saucin, saucin, i'm saucin, on you

Sorry guys...with an area called Sauces I can't help but keep going with the clever subject lines. :)

Packed email this week bc new area, opening area, new companion, means lots of work. And it is dope. I'll start off with our investigator called Dipti (I think that's how it's spelled) but she's Indian and has a year here in Mexico and speaks no Spanish and has limited English. So basically we taught her yesterday in her limited English (and my limited English) and it was tough. But it went well and she's really nice.

In this area the Elders used to have bikes, but about 3 weeks ago they got robbed. So a member that we met on Tuesday loves us so much that he went and bought us bikes with his own personal money. This man is a legend. He's also going to take us to Costco in about 30 minutes. Talk about a life saver. 

A few days ago we ate pozole with a member which is one of my favorite foods, but it was so spicy that I thought my throat was going to close in on me and I was going to die in that moment. Never ever have I eaten something so spicy. And I eat pretty spicy now

There's this sister in our ward that studied criminology, which she said was trying to find out why people commit crimes. She knows how to do this thing to determine the character of a person just by reading their handwriting. So I wrote Elder Jones, and then I signed my name in cursive, and she told me exactly who I was. It was freaky.

This week we've taught a lot of the lesson 1 to people, which is the Restoration. Every time I teach it I just feel the spirit and my testimony of what happened grows. It's so simple and makes so much sense! Everyone should invite the missionaries over just for 15 minutes to hear this message. Members of the church and people who aren't members. It serves us to learn a little more or to just be reminded. I know that it's true. If we read the Book of Mormon we can know that it's true. Like the prophet made the inviatino in April in General Conference, we should all read the Book of Mormon every day. If we do that, we'll be blessed with knowledge and protection every day.

Thanks for reading guys! No pictures this week but hopefully next week! Love you guys, Happy Halloween and Feliz dia de Los Muertos. Stay safe!

Elder Jones

saucin' it up

Elder Sweat and I came up with that subject line together this morning. I'll explain:

today were changes and so that means new companion, but I also got a new area, and it's called Sauces. So I'm about to sauce it up in Sauces.

"a man without sauce is lost, but the same man can get lost in the sauce"

This week was good, really the email will be pictures for you all to enjoy because this keyboard is making me angry bc it doesn't type very well. Lots of sticky keys. Anyway, yesterday we had the baptism of Carlos! He was in my same situation, questioning a lot of his beliefs about God, searching everywhere for answers, and then finally decided to do it God's way and is a lot happier now! I think it's interesting, as mentioned in a Mormon message called Lift, the dichotomy between healing the body, and healing the soul. If we want to heal the body, we focus on ourselves, taking medicine, going to the doctor, taking care of our bodies. But the soul is different. To heal it, we must turn outward, focusing on others and not ourselves. I feel like that's what turning to God does for us. Heals our souls and makes us happier. 

Heres Carlos:

That was  a joke bc turns out I didn't take a pic with him...sad day.

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​my homie Dulce and E. Hernandez

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​we made crepes with the familia Uribe

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​pretty sunset outside the church beofre our baptism

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typical​

I hope everyone has a great week!!! Say your prayers in the morning and never forget to bless your food. Love you guys!! 

-Elder Jones

question for seminary

From Mom:
Tomorrow we are studying 2 Nephi ch.29 and 30. In chapter 29 it talks about how people will say we already have a bible and we don't need another bible. 

3 And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.

Have you had this experience yet with people you have taught? Where you told them about the Book of Mormon and they said they already have a bible and don't need another one? If so, what was your response to them?

We are actually suppose to role play a missionary experience with this exact idea. I thought it would be better to hear from a real missionary with real experiences.

Love you the most-est!!!

Mom

Elder Jones response:

hahahahaha  I make this joke all the time about having a bible. But lots of people are really stubborn sometimes about this, but one time someone said something about how we could teach these people about the bible, but they already know about that. We come to teach something new, which is the bom. I liked that thought.

"i'm with the devil"

Hey guys! Hope everyone is having a nice October week, hopefully its not 90 degrees outside too many days this month.

I heard a lot about the devil this week. We had interchanges this week. As we were walking down the street some guy just says "hey we've gotta give thanks to the devil too right? Without him we wouldn't have bad, and without the bad we wouldn't know the good." The guy makes some sense but there's no way I'm giving the devil thanks for anything. My compa asked if he would like to come closer to Jesus and he said that he'd rather keep smoking weed. That's a normal thing in the life of a missionary btw. 

Hermano Gino shared a pretty funny story with me.. He said he was in a taxi coming to church but he was gonna get down a lot before the church because he only had 24 pesos and 24 pesos wasn't enough to get all the way to church. So he tells the chauffeur to let him down when it got to 24 pesos. The taxi driver said, "no worries man you just tell me where you're going and I'll take you there, I like you guys". So he keeps going and they get to the church and Hermano Gino decides to share something with him about the church, and invites him to church and the taxi driver says "nah man Im with the devil but you guys are bien chidos" I think with Hermano Gino's story is funny, but I learned something from it. Through our example people recognize members of the church, and if some day they meet some missionaries the first thing that will come to their mind will be "hey I have a Mormon friend" and they'll think of that example. Just some food for thought.

I'm not sure if salsa valentina exists in the United States but it's eaten with many, many things here. so anyway sangria (if you don't know what that is its a soda and you can buy it in Kroger) can be prepared a certain way so that it becomes a "sangria preparada" and it's got like the salt and all that kinda like a margarita. A sangria preparada is: valentina negra (valentina but the really spicy version), salt, and tajin. Tajin is like spicy powder stuff that you put on fruit so that its kinda spicy. But anyway you mix all that up with the soda and then you drink it. Basically it's gross and just tastes like you're drinking valentina. I tried that this week.

To end I wanted to share something from general conference. There was this one talk where the brother said "mirar mas alla de lo que vemos" which basically means that we have to look a little farther than what we see. I'm not sure how to translate it very well. Anyway, something came to mind that my dad always, always talks to me about which is perspective. and more so eternal perspective. In life lots of stuff happens, trials come and sometimes like stinks. We have to have an eternal perspective. We have to be able to realize that this life is just a short part of our existence and some day we're going to be back with our Heavenly Father with all the experience we've gained. Sometimes life is hard and not very fun, but if we can have that eternal perspective, we'll be able to understand a little better why those things happen.

I hope everyone has a great week! Stay safe, love you guys!

Elder Jones

This is Cristian, he's a convert of Elder Hernandez that we talked to today, he was super cool. He used to be a Freemason. 

Just a short email this week. Sometimes the mission is really hard rn, and I feel like I'm just trying to endure sometimes until I get home. I'm really trying to find the joy in the work rn which can be hard sometimes. But things are going good.

BYU bound

I request that you post this on twitter and instagram with exactly this caption​

Braeden says "ya boy got accepted to byu"

Hey mom! It's good to here you guys finally got into a gym I'm gonna need it when I get back. We'll see if I can get back into shape in those few weeks when I get home and before I head up to byu. Don't worry about your pushups and situps, that just means there's more room for improvement. I started getting into working out again the other day and I was only able to do like 23. When I was in the offices I would pump out 3 sets of 20 like it was nothing. But I know that I can improve. Anyway keep me updated, and when I get back I'll come and work out too. I'm glad Kate got moved up and was able to have fun in The Colony game. I'm excited to be able to go and watch whenever I get home. Only 11ish months, the time will fly by. But anyway, things are good here, we're just chilling. Trying to get some work done. I was able to contact some people today and it was really great to be able to talk to them and invite them to church and stuff, the old lady was staring at my name tag and was like " joven I can't read that. What does it say?" haha So I explained to her what we were doing. Anway mom love you lots and have a great week!!

my back hurts

I'm pretty sure that everyone knows by now about the earthquakes here in Mexico City. The earthquakes have provided a lot of opportunities to serve. In our area there's not anything to do really but we had two days organized by the mission to go to a place called Chimalpa to go and serve. About 40% of the houses there had fallen so we went to go help out. Huge trucks of cement bricks and rebar were brought in to build new houses. Our job was to unload them and carry the bricks to the houses. It was pretty hard work. On Tuesday I got the job of getting on top of the truck and pulling rebar up on top, then I got to ride on top of the truck to the destination. Then I touched every single brick that went off the truck bc I passed them off. That's why my back hurts. haha. On Friday we had an even harder job. About 20 of us went with a truck to go unload it, but the house was at the bottom of a really steep and muddy hill so we couldn't take the truck down. We had to carry three to four blocks at a time and walk them down until we got to the house. It was brutal. Like really brutal. But then we finished and the lady that lived there gave us coke. We asked if we could sing a hymn for her. So we all sang I'm a child of God. I haven't felt the spirit so strongly in a long time. We all sang from memory bc we didn't have hymn books, so some of the guys didn't know the words, and we didn't sound the greatest, but I looked over at the sister and she just started crying. She then thanked us so much for our work and we left. My body hurt but it felt so good to be able to do that for her. I mentioned to a friend "sometimes the mission is just really hard, but the moments like these are the ones that make everything worth it, and I remember why I came."

The other thing I want to share is about something that a friend shared in a training we had on Monday. He talked about how there are 2 types of animals in the jungle.  I think we all know that you either eat or you get eaten. He mentioned that both animals run all the time, but for different reasons. One runs so that he doesn't get eaten. The other runs so that he can eat. So the question is, why do we run? To eat or to not get eaten? Do we run as a result of our own initiative, or because someone is telling us to? Do we obey the commandments and go to church bc we have to and people will see we're not there, or because we want to? That's something that really impacted me this week, and it's the thought I leave with ya'll today. Why do I run? And then try to run for the right reasons.

Love you guys! Have a great week. Stay safe.

- ElderJones