FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD

I am grateful to have heard from Taylor this week.  Last week was LONG not hearing from him!!!  I am grateful for the lesson that Taylor seems to have learned this week.  It is interesting to me, because in my letter to him yesterday I wrote to him about how impressed I was with his attitude on working and reaching his baptismal goals (as expressed in the last email he had written) so that they could get the temple in Bahia in a year!  I told him how that work ethic would be a positive throughout his life and good things would come to him because of it.  I found it ironic to find out that he had had a "lazy week". I am indeed grateful for all of the lessons he is learning on his mission, and the patience I am learning!


hey mom. 

nope, samantha didnt get baptized on saturday. last week was probably my laziest week here in the mission. i dont want another week like it. being lazy on the mission does not go well at all. i feel bad for wasting the Lord´s time and all. me and elder soderquist said we shall not be lazy anymore. but enough of that. daniel hasnt come to church in a while and neither have his parents but that is something we are working on. mariano has not been able to be found. he is never home. so we dropped looking for him. but anyone else we have right now, not really. we didnt find anyone new last week and i can definately see that faith without works is dead. so then i have to work! elder soderquist is good. we are working with this one investigator paula who is the in law to a menos activo. she seems like she could get baptized soon but i think she may be living with someone. we are going to find out htis week. well, unfortunately that is all the news. i just really need to kick it into gear and find new people and then go from there! i love you mom and hope your wrist gets better!

elder jones

  

A TEMPLE HERE IN BAHIA IN A YEAR. IT'S A BIG GOAL BUT I KNOW IT'S POSSIBLE.

hi mom!  how dare you not tell me you fell down the stairs! dont you know i am bound to find out through someone else!? you crazy... jaja well i hope you feel better! well conference was amazing, but first the questions. i could do skype, i could not, it all depends on how/where i am during the mission. i heard of a couple missionaries doing skype and others not, but i dont know what i will do on mothers day. so i weighed myself again, i now weigh about 95.5 kilos. i lost more weight! i dont know what is going on but whatever i am doing is working jaja. yeah, next time i will work on sending pictures jaja.  well conference was pretty sweet. i got to watch all of it in english as well! except priesthood session. i watched the broadcast in the morning and it was only in spanish. i think by far my favorite talks had to thomas s monson on temples and marriage. i want to just go to the temple now and do work there and get married! jaja, so send on down some young woman so i can turn this mission into a couple mission jaja. but yeah, i know that temple work is an amazing thing and i love that i can help others who have passed away have the same joy that i have.  well this week, we found two new investigators. technically it was two but one we already had investigating but we hadnt talked with him in three weeks so he gets counted as new again. we had two other investigators come to conference which was awesome as well! they said they liked it. so i dont know if i told you about samantha, but she is 13 and a reference from a member. the member is her best friend too. so we are teaching her and have the fecha for the 16 of april. we are going to her house tomorrow to teach which i am excited for. we also found this other investigator whose name is mariano. he is about  17 or 18 and said he would go to conference but didnt go :( but we are going to see him tonight. so we will see what happened. well, that is about all i have. we just need to find new investigators. that is our goal, find and baptize, 180 a month, and a temple here in bahia in a year. its a big goal but i know its possible. we only need to baptize 2 people each month, we being each companionship, and it will happen! well, i pray for the strength to go out each day so i can find new people in order that i can keep up with my goal. well, that is about all i have now jaja. i love you all and take care mom! 


con amor elder jones 

THIS PAST WEEK WAS A GOOD ONE

hola mama

well this past week was a good one. we found four new investigators. we have only taught them all once though and we are going to go teach them again tonight. about the photos mom, i havent tried to bring my camera to the ciber to send any photos, sorry. elder soderquist is great. he is from woodbrigde virginia. sorry, i dont have much time today, we got to the ciber late and now have a cita in five mins. that is pretty much my week. i feel like my castellano is coming along well and i am understanding people well. o yeah, we got about five references we are going to contact this week as well. so that means more new investigators hopefully! i just read 2 nephi 31 the other day and its amazing. talks about why baptism is important and why if christ was baptized, all the more reason we need to be baptized. sorry this is so short! diculpenme! chau!

elder jones

MY NEW COMP IS ELDER SODERQUIST. HE IS GONNA BE A GREAT COMP IN MY OPINION

well, we just had transfers. elder cox is now in necochea in his last area, i think his area there is keken. my new comp is elder soderquist. he is gonna be a great comp in my opinion. i think the work is going to pick up here. last week was ok. it wasnt our best though, we didnt teach many lessons either. but we do have one investigator right now who is getting close to being baptized. she is named baulina. she tells us how she wants a church in which there is no drinking or dirty dancing parties. we have told her well hey, this is your church! but she just havent received an answer yet. so we are working on that with her. she also needs to go to church as well. she told us she sells stuff on sunday mornings and we are going to teach the dia de resposo with her.

