WEEK 16

How are yall doing??? Good? Ok cool:)

 

I know im doing good, cause we just had the spiritual nuclear bomb dropped on us known as General Conference! I mean, holy cow was that so awesome.... 

This was the first time in my life when a conference finished, and i was like, "what the heck??? thats all? I thought conference was two hours!" And then it turns out 2 hours had passed... I guess time flies when your too busy paying attention! haha

 

I took about a million pages of notes... seriously.. i think its actally a million.... i just was writing all of my thoughts and feelings and things that the spirit was telling me. that way i can use them with my scripture studies, and its just awesome. Ill put some of my thoughts and favorites at the end of the email:)

On tuesday, i went on exchanges again with the other missionaries in my same ward. I spent the day and night with Elder Garfield! He has about 8 months in the mission, and he is from virginia.

We were getting to know eachother better and all that fun stuff (in english, which felt really weird) and i honestly felt pretty bad for him! He was one of the only members of the church, and he is kind of a super weird kid, and he got bullied alot. He didnt have any fun or cool stories to share like i did, and i realized that and stopped sharing my stories and just wanted to listen to him! I felt like he just wanted someone to talk to! He ended up telling me that he never had anyone he truly considered a friend until he got here in the mission field.... super sad! Anyways, we worked hard, and it was a good experience!

 

This week was our mid transfer interviews, and i feel really good about how it went with the presidnt!

He told me that he was amazing with my spanish, and am progressing so fast. He also said he is very happy with my progression as a missionary. He asked me to keep preparing myself like im doing now so that when the lord needs me for a leadership position, ill be ready! I finish with my Training (the first 12 weeks, a missionary is put with a senior companion who is their trainer) on the 23 of april, and after that im able to hold positions of leadership or even Train a new missionary! or just be a normal missionary out there working my butt off and preaching the gospel:) whats important is that we are serving, not what positions:) There was a few talks in conference about that, and it really stood out to me!

 

did have one day this week, that kinda sucked.... One of the first ones where i returned to the house feeling a little let down and super worn out. We had about 6 lessons fall through in a row... and all of them happened to be on opposite sides of our area! we ended up crossing all the way across the area about 5 times! it was a whole ton of walking, and very little success. We tried doing some contacting after our last lesson fell, and we had a few super rude people answer their doors and swiftly close them again. So it was kinda hard, but hey! its about time i had a hard day;) haha now i should be good for another few months;)

 

Also this week, we found a family of gold! we contacted initially the son whos called malik, he has 14 years and he loves doing exercise and playing futbol (soccer) Later we talked to his mom, and she said that their family is very close, and have actually been looking for new churches to attend! We shared a quick lesson about families and then they had to leave, but they were very eager to have us come back! Heck yeah! Some people really are prepared for the gospel!

 

conference!

Earlier this year, president Nelson came and spoke to all of us in my mission, and during his talk on the saturday morning session, he started talking about how he recently was in mexico and all of us missionaries lifted our hands up like we just got a touchdown cause we thought he was gonna talk about us!!! but no... he just mentioned about the government and how he spoke with them.... SO CLOSE!!! haha

 

I really enjoyed Gary Sabin's talk, he told about how the example of his grandfather in the navy lead to his two close friends being baptised, and from those two, 12 missionaries left out to preach the gospel! That is some fine missionary work! Just from our example, we make a diffrence!

 

It was kinda sad to see how hard it was for president monson to talk, and he spoke for like under 3 minutes... His talks on Charity and The book of mormon were so powerfull, and so awesome. This world honestly does lack charity, and everybody can work on that one a little bit:)

 

Anyone else notice that there was a bucnh of talks about listening to the promptings of the spirit? I did! Super important in missionary life! haha 

I also really liked the quote from Uchtdorf, who said "the spirit of fear is not from god" and talks about how all good feelings are fruits of the spirit. Its super easy to not want to talk to peopl and have some drunk guy answer and start yelling, but the spirit of fear is not from god! We can pray to have strenght from the spirit, and i have done it so many times, and its so amazing! Such a blssing we have to have the Spirit to be with us always. 

 

Oh yeah! I was actually able to watch conference in English! Me and 5 other white guys in a tiny room! I never realized how much of a blessing it is to hear the profets speak with their real voices! In spanish, they have voice overs of native spanish speakers! So yeah, still got conference in English:) 

 

Mission life is dope, and constantly having work to do is such a blssing! keeps my 1000 mph mind working good! 

 

Till next week,

Elder Jones 

 

(PICTURE EXPLANATIONS)

Helped one of our investigators decorate their car cause their little 5 year old daughter had a spring party at their school, and her dad wantd to take her in a "cool ride" 

 

Also, super majestic mountain backround, looking to the future picture;) haha

 

one normal selfie:)