Another Monday?

Is it Monday again?? Crazy!!!

Good week!!! I don't have much to write.... hm....

We had to travel a bit this week because we went to a leadership training with President which was awesome, and it was fun to see other friends from the mission.  

It was interesting because President actually talked a lot about money in the training.  He was suggesting that the church isn't building more temples because now there are so many missionaries, that all the funding goes to missionary work. 

Something interesting he pointed out is that each mission spends so much money on all of the costs put together for all the missionaries and services and such, that they figured out that the church pays about 12,000 dollars for every person we baptize. Talk about worth of souls! haha.  Well President wants to lower that cost.  There are two ways we can do it.  We can spend less money or we can baptize more people!! haha So we are going to baptize more people.  Then we have to make sure they stay in the church because if they don't, that's 12,000 dollars wasted! Anyway, it was an interesting point of view to look at things.  

The Alberto Family is going to get married this week so we are excited for that and for them! They still aren't goign to baptize because we want to make sure they are fully repented and ready for baptism.  Marriage doesn't exactly mean full repentance... haha but they are great and we are confident that they will get baptized within these couple of weeks. 

Life is going well here in the mission and I'm loving it!

Thanks for everthing, have a great week!!!! 

Thanks for all the love and support!

Hermana Jones

Churchless week

Woops, sent the letter again without writing anything. 

We had a good week here in Barranca, it was pretty strange because yesterday were the elections and according to the law, you can't have any meetings on election day. So there was no church for us and I felt so weird all Sunday.  It was the first Sunday that I haven't gone to church in years! Also it was a bummer because we couldn't see conference, but will be seeing it this week. So this week now you can tell me your opinions/what you liked and such of conference. I'm excited to see it! Word on the street is that they didn't announce any temples and they are "Alma 54-ing it" O sea, we just need to strengthen what we have already got.  

Nevertheless, it was a pretty good week, just strange.  So many people were travelign because you have to go to your own city to vote if you never changed your address (Which is a TON of people) so like half of the population went to other cities and a ton came here that were originally from here as well.  So we did a lot of contacting and finding new investigators because our current ones weren't home! 

A lot of finding = a lot of rejection! It was a little frustrating just hearing everyone's lame excuses why they can't listen to us but it definitely helped me grow in my testimony of the Savior. I love these people so much and want them to be saved, but they just flat out reject us.  But that's what the Savior went through as well. Just gotta keep workign with Faith! 

Today starts my last transfer! We haven't found out yet about the changes but I'm 99.99% sure that I'll be finishing out here with hermana Fuentes. I'm excited to sprint out to the end! 

The weather is finally warming up and everyone is happy. Life is good. The work is going well.  

I can't upload pics today so next week for sure.

Have a great week!
Love you bunches!  

Week of Adventures!

Hola Familia, 

This week flew by because we went up to Huaraz to do a work visit which was pretty cool! Huaraz is far and there are 3 companionships of sisters there so we stayed from Monday until Wednesday and it was productive and it is summertime there so it was nice to see the sun feel dry air- not so humid. Hna Agle, my trainer/mom goes home next week so it was sad to have to say goodbye to her, but I'll get to see her again in January. :)

We got back and got to work for a couple of days and then had a zone training with Pres. and Sister Archibald and the assitants which was AWESOME.  I'm pretty sure Pres. Archibald would be an awesome coach because he is so motivating.  He was talking about the importance of what we are doign adn how important it is to hasten the work and have an attitude of urgency because there isn't much time! I felt like I could go walk on water after that. It was great. So we got back to work and had a great week!

This week I saved a dog off a roof. When we were running in the morning a kid and his grandpa were trying to climb a ladder and take their dog off the roof, but they couldn't do it so I tried but the dog looked like it was goign to bite me so I got up there with the kid, and a lady gave us a bag and the kid put it in the bag and it started going crazy and I threw the bag down to the grandpa and all was well! It was a fun adventure/service activity. 

The Rodriguez family is progressing and we found out this week that Lucero, the 22 year old daughter has to go away to study for 2 months so she won't be able to get baptized until December, so we talked to Pres. Archibald and he said it would be better to baptize her this weekend than wait.  So we went over there on Friday night and talked to her about it and at first she didn't want to get baptized on saturday because she had lots of doubts and such and didn't feel ready, but we were talking to her and helping her and it finally came down to the fact that she had doubts about Joseph Smith.  So we invited her to kneel and pray right then and there. So we all kneeled and she prayed and asked if Joseph Smith was a prophet.  The Spirit was so strong and we all stayed kneeling after to listen to the spirit and we got up and she explained to us that she had felt the Spirit so we told her that that was her answer and she agreed and agreed to get baptized the next day.  So on saturday she got baptized and her whole family came and it was great and she gave her testimony after about how she knew it was the right decision.  There isn't heated water in the fonts here so it was pretty cold the water but she said as she entered in the water while being baptized, she didn't even feel cold, or afterwards either.  She is super awesome and it was a great example for her family.  They are still going to get baptzied in October, because they have to go to church a couple more times still. Everything is going well with them.  Our challenge now is finding more families because a lot of fallen and have stopped progressing so that is what we are going to focus on this week. 

Oh yeah, I am going to send you the most fulfilling picture! Our itty bitty branch has had 28 baptisms in these last 4 months between two companionships, which is awesome! Not only that but they are all families that are still active and going strong.  Anway, most of them went to the temple and did baptisms on saturday and so they took a picture together and when I saw it it made me tear up a bit.  It's so great to see the progression towards the altar! the work is hastening! 

Thanks for all the love and prayers. Have a great week! The church is true!

Hermana Jones