Friday, June 17, 2011

Cami's Arrival

Hey everyone,
 
OK! Here is the latest. Cami will bus to Santiogo Chili today Thursday June 16th, fly to Dallas, then to Salt Lake arriving on American Airline flight 689 about noon on Friday and layover until 4:50pm. Anyone in Salt Lake area might want to try to visit with her at the airport in Salt Lake. She will arrive at the St. George airport on Delta airline flight 7779 at about 5:48 pm. Happy days!!!
 
Love you all,
 
Von

May 30, 2011

Well Mama...

I love the idea of being surrounded by my family the day i get home! There is no imaginable way that it could be a bad idea:) but i may want to take a shower first thing when i get home... do you think you could all wait for me? haha if not, that's fine. ill just  shower after. what time will i be getting home? they haven't sent me my flight plans yet but i think they'll actually be getting here this week so... yeah. I feel really weird when i think about going home. I mean, obviously I'm excited to see you all but it just doesn't seem real to me yet. It feels like the end of another transfer is all, so if i have a hard time adjusting... well, just have patience with me please:)

So, i was totally expecting an email saying that Shay had a new little boy but it looks like he wants to wait for his aunt Cami to get home before he comes out! haha I'm so excited to see all my little monsters!!! oh, i sent you guys a letter today. a letter for shay, one for the family, my last picture cd, and a tape that i was supposed to send to JD about 6 months ago... oops:) so, yeah that should be getting there before me i hope. if not.... oh well, i guess we can all read the letter together! haha

also...Kennedy wanted to be at the airport when i get home so if you could let her know what time and all that.  oh wait... i think i already told Telli to do that, so never mind:)

Things here are going great! This week was a good one. We were able to see progress in our investigators and have help from the members too! Norma went to church on Sunday, and Miriam and Arturo are getting to be regulars now:) they know that they are going to get married and baptized but it frustrates me because they want to wait a whole year!!! I really love them thought! They{re fantastic people!!! last night we had a family home evening with them. we played pig and a poke. It was really fun! haha i love the crazy games that our family plays. they've helped me out a few times in the mission. unfortunately, there are a few (like the sock game) that are a little too violent, and others( like spin the body) that are too "hands-on" for missionaries to be playing. I{m excited to play those kinds of things again when i get home:)

Were still looking for a new place to live, and everyone's trying to help us out. We saw our little friend the other day -the mouse- bluhh! he ran out of our bedroom and into the kitchen :S were going to put down traps for him. Muahahahah

anyway... I don{t know what else to tell you today. I love you... that's all:)

Abrazos y besos

Hermana Jones


PS I tried to attach a picture from our last Zone Conference... im not sure if it worked, but i hope so! 
Happy Birthday Cami!!
We Love You!!

May 23, 2011

Dear Fambly,
Wanna know something crazy? On my birthday, I only ate one little piece of cake, which came from a stranger that let us into her home, i didn't receive a single wrapped present, we had a normal proselyting day, knocking doors and doing contacts.... by all measurable means, it was the poorest birthday ever,
but on Sunday morning, i received a few of the best presents ever. 1, Braian was confirmed a member of the church. He was baptized the day before:) 2, Roque, my convert from Neuquen, randomly showed up at the church after the first class. He came all the way from Neuquen just to wish me happy birthday. I love that old man! 3, we had 5 investigators in church, 4 of them have baptismal dates:) and they really liked the meetings because the members made them feel comfortable! yay!!! and 5, I got lots of hugs from the Hermanas in the ward!!! They're adorable. -i think ill bring some home with me;)
So basically, i had a lovely birthday, it wasn't the normal self-centered, "its my day, everybody focus on me" type of birthday, but it was SO much better!!! Id like to have birthdays like this one for the rest of my life! haha every year, somebody i know and helped to come unto Christ will be baptized... actually, that's not a bad goal! I like it!!!!
Anyway, aside from that, i don{t have lots to tell. Thanks for all the birthday wishes that you all sent me! I feel really loved:) and i love you all back! tehe
Oh, also i think were going to be moving from the house were living in now but i don't know exactly when... all i know is the mice are insoportable!!! They keep us up all night with their little scratchy noises and the other day my comp wanted to eat some chocolate that she had saved in her desk, and when she pulled it out, it was half eaten! they gnawed through the wrapper and had a little midnight snack:( haha she was so grossed out!
anyway, i ended that on a happy note;) oh well, gotta go! Love you all TONS!!!!!!!
Love,
Hermana Jones

