Thomas Jones to you & 35 more

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 42 March 17-- March 23

 My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

          This week was solid. It was a great week to finish off the transfer. We have been having some great lessons, feeling the spirit work through us and all. We have this great couple that we are teaching named Patricia and Ruben. We found Patricia on the street doing some contacts. When we visited her the next couple of days and she has been going great. She told us that she was smoking all her life. And then one day she just decided to quite and stop smoking and drinking. And then the next day she found us on the street. It was sweet. The Lord truely prepares his children before they meet his servants on earth. It is so amazing. We are teaching the husband also right now and they are progressing just great. Yesterday they went to church and they really enjoyed it. They are feeling the spirit and feeling good about it all. 

     We also have this great investigator. Her name is Rose. She went to church already twice. and she knows that the church is true. Yesterday we taught her about the Word of Wisdom and she said that she is going to live it. She has a problem with coffee. But after hearing about the new commandment. She said that she is going to try to quite. She is a sweet old lady. About 40 years old. 

   On saturday, we visited a less active family who havn´t been to church for many years. We just left our testimony and invited them back and the spirit did the rest. The next day we found them in church. It was so awesome. After church they thanked us.

     We are just going crazy. talking to everyone and teaching everyone that we can. I know that before this life, I promised to people that I was going to find them and help them find this happiness and the truth. We are going to find everyone that we pormised. We are going to just work, work, work. Sometimes it gets tough. But we are going to keep our heads high and just cary on. Can´t waste time. We need to give it our all. All of our heart, might, mind, and strenght. I´m learning a lot of what that means. In my calling it talked about how I need to give all my heart, might, mind and strenght. In D&C 4:2 it talks about it too. I´m learning how to control not only my actions in this work, but I´m learning how to focus and control my thoughts and my mind into it also. What ever you litterally think you are, you will become. Your thoughts control your enviorment. It is so hard for me, I´m so easily distracted by so many little things and problems. It is so hard to just live in the moment that you are living. But I´m learning. This is helping me for my life. I´m learning so much about faith and about having trust in the Lord. I´m learning how to do all that I can and then the Lord does the rest. And that is when the Miracles come in. I´m learning so much about obedience. I love being obedient to the lords commandments. Obedience is the first law of heavens for the blessings and miracles. It is awesome man.

    So transfers arrived. And Elder Rezabala got transfered. Noooo! man, transfers are tough and sad. I am going to continue being District Leader, it seems like the Lord is satisfied with my service. I also got called to be a trainer again. This Transfer is going to be super tough. I´m going to have to learn a lot. Elder Rezabala knew the area really well and he planned normally every night while I accompanied the district. But now I´m going to be acompaning the district every night, plannig for the area, training this new missionary, and a lot more. It is going to be fun. I´m excited for this challenge. I´m just going to need a lot of help from the Lord. 

be happy 

Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 41 March 10-- March 16

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

   So this week. I fulfilled one of my dreams here on my mission. So Mario was able to be baptised this week. It was such an awesome baptism. Mario is 67 years old and he is a Japanese man who speaks Portuguese. Mario has been in about 3 car and 2 Motorcycle accidents in his life. So his body is not in the best shape. Half of his body is kinda paralyzed, but he can still walk pretty good and move around. We helped him get changed for baptism and enter the waters. It was so amazing to see him get baptised. Mario doesn´t talk very much. But when he does, most of the time he is cracking jokes. When we walked him back into the bathroom, I asked him how did it go. And he began to cry and just said that it touched the deepness of his heart. He is such a great guys. He is a very self dependent man. He doesn´t like very much help. He always uses the phrase of other people going to church´s feeling the bag of God. Or giving God all these problems to solve. We are teaching him that there is a balance to it all. That it is not a bad thing to ask Heavenly Father for help. We actually need his help in our lives to become the person that he wants us to become. We need to be humble and know that we can´t become this great person on our own. We shared with him Ether 12:27. But we need to make sure that we are not just sitting around and waiting for the Lord to do something. We need to be acting and going,  and then the Lord will help us on the way. Just like it talks about in James 2:17 faith with out works is dead.  He is so awesome. He jokes with us telling us that he feels like we are two old wise men teaching him. I love Mario.

   This week was great. The enemy is stepping up his game and he is attacking. But I´m trying to be strong and do the best I can. I love my mission. I´m so blessed. I love you all and I hope you all and doing great.

Be Happy.

