First Baptism!

   This week has been great!  I got to see my first convert baptized and confirmed!  One of the best experiences of my mission!  The Spirit was so strong in the baptismal service.  It was great to work with Maria to get her ready and to get the baptismal service ready.  We were in charge of the service and it was pretty stressful while we were working at it, but it was so great to see it all work out in the end!  










Here's a great video explaining why we are baptized, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints-

Why we are baptized 












We have been working closely with Miguel and Suyapa, a recently married couple from Honduras.  We have had the opportunity to answer a lot of their questions about the Book of Mormon and that has been a wonderful experience!  We have been relying in the Spirit more in planning and that has brought about wonderful results.  For example, we decided to go to one of our farther areas to try a less active's house and they were there!  Another example, we were walking to our car to go to a new area when I felt impressed to knock on a door of a family who dropped us and they were there and let us in!  Turns out that their daughter is actually rather interested! 
  We also had Mini Missionaries this week (young men, aged 16-18, who choose to spend a weekend working as full time missionaries) which was cool!

Good Goals

Elder Jarnagin and Elder Romney at the Reno Temple.

   We had a slower week but we saw a lot of good happen!   We are working with the Razo family to get them ready for their baptism on Saturday!  It is kind of stressful, but it has been great to work with them to bring them to this important part of their lives!  We are working with Miguel and Maria, a couple from Honduras who got married this week!  They want to do whatever is needed to get them to their baptism!  

   I learned a lot about good goal setting this week.  Earlier on in this week we had lower goals, easily attainable goals.  Mid-way through the week we started to set higher goals, harder to attain, but still possible, goals that pushed us.  With harder goals we started to see more miracles and more lessons pop up, what a great lesson! 

I'm assuming this is Elder Romney having a Valentine's Day photo shoot with his true love-
the Book of Mormon.

 

New Comp!

   This week has been challenging, but it really has been a good week of growth.  This week was my first without having someone who knows the area better than me, but it has been great.  We picked Elder Romney up on Tuesday and immediately got to work in some of our further areas.


We walked around in some of our trailer parks and found a lady selling tamales and had a good gospel conversation with her. 
   This week has been interesting, trying to adapt to a new companion. Elder Franco and Elder Romney are very different, but I have already learned so much from Elder Romney!  His Spanish is super good and he has been helping me with mine!  Elder Romney has been out a couple of days more than me, but he knows both languages perfectly so he wasn't in the MTC as long as I was, so he has more in field experience.  He got transferred from Elko English speaking. He is from Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua Mexico, so he is by blood a fourth Mexican.  We get along pretty well, he is super funny.  It's been tough being the one planning, being the only one who knows the area, but it has really helped me find my way around!  We haven't had as many lessons this week, but every lesson we did have we could see that it helped our investigators.
 

 Spiritual experience: Confidence is everything.  We have to rely on the Lord, so we have to have confidence in him.  When we have fear, it is a big problem.  I had trouble fearing speaking Spanish this week for some reason and because of that I couldn't speak well.  I can only really communicate with obedience, love for people, hard work and no fear.  It is like the parable of the talents.  The man who received one talent, in a sense feared.  He feared putting his one talent out there and because of that, in the end, he lost it.  The same is for us, if we have a talent and we fear using it, what is the point?  God will take it from us and we will have not a speck of the talent left.  If we have gifts we must use them, with the spirit, without fear, so that others may be blessed.   You can watch a Bible video of the Parable of the Talents Elder Jarnagin is referring to here  or read it here.

New Companion

   This week has been great!  We haven't had as many lessons, but the lessons we did have have been very powerful.  We had a church tour with one of our investigators, V. and his daughter and it was so amazing to be able to see the Spirit touch their hearts!  When we went into the chapel, they just stopped and said they felt peace. V. said he wanted to take a nap there!  We have been dropping a few more investigators that were not interested and that has been good.  A lot of old investigators that we have not seen in a long time are popping up again and that has been so great!
   This Sunday, I had my first real transfer call.  Elder Franco is leaving, he is going to Winnemucca, in the middle of Nevada. My new companion will be Elder Romney from Chihuahua Mexico.  I will be the senior companion, meaning that I will drive, take control of lessons, be in charge of all planning and basically lead.  Transfers has been interesting, to put it into one word.  It will be hard to say goodbye to Elder Franco, but I know that Elder Romney and I will see a lot of miracles up here!  It will be tough, but I know that transfers, who we are with and where, is from the Lord!

   Last week, I asked Elder Jarnagin if he was being exactly obedient and how obedience has blessed his life even when it was hard.  Here was his response to me (which for some reason I feel impressed to share...)

  This week has been great!  We have seen so many miracles!  I am striving to be exactly obedient!  We  have learned this week that exact obedience is more than just being obedient, it is also a state of mind!  I am trying to be obedient in all times, and especially in my thoughts, leaving unnecessary thoughts out.  I think we were able to have success with the R. family this week because of obedience, it is so important.

 Elder Jarnagin keeps forgetting to take his camera with him, so I am really missing his face!  This is a picture from the last Sunday he was home with us.