Happy 2012!

Dear Family and Friends,

 

Well, I finally received everyone's letters and packages from the last month. It was pretty dang sweet. A sister in our district who will finish her mission next week stared at the pile of letters and 2 packages and said that she's never seen anyone receive so many letters in her entire mission hahahaa. ohh yeah. rakin it in, gettin it innn..lettin thesee cards fall all ovaaa maa skin..i got carrdds to bllowowowooww..hahhaa only some people will read that and truly understand that. I truly appreciate the love of my awesome family and friends as they share their testimonies with me and allow me to have a good time laughing hard at their hilarious letters and experiences. ..If only I had time to sit down and write about my experiences..hahaha, then again I'm not sure many people would believe all of them. For now, I'll just tell everyone that the church is true and that I'm trying my best to baptize people...

 

Anyway, life here in the mission gets easier. When I say easier it's probably not the easy your'e thinking about. NOTHING about the mission is easy. It's all hard work. But like dad so thoughtfully wrote in one of his past letters, "i like to do hard things". Life's not worth doing a bunch of easy things and then dying. You can't even look back and say, "dang, I did work". "thats like a dollar an hour!!" No, but seriously, life in the field is THE life. I love the mission. You learn different stuff everyday. In Brasil you see stuff every single day that you've never seen before that you've never even thought of...right when you thought you've already seen it all. But my mind is starting to stop freaking out every day. I'm more worried about how I can improve myself as a missionary and person, and how we can better our teaching, relying more on the spirit and Lord to progress our investigators and help us in our work. This way is much better than being worried constantly about them, being worried about having the spirit in our lessons.

 

Preach my gospel says that faith is the opposite than fear. In 'our pursuit for happiness', Elder Ballard says that we need to rely on the Lord to provide us with words and the spirit if we do our part. It's a promise if we are obedient in whatever stage in our lives.

 

The portuguese is still progressing. Mom, its wayyy easier to understand than speak haha. I can pretty much understand everything. Sometimes people will use a word that I don't know but I can understand still because of the sentence. I need to continue to expand my grammar and verb usage. It's really hard to go all week speaking Portuguese 24/7 and then type this in english by the way so if im spelling words wrong...ohh well. I'll go back to kindergarden when I return to learn how to speak English again...

 

We have a young man named Matteus progressing for baptism this sunday. We're doing all we can to help him  feel ready. We brought him to an activity at the church last week and to church too. It's always great when the 5th sunday lesson is "retention" when you've got a 17 yr old boy there you are trying to get interested...how pleasant. He's still "thinking" about baptism but we're gonna hit him hard with the spirit this week and then throw him in. Do work like we do here in zona pampula. District meeting was great this week. I always ask a lot of questions and we always learn a lot. I always try to use being around older missionaries to my advatage to seek advice.

 

Sounds like the phillies are really doing work with getting everyone they can. What happend with ryan howard!?? I never knew he was out. He's too young to be sitting on the sidelines all the time. 

 

It took me more than 2 hours to open all the cards that my district leader brought me yesterday. I read them at night and in the morning. I had 2 hours of a lot of laughing and felt the spirit often. I am amazed with how blessed I am to have such great family and friends. Thank you so much for your dilligence to write me and your prayers and thoughts too. I continue to do the same for you. Each card is appreciated greatly. I can feel your spirit in every card. I will try my best to work on responding for everyone during the next few pdays. Please understand that It takes more than the 3 weeks for me to receive your letters because they have to be picked up by my district leader sometimes a month later. Your testimonies strengthen and help me. I'm filled with joy as the ancient Book of Mormon missionaries were when they learned that their friends and family were still their "brethern in the word of God" ficar firme sempre. (stay firme forever).  Never lose track of the important things in life like President Uchtdorf has counseled us.

 

I continue to work hard to find those elect prepared to change their lives for the better. I continue to pray and think about all of you. I love you.

 

Love, Elder Jones