Elder Jones Week 74

HEY GUYS! I´m so happy for Courtney and Stephen!!!! That´s such great news. Did he talk to dad first? haha. My release date is June 1st. When does Tyler graduate? That reminds me, I need to know if I should keep my return plane ticket to O´Hare or if I should change it for a ticket to the Indianapolis airport or any other airport near there. Yea I´m done thinking about that now, I´ve still got a lot of time left in the mission. 

Transfers were last week and it looks like I´m going to be in Magdalena for 3 more months because Elder Montoya goes home in 5 weeks. 

We had a great week! We went to the temple with Mario and his brother Mickey. Mario was baptized for his grandfather, and he had a great experience! Lucio and Zulema also came to the temple with their 4 year old daughter, Ariana, and they had a great time. They also had some great news! Ariana is going to go to a school where they require the parents to be married, so they are going to get married! woo. But they still haven´t done anything yet to get married to I´m trying not to let myself get too excited because this is like the 6th time they´ve told us that they´re going to get married. 

We spent all of Friday and Saturday cleaning, painting, and fixing the house where the sisters in Pueblo Libre are going to live. It was a lot of work, but we´re glad that everything is finally ready for them to move in. I should have taken a before and after picture of the house like how they do in Hoarders. 

 Because we live so close to the offices and to a lot of hospitals, normally when someone in a hospital needs a blessing they ask us to do it. This week we had the opportunity to give a blessing in a hospital to a man named Gregorio. The Assistants told us that he has been anti-mormon for many many years, and never wanted to receive the missionaries in his house. His brother is a returned missionary and his sister and father are recent converts. When we entered his hospital room he was reading a Liahona and he was glad to see us. He was hospitalized because his blood pressure had been rising uncontrollably and he wanted a blessing. We gave him a blessing and we talked to him for a while and we could tell that he had been humbled by this experience. I could feel the spirit very strongly in the room with him and we taught him about Jesus Christ and baptism, and he accepted to be baptized on the 28th. When we left we both felt really good. He doesn´t live in our mission boundaries but he´s going to attend church where he lives. 

Thanks a lot to Grandpa for the line of authority last week. I sent it to Ernesto this week and he really enjoyed it. His wife is a returned missionary and she remembered Howard W. Hunter from when she was baptized some years ago. I´m really happy here, and I´m really enjoying the ward. Have a great week! 

Elder Jones week 73

Hey guys! I hope you all had a great week. This week was great. It was the last week of the transfer and we took a picture of all the missionaries in the zone. There is a tradition in Peru to hit people with eggs on their birthday, so after taking the picture we all nailed Elder Yates, a new missionary in the zone, with a kilo of eggs for his birthday. He had no idea what was going on, but he was a good sport about it, and his companion brought an extra shirt for him. This week we were 30 missionaries in the zone! because 2 of the new secretaries are being trained. Elder Dyches and Elder Montenegro. They`re awesome. Elder Dyches likes to run so we`ve been running together almost every morning this week. I am so out of shape. We went to the temple this week! I hadn`t gone in a really long time. We`re also going to the temple on thursday with the recent converts in the ward, so that`ll be exciting. This entire week we`ve been really worried about finding a place for the sister missionaries in Pueblo Libre to live because the owner of the house where they are living is going to sell the house on november 10th. An elderly woman that attends Pueblo Libre offered her house because after the death of her husband she moved to live with someone else in the ward and she wanted to offer her old house to the sister missionaries. On saturday we went to go check out the house and we learned that she is a hoarder. She doesn`t throw out anything. Her house is a very narrow  4 story building and she wanted to offer the first 2 floors to the sister missionaries. But both floors were full of things that probably have sentimental value to her and also a lot of things that I`m sure didn`t have sentimental value. But she wasn`t willing to throw away, or give away, any of it. So we spent about 4 hours on saturday carrying things from the first and second floor to the 3rd floor. We`re not so sure how hygenic it is to live in a house where the other floors are full of trash, but at least the first 2 floors are looking pretty clean. 

We found several awesome people to teach this week. We found the Chaman family. The father is less active and the mom and 15 years old son, José, are not. The father, Enrique, is really good friends with our ward mission leader. Yesterday we went with him to visit Enrique for the first time and he was alone, but his wife and son were going to arrive soon. It really helped us gain their confidence that our ward mission leader was there. They listened to the missionaries about 2 years ago and José almost got baptized but they found out that their uncle was dying of skin cancer and the grandma was in deep stages of Alzheimer´s and they just stopped listening to the missionaries. Right now Enrique wants to come back to church. He`s been reading the Book of mormon since June when his mother died. They had a piano in the room and Enrique wanted me to play something on the piano when José came in to gain his confidence, because he likes piano, and I didn`t know what to play because they didn`t have any hymn books so I just started playing Clocks by Coldplay when he walked in and it turns out that he really likes Coldplay so we sucessfully gained his trust. He`s also really good friends with one of the daughters of Elder Moscosso. So we`re very confident that they are going to progress. José is going to play basketball with us and the Secretaries on saturday. 

Elder Jones week 72

Hey guys! We had a great week! We taught very few lessons in people´s homes because almost all of our appointments fell through this week. But we talked with a ton of people in the street. I started to get a little bit discouraged  because we weren´t finding anyone to teach and we hadn´t brought anyone new to the church in a few weeks. But we had a lot of opportunities to learn how to be persistent with the people we contact and do all that we can to share our message with them even when they are a little hesitant to listen to us. On Saturday we met a family and we invited them to church. They said they wanted to go so we said that we were going to come by half an hour early to pick them up. We did and an excuse came up and they said they were going to go by themselves but a little bit late, but we just waited for them to be able to bring them to church. We ended up arriving at church 30 minutes late, but at least they came! and we have an appointment with them on wednesday. Yesterday there was a multi stake conference broadcast for all the stakes in Peru and Bolivia. They really liked it! 

Also on Friday we visited Lucio and Sulema to invite them to a stake activity for married couples. They really didn´t want to go because they were going to have to wake up early the next day. We asked them when was the last time the two of them went out to do something fun without their children. They said 15 years. And when they said that they realized that they needed to go. and the other ward members that were there said that they looked like they were having a good time. Also they went to a stake devotional yesterday for married couples. Elder Godoy (an Area Seventy from our ward) and president Larson both spoke with their wives. We hope that it helped them. They are so ready. Their daughter in Utah was baptized on saturday. 

I hope you guys have a great week. 

Elder Jones   

Elder Jones week 71

Hey guys! We had another great week. On wednesday the zone leaders and sister trainers were supposed to have a meeting with Elder Waddell from the Area but he was called to the presiding bishopric so he wasn´t able to come. So we just had a normal mission conference. Last month our mission was the lowest mission in the area for new investigators, but this last week our mission came out as the highest in the area in several key indicators. The zone is doing a lot better. We were supposed to have 4 baptisms as a zone on saturday but all 4 of them fell through. The district leaders are making sure that they´ll get baptized this week. This next sunday there is going to be a conference for all the stakes in Peru and Bolivia, so no one is going to get confirmed this week and the next sunday will already be november, so October is pretty much over already. We´re meeting a lot of new people every day and a lot of them tell us that they want to get baptized but they just don´t show that with their actions, like coming to church. Lucio and Sulema were thiiiiiis close to making the decision to get married this week but something happened and they changed their mind. This week for the first time in the time we´ve been teaching them they read the book of mormon together as a couple, and that is what made them want to get married. On thursday we were on a companionship interchange and I was with Elder Torgersen and he asked Lucio how much time he has attending church and he said 5 sundays, but when he gets to 10... baptism. hahaha. I was soo happy. They started planning their wedding and their baptism and everything, but when we came back 2 days later something had happened and they felt like they needed to wait more time before they make the decision. The bishop talked to Arantza on sunday about it and he told us that Lucio has the desires to do what is right but he made a bad decision a couple of days ago and that discouraged him a little and it made him feel like he can´t change and that he´ll never be ready to be baptized. So this week the bishop is going to visit him to try and help him out a little. Their daughter that is in snow college in utah is getting baptized on saturday! so that´s exciting. We´re planning a trip to the temple with all the recent converts and we want to bring the Ortiz family. We think it will really help them. Also speaking of the temple. Jesus Pachas completed a year of membership this week and I called the elders in Caja de Agua to ask about him and they said he´s almost ready to get his endowment. He just needs to finish up some of his temple preparation classes. I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Jones

