The Brazilian Adventure: Week 82 December 22 -- December 28

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

It was so awesome to be able to speak with my family this week. It seems like everyone is doing good. 

It is SO hot! This whole week has been so hot outside. A lot of sweat come down my face. And then it is worst in a tie. And in about a month or two it is going to get worst. 

This week it has been tough. many of our investigators aren´t keeping commitments. And we a droping a lot of them. But we are still finding some great families. For example, we were visiting members fromt he members list and we past by the house of a name of Renan. When we opened the door the family was so happy and they invited us in. We then found out that Renan is on his mission and we found his whole family there and they aren´t baptised. And they just talked to him the day before. So I think it is ogng to go good there. 

I swear, I love to give Priesthood blessings. This week we found this member who moved in with her family about two months ago. She is 27 years old. She just had a divorce with her husband who is a member and a returned missionary. They were married for two years. She was having a very hard time still. She then asked us if we would give her a blessing. I swear I began to tear up a little as I place my hands on top of her head, I can feel the spirit so strong tyring to comfort her and help her know that god loves her and then the words that just come out of my mouth and just perfect for her, and I know that that is the pirit speaking through me. It is amazing experience. I´m glad that I can have the Preisthood, and I´m especially glad that I´m worthy to use it when I´m called. That is a great lesson that I have learned. It is so amazing, everytime I put my hands on top of someone´s head to give a blessing, I can feel a small part of the love that our heavenly father has for them. It is so strong. I love it. 

I love you all.

Be happy

Love the Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 81 December 16 -- December 21

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

Merry Christmas!! It doesn´t even feel like Christmas. It is so strange. I´m excited this week to be able to talk to my family! it is going to be sweet. 

So like I was telling you guys last week, we helped this family come back to church and the bishop is really happy. He told me yesturday that while back ago, the members were trying really hard to bring this family back to church. But they weren´t able to. They stopped trying and moved on with other families. So the bishop was surprised and very thankful. Alan, the father, latter told us that when we came to see him, he felt the spirit really stong. He said that he felt the spirit of the Lord telling him that now was the time for him to come back to church. And we just invited him simply to come back and he said that he would, and he did. He also told us that he wanted us to teach and baptise his young son. And happly did. We are wroking a lot with this family and today we have a family home evening with them and they invited there neighbors to come and we are going to have more people to teach. 

I´m so thankful for the spirit of the Lord. We didn´t do anything, we just invited and God did the rest. It is amazing to see someone to come back with that power. 

I love you all and again, I´m excited to speak with my FAMILY!! oh yeah baby!

Be happy 

Love the Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 80 December 8 -- December 15

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

So we are working a lot with the recent converts and with reactivating members, there are a lot of less actives in our ward. We have been given promises in my mission that if we work with retention and reactivation, we are going to baptise a lot more. And I believe in that promise, and our mission president is really focused on the kingdom of God growing in our wards. So we are trying to work on increasing the number of people in the church. We helped this one family come back to church these last two Sundays. It is an awesome family. The dad is so funny. And they live with a whole lot of other people who we are trying to help to come back to church and we are finding a lot of family members who are not baptised. Oh yeah! 

This last week, we had an awesome mission tour with the area president of Brazil, President Costa. It was so awesome. He is such a funny guy, and he has the spirit so strong. He saided some amazing stories of missionaries on his mission when he was a mission president. He also told his conversion story, which was really cool. He was about 27 years old and his family were all members and he never wanted to join the church, but he had some sister´s that tried really hard to work on him. But he never wanted to listen to them. But one day he was in his parents house and someone was being taught in the other room and he could hear a little of the story of Joseph Smith and of the first vision. He then left the house to go look for his friends on his Moto. on the ride to look for his friends he was thinking a lot of what the sisters taught. He was being touched by the spirit. He then completely turned around and went home. He asked his mom for the story of Joseph and then went to his room alone. He began to read every verse of Joseph smith´s story, after every verse, he would pray to god and ask Him if it was true. He began at 7 at night and finished at 9...... in the morning. He prayed and read for 14 hours straight. And when he finished, he knew that it was all true. That same day, he went to find the sisters and told them that he wanted to be baptized right now. The sisters told him that he is going to have to wait because they could not do the baptism. But he tried convincing them to just baptized him right then and now. that was funny. He then was baptized 3 days later by an Elder. President Costa is such a great guy. He gave us some great counsel and we felt the spirit really Strong. 

This week has been raining a whole lot. 

Love you all 

be happy 

Love the Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 78 November 24 -- November 30

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

My new area is supper awesome! I am only about 20 minutes, on a bus, away from my last area. I am in the stake called Parkin Pinheros, in the ward called Jardim Record. This ward is supper good. We have a great ward mission leader whos name is André. Our bishop is supper cool. We have 4 missionaries working here. The patriach in our stake lives in our area. He has also served as a stake president AND a mission president. It is so cool. The members here are supper cool. I almost felt like I was in a ward in the states yesturday. It was really organized. The Lord has blessed me with a great ward. The only thing is that the ward has not had many baptisms for a while. But that is going to change here. We have 0 investigators really strong.  The Lord is going to help us fly in a little bit. 

My new companion name is Elder Lopez. He is from Bolivia. He is supper chilled. He does everything supper calm. He reminds me of Melo a little. haha He has been a member almost all his life. He seems cool. 

I got here ready to work hard. I first hit up the area book and made a list of all the Ex-investigators from the past and all the recent converts to look for investigators. This transfer we are going to work a lot of reactivation and retention and  working with the members andfallowing the spirit to baptise. It is going to be great. We are going to focus on letting the kingdom of god grow here. I am excited. 

This weekend I went back to Sao Marcos because one of my investigators chose me to baptise her. And so my companion and I did a crazy walk over there. It only took about 1 hour. We baptised the niese of maria. It was great to see Elder Queiroz again. 

Love you all, hope you are all doing good. 

Be happy

Love The Elder Jones