16 de Julio 2012 (handwritten letter sent to the family)

Dear Mom, Dad, Nick, Spencer and Caden,

!Hola de su Hermana en Paraguay!

A neat story from this week....we started teaching Cirila Salen who is 45 and hasn't been to church in 30 years! She finally let us in to talk to her and she came to church yesterday for the first time!! Woohoo!! I was soo excited. The members really made her feel welcome also. We wore purple so she would let us in because it's her favorite color!

When we taught her, we taught about the importance of our baptismal covanants and the Atonement- how Christ has made the way possible to be free from any sins or mistakes we have made.

She stopped going because she lost contact with the sister missionaries and just didn't have a lot of friends at church and now she is struggling with a lot of problems with her son now who is addicted to drugs. Her daughter that she takes care of ran into the room and wanted to sing, so we suggested, "I Am a Child of God." "You will sing and I will cry," Cirilia said. As we sang, I knew she could feel Heavenly Father's love and hope for her that she hasn't felt in a really long time. Also, we stopped after a lesson the other day at a house and clapped...waited...no answer...clapped again..."?hello?" "someone" shouted in their dark garage, "Hi!" We are missionaries from La Iglesia de JesuCristo de los...." and then, I stopped and laughed as I realized I was talking to their parrot...we started laughing and I couldn't stop as we walked away and heard the parrot laughing with us. :)

Sure do love you all. Christ offers us hope and peace if we just live His gospel.

"Hurrah for Israel!"
Su Hermana JonesM