elder jones week 70

Hey guys! I had a great week! This week we`ve been trying to talk with everyone possible and invite them to baptism with a date. I can feel the change happening in me. I feel like any sort of remaining fear I had to stop people in the street to talk about the gosple has been uprooted. The entire zone is getting better at it too. This week as a zone we had more than six times more invitations to baptism with a date than a couple of weeks ago. I feel happier and more satisfied with my work at the end of the day now that we are really pushing ourselves to find new people to teach. We had a few crazy experiences this week with finding new investigators. So it turns out that Cruz and Ubaldina actually live half a block outside of our ward boundaries, so we passed the referral to Pueblo Libre, and they are going to get baptized in Pueblo Libre. But in the same corner where we met Cruz we have found various new investigators. Without fail everytime we pass by this corner of Arnaldo Marquez and Rio de Janiero someone stops us to tell us that they want to listen to the missionaries or some family member wants to get baptized. It`s insane. But we`ve had several experiences on the same side of the same corner. On that corner we met a guy from Switzerland that attended church for 3 months in Switzerland and never got baptized because he never prayed honestly to know if the church is true, and now he`s willing to try again but with real intent this time. Also this week while we were on the bus to go to Breña to interview someone for baptism, an old investigator, named Luis, that I had never met called me and told me that he wanted us to visit him as soon as possible and that he wanted to get baptized. We visited him the next day and he told us about a series of events that have caused some big changes in his life and his priorities and that he had made his decision to get baptized! So that`s good. Also this week we were on our way to an appointment that we weren`t very sure about because it seemed like the person wasn`t that interested when they agreed to let us come by, and a man asked us if we had anything to read. We started talking to him and we were there in the street talking to him for about an hour. He said that he wanted to get baptized. we made another appointment to visit him and his family( his wife and 2 kids) and gave him our number. yesterday his wife called us telling us that she is a less active member and that after her husband talked to us the other day he felt a lot better and that he is really interested in joining the church and now she wants to start going to church. The only thing is that this week they are moving to another part of Lima outside of our mission. We`ve noticed this week that as we talk to more people we find more people that are willing to accept the gospel. It sounds pretty simple but it is the truth. I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Jones   ps.     Oh and also my mission president and his wife know the Lex family from chicago. Sister Lex is sister Larson`s cousin. Haha small world

elder jones week 69

Hey guys! glad you all had a great week and enjoyed conference! We had a great week! We worked harder than I think I`ve ever worked on my misison this week, but still it`s not even close to the vision that President Larson has for the mission. On thursday we had mission council with President Larson and the other zone leaders and I`m really excited about the new changes that are going to occur in the mission. They`re going to help me stay more focused on my purpose as a missionary.

