Monday, September 17, 2012 - Here we go again!

Hola Mi Familia! It is crazy how fast the weeks fly! Seems like days can last for a lifetime, but weeks go by in the blink of an eye! This seemed to be an especially interesting and good week full of lesson and helping people. So something exciting! We are going to Hermosillo tomorrow to have a meeting Wednesday given by an Area Seventy. I'm not sure if it will be the whole mission at one time, or if they will split it up by zones...we will see! So that should be fun! Yeah mom, we are supposed to be getting a ton of new missionaries in the next few transfers, so who knows, I could be training soon! By the time January comes around a lot of Elders will have gone home and the mission will be quite young which is what I think Pres. Hernandez wants. He is trying to clean and tidy things up and get us a little more stricter and straighter! Sounds good to me! Speaking of new missionaries....another transfer is almost over! Just one more week! Thank heavens too! I am ready for some changes...hopefully! So it may not be until Tuesday till I write again. But we will see what happens. That's quite hilarious about that kid helping at the Football game! Little busy body! I'm sure he was quite good! Ha! That is quite hilarious about family home evening prayers, dad! It does bring back memories and good that Cole takes command of things! Ha! Does Cole's email work yet? So to start of the week...we got our tank back and I have been enjoying HOT WATER again for the past 7 days!!!!! Oh so wonderful! 4 weeks of bathing in cold water has not been fun! It was quite a different experience and it took a few showers for my body to get used to warm water again! But oh, it is so lovely! So we have been a few weeks out of August now, the hottest month of the year, and finally things are starting to cool down some! It gets quite fresh and cool in the early evening and through the night! I LOVE it! I have almost forgotten what cool weather is! The sun rays still seem to be a tad bit strong, but it isn't as hot which is nice. Let's just hope this next transfer I don't get transferred to Hermosillo or somewhere south. This week we had a really good lesson with an investigator named Raul. I don't remember if I have talk about him before but he is a guy who contacted us the in street one night when he was drunk and said that his ex was baptized and he wanted us to come and help him "feel good again"(most likely referring to the Spirit). So have visited him one time before and left a pamphlet of The Restoration for him to read. When we returned this past week we were going to talk about The Restoration, but began by asking him if he had any questions about what he read. He said yes and asked, what this baptism thing was and he said that he had never been baptized. So we immediately shifted gears and talked about The Gospel of Jesus Christ. We had a bombin lesson and he was understanding everything and very responsive and talked a lot about what we were teaching. At the end of the lesson, I invited him to be baptized this next Sunday and he accepted! This is really exciting that he has this desire and a date, but first we have to conquer some Word of Wisdom problems and he has to come to church, so we will see where we get to. This week we had a district activity where the missionaries from Esqueda came and the 4 of us (our district is just the 4 of us) worked together in Nacozari to find more people to teach. It seemed to be quite successful and we found some pretty good people that I am excited to work with! One particular experience, we gave a first lesson to this woman who just had a baby and we taught her how her family can be together forever through the Gospel. We invited her to be baptized and she said should would like that. We set a date and asked if she would prepare to be baptized this day. She said "it's that...."and immediately your mind starts to wonder..."it's that what? It's that your catholic? It's that you have already been baptized? It's that what?" She said "It's that we have an appointment in Hermosillo that day! Ha! that was relief! Of all the things she could have said she just had an appointment and that is why she didn't accept the date. We set up another appointment yesterday to meet with her husband, but they weren't home when we passed by. I'm just full of experiences! Another! We passed by Saturday to a little old lady that Elder Miranda and one of the Elders from Esqueda contacted. This visit was quite heavy and depressing. She is 63 years old and was telling us that her husband had just left her after being married for 47 years. He just up and left her for prostitution. And apparently her 2 daughters have abandoned her and want nothing to do with her. She was just crying and crying and telling us how bad that she just wanted her husband back and how much it hurts being together for 47 years and he just ups and leaves her saying she is good for nothing. She also has basically nothing. She has no food to eat whatsoever and has no money. She eats only coffee and a tortilla every once in a while for food. It was so sad! I was just aching with pain to hear her story and of her sad circumstance! We couldn't really do too much for her temporally, but we tried to uplift her spiritually. Luckily a sister in our Branch was just made director of a DFACS (or however this is spelled/abbreviated) and we told her of this woman and she is going to visit her and see what she can do. We invited her to be baptized and told her it would help her situation and she said she would like to, but we don't think she will progress much! Oh the experiences and stories you hear in the mission! On more! We had an awesome FHE last night with a part member family. The sister and her 2 kids, ages 9 and 13, are members but the dad is not. The missionaries have been meeting with the dad for sometime, and he says he will get baptized, but this is not the time. He says he has a problem with bad words and he wants to rid himself of this habit first. We had and FHE and talked about the family and the responsibilities of the parents and then the kids and how families can be together forever. We then watched "Together Forever" a church video that is a bit older, made in the 80s or so. During the video, the 13 year old boy started to cry and was touched by the spirit. At the end we shared more about how special it is to be sealed together forever. We then asked the dad if he would like to one day enter the temple to be sealed to his family and he said yes. One thing led to another and we began talking about baptism and we extended the invitation to baptism and he said that he isn't ready yet. We asked if there is anything we could do to help and he didn't really respond. All throughout this convo, the 13 kid was adding in his 2 cents every so often and you could just tell how much he really wanted his dad to be baptized. Nothing really happened, but we just said that we were here to help their family to be together forever. So hopefully someday soon the dad will accept. I reflect often how much the mission really is life prep! I have seen so much how Satan is attacking the family and how it is important to have a family reared in Gospel teachings to withstand the attacks of the devil. I have seen so many examples that I can apply to my life later on. Like how not to be when I am a husband and father. But also HOW to be when I reach that point in life. It is really crazy the experiences that the mission brings and I am grateful for these teaching experiences. Well, I think I have pretty much written your eyes off (talked your ear off?) so we will call it good for this week! I love and miss you all tons! Stay fresh, but keep it wrinkled! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner