Wow, I`m overwhelmed! Thanks to the family and all who sent their birthday wishes. It meant so much to me to have all those messages there to read today. Feeling wise, FILLED with love!! And more feel more dedicated to my Savior Jesus Christ. I appreciate all the good "ralling-cries" and prayers on my behalf. I`ll accept them! :) haha. This week was such a turn-around week for me and for us here in Avellaneda. I believe the Lord has his purposes and a plan for each and every one of us! I know that He works diligently each day so that His plan becomes reality.

17 Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you;

18 And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches eternity riches of eternity are yours.
19 And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more.

I talked a little bit last week about gratitude and this week we`ve had some great blessings as we`ve looked to give thanks for all things that happen to us. Our faith has increased. Our love for God and Christ and been made strong and we`ve appreciated our time as full-time missionaries. We also had an amazing blessing of teaching our zone this last week a little bit more about obedience and revelation. It went SO well. From past experiences and from giving thanks we knew that the Spirit could be with us and we were blown away at the results of the meeting. There was a spirit of worship like I`ve never felt before. I remember hearing a talk about reverence for Deity and well I think we were all able to feel that there. The zone has done great this week! Obviously that gives us more opportunities to give thanks! Así vamos progresando en la zona supongo!

Our week felt much more missionary like this week. Elder Anaya and I laid everything out on the table and were blessed to see new options and people to visit in our area. We had gotten in a bit of a rut as far as work goes. We felt really "routined" and doing the same thing over and over wasn`t really fun nor effective so with help from the heavens we were able to put new plans and it required work, but we felt ourselves being guided to a few new people this week. I`ll tell you guys about two.

We met a lady named Gisela. We were at the end of the day and hadn`t gotten in anywhere when we felt to go to a members house and figure out if she could help us with a family we were working with. Gisela is a family friend of a less active member name Dante. (We`ve also been working with Dante for awhile- we`ve put lots of goals for him but never had been able to get anything progressing with him). Anyways, we talked with the member family a minute and the whole time I felt strongly the need to talk with this lady. She stayed quiet until we began asking her if she had ever talked to missionaries before. What seemed PERFECT turned out to be just that. She was very interested in learning more about God in her life and well, she accepted the invitation to listen to us and begin looking into the church. What we`ve noticed is that she is SO sensitive to the spirit. For knowing almost nothing about the church she was crying as if she was at Girl's Camp (he he). We felt Heavenly Father's love for her and really enjoyed the couple lessons with her and watching the spirit work within her.

Yesterday we went with our with our amazing Bishop. He invited us to eat at their house and then asked to go do some visits with him. We went to a less active family who almost broke into tears as they opened the door to us!! Wow!! We met Roxana. For years she has listened to missionaries but always has had something blocking her way or keeping her from really looking into the Gospel. We KNOW that the Lord prepares people- even angels are about in the world preparing the hearts of MANY so that they will come to a knowledge of this Gospel. We had a great lesson there with the Bishop. He was the greatest of help to us and for her. It was really how the Lord has envisioned His work right now. Members and Missionaries working together!

Well family I`m short on time. Right now I have NO clue what we`ll be doing on Thursday. I`m sure we`ll go out to work and teach people! That`s good by me though. We were invited to a couple family home evenings this week so maybe one of those will land on Thursday. Also, I had exciting news that Elder Villalba (old companion) is here in Avellaneda this week so I`ll probably be able to see an old friend! I`ll let you know what we`ve been doing next week!

Again, thank you SO much for all the love and birthday wishes. I wish I could transmit all the love I feel for the family- I pray that you may feel it! And I`ll work so that I can show it in about a month or so. Onward, ever onward! :)

Have a great week!
Elder Jolley