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

Week 92

Hey guys! That`s such great news about the house!! That`s going to be so great. I`m really glad for you guys. It looks really green all year round in magdalena, they are always watering the plants. So as you all know I`m training!! WOO I`m so excited. My companion`s name is Elder Alfaro from Tarija, Bolivia. We are both new in the Valdiviezo ward, condevilla stake, where it is not really green all year round. our sector is a giant hill with lot`s of stairs and lots of people. It`s kind of like Caja de Agua but the hill is taller and bigger. you can see our entire mission and beyond from the top of our hill. My companion and everyone in our ward thinks that I have a year in the mission, and I`m not going to tell him until May 31st. I feel like it`ll be better that way so I`m not tempted to talk about going home all the time. Everyone thinks that I speak really good spanish for someone that only has a year in the mission. So that boosts my self esteem. My companion is awesome. He just barely finished a year of membership, and I admire the great leap of faith he has taken to come out on the mission. I was in Rimac training Elder Mestre when he was baptized. We had a great week. Elder Robbins from the presidency of the seventy came to our mission and I feel like it was exactly what I needed to hear at this moment in my mission. Elder Alfaro from day one hasn`t been afraid to talk to people when we contacted, because he would accompany the missionaries a lot in Bolivia. But it was hard for him at first to talk during the lessons, but now he`s getting used to it and his personality is coming out. I`m really greatful for the advice that sister Larson gave in the meeting with the trainers. She said that an eight year old doesn`t clean a bathroom like she would clean a bathroom, but at least they`re cleaning the bathroom. I feel like with elder Bates we had created a really great atmosphere in our companionship in which we both knew how to listen to eachother and the investigators and really teach with one voice. But thanks to Sister Larson`s advice on tuesday I was able to recognize from the start that it wasn`t going to be like that, at least for now, with my new companion. We worked really hard this week and I can tell that Elder Alfaro is getting a lot of satisfaction from what he`s doing. He teaches with the first book of mormon he ever recieved, and he keeps his place in it with his first contact card. I`m really excited about these next 3 months I`ll be with him, and I want to take advantage of the time I have left to continue to develope christlike attributes.

Elder Jones  

Week 91

WOOOO SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA!!! I´M SO EXCITED FOR TYLER!!!! I just looked it up and it seems like a sweet mission. Way bigger than my mission. That´s so awesome he´s going to do great. That´s awesome that he´s leaving so soon and that he´s going to go to the Mexico CCM. He´s going to love it. So all three of us are going to be Spanish speakers!! We´ll have to plan out really well what we´re going to do from the 9th to the 13th. We had a great week! Johan and Erika were baptized! Ali and Dominica were going to get baptized too but on Saturday morning their grandpa came to take the kids out to do something and didn´t bring them back in time for their baptism. So they´re going to be baptized on Saturday. But what´s important is that the parents were baptized. the bishop baptized them. It was one of the best baptismal services I´ve ever attended. So many members came and bore their testimonies. Johan and Erika bore their testimonies, and I can tell that they´re going to stay in the church. They´re so happy.

This entire week we were looking for an apartment for the sisters in Jesus Maria, and it took a lot of time because there aren´t a lot of rooms within our price range that are big enough and meet the privacy requirements. we probably looked at about 10 apartments this week, and none of them met the requirements, until we finally found one that did. In the flyer that they put up they said that they were renting it for 650 soles a month which fit into our price range, but when we went to go see it they raised it to 800. I don´t know why, and I don´t want to assume why they raised it to 800 for us, but we told them that we would have to talk to our president about it because it was out of our budget. President Larson approved it, so I felt like we should move the sisters in, but Elder Bates kept saying that we should look for somewhere cheaper. I didn´t want to waste more time looking for another apartment because the apartment was approved by the president, so I resisted, but Elder Bates persisted. So I realized that if Elder Bates felt that way, it was probably an impression from the Holy Ghost, and that I should listen as well. So the moment that I mentally accepted what Elder Bates was saying, a member from their ward called us telling us that they were renting an apartment. We went to go see it, and it was a lot cheaper, and a lot bigger than the other one that we found. So I was reminded that I not only need to listen to the impressions that the Holy Ghost gives to me, but also to my companion. 

