WE FOUND 6 NEW INVESTIGATORS! IT WAS AWESOME.

hey mom!

sorry, but today´s email is going to be short. we are in olavarria and are heading back in about an hour. we have to get to the terminal in about thirty mins with our luggage. but recap of the week. we found 6 new investigators! it was awesome. first off is n. she is about 28 years old, give or take. she got married 8 years ago and has a kid named j who is about 7 years old. she is catholic by tradition but doesnt go. she really liked what we taught and said she would read and pray. so we are going by her tomorrow. but for now, we dont have much to do with her. then we found her neighbors, r, r and a. r is the daughter of r, and a is the marido of r. r is about 26 years old. so r is about 55. they are pretty crazy. a is about 25 years old. same thing with them. we need to go back and verify. then we found another lady named r. she is an ex investigator. she came to church before but stopped. she was afraid of baptism, but we got that out of her. she has a fecha for the 13 de mayo. then we have o. he is 19 years old. he is the younger brother of a member who hasnt gone to church since he moved from buenos aires about a year ago. he wants to get baptized, even asked what he had to do to be baptized. he has a problem with smoking, and i believe he also will have a problem with the law of chastity seeing as how he has a girl friend. so we will see how that goes this week. j has dropped off the face of the earth. and v once more came to church. we want to talk with her this week to see what is her deal. she pays tithing and all, but isnt baptized. i think she just needs the invitation once more. so we shall wait and see how it turns out. today we had interviews with pres d. he is awesome. he talked about our studies before hand and how we cant waste our time which is set apart to study. i wish i could hear more from him all the time! well mom, i will be talking with you next week. i love you!

elder jones

AS FOR LAST WEEK, IT WAS BETTER THAN THE ONE BEFORE, BUT STILL NOT WHERE WE WANT IT TO BE.

hey mom

i cant believe another week has gone by. its wierd to think i am pretty much 3/4 way done with the mission. i am just awestruck. today was a long pday. we had the toilet clogged by elder w, then elder h used the toilet, and then i also used the bathroom, but neither elder h nor i realized it until after i had finished. so we spent most of the day with the bathroom because we have no plunger and it was the siesta and nothing was open. safe to say, i hate the siesta. and we now have over a hundred flies in our house. you would not be happy mom, jaja. i got the package as well. i used the gravy today. elder h and i made mashed potatoes with gravy and slow cooked some meat in the oven. it turned out super delicious! thank you soo much!

as for last week, it was better than the one before, but still not where we want it to be. we found three new investigators. still short of at least two newbies a day. but we are getting better. we didnt do divisiones with the zone leaders because we are out of money and havent received any for quite a while, so traveling was out of the question. we might do divisions this week. but who knows. service with the hermana was great the other week, she had just asked us to help her. we did more service this week as well. we dug a huge hole for a recent convert family who is building a house. they needed a hole dug for the sewage system. i am not exactly sure how it works, but it had to be about 2 meters deep and 1 and a half meters wide. it was not easy. we had set a bunch of citas this week, but nothing really super solid. we found one person who is the neighbor of h. he is older and runs a kiosko out of his house. he understood most of what we said, which surprised me, given his age. we are going back tomorrow to see if he had read and prayed. so we shall see what happens. we talked one night with a super evangelical man named o. during the lesson, which we pretty much couldnt teach because he talked the whole time, he pointed to me and said, i want to hear what you have to say. i started to speak and he cut me off and went off again. then afterwards he started telling me, not elder h but just me, to go and find God. it was kind of awkward. then at the end, i said the prayer before leaving, and he stood up with us to send us off, and he asked to say one himself. he then placed his hands on our heads and started to pray, shaking us while he prayed. when he finished, he pushed our heads back with an AMEN! and i was trying hard to just not freak out and laugh. so we walked out and just were in awe with what took place. i think he thought i was full of demons. but who knows, he was for sure a little tipsy from some drinking, and had bloodshot eyes. i shall not judge him though. well mom, that is all i have for you, next week, i am sure we will try to figure out what we will do for mothers day. i love you!