May 9, 2011

So, what can i tell you... oh, we had transfers the last week and hna Bundy left for Bariloche, and my new comp is named Hna SancĂ©. She´s from Guatemala:) and she´s really great! Her trainer was Hna Georgeson, my MTC comp, so i was pretty excited about that! and i´m excited that i have another latin comp so i can improve my Spanish a little before i go home. cuz with hna Bundy i´m not gonna lie, i was starting to get a little rusty :S haha anyway, i´m learning lots and we´re trying to help all of our investigators make it to their baptisms!
We´ve been finding lots of inactive members lately that have children who aren´t baptized and we´re trying to work with them so they can come back to church and become eternal families. The other day we found a family, Familia Menna, because i don´t know my area that well so we were kinda lost. We were knocking doors, but we ended up in an area super far away where there were only factories and big empty lots, and i was like... ¨uh, oops. sorry i just randomly led us into the middly of the desert to knock doors...¨ but then i saw that there were a couple of little houses a little further down the street next to this factory, so we knocked the first one and a lady answered and before we could even say anything, she just said, ¨come in, before the flies do!¨ haha so we went in and she invited us to sit down. her husband was there and he told us that they were members. they were baptized 5 or 6 years ago but had stopped going like 4 years ago. She has a friend who is Jehovah´s witness and she was going to have her friend start teaching her youngest kids about the bible because they wanted to learn and go to church. but when we showed up, she told us that she took it as a sign. and she wants us to give them the lessons so they can go to the true church of Jesus Christ. I really think God sent us there to help that family, and it´s going to take a little work i think but i just want more than anything for her kids to be able to grow up in the church, for her to be able to feel once again the happiness she felt when she first discovered the restored Gospel. She has a testimony but life is hard, and she fell away. Now, her Father in Heaven ent us to help her make it back.
Man, i love being a missionary!!!
Anyway, that was a little miracle form this week:)
Hey, could you forward this email, well not the first part but everything else to mom to forward to everybody, cuz i kinda just went off on a tangent here and i haven´t emailed anyone else... tehe oops:)
Thanks Telli!
Love you tons!!!
Love,
Hna Jones

April 18, 2011

Hey Mama!
I made a picture cd today so ill probably send it to you next week... which means you{ll get it in like 3 or 4 weeks probably:) but i think they put all of the pics i had on my mem card on their so there are a bunch of repeats... oh well, you can just skip to the end to see the new ones!
I loved the flower story! that's so awesome that they were seriously selling flowers for 2 cents!!! i'm going to be able to enjoy those when i get home:)
 
I have some fairly entertaining stories from this week...
 
El Santo Simon
The other day we met an interesting character when we went to visit Graciela and her grandsons. He calls himself Santo Simon, and is apparently, a drunk hermet neighbor who goes to her house every once in a while because nobody else will let him in and he lives alone with his dogs and needs people to talk to every once in a while...
so, we got to her house and he was sitting at the table and started yelling at us how he doesnt believe in religion because they all lie to you, and then he started talking about his mom and, all of a sudden he burst out into song! NO JOKE!!! I was a little startled, but quickly recovered myself and tried not to laugh as he continued belting out his ballad..." es mas bella que la luna..." (stopping mid-note) he turns to us and says, you{ve seen the moon right, when the night is dark and the sky is clear... (singing again)" mi mama es como la luna..." and then he started crying.... and singing... and yelling.... it was a rollercoaster. and we were trying to listen politely and not startle him just in case:) but he really reminded me of a character that would be on 'the last unicorn'... i don{t know if i thought that because there actually is a character that breaks out into song on that movie, or for some other reason.... but there you have it! Santo Simon
 