 

well, all i need to do is just find investigators. it was hard considering elder cox had already knocked all of general cerri. we couldnt ever really find places he didnt already try. but now its gonna go well. unfortunately that really is all i got for you. nothing big happende last week. just contacting and looking. thanks for the scripture mom. well i love you and i will talk to you soon. general conference is almost here! woohoo!

 

elder jones

THIS WEEK WAS HARDER THAN MOST

hola buen dia.

my shoes are doing fine. when it rains though, they get super dirty/muddy. my comp has a pair of galochas, or rubber covers he puts over his shoes that protect them from getting muddy. they are a great idea. hint hint jaja. my favorite food, that is a good question. i do like milanesas and the fideos (noodles) they make here. so far i havent really disliked a food. the only thing would be noodles filled with spinach. they are not my food of choice jaja. i weighed myself the other day and i weigh about 100 kilos. thats like 220 lbs. i think i have lost 20 lbs since the mtc. i havent really noticed any difference in people being gone on vacation. 

this week was harder than most. we had a total of 6 lessons taught. we didnt find any new investigators and got no new references. we have no progressing investigators and its getting tough. we even went out to campo to look for houses and found nothing. our goal was find many new investigators this week and get fechas for the last week of this month but nothing. it was tough on elder cox and i. we got frustrated with every rejection we got from doing contacts and noone letting us in. we are praying hard to get help with our work and to find new investigators. this is our main goal as of yesterday. references and new investigators. well that is all that really happened this week. the cut on my head is now gone though. so that is good jaja. well i hope all is going well. i heard about the tsunami and earthquake in japan. it very sad. we are praying for the people there. but we also know the mission work will pick up as well with helping the poeple! well i love you mom! chao

elder jones

REFERENCES ARE THE KEY TO HOW MISSION WORK PROGRESSES

The highs and lows of missionary work continue...but Taylor seems to be handling it well.  He is learning and growing from it all which makes my heart happy!

And, while it is hard to know he got hurt, and I wonder if he shouldn't have had stitches or how bad the "cut" really is, at least I know he is still my boy through and through!!

buen dia.

 

hermana lanari told us that silvanva talked with them and that she already knows some members and i think the missionaries as well. daniel and ara are doing well as well. ara came to church and daniel had apparently went to campo with his parents. we only had one investigator in church yesterday. and it was melina, peter (a member) girlfriend who cant get baptized because of her parents. noemi, ara´s mom, and jorge didnt come either. we were sad when they didnt show. so ara had come by herself with the lanari family. yeah, we have taught ara´s mom and brother pretty much all the charlas and noemi wants to get baptized but she is juntada with another person. but it sucks because he is only there 3 or 4 days each month because he works in rio negro which is like 8 hours south. we asked jorge when is he gonna get baptized but he didnt say anything. we are thinking about restarting the charlas and trying to get a fecha with him. we dont have any fechas. actually that is a lie. we found an investigator the other day whose name is maria. she said she would get baptized if she knew this was the true church. so she said she is gonna pray and we are going to visit her tomorrow. baptisms i count as in my companionship. fast and testimony meeting was good. elder cox and i gave the sunday school class. i feel like we did well. i kinda went along reading the maual for teaching but it was good overall. i didnt mess up my words to bad jaja.

 

so we are being pressed to find more investigators. we are trying to find as many as we can. they want us to always be asking for references. references are the key to how mission work progresses. so always be on the lookout to give the missionaries references! it helps them more than you think! so we had about five citas we set up yesterday in the tarde all made by contacts. everysingle one of them failed. it was depressing. i feel like i have contacted all of cerri as well. but i know the field is white all ready to harvest. i know that with continued searched, the Lord will bless us with investigators.

 

so guess what happened to me yesterday. we were on the way to a cita. i was walking along the side walk, and while one walks on the sidewalks in argentina, you need to stare at the ground or else you will trip. well i was walking along trying to not trip when i hit my head on something. the way they do trash here is different from the states. they have poles with baskets on top in front of their houses where they put their trash so the dogs dont get into it. well i had hit my head on on of the baskets while trying to not trip. so i just keep going thinking it hurt. we get to the cita and elder cox looks at me and tells me i have a big cut on the side of my head. i now have a two inch long cut that starts just above my temple in my hair and ends just above my ear. one cant see it unless they look at me from my right side at my head. but i feel like everyone now stares at me when i walk around because i got a huge cut on my head. but o well. i know it will go away soon, i hope jaja. well, that is about it! i love you and hope all is going well!

 

elder jones

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