Monday, November 18, 2013 - "21......Lucky Number!"

Hola Mi Familia! I LOVED reading my mail today! Thanks everyone for the updates and especially for the birthday wishes! Well, this week was quite the week! Birthday week! Well, of course no week with my compe is a dull week, but this week especially! We started out and continued the week living Aunt Melon's "14th Article of Faith"..."We believe in Meetings....!" We had quite a bit of meetings this week! Tuesday and Wednesday both we had meetings with both Stake Presidents and President Hernandez. We have this meeting every month to report to the Stake President and Mission President how each ward is doing regarding missionary work and the things that they lack and what they need to improve on based on what the missionaries have told us. There are 2 stakes here in Hermosillo and our zone is the only zone that has wards from the both stakes and so we had to go to both of the meetings with the 2 stake presidents. We also had our weekly Missionary/Ward Mission Leader meeting with our Ward mission leader to talk about our investigators and to finalize plans for the missionary activity we were going to do with the ward. So meetings, meetings, meetings! Friday we had the ward activity that we had planned to get the members to invited more of their friends. We did a "Movie Night" and we watched "The Testaments"--a personal favorite of mine! The catch was that the members invited their friends and neighbors and non members to the movie night. It was a small attendance, but a few of those that went were able to bring a few people and some investigators that we had invited were able to go too! The movie went well and the spirit was strong at the end as always. My comp was asked to share his testimony and then we had refreshments and associated with the non members that were there and get addresses! However, there was no on in our area that went that we weren't already visiting. It was nice activity and may have to be done again in the future to get more references. A little update on our Teaching Pool! We could be having some baptisms coming up! There are basically 4 people that we are teaching right now that are almost sure baptisms. One boy is a 9 year old kid and his family was baptized about 10 years ago but have been inactive most of those 10 years. They want to start going to church again and so we are helping them return so that the boy can be baptized. They are really poor (a little ironic for the area that we are in...) and have a hard time getting to church because they don't have enough to pay for the bus, but they have been making their best effort and are doing well. They have gone to church 3 times now and so if things are good, in 2 weeks he could be baptized. There is another girl who is a 15 years old who seems to really like the church! She and her mom were investigating the church a few months ago and they were progressing really well and then something happened the mom became a little saddened and let down by the unfulfilled promise of a former missionary and decided that her time was not now. However, the daughter is still interested and her mom is really supportive of her. She is really shy, well, she is but she isn't and so when we are teaching she gets embarrassed and doesn't want to respond to questions that we ask, but she is really cool. She said she likes church because all of her school friends drink and smoke, etc. and in church she is surrounded by good people who don't do that stuff. She is a little hesitant with things but seems to like it all so we are going to keep working on her. The last 2 investigators are 2 boys, a 14 year old and a 15 year old, grandsons of the new Bishop. My former comp and his comp before me were teaching them and they were progressing really well and loved church and everything and then their grandparents went to Colorado they kind of lost contact with the missionaries. Now that the grandparents are back, they came to the movie night and liked it and came to church yesterday too and are really associating well with the 2 young men that our ward has. So hopefully we can really focus on them and we think that could be 2 baptisms in the next few weeks as well. So Saturday....well what a day! A birthday day! November is a special month because this month I turned 21 months and 21 years! So crazy! Can you believe I am 21 already!?! Cause I can't! Well, the very first thing that happened on Saturday is that when I woke up I got a call from Pres. and Hermana Hernandez wishing me a happy birthday! That was really nice. Later my comp made me a nice pancake/banana breakfast! We opened presents and I put on my beautiful new red birthday tie! I LOVED IT!!! We left to go work as usual but I felt extra special that day because it was MY day! Nothing really happened till the night. Saturday night a wonderful family invited us and the sisters over for a Carne Asada dinner and man was it good! They make probably the BEST carne asada that I have ever tasted in Sonora! It was soo good! They had also made my cake that you sent me mom in addition to another Choco-Flan cake! It was delicious! There was even a piñata included and I wacked the candy out of that thing! It was a really special day and it was probs one of the best birthdays that I have had away from home! It really was a fantastic day! I feel the same haha! I almost think that 20 years was bigger for me, but 21 was great too! Thanks everyone for you love that you sent me on this special day! Well, I hope you all have a fantastic week! Thanks for your constant love and support! Thank you all so much for all that you do for me! I love you! "Keep calm and carry on!" ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner