The Brazilian Adventure: Week 94 March 23rd  -- March 29th

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

Tranfers came. And we both stayed! Oh yeah. 

We are Doing great. We found a great family. I don´t have any time today.

I´m super excited for GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!! I love it. 

Love you all 

Be happy

 Love the Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 93 March 16th  -- March 22nd

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

KAYLEEN, ANNALEE, and KIANA GOT BAPTISED!! I´m SO happy! I love reading these amazing e-mails from you guys. Everything is going just great with many people. I love hearing about the progress of Faline and her family. My cunhado got BAPTISED too. I love it. Wendy memorized the 13 articles of faith. Got some shoes the other day from Lynda and Kaycie, and some sweet pictures. I belive Ellen returned nowfrom her mission and served a great mission. I just love it all. I love how everyone is doing. You all make me so happy. Thank you for letting me know what is going on. I´m so filled with this joy that is so great. 

I´m doing good here. We aren´t having to much success on the battle front with baptisms. But the ward is getting better. We are trying to help the ward increase its spiritual side. And it is going. A few weeks ago we had 71 people in the sacrament meeting. Yesturday we had 108 people. We are working a lot on reactivation and retention also. And it is going great. Yesterday convert family invited the whole ward to have a "barbeque" but just with a special bean food that is called Fejoada. And it was amazing! It was our lunch for the day. Their house was packed! 

President Dalton gave permission yesterday to me so that I can visit my recent convert. She is Fernanda back in Primavera. The sisters told me in a last multi zone that she hasn´t been going to church for a while. The visit was awesome. I arrived as a surprise. She was crying and almost gave me a hug. But I gave her a stiff hand shack and it held her back. She said that she has been workibng a lot and that is why she hasn´t been going. But I gave here a good talk and she said that she is probably try to look for another job. She said that she wants to serve a mission! but her parents don´t want her too. I hope she goes. I loved the visit. 

Love you all. 

Be happy 

Love the Elder jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 92 March 9th  -- March 15th

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

There is a less active women that we are helping to come back to church. Her name is Jaqueline. And she has two little boys. A lot of the members were helping us, especially an Irmã named Graça. This last week Jaqueline didn´t go to church and so we passed by there to visit her. She is doing good and said that she will be giong this next week. As we were about to leave, she asked us. Elders how is Irmã Graça doing? This last week, Irmã Graça has been really sick and not to good. But Jaqueline hasn´t seen her for about two weeks. So we asked here, why did she asked that? And she said that ever since the begining of last week, she has been thinking a lot about Irmã Graça. And she has been feeling like something was wrong with her. We then told her that she was really sick. And then I explained to her that this was the spirit telling her these things and she knew that it was true. It was a good experience. 

During the week it was raining a whole lot again. One time we were teaching someone and a lightning struck right by her house. It was crazy. and it was SO loud. 

We have been droping a lot of people and our teaching group is starting to grow again. 

So yesturday there was a great protest against the president Gilma here in Brasil. We had to be in the house the whole day. We just studied and did weekly planning. It is so weird. I think there is some crazy stuff going on in the world and I have no idea. On saturday, during some lessons, we saw some of the friends and family members getting ready to go protest against Gilma. 

I´m excited for general conference soon. 

Love you all

Be happy

Love The Elder Jones

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 91 March 2nd  -- March 8th

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

Last P-day, we had another great supper p-day. Man, Brasilians are supper competetive with soccer. I get a little scarred to play with them sometimes. But is so funny after the game they are all great friends again. That is how brazilians are most of the time. They can get mad easly, but they can afterwards forigve and forget so fast. It is so awesome. It is a great example for me. 

So we found this great young teenager who is elect. He accepted everything that we have taught him so far. and he has prayed and knows for him slef that it is all true. He is a friend of a recent convert. He is kinda lazy and a plays a lot of video games. He went to church this sunday and he said that he liked church, but he didn´t like waking up in the morning so early. He never wakes up so early. He said that maybe he doesn´t want to get baptised because he doesn´t want to go to church every sunday. He said that he is ok with going to the terrestrial kingdom. I was so amazed when I heard that. We are still going to try to help him. But man, the youth in these last days are kinda lazy. I´m so thankful to have such good parents to help me out and who have raised me to not be so lazy and who have taught me to work. 

this week my son got some food poisining from some salgados on the street. He had to stay in the house all day on Wednsday. He stood up at night sometimes having to use the bathroom. He said that he is never going to eat salgados on the street. I´m still going to. I love them. 

This week we had a meeting for the New missionaries with President Dalton. He is talking a lot about teaching groups of people. We had a meeting at my old church building in Primavera. It was awesome. 

we are visting a lot of less active. It is intense sometimes

Love you all

Be happy 

Love The Elder Jones

 

The Brazilian Adventure: Week 90 February  23rd  -- March 1st

My Dearest beloved Family and Friends:

So there was a this young kid named Jefferson who was baptised a few weeks ago who went up yesterday to bear his testimony in our ward. He is 10 years old and is a nephew of a member. I have never heard in my whole life such a powerful testimony. He started out calm and by telling his story. And then when he got to the part of telling us his experience about when he went to his room to pray to God if Joseph Smith was a true prophet and if the church of Christ true and only living church 100%. He told us so sincerly and crying so much, choking on his tears, about how he felt something so strongly testifying to him that it was true. He said that he felt the truth so strongly. It was so cool. I felt the spirit testify to me that his words were true and my testimony increased even more. There is no way a kid can make that up. I know that christ wants us all to be like little children. Kids are amazing. I want to be just like them. I miss my little brothers and sisters and also my little nieces and nephews. They are so awesome. 

Well, I know that my mission is beginning to come to an end. And I really don´t want it to. I´m panicking. I love my mission. I don´t understand how a missionary can become "truncky" towards the end of his mission. I´m going crazy trying to talk to the most amount people that I can. I´m trying to baptise the most that I can. I´m trying to work the most effective and excercise the most faith that I can. This is the last time that I will EVER be an Elder, and a full time missionary  while I´m young. This is the last and only time that I´m going to be known as a representative of Jesus Christ. The last and only time that I can walk up to some one and tell them that. The last and only time that I can work 24 hours in the Lords work and keep doing his will. The last and only time that I can feel so close to Him. I´m running faster than ever, wroking harder than ever, praying like I have never prayed, and preaching like I never had before. I´m going crazy, time is flying. I am getting a lot of opposition like always and it is supper challenging, but we are going to do great. Work! Work! Work! 

Love you all, I heard that Annalee, kiana and kayleen are getting baptised soon! yeah! 

Be happy 

Love the Elder Jones