I JUST WANT TO BE A TOOL IN THE LORD'S HANDS AND BRING THE JOY AND HAPPINESS I KNOW AS THE GOSPEL TO OTHERS HERE IN ARGENTINA

I don't think that the work can be summed up any better than Taylor said it in that one sentence I used as the headline for this post.  As a mom, I have been proud of all my boys for different reasons throughout their lives, but I have never felt such sustained joy!

hi everyone!

well this past week was a good one. daniel and ara both got baptized and confirmed! the service went well, when it was time for daniel to be submerged in the water to be baptized he freaked out and thought he was drowning before he went all the way under. so they had to do it a second time. the second time he went all the way under jaja. ara´s baptism was graceful. so it just goes to show girls are more graceful than boys jaja. so in church we had six investigators, excluding ara and daniel. daniels parents, aras mom and brother jorge, and a couple others. we also had about 50 in church in total! that is a record elder cox said since he has got here. a couple of inactive families came and it was great. one of the familys we have lunch with every week and the other we had family night with last week. they said that things had started going bad as soon as they stopped going to church. but they are coming back because they know they will receive the blessings for doing so. we found two new investigators this week and got a fecha for them for the 19 of march. so we are doing pretty well from what i know so far. i have heard that the most a missionary has got in baptisms is around 45. i was told by president to set a goal on how many baptisms i want. so i have set my goal at 45 for here in the mission. i just want to be a tool in the lords hands and bring the joy and happiness i know as the gospel to others here in argentina. so i am doing well here in cerri so far. i just hope it continues and the lord keeps on blessing us for our hard work. well last week not much else went down, we spent a lot of time searching around for baptismal clothing for ara and daniel. it took us until saturday morning to find clothing. it was a bit stressful but it all worked out. i heard that my zone this past week had 9 baptisms and 9 confirmations. i dont know if i already told you but president detlefsen and the member of the seventy who is over argentina set a goal to have 180 baptisms here in this mission this month of march. it is possible and i hope we can get it done! well that is all this week. i love you all and take care!

elder jones

A CRAZY WEEK, ANOTHER BAPTISM AND A GOAL OF 100 BAPTISMS FOR THE ZONE THIS MONTH!!!

No email problems this week!  After seven straight weeks of sending my email to Taylor Monday morning around 8 or 8:30 A.M., to make sure I didn't forget anything, knowing he didn't write until about 11:30 A.M., this week I sent it on Sunday evening to try and avoid the problems of the last couple weeks.  What a blessing, because today Taylor wrote at 5:10 A.M.!!

hola!

well sounds like all is going well back home. keep looking for the job mom! you will find something im sure. you are just finding a lot of people going to argentina arent you? well this is probably my most crazy week yet. a lot has happened. well to start off, silvana got baptized! but there is a super long story behind it. to start off, tuesday we had district meeting, afterwards, we did divisions and i went to maldonado and elder cox went to cerri with elder milne. so i am out with elder metcalf and we are doing contacts when i get a phone call from elder cox saying we are having a baptism that day. i was a bit confused. so he tells us silvana is goning to get baptized that night. apparently, while cox and milne were walking by a store, they saw rodrigo, silvanas son. he said that they were leaving that night. apparently, facundos friends had threatened her and she was planning on getting out of there and heading down to go live with her mom. so milne and cox went over to her house and told her she was getting baptized that day. so we called president detlefsen, got his ok and we had an emergency baptism. we also confirmed her as well. so after her baptism, she left an hour after her baptism with her kids. it was sad to see her and her kids go but what can we do? we got her address so we can send the missionaries over to finish all the lessons with her. so everything will go well there!

we also had zone conference this week. so i met all the missionaries in my zone. surprisingly there arent any hermanas in our zone. it was pretty cool seeing president and his wife as well. they told us that our gol is 100 baptisms this month and 180 next month! its a lot but we can totally do it. hopefully we have two baptisms this coming saturday. one of them is daniel ruiz and the other is abbigail lopez. her nickname is ara. yesterday both of them went to church, and we also had three other investigators in church. so we had five in church yesterday! daniel and his parents came, ara and another hermana who we tried to get a cita with but didnt. so we are having a pretty good transfer so far. well, those are the highlights of my week. i love you all and wish you the best!