love elder jones

I NEED TO STEP UP AND GET THIS DISTRICT MOVING

hola mamita

im glad you enjoyed my letter so much! jaja. another week down, and not much to report. i hate when i dont have much to tell you. but capacitiacion was awesome. i loved it so much. and it was cool seeing a lot of old companions and leaders. i saw for instance elder g, my companion from toay. he is now a district leader as well. but yeah, president d is awesome. we have new "commandments" now though as missionaries. we need to baptize each week. we need to find at least 2 new investigators each day, and get baptismal fechas with them or they dont count. that is no longer our zone rule but a mission wide rule. he also talked about how  and i quote "we need a missionary who prays with more power." he feels we dont pray with enough zeal, is that the word? we arent sincere enough in our prayers. we also dont have enough hunger to baptize, if we did, we would be doing what we need to, which is baptizing each week. as a district, we only found 1 new investigator last week. the asistents talked about goals and being specific and not just planning for one week but having the vision of planning for three weeks to a month in advance. we really need to get working though on finding newbies. the zone leaders told me i need to get it into gear. four missionaries and one new investigators is not helping the mission. they said they want me to go up to being zone leader and that i cant do that if i cant get even the district up and functioning. i know i said i dont want to be zone leader, but if i can and am needed to be, i have to step up my game as well. i dont want to lose what can be. its just like the celestial kingdom. we dont not want to go there, so we need to do everthing we can to get there. so i need to step up and get this district moving. i am going to do divisiones with the zone leaders this week, and also with the other companionship this week. so i am going to learn form the zone leaders and then go right into teaching it to the other companionship.

last week, we didnt really get any lessons in. J didnt come to church. we werent able to teach him, i think he is falling out of sight. we may have to drop him. we have to many eternal investigators. that the last thing we need. B is afraid to get baptized and not be able to keep the commandments afterwards. i think its just an excuse though. we dont know how to get to him yet. we ate dinner with L and her dad this week. her dad had invited us to an asado and it was pretty good. on saturday we helped out an hermana cut all the branches off her trees and take them out to the garbage. she had a lot of trees and thick branches. my shoulder still hurts.then on sunday we went by the familia v. hermano v is the mission leader. he told us about one of his daughters who is not baptized and we could try to start working with her. so we are going to try to get something going with her, she is named v. really, we need to kick it into high gear. we know that we need to work even harder, we were put here for a reason, and we dont want bolivar to suffer. we want it to be its own ward and possibly stake! well mom, i love you! take care!

elder jones

I READ MATTHEW 7:21-23. IT'S A GOOD ONE WE USED WITH AN INVESTIGATOR. I RECOMMEND IT.

hey mom!

yeah, transfers passed, i am still here in bolivar as district leader. but right now i am in a ciber in olavarría. tomorrow we have training in bahia blanca with president d, all the district leaders and zone leaders will be there. its gonna be awesome. i love hearing president d speak. then wedensday i get back and we have district meeting and then we head out to bolivar once more. we had our branch council this week and finally got our fifteen names of less active members to work with, five from each organization. we also finally got to watch all of conference. so that was good. i still loved elder bednar´s talk the best from priesthood session. i am pretty sure i will be getting home on halloween. easter was ok here. nothing special. everything was closed though. we didnt have dinner or lunch with anyone at all. so we ended up cooking in the house. i made rice with an onion and shredded meat. it was delicious, although i through way to much pepper into, almost all of it to be exact jaja. 

e, we still havent been able to find nor m. so we are still in a drought of not finding people to baptize. we did talk with an ex investigator however who invited us to an asado this week. so that should be good. we are going to try and sack a fecha with him and his family. we will see how it goes. we have one investigator named j g, i believe i already told you about him. well, he has a fecha for the 28 of abril. he knows the book of mormon is true. we still have to teach him however all the commandments and get him married. he smokes and drinks. but i prefer having investigators with problems to not having invesigators. much less stressful i think jaja. l has dropped off the face of the earth, his wife told us pretty much to not pass by anymore. other than that mom, i dont have much else to report. i read matthew 7:21-23. its a good one we used with an investigator because he uses all the miracles other churches perform as an excuse for not coming to our church. i recommend it. well mom, i love you! heree come some pictures your way!

