Life in the stone bridge

Hola mi familia!

Okay well it seems like I was just writing yesterday because this week flew by and I don't think I have any fun stories of going to Ecuador or anything. It was just a good normal week in the work of the Lord!

Our investigator, Copertino is still progressing towards his baptism on the 14th. He came to church yesterday and loved it again and is excited for his baptism.

Our other awesome investigator, Roger, wasn't able to go to church yesterday because he was sick :( so that was sad but we are going to visit him and we will just have to push back his date another week and pray that everything goes well. He is being a little colder to us so just pray that everythign goes well with him!

This week we did a work visit with some sisters so I went to another area with sister Margetts, from South Jordan UT.  She is finishing up her training here so she is pretty new in the mission but she is so sweet and we had a great 24 hours together.  She also was going to BYU before the mission so I'm adding her to the list of people I can hang out with when I get back! -I'm pretty sure all of my friends are getting married.... haha.

Tomorrow are transfers again here in the mission but I think Hermana Alonso and I are going to stick around here for atleast another transfer. They haven't told us yet but later today they will.  We already have 3 transfers here together but we love each other and work well so hopefully President doesn't find it prudent to split us up! Well I guess it's really the Lord's call, but we'll see. :) I definitely don't want to leave the dusty land of Puente Piedra!

This morning I finished the Book of Mormon in Spanish for the 2nd time! It just gets better every time.  I love how we are given the invitiation to read it and ponder it and pray and find out for ourselves if it is true.  There are so many people that bash the Book of Mormon but they can't say anything against a sincere testimony of somebody that has truly read and prayed about the Book of Mormon, and received the witness that it is true.  I've received that witness many times and my testimony is strengthened every time I read that great book. It's so true!!!

Thanks for everything and I love you bunches! 

Hermana Jones 

Tour DE Ecuador...and Peru

Hola familia!!

OKay, so you may be wondering why I'm sending this email on a wednesday instead of Monday.  Let me just explain, these past two days have literally been the craziest ever! I'll try and fit everything in here and help you understand how awesome these days have been.

Last week an Elder from the offices called me and said I needed to be at the offices at 8am on Monday to go to the migrations office and to bring money and clothes in case we got back late and I had to stay the night in the offices. Well people do that all the time so it's normal but at 10 on sunday night, another sister called me and asked what I was packing to go to Ecuador.  I was quiet and asked, "ecuador? what do you mean ecuador?" and she said, "oh, you didn't know? We're going to ecuador tomorrow." 

What?? Like the country??? 

So yeah, I'm not sure how that detail got left out, but about 15 of us had to go to ECUADOR!! Basically we are the ones that are here without visas and our time went up and we were illegal so we had to fly to Tumbes, the city closest to Ecuador, and take a bus to leave the coutnry and then come back so they could give us six more months legal here.  I was so shocked! But that is what happened.  We left and flew to Tumbes, up by the border and it was an adventure!
We got off the plane and it was incredibly hot and humid. We all got in a bus and drove to Ecuador, waited in a line, entered the country, then turned around and waited in a line to get back into Peru and they give us six more months! Woo! So we finished all of that at about 3pm and our flight back wasn't until 9pm. SO the driver took us to the center of Tumbes and we just walked around and took pictures and ate and it was great! Tumbes is so cool and green and has a million mosquitos! So we finished up and went back to the airport and it started pouring so our flight got delayed but then we finally made it back to Lima at about 12 at night! 

We drove to the offices and were getting ready to go to bed, at this point it was about 1:30 am, when an Elder called us and told Hermana Alonso and I that the next morning we had to be ready at 6:30 because President was going to take us to the temple for being the comp of the month. Yay! So we slept a good three hours, got ready and went to the temple. We did a session, my first session in Spanish! And my first time seeing the new movie! (It's awesome!) and it was so refreshing to be able to go after almost a year! I loved it. So then President drove us around central Lima to see all the fancy places and we went and ate at Tony Roma's on the beach! IT was so delicious and I was in heaven.  We went back and after about 30 hours being out of our area, we finally made it back to our area at about 5pm last night.  What!!! THat was the most eventful to days of my mission haha.  It was incredible and I can't believe I went to Tumbes, Ecuador, and The center of Lima.  I took a million pictures and it was paradise.  

We got back and were worried because we had been away from our area for so long, that gives Satan a ton of time to work. Luckily we were able to get to teaching again last night and everything is good so far.  Oh, and I'm extremely tired.... haha.  