con amor

elder jones

I FELT THE SPIRIT PRETTY STRONG THERE IN THE ROOM AND THIS MEMBER IS JUST GOLDEN

I was so anxious for Taylor to receive my email this week because I thought maybe, just maybe, he might respond to something I told him about home in his email back to me.  I was  wrong!  Aside from being scared again that he didn't even actually receive my email, and having to re-send it, hoping the second one would get to him, his email was a pretty typical Taylor email, not that there is anything wrong with them.

The story I shared with him in my email that I thought he might comment on was about a talk given in our Sacrament meeting yesterday by his former priests' quorum leader, Brother Dave Hada.  Brother Hada had been asked to speak with Danny Chamberlin, a returning missionary, but Danny's talk got postponed and Brother Hada's didn't so his remarks were somewhat missionary oriented.  The following is what I shared with Taylor:   At one point, Brother Hada was talking about how Bishop Miller (about 4 bishops ago) had told him that he was going where he was going on his mission because someone there needed to hear from him.  Then when he was on his mission he served the first 14 months in Madrid and then got transferred to this small town with no history and no culture and was kind of bummed.  He didn't know why he was transferred there.  Then one of the assistants told him that the president was actually shocked that that was where he was supposed to be transferred to as well, but that was what the inspiration was.  Brother Hada then remembered what Bishop Miller had told him about there being people that needed to hear from him.  Brother Hada then read us a story from his mission journal about a lady named Carmen that he baptized that he knows was the reason that he was sent to that small town.  It was what he said next that brought me to tears though!  He said that "There are people out there waiting to hear from Dallin Jones, just like there are people waiting to hear from Taylor Jones.  I read those blogs and they are something special."  I hope Brother Hada's experience will resonate with you in some way.  I sure like being able to share things like that with you! 

Enjoy Taylor's letter this week!

hola!

jaja tell colton i love him very much. yeah so elder cox and i pretty much ran the branch yesterday jaja. elder cox plays the piano in sacrament, i lead the hymns, we open the church up and set up chairs for sacrament, we prepare the sacrament, we participated in the confirmation of rodrigo, who yes is ten years old, and we also gave talks in sacrament. surprisingly i didnt do half bad giving my talk. i read parts of jesus the christ and talked about his ministry and how he is key in our salvation. and guess what mom, i did it without writing a single word down on paper!! jaja afterwards, an member came up to me, hermana alonzo, and told me congratulations and what not. i asked her what for and she was just telling me how surprised she was at how well i spoke in castellano. i thought i did horrid at the pulpit but i guess not! elder cox then spoke on the book of mormon and used a bunch of quotes from elder hollands talk on the book of mormon. his talk was way better than mine by far. then after church, another hermana came up to us and asked us for a blessing. so we sat down and talked with her and she told us how she is preparing to got to the uruguay temple soon and she has been praying for a job a lot. last night after her prayers and asking for a job, she told us some one called and offered her a job and she was thrilled. so she had all the faith she needed for a blessing to work, she just want the blessing because her ankle and big toe are in pain and she has an infection or something. so i annointed and elder cox sealed the blessing. i felt the spirit pretty strong there in the room. afterwards she invited us to come over for lunch another day. so we are going to go over soon and have asado with her.

