Monday, January 13, 2013 - We Got Gold!

Hola Mi Familia! This week was quite an interesting and fantastic week! Let me just tell you.... We started off the week with member visits! We asked one of the young men who is preparing to serve a mission to go out with us and do some visits and he did. He is almost 17 so he still has a year left but it was his first time doing visits with the missionaries and I think he liked it. We had a really neat experience with the new family I was telling you about that we found last week. We went to go visit them and were planning on doing one thing, but when we arrived, plans completely changed and we did another. We talked about families and the importance of families and how the Gospel is uber important for us to follow. He gave a really special lesson because that was the first time, we met the dad and they had told us before that he wasn´t very religious, but I think he really enjoyed the lesson and that he is ready for us to visit again. The guy that went with us felt the spirit really strongly in the lesson and went around and told everyone to feel his heart because it was beating really fast. He gave an awesome testimony of how the Gospel had blessed his family (his dad was just barley baptized this year after 20 years of being a ¨member¨ without being a member.). It was special. They are a really neat family and we really really want them to progress and go to church. We invited them again this past week, but we were a little busy with other things and couldn´t pass by for them and so they didn´t go. Hopefully we can focus on them more and teach them good! We found gold this week! We received a reference from a member this week that is totally and absolutely prepared and ready to receive the gospel. He is a 21 year old college student. When we went to meet him we took a YSA with us and he was a really neat guy. He said that he wasn´t really that religious but that he would like to find a church to prepare him for the future to have kids and teach principle in his family--something that he really didn´t have. He has so many questions about topics relating to The Restoration to The Plan of Salvation. We taught him a little and he was so interested and wanting so much to learn more. The spirit was totally present in the first lesson and he said he liked how he felt and that he felt comfortable and at peace with a Book of Mormon in his hands. We invited him to church this week and he went, but I will explain that in a bit. This weekend we had Stake Conference. It was a special stake conference because it was a satellite broadcast from SLC. Remember when we had one of those a few years ago? From now on the missionaries and youth were invited to attend the Saturday night session which is usually for adults. The stake pres. is in our ward and so we were asked to do a special musical number and we did a quartet of ¨Help Me Teach With Inspiration¨ It was beautiful and the spirit was present. You can tell everyone was touched. The conference was really great and all the talks had to do with ¨The Hastening¨ and missionary work. Sunday was a little different. We all went to our respective ward buildings instead of the stake center and they did a broadcast from the stake center to all the wards. There was a camera set up in the stake center and we were watching via internet connection! (Crazy the technology these days even within the church.) The stake president spoke and at the half hour the broadcast turned to the live stream from SLC to all of Mexico where we hear talks from Elder Christensen (the one who is coming here to do a conference the week after I leave), Sister Marriot, and Elder Christofferson and Elder Hales. It was a really really good conference and I learned a lot. Again, all the talks were focused on ¨The Hastening¨ and missionary work! I feel the end really is near and they want everyone preparing for the second coming. So the 21 year old went to the conference on Sunday with us and he was really nervous to go to church when we picked him up. When we got there and we entered the church building a great peace was felt that calmed him and us. We took him on a mini tour of the chapel before the conference started and he seemed to enjoy that. He was very attentive and listening to everything that was being said in the conference. At the end he said that he really liked it and that he had a lot to think about. There were a lot of church members greeting him and talking to him and he felt welcomed. This week we also had our every so often scheduled interviews with Pres. I was able to get my temple recommend renewed and we had a good chat. It was nice. Just one more to go.... I hope this wasn´t too short and too uneventful. Just 2 more emails to go...enjoy them while they last! I love and miss you all dearly! Play hard and work hard! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner