Week 99

So we had a great week! We found out that there is going to be a communal marriage in the municipality of San Martin de Porres. (exactly the same place as last year with the Rosales Flores family in Rimac, almost exactly the same day.) On May 21st. Juan Carlos and Karen are excited about it, and they´re already getting their papers ready. We also invited Lidia and Victor to get married on may 21st and they also accepted! Lidia is Juan Carlos´ sister. She has been looking for work since before we arrived here, and precisely the same week that she and her husband decided to get married on a specific day, a job opened up at the work of one of the members in the ward, and she won´t have to work on sundays. Mosiah 2:24 "And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you;". 

This week we had left Juan Carlos and Karen Alma 32 to read and they had only read half of it. So we were reading the rest of it with them, and I can´t tell you how many times I´ve read Alma 32 on my mission, but this time I realized something I hadn´t seen before. We read verse 42 that reads, "And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst." I was thinking about the fruits of the gospel, blessings, and spiritual experiences that we recieve from God. They are intended to enjoyed personally, only for us. But whenever we partake of the fruit we are left with the seeds. We don´t eat the seeds, they are intended to be shared with others. The only way to obtain the seeds is by partaking of the fruit. No other part of the tree has seeds. In order for missionaries to constantly plant seeds (even though technically the spirit plants them) in the heart of others, they must constantly be partaking of the fruit, or they run out of seeds. I´m reminded of the conference talk by Bishop Waddell in april when he said that in Lehi´s dream the people that partook of the fruit only once were later ashamed and fell away, but the people that were continually partaking of the fruit did not pay attention. The gospel has to be continually working for us, and we need "many revelations (or spiritual experiences) daily". With every fruit that god gives us, he also gives us the seeds, or the responsibility to share it.

One thing that we recently noticed about our sector that is unique is that basically everyone that lives on the hill is related. They all know eachother. Now that we are teaching several families, we realize that they´re all related. When we ask for references from our investigators none of them say "I don´t know anyone here". They all tell us to go visit their friends or family members. This ward has so much potential because once things start moving, and a couple more families get baptized, the growth of the church here is going to be exponential.

Yesterday we had lunch with the Capuñay family. Brother capuñay served in Santiago Chile from 2005 to 2007, and his mission president was.. Brad Wilcox. hahah. Elder Holland was the Area president of Chile during his time there and he said that twice a month he had family home evening with Elder and Sister Holland and their investigators.  

We´re both really happy and we´re having lots of really great experiences, and I hope you all have a great week! 

Elder Jones

Week 98

Hey guys!
Congrats on moving in to the new house! It`s going to be a great missionary opportunity. Make a conscious effort to make friends with those that aren`t members of the church in the neighborhood. Especially Mom and Dad. Two questions that I have been pondering a lot this week, and that all of you can think about this week, are: Why is it important to have good member friends? and Why is it important to have good nonmember friends? How can you have a good balance?

So the Church has announced where the new temple will be. Los Olivos! I can see Los Olivos from my apartment on the hill. 

We had a great week! Like always we did a lot of service. Harumi was finally confirmed almost a month after her baptism. We learned a lot this week about the importance of working with the head of the family. The uncle of Harumi, Juan Carlos, went to her baptism a few weeks ago and he really liked it. We haven`t been able to teach him and his family until this week because he works a lot. But now we have been able to find him at 8 o`clock in the morning before he goes to work, and he`s so excited about the gospel. He attended church with his family in Cusco when he was little until he was 7, when his family went inactive. He is now 27 and lives with his future wife, Karen, and they have an eight year old son named Lenning. The first lesson we were only able to find him, and he told us that he was willing to do everything it takes for him and his family to get baptized. Later in the week we explained to the entire family the blessings of the temple, and now Juan Carlos is willing to do everything it takes to be sealed to his family in the temple. They all came to church yesterday, and they really enjoyed it. They are working on getting married as soon as possible because they both feel that it is time to get married. It reminds me of Johan and his family when I was in Magdalena. When the father is the first one to get excited about church, everyone follows. We have also been teaching Teodoro who is 57 years old, goes to catholic church every week, and is actually married to his wife Jacky. He wasn`t religious in his life until december. When he was really sick in the hospital someone gave him a new testament, and he has been reading that ever since. It has always been hard to teach him because he always wants to teach us what he has learned from the bible and doesn`t really listen to us when we respond. Finally last week we gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to read it. For the past two weeks he has been reading it and comparing it with his new testament which is exactly what we want him to do, and it is answering his questions about if it is necessary to be baptized again, or if he should pray to the virgin. The other day we saw his wife Jacky and she told us "That book is changing my husband. He wants to get baptized. I think I want to get baptized too." They are going to accompany us to church on Sunday. Last night there was an activity about family history and the temple for the recent converts, investigators, or less actives in the mission in one of the institute buildings. We brought the Damian family and there were hundreds of people there. At the end they gave out My Family booklets and temple coloring books for the kids. On the bus ride back I was sitting next to the driver, his name was José. His wife was the one that collected the money from the people, and their 8 year old son was in the bus with them. Guadalupe, who is 9 years old, gave her coloring book to the boy and his mom was looking through it with him. I started talking with José about the temple and they want to go to church. They live in... Los Olivos. hahah. I hope they end up going to church. 

We had a great week and I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Jones       

Week 97

Hey guys!
Sounds like everything is going great. That´s great to hear about the house, work, neighborhood friends, and Tyler´s mission prep class. We had lot´s of great experiences this week. On Tuesday we helped a man destroy his old wooden hut and then put together a new one, all in 2 hours. Nicole´s father changed his mind and said that she needs to wait until June to get baptized. We´re going to try to get him to agree to a date in Maty. Also Nely will have her birth certificate on Wednesday but now all of a sudden her husband wants to wait until June to get married. I´m not sure why everyone wants to wait until June to repent, but we´re going to try to help them do it sooner. Everyone thinks I´m going home in march, and I feel like it´s better if they don´t know that I wont be here in June. I don´t want their decisions to have anything to do with me or when I go home. I´ve seen it with my other companions that were finishing the mission. It´s kind of like how we shouldn´t know when the second coming is. Our desire should be to repent today, regardless of when the last day we have to repent is. Elder Alfaro is doing great. He´s coming out of his shell and he´s coming up with a lot of great ideas to help us work more efficiently instead of just following me. We´re working on helping the ward members get more excited about missionary work, and helping us out. Rodrigo is doing great! his grandma and extended family are going to come in May for his baptism! He´s still really excited about it. His parents are a losing a little bit of interest, and wanted us to bring Rodrigo to church so that they wouldn´t have to, and we made it very clear to them that we aren´t here for Rodrigo, but the entire family. We have lots of great spiritual experiences daily and we are happy. I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Jones

Week 96

Hey guys! Sounds like you all had a great spring break! We had an awesome week. We found lots of people to teach and Elder Alfaro is doing great. This week the main excuse that people used to tell us that they didn´t have time to listen to us was that their children had lots of homework, so we´ve helped a lot of children with their homework this week to be able to find families. The parents almost always accept because they themselves can´t help their children with their homework. Usually one of us is helping with homework and the other is talking with the family. I think I forgot to tell you guys this, but Elder Alfaro was studying Chemical Engineering in Bolivia. So we get along well. It´s a really easy way to gain people´s trust because they see that we aren´t robots and that we´re here to serve them. We´ve been teaching a young man named Rodrigo and his family. He really likes to learn about God and his grandma and extended family are all members. He went with them to the temple in December and his grandma bought him a triple combination, hymnbook, and The Testaments movie. He`s been reading the book of Mormon since December, and also listening to the Jehovah`s witnesses. The first time we met him he was in Alma, and we were shocked. We taught him and his mom about the restoration and we started explaining what baptism was he said "Mom, I want to get baptized!" before we could even invite him. His mom said that they would have to talk to his father. Later in the week they said that Rodrigo`s father was opposed to his baptism because he didn`t want him to lose 2 years of study, but that we could talk to him on Sunday. we came by on Sunday morning and the dad, Hugo, is actually really awesome. We had a great lesson and at the end when his father asked us if it was obligatory for his son to go on a mission after getting baptized, I was tempted to go the easy way out and say that it`s technically not obligatory, which is true, but withholding the part about how it is the duty of each baptized young man in the church, and is what God expects of us, just so Hugo would let his son get baptized. But then I realized that if I would have  said that then it wouldn`t be working with the end in mind. So we explained the part about how it is our duty and we bore our testimonies about how our missions have changed us. Then Hugo surprisingly said, "I want my son to serve a mission". He also wants to participate with his family in the church. So now Rodrigo is preparing for a baptismal date May 6th, and we are working with his parents to be able to get married.

Also yesterday we visited the father of Nicole, who is Harumi`s cousin. Nicole comes to church every week but doesn`t have permission to be baptized. But yesterday we visited her father, and we explained to him what baptism is, he felt the spirit, and now Nicole has a baptismal date for this Saturday. Not only that but her father, Andres, wants to go to church because he`s "curious". I know that he felt the spirit. 

We had a lot of other really great experiences that I don`t have time to tell right now, but we have seen the hand of the Lord work with us this week. I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Jones

Week 95

Hey guys! So as you all expect, the entire stake center went crazy yesterday when President Monson announced that there will be a 2nd temple in Lima. The 4th in Perú. It´s really exciting for all of us. We had a great week and I really enjoyed conference. We felt that it didn´t make sense to wait until the 23rd for Harumi´s baptism and we invited her to get baptized on Sunday after the conference! So Elder Alfaro had his first baptism yesterday. It was a really great baptismal service. Many ward members came. The first time we met Harumi she said that she could feel the spirit when people in the church bore their testimony and she wished that she could have a testimony like them. After her baptism she was given the opportunity to bare her testimony and I could tell that she was really happy about her decision and that she has known the things she bore testimony about for a few months. She just needed help recognizing an answer and she herself needed to make the decision to be baptized. She was so happy after coming out of the water. Elder Alfaro was nervous but he did a great job.

