Hermana Jones

Argentina Buenos Aires North Mission

lunes, 29 de agosto de 2011




Hola!
Well, this week we found lots of new investigators so that´s the good news. We are struggling to get them progressing. Getting people to church is rough, but I know we can do it! We just have to keep on working!

GOOD LUCK IN SCHOOL THIS WEEK TO EVERYONE!!!!

Anyways, we visited Carlina, a grandma in our ward and she took us out right then and there to visit her friends. That was cool. She is funny.

We have a mission rule that our cell phones have to be in our ´socks´ for safety, but that doesn´t work so well as sisters. I sent a pic.
It´s almost september, I can´t believe how fast time flies!
It is starting to get quite a bit warmer out now. Yesterday I just wore a sweater. It´s crazy how fast and drastically the weather changes day to day. Last week it was super cold as you can see from the picture.

This week we had interviews with President. That was great as always. I love all there is to learn. We practices asking for references and this week after that we have received so many that we don´t have time to contact them all. Pretty awesome.
This week I studied 1 Kings 17. I love this chapter when the widow and her son are about to die. When they give the last bit of their food to a servant of the Lord. He even asks to be served first. They then see the blessings. The Lord requires sacrifice to be able to bless us. Many people do not understand that concept, but I know the Lord always comes through. This past sunday in church there were double the members (51) in attendance than from the first week I was here (23). I am happy to see progress. Little by little. Now I am just dying to baptize!

Well, hopefully everyone has a great week!
Love,
Hermana Jones

lunes, 22 de agosto de 2011

Hola! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MELINA!!!!!!!
Well, this was a long week, but all is going well. I have no clue what happened to Ivana but we haven´t seen her since wednesday. I think her Mom got into her head or something, but I hope that after her surgery she decides to talk to us again.

Yesterday was Kid´s Day here in Argentina!!! They have huge partys in parks and places like that for all the kids. It was kind of crazy. Yesterday was kind of a slow day, we were having a hard time finding investigators to teach, especially since this past week almost all of our investigators dropped us. Then a miracle happened. We decided we needed to visit a lady we had contacted last week and she invited us in. It was great. We taught an entire lesson and it is incredible what questions she had. We put a baptismal date with her and her son, so now we just need to get them to church. She asked why they are so many churches and said there should be one true path. Also, she wanted to know how the truth could be brought back to it´s perfect form if so many people have gone changing things and doing things how they want. She said that she doesn´t go to church and doesn´t want to go to a church, because she feels closer to God in her own home and doesn´t feel like going to something created by men is going to help her. She´s golden. She still has tons of doubts and questions, but hey, we have someone interested!

This week we had leadership training at the mission offices and we also had our district meeting in San Pedro, which is close to the mission Rosario. (It borders it) That was fun. Lots of traveling. I got mail too! Thanks for the letters!
Also, thanks Fergusons and the YW for the package! This week we have interviews with President. I am excited for that. He always makes you feel so good and inspires you to do better.
This week I was thinking about my level of dedication to the work and in general. It is so important to dedicate everything, all I have to the Lord. I always felt like I was pretty dedicated to the Lord, but I know I can do better.
Well, today I am going to write lots of letters, today the mail place won´t be open since yesterday was a holiday, but check your mail boxes in a few weeks!

We still haven´t moved. The offices are kind of slow in telling us what to do and if they have figured things out yet, but I´m sure since it´s almost the end of the month, they will tell us soon when we´re moving. Our apartment is gross, and full of bugs, so I look forward to moving with great anticipation! But hey, we have bikes, I can´t complain!

Everything is going great with the bikes! It sure made me sore the first few days, but now I feel much better. Don´t worry I´m getting in some good curb hopping and there´s even a good decent on a very rocky, dirt road down to a villa where I can practice the braking application and having my weight back over the rear tire. :) We sure do get some funny looks because first of all, we bike in skirts, and second of all bike helmets pretty much don´t exist here. Everyday someone asks us why we use a helmet. I learned I have good reflexes as I almost had an movie like accident when we were biking down a busy street ¨downtown¨when a parallel parked car door opened right in front of me as I was going top speed. Luckily I swerved.

Well, this week should be pretty awesome! I´ll keep you all updated! I love you all!

Love,
Hermana Jones

lunes, 15 de agosto de 2011







Hola familia!
Well, this week was pretty hectic but all is going great. We were informed this week we have to move as our contract in our apartment ends this month. So, we had to find a house and move by the end of the month. I wasn´t sure what to do since first of all, we´re new here in Zarate and second, I have never had to find a house to live in in a foreign country... haha. Well we are still in the process, but I think we found a nice little house thats brand new that the offices will approve. The rent is super cheap too. $250 a month.

Anyways, we finally had investigators in church! If all goes as planned Sunday, Ivana will be baptized. She is an investigator we found week before last. Her brother Diego is a little bit handicapped mentally and wants to get baptized too, but their mom won´t let him, she is super catholic. Pray for Ivana. Also the next day she goes in for surgery to get kidney stones removed or something like that.

We got the bikes finally!!! I´ll send some pictures. Also, monday we went to the river and used the elders bikes that we transferred to some other elders that didn´t have bikes. I´ll send pictures of that too.
We are planning an open house in the chapel, and for that we are going to make some big posters about families and we decided it´s better to use actual pictures of actual members (mostly less active and converts) to get people interested. So we have been taking lots of pictures the last couple weeks.

All is going better and better each week, now I just want to get people baptized already!!!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM and DAD!!!!! 24 YEARS!!!

