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