So we`re teaching Cruz who is the woman who found us in the street saying that she wants to get baptized. She attended the Saturday afternoon session of conference and she really liked it. She told us that she was going to be able to go to the session in the morning but didn`t show up and she showed up a little late to afternoon session so we didn`t see her come in. At the end of the session we were disappointed that she didn`t come and when they turned on the lights and we stood up we saw her! She`s still going strong for her baptism on the 24th. Also we met her ex-mother-in-law who lives with her this week. Her name is Ubaldina and she`s about 80 years old. When we came into the house to teach Cruz and her grandson, Ubaldina walked in and told us that she couldn`t listen to us because she`s catholic, but we invited her to come listen to our message about Jesus Christ, and she did. At the end we invited Cruz to get baptized on the 24th and she said yes, and before we could even ask Ubaldina she said that she wanted to get baptized too! She came to conference and she was sleeping through a lot of it but she said she felt the spirit. I think just the fact that she came to the conference is enough to show her faith in wanting to find out if the church is true despite her physical limitations. She has a really bad gambling addiction. She will leave her house and be in a casino for 3 days at a time, and sometimes lose up to 20,000 peruvian soles or 7,000 dollars. The baptismal interview doesn`t mention anything about gambling but we definitely want to help her out with that problem. We have also been teaching Cristian, who is japanese, and is a referral from the sisters in Pueblo Libre. We gave him a tour of the church this week and taught the gospel of jesus christ because he doesn`t know very much about Jesus Christ. When we showed him the baptismal font and explained baptism and extended the baptismal invitation, you could feel the spirit very strongly and he accepted. He wasn`t able to come to conference. 

I got a lot out of conference this time. While I was watching, I tried to write down introspective questions that came to my mind that I can meditate on later throughout the week and in my studies, instead of feverishly writing down every interesting sentence that I hear in the conference. I hope you guys have a great week! 

Elder Jones 

Elder Jones Week 68

Hey guys! I had a great week! I have a new companion! his name is Elder Montoya. You killed his father, prepare to die. (Ha, ha, ha  - joke) He´s from Juliacán, Sinaloa, Mexico.  He´s awesome.  He´s also about to finish his mission. He has 21 months in the mission.  I´m learning a lot from him.  

So yea, to catch you guys up on what happened last week, I was putting in the zone achievements in the morning and we received news that one of the young men in the ward had tried committing suicide and he was in the hospital.  So we went to the hospital to give him a blessing and then the entire day I was with Elder Anderson while he said goodbye to people.  

On Saturday Arantza and Mario were baptized.  And afterward Mario invited us and the mission secretaries to go eat chifa.  He´s so happy.  Arantza told Elder Dayton in her baptismal interview that the week before she met us she had been praying that someone would come to help her repent and feel closer to God.  So that´s awesome.  We´re still working on getting Lucio and Sulema married, they´re going through some problems right now that we don´t understand and we can´t figure out what is going on, but they don´t want to get married for now.  But some good news is that Eugenio and Doris from Rimac finally got baptized on Saturday! I met them in March and I baptized their daughter Sofia and I got to go back to Rimac to baptize them. They were so happy.  I´m glad things finally worked out for them.  

We´ve met a ton of new people this week.  The referrals have just been coming like crazy.  So we should be having quite a few people progressing this upcoming week.  On Saturday we were walking towards a referral´s house and since I´m the one showing Elder Montoya where everything is, I accidentally took a wrong turn and we could do one of two things; keep walking and take the longer route and at the same time keep my pride from getting hurt, or we could turn around and take the shorter route.  We took the shorter route, and while we were on the shorter route a woman came up to us asking us what she needed to do to get baptized in the Mormon church.  She had listened to missionaries in the past when she lived in Ica, but she never wanted to get baptized.  When she saw us and she felt like she needed to get baptized and she wanted us to prepare her to get baptized as soon as possible.  So that was the highlight of my week. 

Also the Luis that we were teaching when I first got here, the one who almost got bapitzed and changed his mind after a few days.  He lives with his aunt and uncle and cousin.  His uncle, Leonardo, is inactive, his aunt, Rosalía, attends church every week with her nephew Lyon who is 11 who was baptized in August.  Rosalía wants to get baptized but she can´t because Leonardo doesn´t want to get married.  They´re really hard to teach because Leonardo and Luis don´t want us to enter the house.  But this week we offered to do service and they let us in.  We helped them put a ton of books into bookshelves in their library. (they´re super rich and love to read).  And after that we taught them something short, and they came to church yesterday! So hopefully that´s not a one time thing and they´re actually interested in progressing.  I´m learning a lot and I´m really excited for this next week. We´re going to have a lot of people to teach.  I hope you guys have a great week! and congrats to Dan on his cross country meet!