Monday, September 23, 2013

Hola Mi Familia! Weeks seem to go by faster and faster! It seems like we were just at Monday a few days ago and here we are. Well, this week was a little weird for many reasons. A lot of things happened. Let´s see if I can describe it all. I would like to start out with some little blessings the Lord has given us this week. The last weekend, the stake had a Mexican Culture night in honor of the Mexican Independence. About a 6 months ago Pres. came out with a ¨rule¨that we can´t go to ward activities/parties if they don´t do anything with missionary work. So we weren´t able to go. But apparently a bunch of investigators went and someone told us that a less active brought a friend with her to the activity. Apparently this friend has received the missionaries a few times over past years and she hasn´t been baptized for one reason or another. Well, apparently this person was telling a sister that she wanted the missionaries to visit her again and that she might be interested in baptism. This has been a real blessing. We haven´t had time to visit her yet, but we are hoping to do it soon and see if we can help her progress. A week ago when we did interchanges, my comp and our district leader went to go look for old investigators to try and find more people to teaching. Upon looking for someone, they came to a house and when asking for the young guy they were looking for, someone told them that he had just died a few hours before they had arrived. Well, they took the opportunity to talk with the father of this young guy and he was pretty upset so they couldn´t do too much, but set up an appointment to return. Well, we went back and began to talk with him and he was just really devastated and hurt by the death of his son. I can imagine. We decided to teach part of the plan of salvation and while teaching he paid a lot of clear attention to us and was taking everything in. He was really amazed at hear that we had lived with our Heavenly Father before this life. It made me think about our experience here on earth. How before we were taught all this, but we just don´t remember and that is what we as missionaries are doing--helping remind God´s children of what they have already known before. It is sad that is takes a difficult event like a death for someone to hear the restored gospel, but we are thankful for this opportunity and feel like he will be able to progress. So, some calamities.... On Thursday, while riding the bus to go eat, our cell phone fell out of my comp´s pants pocket and we didn´t even realize. We got to the food appt. and realized it wasn´t with us. We have been devastated! Being Zone leaders the cell phone is our life! Especially this coming week when we have meetings and interviews with the Pres. and having to call and tell everyone about transfers this coming week. We tired contacting the bus station to ask if they had seen a cell phone, but they couldn´t find it. Mexico doesn´t really believe in Lost and Found....it is more like Found and Found. If one finds it, ¨finders keepers!¨ So we are waiting for the secretaries to send us a new one, but they said that it could take up to 2 weeks. So we will just see what is up. This calamity had a blessing with it. We had a FHE with the primary because of some kids we were teaching and we were in charge of the lesson. We planned on bringing a video for everyone to watch, but when we got to church, no one had keys to the office where the TV was and so we couldn´t do that and had to change plans completely and make up a new lesson. I had a thought to do an obstacle course in the dark where the kids would have to follow a light to make it to the celestial kingdom with God. We did a quick impromptu set up and gave a little scripture to start out. We said that sometimes the world is dark and full of obstacles and Jesus is the light that showed us the way and how to get back to live with our Heavenly Father. We did the obstacle course in the dark and at the end we did a review of what we learned. I was so surprised to see how well even primary kids caught on to important ideas that sometimes seem complicated. We even asked who was the light and a little 3 year old told it was Jesus who is our Savior. It is amazing the knowledge that little kids can take it! We were talking to the sisters this week and they just began to tell us of the rough time they are having with the ward. This ward doesn´t really like to help us too much with the work and it can be quite stressful and frustrating. This has been the first of all of our wards for the 4 of us here, were we have had low totals each week for numbers and where investigators are so hard to come by. This is just a hard area. But only have 1 transfer here and I could be here for the rest of my time and so I have NOT lost faith and I have NOT become discouraged yet, but it is just a little frustrating trying to find something that works. While talking, we talked about our heavy weight that sometimes we carried as missionaries. But while talking about this, we also thought of the weight of the cross that Christ had to carry. Although we carry our own load and cross, nothing will ever be as heavy as what Jesus had to carry--the sins and sufferings of the WHOLE WORLD. This thought really gave me hope to keep on. I may feel weighed down at times, but it will never match what Jesus did for me. In the bible, he tells us all to take up our own crosses and follow him. This thought made me feel proud to be part of the army of God and it gave me a new resolution to be brave to fight for the truth. Well, I hope you all have a super fantastic week and have a lot of fun and success in your activities! Just 2 weeks away from one of the best weekends of the year....GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner