Whenever I don't want to do something

...I leave behind my ¨don´t want¨ and I do it.¨ That´s a quote from one of the Sunday meetings this week, and I loved it! When we are in the service of our God, there will be some things that we just don´t want to do. I, for example, would love to get more sleep here haha. But I get a full 8 hours, and I know that each day, the Lord has other things planned for me to do for His work than an extra hour of sleep. 

 
Well! It´s almost Christmas! And I´ll have been in Spain for six months! It´s cazy to think about... It feels like it´s flown by, but it also feels like a REALLY long time. I miss all of you a ton, but only a year left! A year and a half to give everything to the Lord isn´t much that He´s asked of me :)

We were visiting a less active member the other day, and he asked us, ¨how´s the work going?¨ We said wonderful, and we´ve seen so many miracles. He replied, ¨Where? I´ve lived here for 6 years and haven´t seen a single miracle.¨ So we explained about a few miracles that we´ve seen this week.
One of them was that we found an investigator that we hadn´t seen in MONTHS. Her name´s Glenda...I´ve talked about her before, how amazing she is. I hope she can still feel the Spirit and be a little bit more open to following God´s commandments.

And then, there were two baptisms in our ward this week, and when Isabel, our investigator, saw them, she completely changed. She hasn´t smoked, has been reading the Book of Mormon, and praying morning and night. She´s awesome, and might be baptized this Sunday. 

I hope you all have a great Christmas week! The members of the Church here are taking good care of us; we have two or three eating appointments every day haha :)
Thanks for your emails and cards!

Love,
Hermana Jones

We Can't Be Scared

"...When we´re scared, it means that there is something more that we should do, that we aren´t doing." One of the leaders in the church here said this, and sorry for the weird translation haha. It sounds better in spanish :P
Well! It was a great week. We had an open house in the church, which was a success. We had a few investigators there, and they were taught about where they came from, their purpose here, and where they´re going. They´re questions that are so important, but many people don´t know the answers.


We had plenty of miracles this week, but also some really frustrating events. We´re teaching a few people who are smokers, and trying to help them quit is stressing me out. One, Isa, is a woman who has been through so much and is still fighting even when she should have given up a long time ago. She wants to quit smoking, and wants to change her life, but she doesn´t have a big enough reason to do it yet. We´ve been focusing on the Book of Mormon, to help her build faith in Jesus Christ, because He is the only one who can help her have more determination and resolve to change. I have such a testimony now of the Word of Wisdom (the health code that God revealed to Joseph Smith; in it, it says not to drink alcohol or to smoke.). Tobacco ruins lives! Ack. Frustrating.


BUT. I´ve been reading this talk by Elder Jeffery R. Holland that is called, ¨None were with Him.¨ In it, it talks about how completely along Jesus was. On the cross, He says, ¨My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?¨ Elder Holland says that this wasn´t God abandoning Christ; in order to make a complete atonement, Jesus had to not only suffer for our sins, but also feel how we feel when we sin: God´s spirit, the Holy Ghost, leaves us, and we feel completely alone. That must have been incredibly hard for Jesus, who had never sinned, and so had never felt separated from His Father. Elder Holland says this afterward, ¨But Jesus held on. He pressed on. The goodness in Him allowed faith totriumph even in a state of complete anguish. The trust He lived by toldHim in spite of His feelings that divine compassion is never absent, thatGod is always faithful, that He never flees nor fails us.¨


It´s good to remember what Christ did for us, and how He did it.
I hope you all have a great week! Christmas here isn´t the same as in the states, but it´s still fun, with all the lights and presents :)


Love you all!
Hermana Jones

"If Christ were here right now, where would He be?"

(Besides on Sundays, when He´d be in church, of course haha) One of the Sunday teachers asked that question, and it made me think. I think that, if He was walking in Cartagena, He´d stop and talk to all the poor people, the ones who need His help. It´s a good reminder that, even though Christmas time is super happy and fun for most of us, it can be a sad time for others, being away from their family and friends, or unable to buy their kids presents. 

 
Well, this week was great! It was busy and interesting. We talked to a lot of people on the street about Jesus Christ. The Church has this program now, called He is the Gift (I think...it´s ¨El es la Dádiva in Spanish haha). There´s a cool video on Mormon.org about Christ, and how He is the greatest Christmas gift our Father in Heaven could have ever given us. 

 
Well, I thought I´d update you all on some of the people here. There´s Brian, the guy who was baptized about two months ago. He´s still going strong, wants to receive the priesthood, go to the temple and go on a mission. There are days when I think, ¨Man, even if I just came to Cartagena for him, it would be completely worth it.¨ He´s just so great. I´m so blessed to be a part of his search for God. It makes me realize that there ARE people who want to know God, and who need to know that He loves them. I get to be a messenger of that message...it´s the best :)

Let´s see...Our other ¨recent convert¨, Monica, is a little bit worse. She works in something called ¨Interna¨ which means you go and live in an old persons home and take care of them 24 hours a day. The people she watches over, an old man and woman, don´t let her have books of other religions, or pray out loud, or have Sundays off to go to the church. And so she´s forgotten a lot of what it is that we do in Church, and what we believe, and how to talk to God. It´s super sad. BUT we got back in touch with her, so I hope things will start to improve. Poor thing. Her kid is due in January.

Oh! The other big news: Transfer calls came, and I´m staying here in Cartagena! Transfers are every 6 weeks for missionaries, and I have already been in Cartagena for almost 5 months, so I wasn´t sure if I was staying. I´m super happy I am staying though, because we´re still in the middle of the 3 month training for Hermana Adrian, and I just love Cartagena so much :) 

 
Speaking of Hermana Adrian, I´ve been learning some cool words from her in Spanish. Since she´s from the Dominican Republic, and it´s pretty close to the States, they use a lot of English words. But, for example, there are a bunch of words that mean cool: guay (guh-why), chulo (chooo-low), and jevi (pronounced ¨Heavy¨ and it means SUPER cool). Here they also use words like ¨okay¨ and ¨shopping¨ and ¨feeling¨. It´s very interesting to see how they picked up some american culture.

I love you all! I hope you have a wonderful week.

Hermana Jones

12/1/2014

Hi! We had a GREAT week here :) I left my agenda in the appartment, so I don´t remember everything we did...I´ll go in reverse order to see if I can remember more.

Sunday: Church! It was amazing, the Primary Program. This is when the little kids are in charge of the Sacrament Meeting, and they share their testimonies and sing...It´s the best. We had quite a few investigators there, and they all loved it.

We also ate lunch with a member family. The father is a doctor, so it was cool to talk to him about that. And the food was SO good...

Saturday: We had an activity in the church with the three wards in this area. It was a Game Day: there were board games, basketball, ping-pong... a 14 year old member and I won like 5 games of Foosball :) But now I have blisters on my hands haha.
Friday: ...I can´t remember...haha

Well, you´ll just have to believe me when I say that it was an awesome week haha :) Today was fun as well. Some members took my district hiking, and we went to an old Spanish military base. There were these HUGE cannons that we were able to enter and look around. It was amazing, and super nice to just be able to chill and enjoy hanging out. In an hour we hit the streets again to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. But I wouldn't want to do anything else...I feel like I have the best "job" in the world. The people here are super nice and I love Spain, especially with all the holidays. And I get to talk about Jesus Christ every day...it's awesome :)

I hope you all have an amazing week!

       my district :) Elders Robinson, Erickson, Whetten, H. Adrian, me, and Elder Allen

The Mediterranean Sea !!!!!