so silvana has been having difficulties the past couple weeks with facundo. she has wanted to get baptized real bad and what not but she cant move out of the house and facundo hasnt budged at all. so they have been fighting and what not. facundo has been keeping the money that silvana gets for the kids each month and spending it on alcohol and cigarillos. he also has kept the food to himself as well. so silvana has been eating all her meals with the family next door who is a member. and they dont have a lot of money either. but we have been praying hard and found out that facundo is now gone! apparently, from what i understood, facundo hit silvana and then she called the police and they came and told him to leave and he cant come back. so now silvana is going to go to a lawyer and try to get something worked out. but we set a date for her baptism for the 26 of february! we are so excited! our district and zone leaders want us to try and move up the baptism to this week so we will see how it goes down. we also could baptize daniel ruiz this saturday and we are going to try and pull out a fecha with another investigator who is about 10 as well. her name is abbigail and she is the other neighbor of silvana and hermana lanari (the member who brought us silvana). this member is just golden, she has brought us two families! so we are working with this family. the mom, noami, said she would get baptized if she knew the church was true. but she is living with someone and is married to someone else. so before she can get baptized, she has to get divorced and remarried or move out. so if all goes well, we can have four baptisms this month alone! elder cox and i are praying real hard to get these things done to. well, that is about all that is going on worth reporting. so i get your package you sent tomorrow at district meeting. if i can think of anything i need i will let you know so you can send it with Pia Dates. well i love you all and hope you all have/had a good valentines day!

elder jones

my scrip for the week is mosiah 24. we read it and compared it to silvanas situation

Find Mosiah 24 in the Book of Mormon here

VERY FIRST BAPTISM AND STOLEN PASSPORT AND NO SOCCER PLAYING

Well, when I first got Taylor's email today all it said was "where's my email mom"?  I can't tell you how sick those words made me!! :(  I had written him a lengthy email yesterday after the game, and waited until this morning to send it, but did in fact add a couple of lines this morning and sent it off.  I emailed him right back with a couple lines telling him I sent it, but would re-send it, hoping to hear back from him, but didn't, so I figured those emails didn't go through either.  After about 45 minutes I finally got the real weekly email, and in it Taylor specifically answers questions I asked him so my emails must have gone through!  I hope not to go through another experience like that again!  It's one thing when email doesn't work here, but usually we can call and say "Hey, it didn't go through." or it isn't such a big deal because the person can just keep checking, but this was huge to me, because I knew that he wouldn't see it for another week.  I know other moms have experienced the same thing (esp. moms with missionaries in foreign countries) but this was a first for me.

On a happier note, Taylor had his first baptism!!!!!!  It was quite an exciting week for him overall.

well, a lot went down this week!

 

rodrigo got baptized! we had asked him who he would like to baptize him and he picked me. so i had my first official baptism yesterday and all! it was a cool experience. i didnt mess up either jaja. so guess what went down, the mission office was robbed this week. the people who robbed it disalamered the alarm and broke all the locks on the doors. they stole the huge safe that had money and passports in it. they only got off with ten passports and mine happened to be one of them. but they deactivated it that day so now i am going to have to go to buenos aires to get a new passport some time in the future. but yeah, just a lot of stuff seemed like it got hard this week the closer we got to the baptism. so i read something that intrigued my interest. seeing as how 1/3 of the children didnt follow gods plan, that means there are a bunch of satans followers who can tempt us. so like there are at least ten spirits tempting each person on the earth or more. it made more sense in my mind. silvana is progressing well. after the baptism of her son, she was crying and wanted to give me a hug real bad. she asked us if she could just get baptized right then and there but we cant unfortunately. she needs to get seperated or married to who she is living with. and married is not looking like its gonna happen. she is fighting with the dude and they arent talking at all. so its a big mess. so i found out missionaries cant play soccer here because there was too many injuries happening. so i dont know if i can come back being a super soccer player anymore. not really any new investigators at this time. we focused on get rodrigo baptized and stuff that was about it really. we are gonna start doing some work again this weeek and find more people to baptize. yeah, obedience isnt a prob with me and elder cox. during the siesta we do one of a few things. we have lunch citas, cook our own food and study, or go to the church and play some ping pong. and all this we do while waiting for people to get up after the siesta. there are six elders in my district including me, and i have no idea about the zone. zone conferences are every three months here. transfers, elder cox is staying another transfer and so am i jaja. so yeah, nothing really big. thats about it in all, i tried to hook my camera up to this comp and it freaked out. so when i have more time i will send pics to you. well, mom i love you! i just finished the book of mormon. i started it during the second or third week of this transfer and now i am in moses. i love the scriptures and all the knowledge they have. chao!

 

elder jones