JTAYCL - Email April 29, 2013

Dear Family,

   How are you? I hope you are all having a lovely week! Things are going wonderful here in the good ole Yakima Valley. Last night at dinner a boy said "What's the armpit of Washington?" His dad then said without hesitation, "Look around son." We started dying laughing. There is a sign here that says "Welcome to Yakima, The Palm Springs of Washington." It's hilarious because it could not be farther from the truth. We are having some fun and the fun don't stop. Haha. Hermana Pierce has started giving me speech therapy to try to heal my accent. Haha not really but it has become a joke. Apparently so far I say the words Own, Upon and Orange incorrectly.

We have started referring to Mondays here in Yakima as Miracle Mondays. Every Monday after P-Day ends we start to see miracles. It is so cool. About a week and a half ago we had tracted for 2 and a half hours straight one afternoon. During that time we met a little 12 year old girl who told us we could come back and meet her family. We made an appointment but kind of lacked confidence that she would keep the appointment. We even joked about it all day on Monday. When we came to her house her parents were outside and they were staring us down. This made us a little nervous so we drove past, parked a block away, stalled for a second by OYM'ing a trailer and then worked up the nerve to go to her house. She answered the door and her mom came out. Her mom then told us that her daughter had told her we were coming but she didn't know if we would actually show up. She told us that she and her family do not attend church anywhere, that her family is all catholic but that aren't practicing at all and that she has wanted to find a church for her family. She said she would love to hear what we have to say and then she said, (this is not a joke) "So we're excited to hear what you have to say and if we like it, we'll stay." As we walked to our car afterward Hermana Pierce just kept repeating, "If we like it, we'll stay?" It was awesome. We have an appointment with their family tonight because the mom was out of town last week.
The mom who is worried about her son asked us to teach her even when her son wasn't home. She told us that if she sees a change in him she will be interested in coming to see for herself. I know the change that can come because of Maria Zamora and that's what made her mom interested too.

We went to Women's conference this weekend for Relief Society and it was really good. We live with our stake relief society president and she put a lot of work into it. A sister that spoke talked about receiving a magnet from the missionaries that said "JTAYCL" which stood for "Just talk about your church life." She said that when the church is such a big part of our lives why do we not bring it up more in casual conversation. She talked about how easy it is to bring the gospel up. She said that she has a friend who is a really good member missionary. She went on a trip and prayed to have a missionary experience on the plane. She anxiously awaited to see who would take the seat next to her on the plane and was really disappointed when a man with all kinds of tattoos and piercings walked up. Then the spirit whispered, "There's your guy." She said she fought with the spirit for several minutes but then ultimately decided to casually bring up that she was LDS. The guy got really excited and said he had been wanting to know what Mormons believe. Sister Stapleton said that Heavenly Father trusted this lady to share the gospel with this guy because he knew that she had done it so many times before. I realized that I really want to be someone that the Lord can trust to do the things he needs done! So my challenge to ya'll is to Just talk about your church life!

 I love you all more than you know!

-Hermana Jones