Now every week that I don't go to another country is going to seem boring haha. But they were good experiences.  I absolutely LOVED going to the temple and being able to just sit and clear my mind for a bit and remember the covenants that I've made.  There is a constant mission stress here, worrying about all the people we meet and such, but It was great to be able to sit and just enjoy the Spirit. To just think about what I've done here and what I still need to do in these six months. I was able to reflect a lot and feel the Spirit testify to me that the work I'm involved in is true, and that I need to keep on keepin on here in the Lord's vineyard. The church is so true!!!!
This weekend we are excited for Pamela to get baptized, pray that everything goes well for her! She's awesome.

Thanks for all the love and prayers, I hope everything is going well back home! 

Hermana Jones 

Una Semana Loca

Hola hola!

Congrats to Lynelle for graduating BYU! I don't know if you'll still be sticking around Provo or what but that's great and I hope you feel accomplished from graduating from one of the top 80(or so?) universities in America! 

okay so we had an interesting week and this is why.

Last monday we had transfers, and how they do them here is that they call our leaders on Monday and tell us to pack up and go to the meeting on Tuesday. We don't know where we are going, they just tell us to show up with our stuff. Well Monday came and they said that Hermana Alonso and I were staying together so we didn't have to pack or anything. Woo! We were super excited because we DID NOT want to leave. It was great and we went and celebrated by eating Lomo Saltado, my favorite peruvian dish. (picture attached.) We enjoyed our Monday and all was well.

WELL, we woke up on Tuesday to a text message sent at 11:30pm from the assistant to president telling us to come to the transfer meeting, without our suitcases... what? we were confused. But we went and it was fun to be able to see all of the other sisters that were getting transferred and we took pictures and such.  So what they do is that everybody goes into the room together and there is a slideshow and the assistant announces, "In the area of _____ we have Hermana ____ with Hermana _____" adn then our pictures and names pop up on the screen and we find each other and hug and such.  Well before the meeting I shook President Archibald's hand and asked, "why are we here?" and he laughed and said, "that's one of the three questions of the soul right? Where did I come from, why am I here, and where am I going?" haha so he thought he was pretty funny and didn't answer me. Well the slideshow started and it came to our area and said, "In Puente Piedra 2, Hermana Jones and Hermana Alonso, as sister training leaders!" And our pictures popped up and so we jumped up and hugged and were super excited! So now Hermana Alonso and I are sister training leaders together! Yay! 

What is a STL you may ask? Okay so basically since they changed the mission age there are a ton more sisters and Zone leaders and district leaders can't go on exchanges with the sisters obviously so what we do is we still work normally here and have our area and investigators but at least once a week we travel to another area and do exchanges with other sisters to help them in their area or with whatever they need.  It's kinda like zone leaders for sisters but not because we don't have the priesthood and still work under all of the other leaders. A cool part is that we get to go to the mission council meeting every month and get awesome trainings from President. I'm excited!! We have a lot more pressure now and are going to be a lot busier but it will be awesome to be able to work more and help others in the work as well, and I can't imagine how much I am going to learn from all of this as well! 

So basically this week has flown by because we are getting ourselves oriented with all that and also we had a fun service activity! We painted the upstairs of the house of the Sanchez Family with our district.  We blasted our EFY music and all got to know the family well and the paint actually turned out really well! (Sometimes missionaries don't do the most quality work.... but hey! It's free) but no it looked really good and they were grateful.  All of the houses here are made of concrete so I don't know if that is easier or harder to paint than dry wall but it worked out. 

The weather is getting cooler (in the 70s!) and our animo is getting bigger.  Life is good here in Puente Piedra and we are excited to see what is to come in these next couple of months that we will be together! 

So at the beginning of my mission I set the goal to read Jesus the Christ on my mission, and then I never obtained the book and here it is only in Spanish. But hey, I might as well start now and see what I can read in 7 months. Mom, is there an extra laying around the house somewhere and if so, could you send it to me in the next couple of weeks? They only have it in Spanish here.... If not, that will just be a goal to accomplish after my mission. :)

Thanks for all the love and prayers and I hope all continues to go well for the Jones Family! (and friends)

Hermana Jones 

La Semana Santa

Hola hola!

Congrats to Matt and Jessica for getting married! And welcome to the family, Jessica! From Mom's little note it sounded like all went well and well, they ended up sealed so that's the important part. Send me some pictures one of these days so I can see! 

So now only two of us in the family lack our ticket to the Celestial Kingdom.  We'll get there! 

This week went well and it was one of the most interesting Easter's I have experienced!

So here they celebrate the entire week up until Friday.  They all burn incense and stuff like that and then thursday and friday everybody got the day off work and school and such.  Friday they only eat Fish and nobody did anything all day except there were virgin mary parades in the streets that people went out to participate in.  It was interesting to see the culture/religious differences of Easter. Everybody here celebrates the death of Jesus Christ. While we are grateful for the fact that He died for our sins, in the church we prefer to celebrate his resurrection and the fact that He now lives! 

Friday was a holiday for that reason but then everybody had to work on saturday and sunday, as if his crucifixion was the only thing Christ did.  Anyway, we had lots of good lessons about Christ explaining the garden of Gethsemani, (which most people don't know about) and the resurrection.  It was a good week and we had a lot of great lessons, but everybody claimed to be die hard catholics despite they hadn't gone to church in forever...haha. Anyway this week will be better because they will be back in the rhythm of life and we can teach more about the Restored Gospel! 

Yesterday I was actually asked to give a talk in church so I decided to focus on the resurrection and it went great.  While there are a lot of members of the church here, most of them are recent converts so were born into the Catholic church and carry on those traditions. I explained the significance of the resurrection and the reason why we don't use crosses in the church (Thanks for that quote by Pres. Hinckley, Dad!). It went well and when I said, "you may notice there aren't any crosses in any building or temple", a lot of people looked around surprised as if they had never realized that before. It was pretty funny. It went well!

Anyway, it was a great week and life is good here! Today they are going to inform us if we get transferred or not, and I'm hoping I'll get to stay here for another transfer with Hermana Alonso! 

Have a great week and Love you bunches! The church is true! 

The beach and a baptism

Hola familia!!!!!

This was the best week ever!! Actually it was the work week ever but turned into the best week ever. Let me explain.

It started out great because last monday we went to the beach as a district! There is a fancy beach in our zone so we went and took some pictures and obviously we couldn't get in the ward but we climbed on some cool rocks and took pictures in an abandoned boat.  Also I received a little mitt and ball set at our mission christmas party so I brought that and it was a relaxing day. I'll send some pictures! We were going to eat fancy ice cream but had to get back to the grind by 6. 

Okay so then the week just went downhill. Let me just say that Satan is real and does NOT like families.  The wonderful Sanchez family started having doubts, every one, and I could sit here and explain for a couple of hours everything that happened, but thursday night, a coupleof days before their scheduled baptism, they all decided NOT to get baptized! We love that family so much and were distraught, we left crying and praying and sat down that night and decided that that was NOT okay and we had to do something about it. We called President Archibald and he gave us advice and and our zone leaders and we planned a great lesson and went on Friday night and it just turned out okay but we did all we could. we left the house sad because they still didn't want to get baptized and we knew it was because Satan didn't want them to get baptized.  Well we prayed a lot and decided that we had done everything we could, so we just needed to continue to have Faith and work and the Lord would do the rest. So we told the family that we still were going to be at the church for their baptism and they could choose.  We filled the font and invited everybody and set up chairs and everything.

  At 8 they hadn't showed up so we went over and they were chilling in their house.  we talked for a long time and then all of the sudden, out of nowhere, the son said, Well, let's go! And they all said, okay! let's do it! WHAT!!!!!! We were absolutely shocked! The only thing that can explain that is that the Spirit softened their hearts and opened their hearts just enough to make the decision.  They all got baptized together and we are so incredibly happy for them!!!!! :) It was a great service with a strong spirit and the bishop gave them all books and bibles and hymnals and everything. I haven't stopped smiling since! So basically that was a super long story short. We were so discouraged and were about to give up but we kept the Faith and as always, light overpowered dark and they can now continue to progress to the Celestial Kingdom as a family! Wow.  The worst week ever turned into the best week ever.  I love that family so much. They are pretty much my second family. That was literally the hardest thing I have ever done, but the day of their baptism was one of the happiest days of my life. It was so rewarding! 

Thank you SO much for all the prayers and thoughts for us and for them.  Prayers work! After this week I can testify even stronger that Satan is real but that God is way more powerful. Faith with works brings miracles and the CHURCH IS TRUE! I'm so happy! :) 

Love you so much!  

