The Brazilian Adventure: Week 88 February 9  -- February 15

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

Tranfers! And I got transfered. ah! I did not want to go. This is the best ward that I have already passed by and it is the ward that I have spent the less time in. It is always like that. I am going to miss this ward. I had a lot of good experiences here with the members. The ward asked me to give a little talk before I left, which is not normal when a missionary leaves this ward. At the end I had to say goodbye to everyone, and everyone came with tears to say good bye. I felt good. I did not feel like I had as much successe in this area as I would like, but that day I felt a lot more better. There was a Brother that came up with tears in his eyes telling us that he is never going to forget that experience when he was with us in his car to go visit some members in-active. While we were with him, it began to pour a whole lot of rain. He said that we can go back. But we were really close to those in-active members and I told him that we would go out there and try to see if they were home while he stayed in the car. We went out there in the pouring rain to call at the front door of these members. We passed by about 3 houses and no one was home and time ran out. I thought that we tried going out there with faith to find someone and no one was home. I felt liked we failed that day. But then when this Brother came up to me with tears telling us how we had such great courage to try to bring back those souls. I thought I was a failer, but the Lord had other plans for the act that we made. And that was to touch that Bothers heart. 

You never know how much good you do in the day. So we just have to keep trying to do our best and try to do the right. 

I am going to train again, I am going to finish training a new missionary. He is going to be my fifth son. I love being a dad! 

I love you all, keep doing great and keep looking good. 

Be happy

Love the Elder Jones

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 11:45 AM, Thomas Jones <tjones@myldsmail.net> wrote:

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 87 February 2  -- February 8

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 87 February 2  -- February 8

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

   Things are going good. This week, we went out with Sergio to do some visits. Sergio is the member that has been less active for almost 15 years. He is a great man. 

This week we had Interviews with President Dalton. I love these interviews. They are so great. They are just about 15 to 20 minutes and they are so great. We are doing good in our area. We are working well with the members. I would like to do a whole lot better and sometimes I feel like we aren´t doing so great. But President tells us that we are doing really good. So I´m ok with that. 

We have this young man who we are teaching named Marçelo. He is great. He helped his less active wife and her family come back to church. He just has to get married. And then he is going to be baptised. He already recieved an answer that the church is true this last week. 

love you all

be happy

Love the Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 86 January 26 -- Febuary 1

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

We found this awesome lady on the street the other day. With our next visit with her, she said that she was going to invite all her neighbors for our message that we are going to give to her. 

There is this less active that we helped come back to church. His name is sergio. This is his 3rd Sunday in a row going to church. He hasn´t been to church for that much in almost 15 years. He is coming back strong. He had an interview this last Wednesday with the bishop. 

We had these two other families that dropped us. That was tough. With one family, a member and the mom had a little argument. With this other great family, they started to work a whole lot , and they said that they will need some time until things slow down there. 

This week I was a little frustrated also, but on friday, I had a great study. I´m learning how I need to have faith and never doubt. Some times it is hard for me. Sometimes hard times come and I just think to my self, "Man, what I´m I doing wrong." or "I am never going to have the sucesse that I want because I am not doing some thing perfect." And I began to have these types of doubts. And sometimes I just have a bad attitude right before the day ends or the week ends. I believe that I need to learn how to keep believing until the very end. One thing that has helped me now is to always remember about the atonement and how I can know that If I am doing my best, the Lord will help me with the rest and I will then do miracles in the lives of others. Sometimes I get the doubts that my best is not enough, but this is a lie. When I was reading the Book of Mormon and there was this verse that I loved and that I was so impressed with the Anti-nephi-Lehi people. The part were they would not fight back with the Lamenites and how they would prefer to die then to break there covenant with God. I especially am so impressed in the part in alma chapter 24 verse 23. This people would sit there praising God until the very end. I couldn´t do that. I would panic with so much fear if some one came running at me with a sword ready to kill me. But they had so much faith and didn´t complain and sat there praising the Lord until the end. This was a great lesson for me to learn how to not complain, even until the very end. I have to not have any doubts also. 

I love you all. 

Be happy