Love The Elder Jones ( that´s me)

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 40 March 3-- March 9

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

    Great week. This week I spent three days outside of my are doing splits. It is a normal thing now. It is a lot of planning and work. It is also a lot of fun. The Lord is helping with a couple areas in my life that I´m not so great at. Like planning, goals, and other things. It is great. My district is doing great. We have one group who are having some hard times in their area, but they are working hard. And so the Lord is going to bless them probably not the way they want it, but the way that he needs it. We are trying to work a lot with members. All the members in our areas work a lot and don´t have a lot of time. They also don´t have a lot of trust in missionaries because a couple that have passed by weren´t the best missionaries in the world. But that is changing, and the members having more trust in us. And also a lot of members believe that just missionaries need to do missionary work. Oh no no no (I think the whole world is probably like that.) We are trying to get them all excited and to help them realize the revalation of President Thomas S. Monson that now is the time that Missionaries and Members work together. That is revelation from our heavenly father. There are to many families getting destroyed by the wroldly things by Satan and way to fast. And so the Lord said that he can´t handle it, we need the members. They know these families. They now the area. We missionaries are just 1 person, We need more hands in this labor. The success is through the members. And so we are trying to help them realize that. And it is getting there. Yesturday we had a stake conference presenting our mission program to the members. It was great. We did some pratices. Us missionaries sang a hymn together that we have been praticing. And President Pihno gave a great talk. It is going great. He talked about how the church took away the mission keys form the Mission presidents and they passed them to the Stake presidents and Bishops. He also gave an interesting statistics. We have about 85,000 missionaries in the world. We missionaries baptize about 200,000 to 300,000 people a year right. We have about 15 million members. We have about 9 million who are active. If 5 million of those active members would pray to our heavenly father and bring just one person to church this year to accept the gospel and be baptised, and that is pretty easy. There would be 5 million new members. According to the math, with just the missionary efforts, it would take us missionaries 27 years to accomplish that. You see how clever the plan of the Lord is. This is what the meant in General Conference when they said that now is the time to accelerate the work. But just like the church and the Lord are stepping it up, Satan and his army will be stepping it up also. So we need to work together and fight back. We need to save these souls. We need to wake up and get going. It is a lot of fun and brings a lot of joy being a part of this great work. 

     So last P-day during the work. We were walking over to visit someone when all of a sudden we recieved a text from a phone number that we didn´t know. It said that it was Fernanda and that she wanted to talk to us about baptism. We got all excited. And then we thought that maybe the other Elders playing a joke using a members phone. So then we called to see if it was real or fake. And when we called, it was Fernanda! and she said that she talked to her parents and that she wants to be baptized this sunday. We were so happy! So this week we accomapnied her real good. And on the Sunday morning she was baptized. We had some dificulty preparing the baptism. We don´t have the keys to the baptism fount yet and so we were running all over the place trying to get these keys. But after a while, we got them and the baptism was a success. It was so awesome. She was so happy. Just her mom and brother came. Her dad was working. But she was happy. And then she recieved the Holy Ghoust, with a little reminder for the bishop. 

   When I was on splits with Elder J. Braker on time, someone threw an egg at us. It hit him. It was so funny. It came out of nowhere. 

   Hope you are doing great. Love you all. 

Be happy.

Love, The Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 39 February 24-- March 2
My Dearest beloved Family and Friends
    "Wherefore, now let every man learn his duty and to act in the office in which he is appointed, in all diligence. He that is slothful shall not be counted worthy to stand, and he that learns not his duty and shows himself not approved shall not be counted worthy to stand. Even so. Amen." D & C 107: 99-100

     We all have a duty and a responsibility on this earth and in the church. We must learn that duty and responsibility, and then work in all diligence to magnify that calling. Through out my days, I am tempted to work a little less, to walk through my mission instead of run, and to not magnify my calling. There are many distraction of worldly things and thoughts that appear and I´m tempted to do less or focus on other things. But there is something that I´m learning a lot on my mission. When ever I´m tempted to do other things beside my priesthood calling, when I am tempted to think that I have given enough, and when my mind and body desires some rest. There is one thing that I think about and that I whisper out loud to myself. "Remember Him" the Savior is our perfect example of diligent labor of love and service. When I think about what he did for me, 2 years is nothing. He deserves a lot more then what I  possibly can give him. I love my mission, I´m learning so much. I´m so grateful to be able to use my priesthood to bless to lives of others. This week I was able to give a blessing of counsel and comfort to one of my sisters in my district, Sister Velasco.  I love giving blessings. It is so spiritual and is so powerful. 

    So this week was another fast one. Fernanda didn´t accept her job, because she would have to work on Sunday's. Yes!! she has great faith. She is doing great. But then we ran into a problem. Fernanda is 17 years old and so she is a minor. So she needs her parents permission to help her to be baptised. Well her parents don´t want her to be baptised yet. They want her to study for more time, probably a year until she really knows what she is doing. Man! I was upset. Well we have to respect that. And we have to wait. But the good news is that she is going to turn 18 this April. And by then she can decide for her self. So hopefully we don´t get transferred by then. 

    Last week we had interviews with President Pinho and it was supper awesome. I learned a whole lot from that big ball of wisdom there. And we also had a training from the assistants. 

     This week our zone have been practicing a hymn for this stake conference for missionary work for next Sunday. We are going to represent our new mission program called Families of Zion. We are looking for a lot of families to baptise and help accept the gospel. 

    This week I had the chance to do my second baptism interview with an investigator. Man it is so spiritual. I love doing baptism interviews. Being district leader is a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun watching over these missionaries. And they are all working hard and doing great.

    I hope you are all doing awesome. I miss and love you all so much. keep doing great and giving it all you´ve got. 

Be happy.

Love, The Elder Jones