Monday, October 21, 2013 - Fantastic Week!

Hola Mi Familia! So Fall is moving right along and we are almost done with October...can you believe! This week was actually a really good week for us with a ton of experiences and new people to teach! We started off the week having a zone activity! I forgot to tell about it last week so I will explain it now! We had the brilliant idea of having a zone activity to get to know the new kids in the zone and to be more united. So we had a zone breakfast and played games! Everyone pitched in about $40 pesos and Monday morning we went to the store buy everything! We then got to the church and the Sisters in our ward helped us prepare everything. We made breakfast burritos with egg, sausage, ham, and bacon. It was pretty good actually! Everyone got there and we all ate and just kind of chilled and talked and got to know each other. Then we played like EFY or drama games. It was really a lot of fun! It was a lot of work for us to prepare breakfast for almost 20 but it was worth it. I will send our adventure in pictures. Tuesday was actually a really good day for us. We began to find a few new investigators to teach. We were walking down the street and saw a guitar shop and my comp wanted to stop by and see how much they were and while there the owner of the shop, an older guy, said that he knew the stake president and his family who just happens to be in our ward. He talked with him for a bit and then he said he wanted to ask us a question. He is explained that in his day he was a professional classical guitarist and then he had an accident and messed up his hand leaving him unable to play guitar for the rest of his life. He has been pretty torn up about this and wanted to know why. Why his hand and not his leg, because he didn´t need his leg, but he needed his hand to play. We tried a whole lot of ways to tell him basically the same answer but he just wasn´t satisfied with the answer we were giving. We were a little late for another appointment and so we sang and hymn and that really invited the spirit and humbled him a bit. This experience just made me really grateful for the knowledge I have of our purpose here on earth and the testimonies that we will pass through trials and hard times, but all this is to give us experience and it will all be for our good. This past week, we wanted to go find an investigator that had been going to church for the past 3 months. This sister is a friend of a member and has been going to church for the past 4 or so months but has not been baptized because she does not have her husband´s support. The member friend recently moved to Guaymas and this investigator stopped going to church. We decided to go find her to get to know her better and invite her to church and end then end Baptize her! Well, she kind of lives not in our area, but in the area of the sisters, yet she is our investigator so we had to travel. It was 7:30PM and had had a rough day and we were trying to decide if we should just call it a day or go the extra mile and look for this sister. We decided to go. We had to walk 45 minutes because the bus was taking too long. After we got there we knocked for a good 10 minutes. We saw a light on and heard some noise as if there were people there. After a few minutes the light went off and that was it. No one came to the door and there was nothing. Oh well....we tried. Thursday was a super day! We found 2 new investigators and put 2 baptismal dates! We were looking for a less active and we found his mom who isn´t a member. This boy was really receptive and we talked about baptism in the first visit and he was like ¨I haven´t done that yet¨ so we were like Get on it! So we set a date and he seems really excited and ready to progress! We have another investigator that we found. He is a cool guy. He is 27 and is recovering from some health issues and some drugs but he really wants to turn his life around and is so excited to do it. He pays so much attention to us while we are teaching and is so interested in everything. We invited him to church this past week and he went! For the first time in the past 2 months we had 1 investigator in church and he was just loving it! He LOVED all the classes and the topics discussed. He is just so enthusiastic and it is great! So here is to hoping that they will progress! This Friday we had zone meeting that went really well. Our numbers have been low and so we decided to have a meet to greet everyone get pumped up and excited about working again! It was really neat and a great meeting! My comp and I talked about working with the members. According to this awesome book that the ward is apparently using quite a bit, ¨Everyday Missionaries¨, we took a few points that this book has and we have made a mission plan for the members: 1) Don´t judge, or predict what people will say--many will accept the gospel if we would just give them a chance. 2) Prayerfully create a plan and put dates. One thing the books say that I liked is that if you set a date that by X day we will find someone the missionaries can teach it will give us a deadline and a pressured way to work. 3) Be an example of the believers. 4) Make conversation using gospel vocab/church experiences with your friends...it makes a great missionary experience. The meeting went really well and everyone left feeling more excited to get out and work including us. This week we have been preparing to do a special musical number with us and the sisters to try and pump up the Ward to work. We will be singing ¨How Great Shall Be Your Joy¨. Look it up on youtube...it is actually a really pretty song. We will also be speaking this coming Sunday on the 4 points that I explained above. So here is to hoping that we begin to help this ward! Well, I hope that this will suffice. I swear I had more meaty stuff to say, but if I find more it will just have to wait till next well. I love and miss you all tons and hope you are well and have a fantastic week! Go big at one-act and I will be thinking about you! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner