Whitewashing Our Own Area

so this week was amazing! we saw tons of miracles! on monday we went to the church building by the temple to hang out with all of the other missionaries! when we got back we had dinner with the G family and then we taught P and then we were going to teach another member, bro R, but a whole bunch of his nonmember family was there! so we taught them the restoration! the next day was transfers, but we werent getting transfered so we just sat at our apartment doing studies waiting for the meeting to be over to see where all of our friends had gone! :) well we finally get a call and we find out that none of the spanish missionaries moved!!!! its crazy! (something that we do as spanish missionaries is we try to predict where everyone is going to go even if we dont move!) there are now some companionships that have been together for 4 transfers! that is 24 weeks! like 6 months! i cant imagine how hard marriage would be! she would have to be the best fit in order to live together for the eternities! this is me and elder jacobsens 2nd transfer together now! and we are really excited cuz we are seeing tons of miracles! its weird as a missionary because regular time doesnt make sense anymore! we measure things by 6 week incriments! haha. our new district is us the semoran sisters and the windy ridge sisters! so now me and elder jacobsen are sister training elders! we now have a SISTRICT! haha ;) its awesome though cuz we have our district meetings completely in spanish! wednesday we had temple service again! always super fun! district meeting was on thursday. friday we weekly planned and prepared ourselves for the stake conference this weekend! that night we made a trek all the way out to see these members that live super far away, but it was so worth it! they are the leon family and they are the best! they are both RM's and from venezuela. she cooks the best Arepas ever!!! shoutout to all the missionaries in spanish speaking countries if you like arepas! :) she is insane! when i asked her what her name was the first time i met her she said, "hermana leon, GRRrrrrrrrr!" (lion in english)........ :O

but they were super funny at the end of the lesson when we asked if there was anything that we could do they jokingly said oh wash the dishes and all of that! so we jumped up super quick and started doing them! (that is like unforgivable to let someone else clean your house in spanish culture!) she started laughing and got red in the face and tried to stop us but we were a service train that just wouldnt stop! haha :) it was great and their liking for us just skyrocketed! #membertrust!

then the conference! 

this stake conference was with 2 stakes combined. because they were making a new stake! YAY!!! :) we had Elder Don R Clark of the seventy come and guest speak! he is a fiery old man let me tell ya! and quick off the old whip! He talked a lot to us in the priesthood session about keys and using our priesthood to bless our lives! He challenged us to 1- Get a written fathers blessing. 2- give our wives or moms a blessing of gratitude! it was really inspirational and i left feeling uplifted! he also talked about missionary work and how we should do better! one of his quotes was "When was the last time you bought your wife flowers? something to think about...but what if your wife doesnt like flowers? well tell her that the celestial kingdom is full of them. and that if she doesnt like flowers she can prepare to go somewhere else!" HAHAHA i couldnt believe it!

well now here is the interesting part of the email...with the stake change our branch is now turning into a ward AND our areas are changing. the division in the ward used to be north and south but they changed us to east and west! and when they told us which side we were on we looked at where ALL (and i am not exagerating here when i say all) of the people we were teaching were and they were in the other area....

that means that we have to give R to the sisters 2 weeks before his baptism. that means that we have to give away all of the people we had been making such good process with. all of the people that we had come to love. this is one of the hardest changes i have had to make in the mission. But through prayer and the atonement of Christ i felt his love and peace come into my life and help me realize that this was a revelatory change.  so now we are whitewashing ( a term for when missionaries go into an area without any pre-knowledge or teaching pool or without a companion who was there before.) in our own area! it will be an adventure to say the least!

today we are making cookies for all of the members in our new area! (thanks for the idea mom! :))

i know this church is true and you better believe that we will have some more miracles coming your way next week!

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!! :D

Elder jones