elder jones

WE NEED TO BE ANXIOUSLY ENGAGED IN A GOOD WORK.

hola mami,

 

sooooo. this wasnt the best week ever. mainly because we saw saturday sessions of conference in a ciber with a bunch of kids everywhere yelling and screaming where we couldnt feel the spirit. and sunday, we didnt see any of the sessions due to bad preparation here in bolivar on part of the branch presidency. they hadnt prepared the internet to stream it live and thus noone watched it here. plus we only got half of the priesthood session. which i thought was still awesome but got up til president eyring´s talk. so it could´ve been better. but hey, i am not going to complain. hopefully i get to see them soon. hopefully. as for investigators, we taught a new lady who lost her husband tow years ago. she is about 72 years old. she doesnt retain much though. but other than that, nothing. we are giving up on L. we cant seem to find him. we had an appt with a new lady as well. she turned out to be a dud as well. she was super awesome the first time we talked with her but when we went back, she was a total jerk. i have been thinking a lot about some things. we need to stop using our carnal eyes and start seeing things/trying to see things as God sees them. we cant judge anything without knowing everything, God can because he knows all. he also is the person who knows the best way to help us. he is the first source we should go to for help, then our priesthood leaders and we cant ever forget to do things. we cant sit still. we need to be anxiously engaged in a good work. its just like said in conference, i believe in priesthood session. we really cant be idle. being idle even condemns us because we didnt choose to do good. as a misssionary, God is always testing us. he is always seeing what we will do in certain situations. thus we need to do good always.

 

we talked with a less active member last weekend. he is very less active. he is into drugs and just super lost right now. in our visit with him, we ranged from the restoration to the plan of salvation to the word of wisdom. he tried to convince us marijuana is good for us jaja. but we left him a chapter to read in alma 32. he is feeling like he lacks faith. but i think we can get him back, he just needs to stop with his addiction to prescription drugs. but other than that mom, i got nothing to tell ya. thanks for your email! i hope you keep on keeping on! love you!

 

elder jones

THE BOOK IS BLUE AND THE CHURCH IS TRUE.

hey mom.

this last week was a tough one. we just didnt have anything to do. we walked a lot. im not sure what it was that made me sick. i just was sick again. i guess it was something i ate. we still haven't found L. he has still been out in campo. i dont want to give up on him till i find him but i know i have to put my faith in the lord to know when i should stop losing my time looking for him. the citas we had set up didnt turn up anything. we have a new zone rule in which if we dont get a fecha bautismal in the lesson with the person, they dont count as new investigators. so we had no new investigators. as district leader, i am getting used to it, the other companionship is doing awesome. i love seeing new missionaries, they have so much fire and animo, its awesome! elder h and i get along great. we have no problems. its almost as if he were a long lost brother jaja. as for lunch here in bolivar, we have lunch twice a week, so we get an extra 100 pesos each for food expenses. we passed p-day today playing hackey sack. i think i am super "unstretchy." i said that today and i was made fun of by the other elders for my lack of english vocab. so having to give a talk back home in english will be a bit hard jaja. as of package, the only thing i guess i would really want would be ties, a paisley or two would be awesome. so i got pooped on last week. its was awesome jaja. i walked around with bird poop for about 1 hour on my shoulder. elder h laughed.

we have pretty much been looking for new people to teach. i am looking for opportunities to share the gospel everywhere. its just hard when nooone thinks its important. but hey, the book is blue and the church is true. keeps me going jaja. i am so excited for general conference. i dont know how or where i will watch it but i am stoked. well mom. i love you! sorry my email isnt awesome. not much happened. love you once more!

elder jones