"God uses the unlikely to accomplish the impossible"

--Elder Russell M. Nelson. I read this the other day, and it´s SO TRUE. All through the Bible and the Book of Mormon, God has uses His unlikely servants that come from humble backrounds to be His instruments (like David, who fought Goliath).

This week was great! We had a goal as a mission to set 250 baptismal dates, and it went really well. We ended up with more than our goal, and it was super cool to see the entire mission (about 220 missionaries) working together.

Well, in terms of major events...we went on exchanges this week with some sister missionaries in Fuengirola, and they´re doing awesome. The purpose of exchanges is to train and support one another, but I feel like I´m doing more learning than training. It´s helped me grow SO much...I know that the Lord sent me here to help the people, but more than that, He sent me here to learn and be helped. 

We had a few cool moments this week when people we didn´t know called us and said that they wanted to learn more about the Church! So we gave them a church tour, and they said they´d love to come back and learn more, and, if they came to know it to be true, be baptized. This happened twice, with two different people, and it was a huge miracle. Super cool!

And so that was the main highlight of the week...it wasn´t a super exciting week, but it was good. My companion might get transferred to another area in Spain next week, which is sad, cuz Hermana Miller is awesome :) 

I hope you all had great weeks! 

Love,
Hermana Jones

"How do we practice being like Christ?"

...Here in His Church.¨ This is a quote from a talk given in church yesterday, which I really enjoyed. The speaker said that the Church is a way from the Lord to be more like Jesus Christ; we don´t go just to fill up seats.

Well! We had a fun week, full of lots of funny moments. We did exchanges with some Hermanas from Granada, and I stayed here in Malaga...for the first time! It was scary, cuz I still don´t know the area well, but it worked out. we were able to have a lot of good lessons with people, and I learned a lot from the Sister who came here to be with me for the day.

We have this AWESOME investigator friend, whose name is Eugenia. She´s studied with Jehovah´s Witnesses for 7 years but was never baptized. She smokes and is trying to quit, but has seen SO many miracles since she started meeting with us. She´s awesome. Hopefully she´ll be baptized this Sunday, if she can stop smoking (you have to have stopped smoking for a good amount of time before you can be baptized).

And then, on Valentines day, we just had a really funny day...I´m not sure why, but everyone just started rejecting us in the funniest ways. But we were able to talk to a lot of people about Christ and what happens when we die, which is something a lot of people wonder about. I love being able to bear my testimony about how I know that these things are true. It makes my stronger spiritually, even if they reject it.

Well, other than that...Church on Sunday was AWESOME. We were able to have 4 of our investigator friends there: Jenni, who´s mom won´t let her be baptized until she´s 18; Eugenia, the one who´s going to be baptized; Jonotan, an awesome student who has been looking for God; and Eduardo, who´s this really smart guy who won´t let us actually teach him, but who comes to Church every week (I have no idea why...everyone thinks he´s a member already haha). They all are super great people, and I´m so blessed to be able to work with them!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Jones

"I can't risk disobedience"

This is something my companion said a few days ago, and I though it was so true. There´s a lot going on right now, and if we weren´t obedient, we wouldn´t be able to have God´s help with it.
Well! This week was great, and super fun. We were able to go to Concilio (Council) which is when all the Zone leaders (male missionaries who have been called to lead 14 to 30 missionaries) and the Sister training leaders (us, and 7 other women missionaries, who have been called to lead 12 to 14 sister missionaries) get together with the mission president and his wife and his assistants and we learn how we can help the missionaries in our areas. On Monday we had dinner there in the mission home and had talks and slept, and then on Tuesday we had a ¨State of the Mission¨ talk and made some goals. Then we came back home, just in time for me to get on another 3 hour bus to Almeria to do exchanges. It was SO BEAUTIFUL: the road to Almeria runs right along the Mediteranean for all three hours...it was so pretty. It still amazes me that I´m here...

The exchange went well, and one of the men that I helped teach is getting baptized this week! It was super cool. I came home to Malaga the next day, and we were running to all of our appointments...Thursday was a pretty calm day. But Friday was sooooo stressful. We had Zone meeting, which is when all the other missionaries come together and learn from the zone leaders and SHE´s (sister training leaders) what President said to us in Concilio....which meant that I had to help give one of those talks! It was scary, but it all went well haha.
The rest of the week went well too, and it wasn´t very eventful. But today (like an hour ago) we rode electric bikes down by the beach here in Malaga...it was super fun and really pretty, and the air smelled like Seattle :)

I hope you all had a great week!

Love,
Hermana Jones

Week 29ish

Sorry for the lame title, I couldn´t think of anything else haha.

It was an awesome week! I got to do two exchanges (when i go to another sister´s area and her companion comes to be with my companion for a day or so) and they were SO fun and I´m learning a ton. I get to speak english here a lot; there are a lot of people from Africa here and they speak english most of the time. And we never have a hard time finding people to teach...almost everyone we talk to is super friendly and willing to listen to our message, which is awesome. But the only problem is that we have a LOT of people interested and we can´t teach them deep enough because we don´t have time...we´ll see. It´s a great problem to have haha...Malaga is awesome, and there are so many people here ready to hear the gospel. 

 
This week in church, we had four friends attend with us who were getting to know the gospel. Four! That´s more than I think I´ve ever had haha. But we found out that a super awesome one is moving to Madrid....so that stinks, but there are missionaries there too haha.

I don´t have a ton to write (sorry!) and there´s not much time today...every month the zone leaders and sister training leaders and assistants to the president of the mission all gather together with the mission president and he gives a few talks about how we can do our work better. It´s an awesome time to learn how to help the people we´re teaching, and also how to help the other missionaries that we are responsible for. It´s so fun, but it does take up a bit of our preparation day...but it´s a fun responsibility.

Love and miss you all!!!
Hermana Jones