Fambly Mail

Hey Beloved Fambly!!! I didn´t wish you all happy thanksgiving last week so... HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! Our thanksgiving turned out to be... well, not thanksgiving. It´s kinda a long story but in the end we ate rice with cheese in our apartment, but we did we make a banana cream pie the night before, so we officially had pie night! Yay! keeping the tradition alive, even in Argentina!!! oh, and also, the pie i made was a love pie! I took a picture of it! so that´s for you, cousin Dani:) Well, this week has been kinda a roller-coaster. Daiana was supposed to get baptized this next saturday but now she can´t because she didn´t go to church and she´s really not ready anyway, but it may be an answer to my prayers because we want the whole family to get baptized together and I wasn´t feeling really good about her getting baptized alone... so we´ll see. It still got me kinda down though. But, it´s crazy how when we get down, God sends us something to lift us up. That something for me came on Sunday. Yanina, an investigator went to church with us., and we´ve only taught her once but when we were walking home she said to us out of the blue, ¨when i know more about the church, i want to get baptized.¨ I almost peed my pants I was so startled! haha so i said, alright... we can teach you if you want;) Man, I LOVE being a missionary!!!! I´ve basically decided to keep being a missionary my whole life! I´ll just keep doing it after i get home, but as a kind of side job:) Anyway, That´s all i got this week! but I love you all! thanks for your love and prayers. please keep praying for me, and mostly for my investigators.

Love,

 Hermana Jones

Ode to Thanksgiving!

Well, first and foremost, i had to pass through an ordeal this week that really just made me appreciate even more one of the only traditions that we have in America. We may not have a traditional food, or drink ¨mate¨ but we celebrate Thanksgiving!!! We ate with the bishop´s family on Saturday, and his wife asked us why we celebrate thanksgiving. So we told her, we give thanks for everything we have. it´s like a holiday to remember the things we´re grateful for. and she said somthing like, ¨that doesn´t make sense¨ .... Huh? how does that not make sense? so we explained to her how it came about with the pilgrims and indians, and she kept trying to find an argentine holiday that would be similar, but she couldn´t because it doesn´t exist.

Anyway, even though Argentines don´t understand why we have a day to stuff ourselves until we´re about to throw up, I love it! and it´s something that i really am proud of! you can be ungrateful all you want, Argentina. But i am going to keep my day to give thanks! haha

Anyway, that´s really all for this week. I have more things to share, things that actually have to do with mission work, but i´ll tell you all later:)

Love,

Hermana Jones

 

PS Congrats on the wedding Ken!

Miracles Happen

Hey again Papa:)
You get 2 emails because you sent me 2. haha but this one you can send to the family so that everyone will get off my back! jk, i love you all!
oh, but first of all, to answer your question... I´m really not unorganized at all. My concerns had more to do with having to be in charge. i don´t like responsibility. but it´s been ok! God is helping me:)
and speaking of God, I have a couple stories to tell this week! 2 miracles
firstly... we were walking down the street one day and a lady yelled at us from her window on the other side of the street, so we crossed, and the crazy woman is trying to ask us a question, but there is like mach 5 wind outside (not even joking) and we can´t hear a word she´s saying. seriously, it was miracle enough that we heard her call to us from the street.
so she yells, ¨i´ll come down!¨ and we´re like... please do. so she comes down and says, ¨i was just wondering if there´s a mormon college around here¨ and we said, ¨nope. but can we come in?¨ and she said, ¨sure¨ and told us how her daughter had gone to the church before and they talked to the missionaries, but in the north. they just moved here from Cordoba. Anyway, They´re really great!!! and it the mom, grandma, and granddaughter that live there. the granddaughter is the one who went to the church before. so we set up an apt. to go back in this next week. miracle number 1
miracle 2... Gustavo. He was a reference from the elders, a street contact. we were trying to find his house yesterday but forgot the map in the pension and so we decided to go visit some other people, and then on the way back ( oh, we were with a member, Gabriel) so we were talking to him and just happened upon the street we were looking for before! gustavo´s street. so we found his house and he let us in, and told us he had talked to an elder, he couldn´t even remember his name, but that it changed everything. he went out that day looking for a fight. and the elder came up to him and said, ¨how´s it going brother?¨ and he said he didn´t know why he didn´t yell at him or insult him even though he was really angry, but he just answered, ¨not good¨ and the elder told him he should go to church. Gustavo promised him that he would and they parted ways.
It was a five minute conversation, but for the rest of the day, good things were happening to him. He had left his house that day, ready to kill someone (literally, a guy owed him money and he went to get it from him. he said, ¨i had my knife in my pocket, and if he didn´t pay me, I was going to kill him¨) but after he talked to this missionary, he hid his knife somewhere on the side of the road, and picked it up on the way back from talking to the man who owed him.
He told us, ¨I just want to know the path. I´ve never gone to church in my life but i want to go, because i promised that elder! and i don´t know if your path is the path that God wants me on, but I´m willing to follow it. I´ll do whatever i need to.¨
yep... that´s miracle number 2. I was like.... ¨umm... ok. We´ll teach you¨ :)
so, that´s that! Those people who say that God doesn´t do miracles anymore are absolutely mistaken! I was always ok with just having little miracles, but i´m not gonna complain if He lets me see big ones too ;)
Anyways, Times up! but i love you all bunches!!!! Be Good!!!
Love,
Hermana Jones

Um....

