Monday, September 9, 2013

Hola Mi Familia! Wow! I open up my inbox to a pretty neat newspaper article that the Bishop had sent me on the Scout rescue! That is awesome! Why did no one tell me about that?!? I loved your descriptions about J&J! I know exactly what you mean! And here they are really big into like yard sells and things like that. Every Saturday and Sunday! So just be planning to save one of your Saturdays in 5 months to take a trip to J&J and we can try some REAL Mexican food there! Yum! Yum! HAPPY 19 MONTHS TO ME!!!! I´m getting so old! Ha! I like barely know anyone in the mish anymore because they are all going home and I am rising up to be some of the oldest generation. That is so nuts! 18 was cool, 19 was just like whatevs, but I know that in a month 20 will just be MIND BLOWING!!!! 4 Short weeks to mentally prepare myself for that one! Well, this week was a week of meetings! We started of the week, Tuesday, with the Mission Leadership meeting. It was pretty fun! I personally am a big fan of meetings of every kind so being able to have meetings with the Pres at least once of month is just fantastic! The Mission Leadership is made up of us zone leaders from the 8 zones in the mission, and then 2 sister companionships who are ¨Sister Coordinators¨ or basically ¨Zone leaders¨for all of the sisters in the mish. We went through a bunch of announcements and new rules in the mission, then we did reports of all the zones how our zones are doing and how we are going to get better and then we had trainings. We had some news from the Area Seventy Presidency. Almost a year ago, they changed the requirement of church attendance for investigators from 2 times to 4 times to try and up the retention of new converts. Well, they have changed the attendance requirement again. To up the retention rate even more, investigators now will have to attend church 5 times to be able to get baptized. Apparently the baptism rate in Mexico is high, but the retention rate low. Many are getting baptized, but few stay active, so that is why they are doing this. This will be a bit of a challenge for us to get used to, but it is how the Lord wants it, so we will just have to do it. As a mission, we are going to have a new focus. The President wants us to start focusing more on Repentance and teaching that completely to the investigators. I think it is really good! That is what his training was on Tuesday and how we as missionaries also need to experience this repentance to be able to teach it to the rest. This week we also had a meeting with us, Pres. Hernandez and the Stake President to talk about the wards in the stake and how they are handling the missionary work. Apparently about 20 missionaries will arrive this next transfer and about half will be sisters so they have to try and find where to put everyone. Apparently a lot of American sisters will be arriving too in the next few months. Before there were like no American sisters in Mexico for security reasons, but I guess with so many wanting to serve they are now sending them. We also had a zone meeting this week to tell the zone what we learned in the Leadership meeting and then we did trainings. Mine was on repentance and make a connection to the tabernacle of Moses. It was fun! Saturday, the Stake had a missionary activity day to try and encourage the youth and we had a part in it. We just sang called to serve at the end, but it was neat singing it wiith 30 missionaries from the Hermosillo area and about 20 RMs. I also saw a few people from my other Area, Nuevo Hermosillo, including....My favorite Family from my last Hermosillo area! They were there! That was fun to see them and we have made plans to have an FHE with them soon! As far as investigators, we are kind of fresh out! The ones we had have lost interest. Especially the cousins we were teaching. They are like not interested anymore. Yeah, they are just kids, but they are getting bored, so we have decided not to go with them anymore. We do have a few people that could progress; we just need to start focusing on them more to see if it would really happen. Well, that is about all I got for this time around Sorry this email wasn´t too spiritual, just business. I hope you all have a fantastic week and that the yard sell goes well! I love and miss you all tons! 5 months and counting... ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner