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