Melina - enjoy your party!!!
Katie - enjoy your lack of wisdom tooth ;) sorry I won´t be there this time to change the gause

Love,
Hermana Jones

lunes, 8 de agosto de 2011

Hola!
This week went quite well I would say. My companion is pretty awesome. She is super super chilena. She is changing my accent a ton! She has a way of telling people they need to repent and go to church without offending, but she is super direct and teaches with so much love and with the spirit. I love her. I am already learning so much from her. She is honestly changing my mission. I know without a doubt we are going to have so much success and I feel like personally I have changed so much just in 2 weeks being with her. This week she put her first baptismal date. She was super nervous but she did it soooo well. We have a great companionship and she really likes me and looks up to me, which I find funny because she is the one doing the training... Anyways.

Great news, I know you were all dying to hear. Today we took out the money to get our awesome single speed, back peddle braking bikes. Im not sure what day, but this week we will have bikes!! I am so excited. Its been way too long. I will send pics of that for sure next week! We will be the only sisters on bikes in the whole mission! Our zone is the only zone I think with bikes. Love it!

Yesterday the funniest thing happened. Well, I thought it was funny anyways... We went to go visit Gustavo and Luisa (a mom and her paralyzed son) who we are teaching. They are super cool and open with us. We got there are there was who we thought was their friend, Esperanza there. We start talking to her, super nice, she tells us she always wanted to be a missionary and dedicate her time to serving the Lord. We were about jumping out of our seats excited to share the book of mormon with her and tell her how she could. We start to talk to her about the Book of Mormon and she starts asking a bunch of questions comparing it to the Bible, then suddenly gets up and says shes going to be late and runs out of the house. On her way out she says to Luisa, how could you do this to me? You guys betrayed me! and she slams the door. Hna. Malhue and I were so confused. Then Luisa and Gustavo tell us she was a Jehovahs Witness missionary. hahahaahahaaa. I had no idea. I thought we were going to have a baptism for sure, but no not even close haha. Usually its easy for me to spot them and tell who they are but she was not your typical JW missionary. Anyways... Thats the funny story for today. I think were going to go explore by the river today. I love Zarate. Its super chill and the members are great.

This week my companion shared an awesome scripture with me that we are using ALL the time. Ether 12:4. It is so great. Its so perfect for our area. We have to have the hope for a better world and I love how it anchors us and keeps us firm and strong. Our ward is really suffering. All the less actives are offending. No one likes the bishop, there are so many problems. The counselors in the bishopric are inactive, if that tells you anything... and theyre RMs. We just have so much work to do, and so little time. We have to change the culture in this ward, change the way they think, because just 3 or 4 years ago it wasnt how it is now. There was lots of active members, lots of activities and lots of happiness. We are now planning an open house in the chapel and its going to be the best open house ever.

Oh and this week we ate liver. It wasnt too bad.

Tomorrow for district meeting we have to go to San Pedro which is another 2 hours north. The district leader Elder Beck was nice to come here for 2 weeks since we are new and learning everything, but now we get to go up there. I am excited. Well, I love you all so much!!! I will write more next week and send pics.

Love,
Hermana Jones


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lunes, 1 de agosto de 2011

Hola!
Well, I am still alive! I am here in Zárate and after about 45 minutes of walking around town, we found a place with internet! The great news is I love the area and my companion seems pretty cool too. It is super small town here with lots of small houses. Nothing like Belgrano which is one of the richest areas in the capital! I am still going through culture shock. The people here are a lot nicer and friendlier. You say hi to people in the street and they actually respond! My companion is from Chile! Her name is Hna. Malhue and she is from a tiny pueblo Buin, that is a part of Santiago. She is my 6th companion and 3/6 have been from Chile, Go Back! She speaks spanish great and teaches great. I really can´t complain. She is also super good at imitating my american accent. :)

Well, this has definitely been a learning experience.
So, we got to the apartment tuesday night, which was a huge mess and super dirty, and found the area book (which hadn´t been updated since may) and a map. Then we called the bishop (who was out of town until later in the week). We still haven´t quite figured out who all their investigators were, but we did get permission to call the Elder that was here and ask him about them. He just told us of two families we should keep teaching.

Yesterday, we almost had a baptism. It was going to be a miracle. We found a part member less active family on wednesday, and they have a son that´s 10 that isn´t baptized. We put a baptismal date for sunday, but then a bunch of complications arose and he didn´t make it. Hopefully we can get baptizing soon. This last week we spent most of the time trying to find and meet converts from the last year and the investigators.

The ward is way different than Nuñez as well. There are hundreds of members on the ward list, but yesterday there were only 20-25 people there. There are very few active families. We have lunch with the same families every week, I am glad they are super nice here and want to feed us every week.
President said it was inspired that he sent us here. I definitely felt that this week as well. Everyday at least one person (convert, less active, active) told us they thought it was great and inspired that hermanas are here now because the ward needs a lot of help. The bishop also seems to be happy and we both had to speak in church yesterday on the spot. The chapel is super tiny though so it was not as scary. Also, speaking in public doesn´t really make me as nervous as it used to.

The area itself is pretty big, and actually we have bike! I am in a bike area!!!! But, the sad news is we can´t use them with skirts because the top tube is too high. Saddest thing ever. We are trying to talk president into letting us buy other bikes. There isn´t the public transportation here like in capital so we have been walking between 100-200 blocks a day. We´ll see how that goes.

Well, the showers are cold, we have about 1 minutes of warm water, but I´m just the glad people are nice and my companion is super nice. I like being in an area that´s not so crazy busy and full of people running everywhere with high rise apartment buildings. It´s like a nice breath of fresh air here. It will be even nicer when we get baptizing tons of people!!! and activating all this less active and PART MEMBER families!!! Well, I´m sure I´ve forgotten to say a lot of things, but I´ll write again soon. Like in a week. Chau!

Love,
Hermana Jones


NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.