The Brazilian Adventure: Week 60 July 21 -- July 27

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

I swear, I don´t think I could describe to you how amazing this missionary work is. Last week on Monday night, Elder Cifuentes and I were running around saying bye to the rest of our converts and some of our investigators who are going to be baptised. It was so amazing. I felt the spirit so strong. It is kinda funny sometimes because you have to explain it to them a lot of times. And sometimes when you have to explain, it gets worse and worse during the explanation. "Well we have these things called transfers that happen sometimes to us missionaries and well we are going to be transferred." They ask "What is  a transfer?" then we say "It means that we are leaving to go to another area in SO Paulo." They ask "oh man, well when are you guys coming back?"  Then we say "Well you see...we can´t come back" Then they say "What? Not even to visit? not even right after the 2 years before you go back home?" Then we say, "No, we can´t" Then they ask with tears in their eyes, "Well when are you guys leaving this week?" Then we answer "Tomorrow, really early in the morning" Then we just all start to cry together and tell each other some words of comfort and they tell us how we are their angels and all their appreciation to us.  It is just sad to me and it was hard for all of us. There were a lot of tears and I kinda felt like a hero. I felt like I really didn´t do much. But then again, I kinda really didn´t do much, It was all the Lord. I´m so thankful that I have been given this blessed opportunity to be an instrument in the Lords hands. I love my converts and I´m going to miss them, i´m going to keep writing to them. I can´t wait to find more. I can´t wait to find the ones that I have promised to find before this life. Man, I love being a missionary. 

My new area now is São Marcos in Embu das Artes. This area is smaller then my last area. The members here are supper awesome! I love my area already. My new companions name is Elder G. Fernandes. He is from Belem, Pará. He is cool. Tomorrow he is going to have 6 months on his mission. He works hard. We are already finding a lot of great families to teach. But they just have a problem with getting up in the morning for church. Church here is at 8:30 in the morning. And we are also running into some men who don´t want to get married. Ah! these are so... Something! ah! But hopefully they can change. I´m going to continue to be district leader. This is my 5th transfer being district leader. I´m now going to have 3 other pairs of missionaries. That's 8 missionaries including my companion and I. It is only going to be hard doing splits three times a week. I kinda don´t like it because then I´m not going to be in my area so much. But I´m just going to be obedient and make the best of it. I´m going to teach a lot and learn a lot. 

I love you all, hope you are all doing good. 

Be Happy

Love The Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 59 July 14 -- July 20

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

Transfers have arrived and I have been transferred. Man it is tough being transferred, I don´t like it to much. But I kinda knew that I would be transferred. Last week with my interview with President Dalton, he asked me how much time I have in Primavera, and I told him that I had  4 transfers and a half, or about 6 months,  and he laughed and then said "oooo and I think it is going to be your last." So it wasn´t to surprising. But it is still tough. But something crazy happen. Elder Cifuentes  and Elder Azevedo got transferred too. And they shut down our area, Primavera B, and now Primavera A and B are going to be one area with Elder Peruna. It is a big area. It is going to be sad leaving our investigators. We are teaching Alexia and she is so good. We taught her the 10 commandments one day and then the next day we came by and she had them memorized. It was awesome. She is going to be baptised next week, but we won´t be here, and that is ok. I´m glad that I had than opportunity to find and teach her. We also have a couple that went to church yesterday. the Husband is so funny. We had plans to help them get married and then help them get baptised. They are loving church. We also have these other two women that I talked about last week but Elder Peruna is going to have to work on their husbands because they don´t want to get married. I´m sad to leave our investigators but I hope that the next missionaries take good care of them. Our ward is going to have just one set of missionaries now. 

Yesterday, I was saying bye to some of my converts because I new that today I wouldn´t have to much time to say good bye to all of them today. It was so sad and so awesome. I was crying so much and they were too. I told them to just do the simple things always. To pray everyday, read the scriptures, and to go to church every sunday. And I tried helping them to have a goal and focus on going to the Temple after a year of their baptisms. I hope they can stay strong. Brazil isn´t the best with retention rate and so I hope that they can stay strong. I got there e-mail. Yesterday I bared them my testimony and told them about how we where all ounce in heaven together and that I told them in heaven that I was going to find them here on earth and I kept my promise and the Lord helped me find them. They thanked me so much and cried and said that I meant so much to them. Man I love our converts. Something was kinda interesting, a lot of them told me that I had a lot of persistence with them and that I was at times annoying when we were teaching them to do the commitments to read and to keep the commandments. But they all said that it was good and they thanked me for it. They said that it a good annoying. I gave them a picture of me. Man it is so amazing to look back and see how much you have done in the area. I still got a long way to go but I need to finish my mission running. Today we are going to say good bye to a few more and it is going to be sad and cool. I´m going to miss my convert so much. 

I love my mission! I love this gospel! I´m so thankful this sacred opportunity that He has given me to be a missionary in His church.  I´m nervous and excited to arrive in my new area to find more of the people who the Lord has prepared for me. 

Be Happy

Love the Elder Jones

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The Brazilian Adventure: Week 58 July 7 -- July 13

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

The World Cup is finally over. No more days of being in the house all day. I heard that Brazil lost so hard to Germany on tuesday. It was like 7 to 1. I don´t watch soccer but that is so bad. There was this one guy in front of our house and he was shouting for Germany to win and everybody could hear him. I thought it was funny. Because the days that Brazil plays and Brazil makes a goal every is shouting and lighting off fireworks and everything. But on this day when Germany made a goal there was just this one man screaming "Yeah Germany". It was kinda funny, I don´t think he likes the goverment here.  They next day was kinda scary walking around working for the day. It is not the best thing to be white, with blond hair and Blue eyes. You just look German.  There were a lot of scary looks through the whole day. I had a lot of drunk people walk up to me and ask me if I was German, I just told them really fast nope, I´m from the United States. I don´t even say that I´m form Mexico because they probably think that I´m lying. And then they just try to speak to me in English. But I can´t understand a word that they say. One time I had a guy give me a hug and pat me on the head and tell me that he loved me and that I was a man of God and a good American. The thing about Brazilians is that they get really pasionate about some things very easly and they can get mad quite easly sometimes, but the good thing is that they become happy and forget everything the next day really easly. So it is all good now. 

We are teaching a lot a women who are doing awesome. There were two that went to church that know that the church is true and who have recieved an answer, but there husbands that live with them don´t want to get married. It is so bad. Why don´t people want to get married to someone that you´ve lived for years with. The world is changing the Lord´s standards so much. One guy told me that he doesn´t even know her and she doesn´t truely know me, we are always finding out things about each other that are knew. I´m not married, but isn´t that normal at the beginning. It is tough. But hopefully the Lord will change their hearts. 

I hope you are all doing good. Love you all. 

Be Happy

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Love, The Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 57 June 30 -- July 6

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

President Dalton is so awesome. We had a Multi-Zone conference this week with him and it was so powerfull. He is focusing on a lot about the temple. He wants are mission to become a temple mission. And this is so awesome. So there is a new rule now I think for all the world that we need to teach the all 5 lessons to our investigators before baptism. In the past, we taught the first 4 lessons, but what begun to happen is that the 5th lesson wasn´t being taught to the new converts. And so now it is all the lessons before baptism. I love this new rule. I feel like this is going to help our converts stay more strong in the church. So those of you who don´t know. The 1st is "The Restoration", the 2nd is "The Plan of salvation", the 3rd is "The Gospel of Jesus Christ", the 4th is "The commandments", and the 5th is "The laws and Ordinaces". Here in brazil, the rentention rate for new members in really low. A lot of new members become in active. We have so many new members that we are trying to reactivate in our areas. Sometimes it is because the missionaries didn´t teach them very well, but most of the time is that the members here in Brazil don´t know exactly how to help these new converts. We are trying to help the members. Now with this new rule of teaching all the lessons before baptism, it is going to help the converts stay stronger. It is so cool. We are also going to help are converts go to the temple less then a month after there baptism. We are going to help them do the work for their ancesters. I love it! We also have a new rule that we have to speak one day in Porutgese and another day in English so that the Brazilians and Hispanics missionaries can learn English. President Dalton wants Everyone to speak these two languages. He then told us a little about his life and Sister Dalton and it was awesome to get to know him. One thing that was really cool is that when he served as a missionary almost 30 years ago, he served here in sao paulo also. He passed by an area that is in our mission. At the end of the meeting he talked about a family that he baptised and told us a cool story. At the end of the story, he told one of the daughter in the family to stand up and to bear her testimony. And then we looked behind us and there was a little family, a women stood up and walked up front to tell us their story. This family stayed strong for all this time. That was so cool to see that. That is what I want. I hope that I can have converts like that. That is why I need to prepare them as well as I can. One time I heard a quote in the MTC that I loved and always remembered that related to missionary work. "Success is not about the numbers of lessons that you teach or the number of baptisms you have. It is about how great you make your converts great members." And that is what I want. 

We are teaching this women named Ellen. she is doing really good. She just has to get married. She went to church yesterday and afterwards we visited her and she said that she feels that the church is true. We taught her about the book of Mormon and she said that she is going to read and pray to know if it is true. We also helped reactivate an old lady who got baptised two years ago. She seems pretty happy. We are teaching her grandaughter who is 14 years old and her name is Alexia. and she went to church too and loved it. It was cool when we first taught the 1st lesson, after the lesson she said that she feels that it is true. And when we invited her to be baptised, she accepted quickly and told us that she was thinking about baptism lately. It is amazing how the lord prepares people. We found her completely by the spirit. We found Josefa, her granmother, one day and she didn´t want to go to church and told us that all the church´s were true and that there is not a one true church. A normal thing for a less active to say. (That is what a lot of people believe here, that all the churchs are true) But then I felt prompted to teach her about the Restoration and we entered the house with her son there, but he didn´t want to listen. and then before we were about to start the lesson, we felt prompted to ask who else can hear the message. She then called Alexia. And that is how we found her. I normally forget to ask that question, but that time I didn´t. It is amazing how we can feel the promptings of the holy ghoust. 

I´m doing supper good. I love my mission. I love you all. 

Be happy.

Love The Elder Jones