On Wednesday of this week I felt the impression to write a talk about the phrase "retain in remembrance" used by alma the younger in Alma 5. So I did and it´s about 6 pages long. I didn´t know why I wrote it, but I was happy that I did because I learned a lot about how remembrance is used in the scriptures. Then during the Sunday afternoon session Elder Gong gave his talk on exactly that, and it made me so happy because I was able to get even more out of his talk, and many other talks, because of the talk I had prepared. I think one of my favorite moments of the conference was after Elder Kearon gave his talk about refugees when President Uchtdorf stood up to announce the following speakers and he was crying. I got a lot out of the conference, and I feel like I have more energy and desires to take advantage of my time left on the mission. 

I hope you all have a great spring break!

 Why Lima needs TWO Temples!!!!

Glory to God on the (second) highest

Week 94

Hey guys sounds like everything is going great. I can´t believe that Seth is 8 years old!!! also that must mean that Emmett is 2 years old, which is crazy. We had a great week! A lot of people left to their homelands in other parts of Peru because there was a 4 day weekend for the catholic holidays. Almost everyone in my sector is not from Lima, but from some other part of Peru. It´s funny, I´ve been here long enough to be able to guess what part of Peru someone is from just by the way they look and talk. The Damian family is doing great. Their daughter, Harumi, had plans to get baptized this saturday, April 2nd, but the bishop said that it would be better to wait until April 23rd so she could get confirmed in a sacrament meeting. (we wont have sacrament meeting for 3 weeks because of general conference, Peruvian elections, and then stake conference). She was sad that she has to wait that long to get baptized, and that´s a really good thing. Today we went to the mission offices in Magdalena so my companion could have a meeting with the mission psychologist, and I talked to the secretaries about the birth certificates of the everyone we want to help get married, and they said that they´re on their way and that they´ll be here soon! So that´s exciting. After his meeting I took him to the beach in magdalena because he´s never seen an ocean before! Bolivia doesn´t have coast.

We did lots of unplanned service this week, and that has helped us find lots of new investigators. We mixed concrete by hand to help a man build his house. We picked and carried rock for a man that also wants to build his house. We carried bricks up staircases to help another man build his house. There are a lot of people building their houses, and it´s hard work so they always accept our help. He´re working with the bishop to help a less active man named Julio overcome alcoholism. Sometimes we tend to think that addictions take away our agency, at least in some degree. But what I have seen this week in working with Julio is that with addictions we don´t lose our agency in any degree, but we lose the hope that we can change. And that can be recovered. On Saturday night Julio fell into his addiction, got drunk, and got himself into a fight with someone that was also drunk. When we found him yesterday, he had two black eyes, cuts all over his face and back and a part of his ear had been bitten off by the man. Julio had rubber gloves, gauz, and rubbing alcohol in his house so I got to remember life guarding times and I cleaned his wounds. He had two really deep cuts in his back that looked like they were from a broken beer bottle. They were full of dirt so they took a while to clean. We told him that he needed to go to the hospital to get stitches in his back, sohe´s going to go today. I had never cleaned someone´s wounds before as a service and the feeling I had while doing it was different from the feeling I have while doing other service. I feel like it was the pure love of Christ. He had brought this pain upon himself, but he couldn´t clean his wounds by himself.

I´m learning a lot here in Magdalena and I´m enjoying my time with Elder Alfaro. I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Jones   

Week 93

Hey guys!

Sounds like everyone is doing great. I can`t believe that the school year is coming to a close, it feels like it just started. We had a great week! We have 3 families that we are currently helping to get married. Gerardo and Maria have two sons that are returned missionaries and they have known the church for a very long time, but they aren`t married. We were hoping for some news about their papers coming in this week but they still haven`t been able to get them. Gerardo is trying to stop smoking to be able to get baptized, and he`s gone 8 days without smoking so far. We`re trying to stop by every day to see how he`s doing with that. Nely and Jorge are trying to get married as well but outside of Lima because of the storms there were mudslides that destroyed a kilometer of the road, so they can`t go to their pueblo to get their birth certificates. Also Victor Damian and Lidia. Their daughter, Noemi, who is 15, is a recent convert from last month. The Damian family is awesome. They have 4 daughters ages 15, 13, 9, and 5. They`ve known the missionaries since December and they`ve constantly been coming to church, but their 13 year old daughter Harumi, has always been afraid of baptism. Every time we go we try to talk about baptism and she tries to avoid it. This week we`ve been trying to address her biggest questions and we finally got her to give us a strong yes. She wants to get baptized on April 2nd. Her parents are awesome. They want to get married and be good examples for their daughters. They love the church and they`re just really good people. So we`re going to help them get married without doing everything for them so they can exercise their faith in doing something to receive blessings for it.

Elder Alfaro is doing great. We`ve had some tender moments this week. It hasn`t been easy for him to adapt to missionary life, but he`s doing great. I`ve learned that teaching him through example doesn`t mean taking the steering wheel and doing everything by myself, but rather  giving him many opportunities to lead the teaching. We get along really well and I`m learning a lot from him. 

I hope you guys have  a great week!

Elder Jones