We found a lot of people to teach this week and I hope that whoever comes here to replace me tomorrow is going to help them get baptized! Have a great week!!

Elder Jones 

Week 90

Hey guys! So Johan wasn´t baptized on Saturday because he got stuck in traffic and missed his interview several times this week. and neither the president nor his counselors could do an interview on Saturday, so we postponed it for next week. So he´ll be baptized on Saturday with his family. He´s still happy. Erika and Ali are excited for their baptism too. Today in the family home evening with them and the bishop´s family we´re going to teach them about keeping the Sabbath day holy. This week we had a very spiritual lesson with them. Erika had heard about the sealing in the temple at church and she wanted to know what that meant. After explaining what it meant, Sebastian, a young man preparing for his mission, the bishop´s family, Elder Bates, and I all shared our testimonies about the temple and what it means to us to be sealed to our families. It was a very tender moment and they understand that their goal is the temple one year from now. Also we were a little afraid that they wouldn´t accept to pay tithing, because they have a lot of money, but they accepted it right away. They´re excited to pay their tithing and they know that it will bless them. I´m really grateful for the opportunity I´ve had to meet them and be an observer of their conversion.

We met a lot of really prepared people this week. We met so many that I don´t have time to describe them all. We met a family that is half Croatian and half venezuelan. They know a family from another ward in the stake. The parents are catholic, but the mom, Romi, spends most of her day on familysearch.org either looking up names of ancestors or indexing. She loves family history, but she´s never talked to missionaries before. They have 8 children, but so far we´ve only been able to teach the parents with 2 of their daughters: Romina, 17 years old, and Yanina, 16 years old. Their daughters aren´t members of any church because Romi wants them to look for their own religion now that they are old enough to think for themselves. They are awesome, they have so many questions because they are actively searching for the truth. It´s really convenient for us being missionaries of the true church because we can answer all their questions with true doctrine, and with clarity. Yanina feels like she has done too many bad things in the past to be acceptable to god. She also has a smoking addiction and knows that in our church we don´t allow smoking. She experiences same sex attraction, and whenever she investigates a church they tell her that she is a bad person because of it and that she needs to be cured. From the very start they were both very sincere with us about what it is they are searching for and what they struggle with in life. That has helped us really address their biggest questions first. We felt like we should share Ether 12:27 and 2 Nephi 26:33 with them and explain about how weaknesses come from God. He gives them to us to allow us to be humble, and if we are humble and come unto him, he will make our weaknesses a strength for us. But even though god gives certain weaknesses to certain people, it doesn´t mean that he loves some more than others, because all are equal in his sight. We also talked about the atonement and baptism. There isn´t anything that can separate us from god´s love. He will always welcome us back, and it is possible to come back t through repentance and baptism thanks to Jesus Christ´s atonement. Romina doesn´t have as many immediate problems, she just really enjoys the book of Mormon and she´s already read quite a few chapters this week. lds.org is answering all her questions we haven´t had time to answer yet.They came to church yesterday and they loved it. They love singing and the bishop, without knowing it, invited them to join the priests and Laurels prepare a special musical number for church in a couple of weeks. The young men and women did a really great job of making them feel included. At the end of the meetings Yanina told us "I can give up smoking for this", and they are going to make sure that their parents come to church next week.

We also had a really great lesson with Hernan. Miguel, our ward mission leader, and the bishop were there with us in the lesson. Hernan hadn´t read the chapter we had left for him, and he wouldn´t budge on his answer about being baptized, But he said that he had been praying and that he was finding a lot of guidance. So we started reading the chapter that we left him and I felt impressed to ask him if he has ever in the time he has been listening to us, directly asked God if this was the true church. He said no. So we started to explain the importance of an answer from God, and how nothing else will matter if he receives an answer from God. We invited him to kneel down with us and to ask God if this is the true church. He did so sincerely, and after the prayer he remained kneeling with his eyes closed. It was silent for a few minuets, and during that time we were all praying that he would recognize an answer. When he finished he decided to be baptized, but on friday he´s going to pick a date. That is the power of prayer.

I hope you guys have a great week! 

Elder Jones