a different feeling to the ward. 

Then on Sunday for Father's Day we went and visited the Jimenez family.  They are some investigators we have who are suuuuper funny.  And they always feed us so much food, I feel like my stomach is going to explode every time we go to their house.  They are the best, though, and they have two dogs who have the same hair as Hermana Infante and I do.  

Also, I learned how to cut hair this week -- hahaha, not really. Little baby Franco Moctezuma doesn't like to get his hair cut, but one day I was talking to him and he said I could cut his hair.  His mom was happy, so she gave me the scissors, so I went for it.  I am super proud.  He only has one bald spot in the back.....but for my first time it was pretty good hahaha.  Anyway, I hope you guys have a great week and I hope all the kids have fun in their camps.

Love,
Hermana Jones

Elder Jones Week 54

Hey guys! Glad you had such a great week with Grandma and Grandpa.

So transfers were this week and as you`ve already heard, I was made district leader.  BUT not in Rimac, they moved me to Callao. Widely known as the most dangerous and poorest part of Lima.  If you look at a map of Lima, there´s a peninsula jutting out of it.  That´s my district.  Elder Mondaca and I are in the Callao Ward and Elder Mann, Elder Tejada, Elder Jordan, and Elder Patiño are in La Punta Ward.  Elder Mondaca is from Bolivia, Elder Mann and Elder Jordan are from Utah, Elder Patiño is from Ecuador, and Elder Tejada is from Honduras. We have the best district in the mission. Seriously these Elders are the best.  On Wednesday I gave my first District meeting training and it turned out great.  Also I have to interview 3 people this week for baptism, and I don´t know how to do that, but I´m sure it will work out fine.

This was President Borg´s last transfer meeting.  He´s going home this week, and we´ll have our new president, President Larson.  On Wednesday we had to go all the way back to Rimac for Rafael´s baptism, and we stayed for 15 minutes and had to leave to be able to get back to Callao in time, but it was really great to see him get baptized.  He was really happy. 

So I like the new sector, the members are really nice, but they aren´t used to accompanying the elders. Something that we´ve been focusing on this week is figuring out the schedules of the members and asking them when they can accompany us during the week, and we actually had quite a few lessons with members this week.  Just like investigators won´t get baptized if we don´t invite them to get baptized, members won´t accompany us if we don´t invite them to accompany us.  Also we were able to print off the ward list of action, and I told La Punta about it and how effective it is, so they´re going to be working on that as well to find people that were given a baby blessing but weren´t baptized, or young men that are missing an ordination in the priesthood.  One of the struggles in this area is that on weekends on every street on every block there are parties going on. 

So we were able to see the dedication of the temple of Trujillo transmitted to the stake centers.  Elder Bednar and President Uchtdorf came to dedicate it.  When they were sealing the cornerstone on the temple you got to see what President Uchtdorf sounds like when he´s not giving a talk, and he´s a very happy and funny person.  The talks were great and you could feel the spirit very strongly there.  We weren´t allowed to take notes or bring anything inside the chapel because it was like a temple session. 

On Monday, before the transfers we were able to teach Samuel.  He brought his nonmember mother to our ward mission night last Thursday where we saw "Meet the Mormons" and he said that she really liked it. Before watching it, she had said that she wasn´t going to let him serve a mission, but after seeing it she said that he needed to serve a mission.   So now he´s preparing to serve a mission a year from now.  Also when I went to Rafael´s baptism on Wednesday, the Rosales Flores family was there and Rogger told me that on Tuesday he met with the bishop to start his mission papers! So I´m happy for both of them.

I had a great week. I´m trying not to be too overwhelmed by how much has changed in the last week. I´m happy and I´m learning a lot.  I´m really grateful for the time I had with Elder Price to learn how to be an effective missionary.  I hope you guys have a great week! 

Elder Jones