Jones, Talmage T

Well, I'm grateful for hard weeks. However, I was pretty down and sad about it. I rely on and trust in the Lord through it all, but I am bummed that our friends aren't as committed to following the Savior as we thought. It is a really tough thing to have to stop teaching certain friends. We visited Hugo and Hermana Gastelum, going into it thinking they have a marriage date in mind. Unfortunately, the answer we received is that they don't plan to get married until next year. This postpones the possibility of Hugo's baptism by a LOT. This isn't the only issue; they told us that both of them are jobless. They asked for help in their job search by requesting that we ask our members. The next day, we got a message from our branch president that someone is hiring for a full-time landscaping position!! This was a miracle, and we immediately sent that person's information to Hermana Gastelum. She sounded grateful about it! We showed love as they told us this, but still ...

¡Hola a todos! ¿Cómo hemos estado? Ojalá que estén excelentes. Mucho pasó esta semana, en verdad. It's true. A lot happened this week! Fuimos de intercambio el miércoles, y fue cuando sucedieron cosas sorprendentes. Fui a un área llamada Green River Valley con el Elder Pierson, mientras que el Elder Townsend lideró nuestra área en español con el Elder Ball. Mi intercambio con el Elder Pierson fue bastante bueno. Visitamos a muchos miembros y pudimos ver cómo están todos. Me encantaron los mensajes únicos que enseñó el Elder Pierson, como la importancia de los himnos de la iglesia y cómo traen al Espíritu Santo y fortalecen nuestro testimonio. Sin embargo, las cosas más asombrosas ocurrieron con el Elder Townsend en nuestra área. Ni siquiera estuve físicamente presente para nada de eso, ¡pero fue increíble! Estaba muy nervioso por dos lecciones importantes, ¡pero salieron muy bien! Una de ellas fue con Hermana Gastelum y Hugo. En esa lección, hablaron de casarse a finales de este me...

Well, this has been a harder week for me. Not everything works out as I want it to, and I had to accept this truth. I'm seeing that the Lord is humbling me and making sure I'm still dedicated when things get rough. The good news is that I'm committed to staying dedicated—and positive! Staying optimistic makes all the difference in a companionship. Things were hard because three or four important lessons got canceled this week. When this happens, we remain prayerful and seek to find others to teach. Wednesday was my birthday, so I got to celebrate a little bit. The nice thing about mission birthdays is that they go better when I'm serving others. It's nice and all to get presents, but thanking my Heavenly Father for twenty-one years of life by serving His children is the best way to make the most of my birthday. I am eternally grateful for my Savior who makes my joy possible. I'm also grateful for all the missionaries here in Auburn who were kind enough to wish m...

I enjoyed hearing from the leaders of our church this weekend. So wonderful to receive profound counsel. I missed hearing from Elder Holland for sure, though. Elder Townsend and I listened to the Saturday sessions in English with the other missionaries, and then the two of us watched the Sunday ones in Spanish. I didn't understand all of the Sunday speakers, so I'm going to re-listen to them in English when they get uploaded to Gospel Library. At the final session, a new friend came and watched with us. His name is Edgar, and he moved from Los Angeles. We are anxious to seek him out and visit him. He said the missionaries in California rarely visited him, so we're going to do better than that. We had two wonderful lessons this week that specifically indicated great progress. One was with José, and the other was with Hugo. The thing in common is teaching the importance of marriage and the Law of Chastity. When we met with José, he said he is open to marriage; however, he cla...