WEEK 22

Whats going on everybody! Elder Jones here with another weekly email from the streets of Mexico;)

Im working on finishing Doctrine and Covenants this transfer, and i found some pretty cool stuff! 

D&C 58:30-33 talks about how god is someone who will keep his promises! If we are promised a blessing for doing something, we ARE going to receive those blessings! The little details or "fine print" is that we have our part as well. We need to be doing the things we made covenants for, so that god is able to come through on his end of the deal! On the other end of this, it also says that god cant withhold punishment either. If he said those who dont listen to his words will suffer more, they are gonna suffer more! 

D&C 61:33-34 Talks about missionaries! Tells us that we should go out and forth among those people that are wicked, or that just need the word of god! And the part that i really love the most, is in Verse 36.. It says to be happy about it! We cant be missionaries that are preaching a message of pure happiness if we are moping around and dont wanna be here! 

One thing that i really take to heart about being a missionary, is still being Me! I still have a personality and still love to make jokes and have a great time! It doesnt ever say that we have to be Doctrinal robots! 

Actually, last pday, we went to Parque Fundidora. Its a pretty cool old factory that helped found monterrey, it was an industrial steel manufacturing company, but now they turned it into a museum of Monterrey´s history. Its a really huge park, and its super fun to visit! Elder Allred had never been before so we went and i have a ton of pictures for yall in the other picture email. 

Kinda cool experience this past sunday, we have a member in our ward who has been a member for a really long time... he got baptised in like 2001, and was really active for a year or so, and then kind of inactivated... My first week in the field we visited him and he came to church that week, and has been every week since! He got the priesthood back in 2001 and had blessed the sacrament once, but we have been working with him to get him back to blessing the sacrament, and we even bought him a white shirt so he could do it, and this week he did! It made me so happy to see him up on the stand blessing the sacrament (with another member we basically did the same thing with)

So cool to see how the church is blessing their lives, and we are working towards helping them with goals for the temple! Heck yeah missionary work! haha

Damariz and Pepe originally had scheduled their baptism for the 13th (today) but we moved it back to the following saturday, the 20th of this month. They wanted more time to invite their families and other friends and stuff, and we respected that. They still wanted to have it the next soonest weekend possible, so that all worked out good. I made some super awesome invitations that we are gonna give out to other investigators, and ward members to invite their friends as well. Hopefully we can get some of our other families that are close to baptism, feel the spirit that is present at the baptism of Damariz and Pepe:) Keep the family Belmarez Torres in your prayers please! Satan always throws doubts at investigators right before they are gonna get baptised, so they could use a little extra help:)

With them this week, we had the coolest lesson ever! We got a text from Damariz asking if we had already eaten dinner... we said no, we were just looking for people to teach, and she said more or less "how does campechanas and a gospel lesson sound?" me and elder allred just laughed and were like yeah, that sounds awesome! so we went over to their house, rode to get some of the best food in the entire whole universe infinity and then ate it with their family, and then had an awesome spiritual lesson. Definately the coolest lesson in the mission to this point;) hahaha 

Last night was the ward celebration of mothers day, and they had a mariachi band! That was probably the coolest thing ever! Heck yeah mexico!

Tonight, we are going to help a member of the ward who is in a wheelchair (he doesnt have any legs) fix the ramp in front of his house with concrete, so im really excited to help him with that! I just love working and doing service projects! getting my hands dirty every once in a while is so gratifying! haha 

I get to video call my family tommorow, and it also happens to be my 5 month mark! Time has just flown by! its crazy!

Lifes good ladies and gentleman! Loving being a missionary, and its the coolest thing ever:)

Till next week!

Elder Jones 

Various pictures at fundidora (the video is us jamming to the really weird soundtrack they had blasting around the whole park... haha)

Me and mi compañero in our sweet Monterrey sombreros

The mariachi!