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.

Random Lessons

   This week has been so great!  We have had a lot of times where our lessons fall through and our back ups would be there and let us in!  It was so great to be able to share the message of the Restoration with them!  The missionary broadcast was so great and I learned a lot!  One of my favorite things that I was reminded of was that our purpose is to baptize and to call to repentance.  I really liked the statistics that we were shown that the baptismal rate is much higher when the investigators are found through the members of our wards! 
   This Thursday was so great!  It was my first exchange in MY area and it was so different!  I learned a lot and had to rely on the Spirit so much to overcome the fact that my companion didn't speak Spanish.  It was difficult, but I learned so much in that one day!  We had our first drop (which means they will no longer spend time teaching that person/family)  of my mission this week.  We dropped our investigators Juanita and Victor, because they won't get married or separate in order to come to church.  That really was a good experience, because we knew this was best for them and we did it out of love for them.  Another family, the R.'s who for a while haven't been as interested as before, called us back and the mom, M., said she wanted to get baptized!  The entire family came to church and was welcomed so lovingly by the branch!  That was so great to see!  It goes to show that hard work and obedience eventually pays off!
   (No pictures this week, which makes a missionary mom sad.  I'll be praying to see his face next week!)
Here's a great video about why Mormons send out missionaries, like Elder Jarnagin, out into the world-

https://youtu.be/nD6Z7V4-PfA

Sadness from Investigators

   This week has been pretty great, but it has been one of the hardest as well.  Not much to report.  I am improving in talking and teaching more in lessons and Elder Franco has been letting me take charge of more lessons, which is hard, but it's good to help me grow.  We had many more member present lessons this week and we could really feel the difference.  
   This week was really hard because Cesar Chavez, who was rapidly progressing, told us he does not believe in the law of tithing.  We have tried so many times to talk to him, but he never wants to.  This has really been my first real experience with the sadness missionaries feel because of their investigators not following commitments and not progressing.  This has been a great experience to learn and to grow and I learned more fully that we always need to rely on the Lord.  Elder Franco and I had the opportunity to fast for Cesar and nothing has happened yet, but I know something will down the road, in the Lord's time! 

   On a side note from Mom, I received this picture from a member in the area this week-

Apparently Elder Jarnagin's basketball skills have really leveled up!  (He was actually helping her set up for a youth activity, where they set up a platform in front of the stage.  He jumped from there...;)

Smile!

  This week has been so great!   We have been having a lot of lessons with the Family Chavez and he has been very accepting and is steadily progressing for his baptismal date on the 30th!   We had a lot of success with talking to people in the most random places. We were getting gas on Wednesday and a Mexican woman pulled up and we began to tell her about the restoration when she broke down into tears!  She said she needed this message and she would call us later on. We had exchanges on Thursday and I got to use my bike down in Truckee River, a biking area in the middle of Reno.  I was with our District Leader's companion, Elder Gamble.  He is more reserved than other elders, but he has a great gospel knowledge and genuinely cares about people.  It is always so different serving in English, but I learned a lot from Elder Gamble! 

The Mission Tour with Elder Robbins was so great and it really gave me more confidence to be diligent in street contacts!  Saturday was something special, it was just a regular day, but I felt so happy all day and it was just because I tried to smile more.  It was so great to see the impact a more positive effort has on our attitudes about missionary work!