Hermana Jones 

La Conferencia general

Buenos dias!

General Conference this week was awesome! I've definitely grown a lot to appreciate general conference on my mission.  The entire week I was super anxious for saturday to come! All of the missionaries say that General conference is better than Christmas as a missionary and that's so true. I loved it!

It's hard to pick a favorite talk but I absolutely loved the Sunday morning session. I felt like Bishop Stevenson and President Monson were talking directly to me, so it was great.  I also felt like there was a great overall theme of that the world is changing but God never changes so we need to stick strong to what we know and not let the world influence.  It was great.  I also loved President Monson's statement about temples. What I understood is that we can't keep building temples until we actually start using more the ones that we have! Let's get to work and start attending the temple more! I haven't been able to go to the temple since I left the Provo MTC and I sure miss it.  I think this week or next we will be able to go with a less active member we reactivated because she is going to get endowed. 

The work has been moving right along here and unfortunately we had a pretty slow week here, but we are working so that things will pick up again.  A couple of weeks ago we had a training called, "This is war" from our mission president and I love the title of the training because it is so true! I have seen that so much this week.  We are literally in a battle right now every day against Satan and it's hard, but we know who is going to win! We are keeping our Faith and animo and pushing through! 

OH! Fun fact: our zone had 38 baptisms this month! That's a record for the mission I think. Also, hermana Alonso and I were one of the 4 companionships of the month!

Funny story: This week was April Fool's day, (Dia de los inocentes) except they celebrate it here in November but I told Hermana Alonso that in the US it is in April so I was in the bathroom that morning and the phone rang and she answered the phone and said, "Oh, President Archibald! Como esta!!!" So I ran out of the bathroom with a "WHY IS HE CALLING" face and she just started cracking up and yelled "APRIL FOOLS!" haha. But the funny part: That night I was in the bathroom again and President Archibald literally called so I just naturally thought she was joking when she answered the same way... but turned out it was actually him!  Talk about the boy who cried wolf. haha.  No worries, he was just calling to chat and had a couple of questions about our area. 

Thanks for all the love and support and I hope you all have a great week meditating and reflecting on the words of our beloved prophet and apostles!

Hermana Jones

Los Milagros

Hello Hello!

It's finally reaching Otoño (Fall) in Peru so the heat isn't killing us as much which is great. Every corner here has ice cream for sale for 1 sol (about 35 cents) so I definitely having spent my fair share in ice cream this summer.  

This week the two little girls I was talking about got baptized! Their parents are members but we couldn't figure out why they weren't baptized yet and it was a mixture of fear, not really wanting to, and their dad wanting them to know everything before they got baptized.  We went over a lot and did Family Home Evening's with them and they just opened up more and more every time as we sang and taught and played little games with them.  So we pretty much just told them this week that they were going to get baptized on Saturday and they were okay with it! Their dad needed a little more convincing but in this whole process we were able to reactivate him and he baptized them this weekend. It was great! Next goal: Sealed in the temple.  

Also this weekend our investigator, Gary, got baptized! Gary is literally one of the smartest people I have met but is so humble and just awesome.  Here's his story: He used to be the typical worldly guy with his friends and girls and such but one day he woke up and was paralyzed from the chest down. I didn't understand too well what the cause was but I think it was Meningitis? is that the thing where the liquid inflames around your brain and spinal cord? Well it was something like that and he didn't know he had it until he woke up one morning paralyzed.  It completely changed him and now he is extremely involved in the community and helping others.  We met him because he plays on a wheelchair basketball team that practices in the church's court.  He has been investigating churches for years and almost got baptized as a Jehovah's witness but last minute dropped out because they couldn't answer all of his "doubts." Well we started teaching him and he just ate everything up and understood perfectly and was one of those people that when we called to remind him to read the Book of Mormon he would say, "I was actually reading just now!"  or one day he asked us what is the difference between Aaronic and Melch. Priesthood before we even taught that!  haha so he's great and was very happy to get baptized and afterwards shared a great testimony about how renovated he felt and it was something he had been searching for for years.

I'm super excited for General conference this week and we are using that a lot to proselyte. I'm using Jacob's line, "Have you heard the good news?!? There's a living prophet and he is going to talk to us this weekend!!!!!!!!" It's pretty fun and hopefully we can have a lot of people come and listen to the words of the living prophet. 

I hope you all have a great week and I love you bunches!

Hermana Jones