So, I´m here in Neuquen! I said goodbye to everyone in Trelew. my investigator, Deborah, cried a lot and she wrote me a really beautiful letter and gave me her hair clip to remember her ( and i´m actually wearing it right now!) she´s so cute! I just want her to get baptized. unfortunately she has to get married first, or separated:( but i know she´s going to get baptized soon!

anyway, so fun story, I was feeling pretty good, I didn´t even cry in the bus when i left. 12 hours later (oh ps, i hate long bus rides!) i arrived, slightly tired, in the terminal and started talking to my new comp, Hna Murdock. We were waited for the taxi to get there and I asked her how long she had been in Neuquen. And she said, no... yesterday. and of course we were speaking in spanish and i thought maybe she just hadn´t understood me, so i asked her in English, ¨no, How long have you been here in Neuquen?¨ and she said, ¨yeah, I understood you. I got here yesterday¨

umm.... WHAT?! yes, that´s right. we´re whitewashing the area... and nobody told me!!!! I almost died of a heart attack! how are they going to forget to tell me something as important as that?! so yeah, haha I just laughed and was like, ok this will be fun. and we went to the pension. then, i soon realized that the missionaries before us left nothing behind as far as teaching records go, so we basically are just starting over from scratch... even more fun. haha but seriously, I´m lovin it. it´s definitely an adventure. the first few days, we just went out and knocked doors all day long! we also didn´t have lunch and the other hnas left us without minutes in the cellphone, so we went to a public phone and just started calling random families in the ward. we got ahold of hna Monzon who said she could give us lunch the next day, and when we went to her house, we told her that we didn´t have lunch that week, and she called eveyone until she found someone to feed us for every day! so, God is definitely helping us:) even in the small things.

Our ward mission leader seems really great, although he thinks we´re stupid because we got lost on our way to the church, but it wasn´t our fault, we just had the map upside down... i probably shouldn´t admit that to you guys, and i shouldn´t have told him either, because then afterward, he told us which way was north and which was south like 12 times, and then made us repeat it to make sure we understood... GRRR!!! we´re not blonde! haha it´s ok though..

Anyway, just wantyou all to know that i´m doing great! Thanks for everything!!!

Love,

Hermana Jones

Me Voy

Well Fambly!

Transfers came again! and this time i´m changing. I´m going to Neuquen! and i´m going to be senior comp... umm... I don´t know what my Father was thinking when He decided that, but then i guess we never do know:) Anyway, it´s definitely going to be a learning experience! My new comp is Hna Murdock and i met her once before because she was in my zone in my first area. She seems really great so i´m excited!!! Although I´m seriously going to miss Hna Varela! with 3 whole transfers together we´re already really used to each other, so it´s gonna be different getting to know yet another comp, different but always fun:)

so, the penguins... well, they are pretty cute. there´s a ton of them! like millions so it was fairly entertaining to go visit, even though it ended up eating up our whole p day cuz we had to travel 2 hrs to get there and 2 hrs back. I took a bunch of pictures so i´ll send you those soon! It was a pretty fun drive. all of the elders squished into the back of this little truck, and my comp and i went in the front seat ( which was also super squished) and every time anyone moved, the hna that was driving swirved all over the road. I was kind of afraid for my life! but luckily, we all survived:)

Anyway, that´s all for now! I love you all and miss you!

Love Hna Jones

PS I got the packages! from mom and from JD too! THANKS A BUNCH:) Love the skirt Telli! and the shirt from the volleyball tournament. I´m gonna use it on a p day!

Springtime!!!

Well, It seems that Spring has pretty much arrived! All the trees are covered with flowers and things are starting to look a little greener! It´s a miracle!!! I love springtime! to be honest, it´s a little disorienting having springtime come in September! haha but that´s ok. I still love it just as much as if i were at home. This last week, my comp and i got kinda freaked out because we couldn´t find the moon for about 5 days! I don´t know where it went, but it seriously disappeared! Maybe it ´s some sort of weird thing that only happens in the south...? anyway, it reappeared a couple of nights ago so we´re ok now:) Nobody else even noticed that it was gone! probably because we´re the only ones who spend the whole day outside, and we always look at the stars at night when we´re walking back to the pension. Also, there´s this really Ginormous star that appeared a couple months ago! IT´s SUPER bright! Can you guys see it from there too? I don´t remember how the stars work exactly, but I think there are some that are only seen in the North or South.... I don´t know.
Anyway, This week is Hna Varela´s Brithday! I´m going to make her a carrot cake. When i told her, she thought i was crazy because carrot cakes don´t exist here:) hopefully it turns out ok. you should probably all pray for me. haha no, but seriously.
Anyway, That´s all I´m going to write for now:) I hope everyone is FANTASTIC! I love you all and miss you a little bit every once in a while ;)
LOVE
Hna Jones

Just a quick Message

Hey!!!

I´m gonna write a really short message to the fam today... sorry:) This week was a good one. If you got the last email, you know that I´m still here in Trelew and I´m still with Hna Varela! We were SUPER surprised when they told us! so she´s probably going to finish her mission here, and this next transfer i´ll be heading to another area... or that´s what we´re guessing! but anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that I love you SO much!!!! I´m so grateful for the wonderful family that God gave me!

Just so you all know, I´m doing great! I always forget what i want to tell you when i come to do internet... the next week i´m going to write down what i want to say.

anyway, that´s all for this super lame email!

Love you all!!!!

Love, Hna Jones