another thing, that is really just an exciting fact. They fixed the window in our house so now we can close it and our cat, crackers, cant come in creepily in the middle of the night to eat our food anymore! also, we dont have as much dirt on the floor now that the window closes. and the guy came last week to fix the heater so we{ve been sleepin cozy these days. its a good thing he came when he did too cuz it has been real cold these last couple days! i think winter is here already :S
Everything is going great though!!! The other day, Hna Bundy randomly had a dream that somebody was pointing to our map of centenario, to a specific spot that we always put in our plans to knock that area but we never get over there because its bascially on the other side of the world, so we took it as a sign and just happened to have time the next day to go over and knock to our hearts content! so we knocked... knocked... and knocked some more, and then, as we came to a corner, their was a house all by itself, without neighbors, and we knocked... and mario came out. turns out his wife is a member of the church and his mom was member too but died about a month ago.... hmmm.... i{m pretty sure she sent us there:)
anyway, hope you understood that cuz i was trying to write it relly fast!
Gotta go!!!
Love Hna Jones

April 11, 2011

Hey Mamita,

Jennie did email me about the license thing. Yes i have it, and i'm to scan and email it to her today. The only thing is that this Cyber place doesnt have a scanner machine so were going to have to find another one, because she said she needs it before the 20th and if i send it, it won{t get there in time. anyway, point being that im gonig to try my very hardest to get it scanned today so that she can figure all that out. but if we cant find somewhere today where they can do it, shell have to wait til next week...

anyway, i wanted to ask you a favor if you wouldn't mind... We have some investigators that need a little extra help. I was wondering if you could put their names on the temple prayer thing. Im just going to assume the answer is yes and go ahead and give you their names:)

Graciela

Bryan

Lautaro

Rosa and Jose

Tito

Veronica

Tanya

Belen and Cristian


You might recognize some of those names because i've talked about them before:)

Oh, guess what! This last tuesday, Pres and Hna Peterson were driving with the assistants to Bariloche and the wind blew their car over!!! They rolled twice but luckily come out of it ok. They said theyre bruised and sore and had to get some stitches but aside from that, all is well:) So, God was protecting them!

umm... this week was a good one except that Graciela didn{t make it to church:( I dont know what happened, by its ok cuz God will help us know what to do to help her get there.

 We taught an inactive member this week, Jose, and his wife, Rosa, but we were mostly teaching Jose because he started drinking again after he stopped going to church and now its really hard for him. and his wife wont get baptized until he stops drinking, nor his daughter or son. Basically hes got like 8 people waiting for him to quit drinking, and then theyll get baptized... honestly, i dont know if theyll actually do it but their excuse is Jose's drinking problem:)

Anyway, So we made goals for him of how he can quit because his plan was just to 'decide i want to stop, and not drink anymore', which, obviously, is the idea, but that has been his plan for the last 2 weeks and it hasnt been working out really well so far. So his plans were really easy, 2 things... avoid your friends when theyre drinking, and not ask anyone to loan you money (we had already worked out that he was going to give all the money to Rosa and she was going to handle it because if he has money, he spends it on wine)

so, we asked him, ' what are the 2 things you have to do to quit drinking?' and he said, 'decide i want to stop, and not drink anymore!' .... nope, wrong answer. but it was hilarious becasue the same thing hapened literally about 20 times. we asked him the same question over and over again, and he spouted off the same exact answer! but you just have to know Jose, because he{s kinda a hilarious character in general. So every time he answered the question like that, we would say, "NO!!" and he would just have this confused look on his face, and then start laughing. and then every once in a while, he ll crack jokes, which makes our part really hard because were trying to be stern with him, and his little jokes really are whitty, and are made even funnier by his goofiness. because he{s probably like 65 years old and hes missing all of his front teeth on the top, so his smile is kind of adorable... you wouldn't think it would work like that but it does! haha seriously, hes contagious:) a very lovable character, and he could be a great influence for good if he would just stop drinking!!! so, pray for him please! He needs help!

But, thats all for now!

I hope all is well! Tell Savanna Thanks! i got her email, and AJ's too.

Tell everyone one i love them to pieces!!!

Love Hna Jones