Elder Jonathan Turley: January 26, 2015

Hello parents how are y'all doing?

So this week was pretty interesting. Monday we got to have our p-day which is very different now that I am serving in Neuland. We really don't do anything because we are so far away from all of the other missionaries, other than going to the cyber to email -- that is something we still do on p-day. It was a good experience.

Then Tuesday we went out and did our usual visits. It was a super good week, we were able to talk to a lot of menos activos (less actives) as well as investigators and we were able to have a good amount of success and spiritual lessons.
Wednesday we went out and taught a couple people, just the normal stuff about how we need to have faith and pray and come to church. A lot of people here don't really understand the blessings that we receive when we go to church, and so we have to explain that pretty thoroughly or they won't go to the church. It's very different and kind of hard in the Chaco because our job as missionaries is to get the "members" to go to church. Haha. It seemed like everyone we talked to said they would come to church, but apparently they never really do, so we will see -- you know what, it's all good.

Thursday we went out and we taught a man named H. He is a Mennonite and it's super hard to work with him because he knows the church is true, but he is afraid of what the Mennonite church will do to him if he joins ... so at the moment he is pretty much resisting all forms of knowing if the church is true. He won't ask God if it's true or not because he is scared that if he does and then denies his answer that he would be thrust down to hell. The struggle is real for H, but we are working with him. Thursday afternoon I went on divisions with Elder Bristol, because the other Elders were in town to wash their clothes (my apartment has a washing machine). Elder Bristol and I had a couple good lessons, and it seemed like a couple of our less actives decided that they wanted to open up just a little bit more and would actually share with us, which was a super good experience. Thursday night we all went to Asuncion for our Zone Meeting on Friday.

So our Zone Meeting ended up being in Mariano Rocky Alanzo, which is super far away from where we live. We took two, eight hour bus rides to get there and back and that was fun. ;) Anyway, the Zone Meeting was about forgiveness and that we should forgive everyone and that we should teach everyone to forgive. It was a very inspired zone meeting, as we went back to Neuland and applied it to our less actives -- and guess what -- our normal attendance at church is about 6 and we had 40. We implemented what we learned in Zone Meeting and we got some really good results.

But other than that we went out to Paraiso, a unit that we are in charge of, and helped them get a church started in their little city. We had like 24 people come, but there is a ton of room for improvement, From what Elder Burger has said, there are about 50 potential members in that area, we know we have hard work ahead of us but it will all be well worth it. So ya to get to Paraiso, it was an hour ride there and a two hour ride back -- so yeah, I rode three hours in the back of a truck on dirt roads. It was a lot of fun -- yeah right. ;)

But anyway, I love y'all and that's pretty much it for the week -- here are your questions.

1. Are you staying hydrated? Yes Mother.

2. Are you stocked up with water? Yes we just got a filter for the tap in the bathroom in our house

3. Have you received your packages from us? Nope, I thought they would be at the zone meeting, but guess I will get them next week.

4. Have you received your packages from the Distribution Center? Nope

5. How was church? It was wonderful we had 40 people in church

6. Tell us about your calling as Branch Secretary? What did you do for this calling this week? I had to make sure the bishop did tithing settlements and I had to take care of tithing -- just the normal stuff. Haha

7. Do you get along with the Branch members? Yes, we get a long well. ;) The kids love my Rubik's Cube

8. Did you have investigators at church? We have three --
J -Wife of a less active
M - Daughter of a member
V - Cousin of the branch president

9. How many investigators are you working with? A lot -- I am not really sure the number

10. You mentioned you might have some investigators get baptized. Has anyone progressed to that point? At the moment, no. We have a girl M that we are working with who might get baptized we just need to finish teaching her the lessons.

11. What's the most interesting thing you did this week? I went to Asuncion. Haha. ;)

12. Now that you're away from the city, are you eating anything out of the ordinary? If so, what did you eat? No, we don't get lunch or dinner from the members, so it's just whatever we cook.

13. How much walking do you do? Not a lot, our area isn't really that big

14. Did you figure out another bike? We talked about it, and they should be getting us another one.

15. Are you getting along with your companion? Yes, we get a long really well.

Love --

Elder Turley

Holding Puppies