Monday, October 28, 2013

Hola Mi Familia!!!! Last week of October, what? Now going on November? I LOVE fall time, but it just isn´t them same in Hermosillo.... This week, as for you, was quite a fantastic week for us! So let me just get started! Our investigator went to church for the second Sunday this past week and he is just loving it! He has had a pretty good week and is just more and more interested every time we visit. He has had a really rough past with a lot of things and is in the middle of a personal struggle right now between good and evil and wanting so bad to change and do good, but then have really strong temptations and giving into sin. We are working on him though. He is funny because he is pretty gangsta! He showed up to church yesterday with some platinum aviator glasses! Haha! He also gave a little speech during priesthood yesterday. We were talking about Elder Perry´s conference talk ¨Peace In the Home¨ and he began to comment on something that was said and just got on one telling everyone how are his past was and so difficult a life he has had but how he is just loving church and how he is starting to change and he owes it all to us missionaries who are helping him and he just kept going on and on about how much he was just loving church and everything that he has been learning. He is a good guy and we have a date for him for this coming month in November, but it may have to be held off for a few personal problems. We have also been working with the other guy. We were looking for a less active one day and we found the less active´s mom. She welcomed us in and listened to us and we invited her to be baptized the very first visit and she told us that she hasn´t been baptized but and that is something she would love to do. So we are working on her. She is a funny lady! A very loud person who is very animated when she talks. She shows us a lot of attention and loves us to death. However we have invited her to church now for the past 2 weeks and she has yet to go. We are a little worried about that but hopefully we can get her there soon. This week we found a few other new investigators that we hope will be able to progress. There was a person we contacted at the bus stop one day and then we went to her house to talk with her and she was telling us her desires to become closer to God and to have a family. We were able to talk to her how the Gospel blesses the families and she seemed really interested. She looks like she could progress really well, but the thing with her is that she goes out of town every single weekend for work. So that could be a bit challenging for church attendance but we will see. We have been visiting another lady, but we have never been able to get a lesson in because every time we go over she is leaving and can´t take too much time. Well we stopped by this week and she was there but a bit saddened and depressed and her son who was there and he was in the sad emotional state. Apparently right now they are going through a lot of difficulties economically and family wise and they are going through a rough time. We talked with them and explained how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can help them in their trials and hard times and they brightened up. At the end of the lesson we invited them to be baptized and they accepted. However, they weren´t able to make it to the church yesterday so we will have to see what is up with them. There is also another girl who is actually an American and from Texas. Her and her family have been living in Sonora for the past 4 years because her husband works or owns a few mines here in Sonora. She was just baptized about a year ago and is in the process of switching wards over to our ward. Her husband isn´t a member and they also have an older gentleman friend living with them that isn´t a member either so we will be working with them. They actually live in the area of the Sisters but since they don´t really speak Spanish we are stealing them. Let me just tell you how HARD it is to teach in English! It is the hardest thing ever! Making conversation and just talking isn´t so bad and is do-able, but you get us teaching and talking about Gospel topics and our tongues just wanted to spit out Spanish and not English. You just get so used to talking about a subject for so long in another language that is just becomes second nature to continue talking about it in that language. But it´s all good. We will battle through! This past Sunday was basically ¨Missionary Sunday¨. The four of us missionaries in the ward spoke in sacrament meeting and we even did a special musical number! We spoke on the 4 points to the member plan that I told you all about last week : 1) Don´t Judge/Predict what people will say 2) Pray and put a date 3) Be an Example 4) Make conversation. The talks went over well and everyone seemed to like it especially the special number. We sang ¨How Great Shall Be Your Joy¨ it is a beautiful number that talks about missionary work and D&C 18. You should look it up! So we are hoping that with our missionary work sacrament meeting bomb the members will be more excited and willing to help us. We will just see how that goes. This week there was an experience that kind of made me think. It didn´t involve me but I was present when it happened and it left me thinking. I won´t explain the details but it involved a church leader saying something to a new member and the new member thinking that they were being judged for their appearance (but they really weren´t). This new member was really upset and we went and talked with them after and they explained that their appearance didn´t define but was just a mark of their past life before their baptism. Sure they made some wrong choices which left a permanent mark on their appearance, but they had repented and were baptized. They way the member explained it just really impacted me. Many times we as ignorant people tend to look at a person or hear about them or their past and immediately we form opinions or thoughts about them that are totally and completely not true. We should always think before we speak. It doesn´t matter who we look like, where we are from, what color our skin is, what gender, what we do or our attractions, how we live...we should treat each and every person as the child of God that they are. Well, I hope you all are well and happy! Here´s to another fantastic week and welcoming November!!! Love you all tons! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner