Monday, February 25, 2013 - "New Changes!"

Hola Mi Familia! As always, it is so wonderful to read you inspiring emails each week! I really do enjoy them! Quite a busy little week you all had, eh? I was excited to learn this week that a friend from BYU, had received her mission call and she has been call to the Georgia Atlanta North Mission! Isn't that just crazy! That makes me really psyched! You will have to watch for her in May. Well, this week began with some exciting news! As you all have heard with the announcement of the church opening 58 new missions, and you have guessed correctly. Tuesday night, we received the call saying that the Mexico Hermosillo Mission will be split into two missions as of July 1 of this year! We will still have the Mexico Hermosillo Mission, but the southern part of the mission has been created into a new mission and it will be call the Mexico Ciudad Obregon mission. We are all quite excited about this! The Hermosillo Mission will go from the Zone Guaymas on the coast (which is basically the middle of the state) and all of the North. The Obregon mission will be from Obregon all the way down to Culiacan which is into the next southern state below Sonora, Sinaloa. So that is pretty exciting news! I have been hoping and praying that I will be staying in the Hermosillo Mission and not have to go to the new one. I will have almost 18 months when they open the new mission and that would really suck to have to have my last 6 months in another mission. And I much prefer the north of Sonora anyway than the south....although I've never been to the south, but it doesn't sound too appealing to me....a lot of heat and humidity...yuck! This week has been a little rough, but full of miracles as well! We have been having a rough time finding new investigators, but have had a few lessons with potential investigators that we really hope will progress. One lady has kind of been put on hold. We went with her and husband at the beginning of the week and it was a miracle to find them both there at the same time and to be able to talk to them. We talked more about repentance and how we can better our relationships in our families and all that good stuff! They told us that they were thinking of moving to Nogales and were in the progress of selling their things. This was a little sad because they are really special people who we love helping and well, now they will be moving and we won't get the opportunity to see them through the whole process. We told them that if they ever see other guys dressed like us, to track them down and to have them teach them. So hopefully later on they will be baptized and it was just us who had to help plant the seed and begin to prepare them to have other missionaries later on baptize them. I hope they do get baptized! They are really special people! The other lady with a son is getting better....She came to church this past week! She had missed the last 2 sundays, but was able to make an effort to come this week. We think she really likes the church. We had been confused with her and what her intentions are with baptism and what she really wants from us, but as we have talked more and more with her and taught her we have been able to feel more and more comfortable with her. But something still just feels weird sometimes and we can't seem to figure it out. The last lady gave us the scare of our lives this week. We had our weekly lesson with her and decided to teach her a few lessons that we lacked to teach before baptism. We began teaching and all and we got to the commandment of Following Later Day Prophets. We talked about this and how we have a prophet today that leads and guides us, and she was surprised to hear this a little. She didn't know that we had a prophet today. I guess somewhere in the past with teaching, that didn't get explained well. We continued and I don't remember what we were talking about, but my comp asks her if she knows that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church of God on the earth. She said, something like "I guess it could be. I mean any church could be true for anybody that feels good or comfortable in that church." That kind of took us by surprise. We realized that after 4 months of teaching, this lady doesn't have a testimony of the restoration and know that the church is true. We were a little worried that we weren't going to have a baptism this upcoming week. We left and talked a bit and decided that we needed to teach the Restoration again and we decided to show the Joseph Smith movie. Well, yesterday, Sunday, we did this and it was pretty great! We gave a short overview of the Restoration and then watched the movie. Well, it happened. Remember, when I told you once that one of our choir directors in the MTC told us that every time we testify of Joseph Smith the spirit is ALWAYS present. Well, that came true again. the spirit really testified about Joseph Smith and the Restoration. We could feel the spirit so strong throughout the movie and when we bore testimony afterward. The lady could feel it too and she also told us that she had prayed and asked to know if it was true and she said that she felt peace and tranquility and took that as her answer from God. So after all we are going to have a baptism this week! Another little miracle this week was one day my comp had to really use the bathroom and it was an emergency and so we just randomly asked a house if he could use the bathroom. It turns out that this house was a part-member/less active family. They said that the day before they had been thinking about us and searching for us and then that day we showed up. God does work in fantastic ways! So we are going to begin teaching them and will hopefully have baptisms there! Well, that is all I got for this week! I love and miss you all tons and hope all is well! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner