These are the Greenie Christmas Challenge goodies. My mom wrapped up every green thing here separately and put a scripture on each one. I had to look up and read the scripture first trying to guess what the gift was. Every scripture had a word in it describing the item. Then out of the 32 small gifts there were 17 with a number in a circle beside the scripture reference. I had to count out to that numbered word in the scripture and write it down. After I found all the 17 words I had to unscramble and figure out a quote from Pres. Joseph Smith. It took quite awhile but here is the quote:
"After all that has been said, the greatest and most important duty is to preach the gospel."
Hi,
I got your first snail mail letter mom! Thanks, I'm fine and doing great! At this point I am in the Cape South Zone in the Philippi & Delt Area (soon to be having Browns Farm officially in our area also) to answer your question, the office doesn’t mail our incoming snail mail at all. We are literally a 10 min drive from the mission office, so presently the zone leaders pick up our incoming mail, (outside of the emails), every Monday and give it to us on Tuesday... I don't know what will happen with that type of mail once I am further away then Cape Town... Sure you can do whatever you want with my blog, you are in charge of it.
I know you are concerned about my letters and journal entries. Before I started doing that my journal entries were extremely lame... I didn't have much desire to write in my journal everyday like I am supposed to... but once I started writing my journal entries as letters, I started writing in more detail because someone would actually read it, and I have a much greater desire to write in my journal every day now! I got the idea from my mission president in the MTC because he was telling us that was what he did when he was on mission. I will make sure you all know about everything I have done and that I do...
The baptisms were on 29th of January. We do have more coming but the problem is, even though we have a set date, quite often the dates end up being postponed for various reasons... in fact the 2 baptisms we have set for the 4th of march are being postponed for the 18th, and we are trying to have 2 more baptisms for the 18th so we could possibly have 4 next month... but we are never for sure about any dates 100% till the week before really...
I have a few things I want to send home that I got here in Africa. I have not sent it yet because I do not have everything that I want to send. … Actually, I like your idea of indexing my spiritual experiences on the last page of my journal! I will have to start implementing that! Thanks mom! I love you!
You mentioned you wanted me to write down things for you to send me in a package. Well this is what I got so far...
#1: 16 GB flash drive or two 8 GB flash drives so that I can back up all my photos onto them. It is highly suggested by all elders because of how easy it is for it to be stolen or broken or lost. I ask for them from you guys because they are really really expensive here...
#2: Church music! I need more variety! and I request you to send me the song "His Hands" because I love that song and I’m craving it! Could I even get a copy of the "Church Tunage" CD that you'd always listen to in the car? I would really like that! Whether you send it on a cd or on a flash drive, both work.
#3: a nice Canadian Flag pin for my suit jacket!
#4: a Canada flag patch to sew on something (optional... don't care too much)
#5: ties... I’m always open for more ties!
#6: family pictures, I just need something to tape up on the wall so I can look at you guys or show to my companion and so I can look at pics of my family during the week and not just on the computer.
That’s all I could think of really... but any church talks or church anything is nice!
Oh one more thing… mini eggs would be nice... anyways... that’s what I have! Love you!
This week has gone by so fast!!! Seems like yesterday I was emailing! This week was actually pretty rough compared to our other weeks... on Tuesday we didn't have one appointment go through... it was actually rather depressing and we found ourselves spending the entire day looking for fellowshippers to go with us and ended up cancelling appointments... the sad thing was that we had an entire day of set appointments too... and just to make the day even worse, Elder Beck arranged for an appointment with a recent convert and a members house, but he didn't write it down, and he never told me, so we didn't plan for it because he forgot about it, so the one appointment we had that we could have actually taught a lesson at, we ended up missing! And the people weren't too happy about that... But Elder Beck made sure he did the right thing, to go and apologize to them.
That was a rough day... All in all we hardly had any lessons with investigators this week but we did have a lot of lessons with recent converts! We are struggling with balancing recent converts with investigators, because our top priority is recent converts, and we have 11 of them that we are trying to teach every week, and we still have to find and teach new investigators and progressing investigators... it’s hard to do...
One investigator we have, her name is Nomvuyo, we met a few weeks ago. We met her because Elder Beck had a prompting to knock on one more door. It was late, we had just finished a lesson at a member’s house, and at this time we usually go pick up the walking Elders from their area and go home because it’s not good being out past dark. But Elder Beck had the prompting, and I was driving, so we said a prayer and I had the prompting to drive to this certain spot, I had never even been there before. I drove us to the spot and parked the car, then we got out and I had an undeniable prompting to walk to a door that was open. Elder Beck had the same prompting and we both started walking towards the door without even saying anything to each other. We ended up meeting Nomvuyo and scheduling a return appointment with her and gave her a Restoration pamphlet. The next time we came and visited her, she was super curious about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. So we taught her about it and gave her a Book of Mormon. It was awesome!
When we went to our next appointment with her she wasn't there... so we ended up not even seeing her for 2 weeks even though we dropped by many times but she was never home. Eventually we were able to teach her again and she was saying that she was really really busy with work and she hadn't had time to read the Book of Mormon at all, but that she had finished 1 Nephi... WHAT!?!?!? After just one appointment she had read 1 Nephi and said that she hadn't had time to read?!?!? …not to mention she explained everything that she read and her understanding was spot on! THAT’S GREAT!!!
She is a dream investigator! She said she still had to sit down and read the book! That’s sweet!!! Usually investigators are barely done 1 Nephi by the time they are baptized! Well maybe a bit further... but on her second visit I was just so surprised! I was so startled that I actually sucked at teaching and Elder Beck had to carry most of the lesson! So she is one investigator that we need to set a date with next time we see her! She has already committed to baptism by the way, but we haven't given her a date yet. I thought you all might like a cool experience or something! So there it is! I love this work!
My watch tan is getting better every day! Being in a car traveling back and forth all day doesn't help too much but it's coming! We are going ice skating again for P-Day today so it should be interesting... it’s kind of boring but most of the elders have never skated before so it's really fun to watch them WIPEOUT EVERY TWO SECONDS! I'll film some of it! I love you all! The work is amazing! I'm doing amazing! SEND ME LETTERS!
-Elder Jones
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