I am not really sure what health benefits come from eating solidified cow blood but I feel fine!

¿Que onda cuates? Todavia estoy aquì en Neza York disfrutando la vida misional. Some fun new adventures and exciting news from this past week. So our beloved Elders abandoned us Friday morning due to special changes and the mission shrinking (there are only 71 companionships now, bien poquitos!). One of them found out late Wednesday night and the other one Friday morning so they had to pack up their things and go to new areas, leaving my little companion and I with the other area book and the whole other half of the Ward. So now we are looking forward to meeting with all of the investigators and recent converts from the other side of Ward this week in addition to our own! As Matthew mentioned in regards to being Seminary student council president, I don't even know what I am doing hahaha there are always new things to learn but one of my favorite things about missionary life is the fact that I am just here to do the best I can in the time that has been given to me. This is my little corner of the world for what I hope will be the last 3ish months of my mission. We don't even have a map but we have lots of fe y oraciòn! :D I think this will be really good for the Ward here, too. For years they had four companionships of elders working here and now are down to one companionship of hermanas. The members are great and very willing to work with us and move things along. There are many people here ready to be baptized who just need love and encouragement so that is our plan for the next few weeks. Seriously, Neza is one of the most prepared places on earth. Sure, there is a lot of drug dealing action and borrachitos in the streets but also many who are looking to come unto Christ. Last week we met a woman named V who is 22 and has been here about 1 month. She dealt with some pretty difficult family tragedies and decided to start a new life for herself here, living with her grandma and aunts. She started working for a family in our Ward about two weeks ago when the Elders met her and was introduced to the gospel. When we started teaching her she really opened up and the three of us have grown to be great friends in a short amount of time. When we visited her on Wednesday and Saturday we were able to share the incredible message of the Plan de Salvación with her, testifying of the reality of familias eternas y nuevos comienzos, thanks to La Expiación de Jesu Cristo. It is one of my favorite lessons that we teach as missionaries because it provides us with a very clear road-map of what we need. It was one of the hardest things for me to learn in Spanish but it brings me so much joy to share this with people who, until this point, did not understand that they will be reunited with loved ones again after this life. As we finishing the lesson on Saturday we invited her to be baptized on el 8 de Octubre and she accepted :) She is really excited to attend Church with us and we are planning on taking her to El Centro para Visitantes with her employers (family in our Ward) and their family this Saturday. It should be great fun :) During these past 14ish months as a missionary I have come to more fully understand and appreciate that incredible reassuring feeling I had in my heart when I opened my mission call and read that I would be serving in the Mexico Mexico City Southeast Mission. I felt in my heart that day, and several occasions during my mission, that this is where I am supposed to be and that there are certain people I needed to meet and teach here, as well as people who have taught me things that I need to learn that will help me throughout my entire life. Another example of this is my dear friend H who was baptized last September. He is the only Church member in his family but they went to the Temple open house last year and his wife remembers me helping her and their 6 year old daughter find the bathroom -- now I live a few doors down from them! Small small world! These past few weeks we have been visiting this dear friend helping him set goals to stop drinking and he is doing such a great job. He came to Church this last Sunday for all three hours with one of his 9 children who is not currently a Church member. He is so sweet and makes sure that we are well fed and taken care of haha which leads me to another adventure of this last week. We enjoyed getting roped into eating molleja or rellena tacos a few days ago. We were sitting outside of H's tire and car mechanic business enjoying a good chat with him when one of his pals passed by with a container full of hot fresh rellena that he was selling. He cut me slice right then and there to eat and H bought a bag of it and invited us in to eat. His wife fried it up with tortillas. Rellena is basically congealed solidified cow blood with chunks of fat and a few spices encased in a thin layer of cow intestine. It looks like grayish black sausage. I had actually eaten it once before back in the little pueblos in the mountains but after eating a nice hefty plate of it this last week something tells me that the preparation process here in the city may be a little bit different than back in the mountains. I was able to eat all of mine but my poor little doe of a companion asked to take her's in a container to the house after getting a little bit of it down. (She sends a big hello to you all by the way :) We then enjoyed eating our normal lunch with one of the hermanas after that. Not getting any slimmer over here haha oh boy anywho life continues to fly here. I am loving my day to day routine of walking and talking. It really hit me the other day after talking with someone just how much I love talking about the Gospel and finding different ways to relay it to the many different people we meet here. Also, President and Sister Stutznegger are such great people who really care about their missionaries individually. I love them. I am excited about the invitation the stake received at home last week because it helps the missionaries so much, and more than anything it is just good healthy clean fun to share something so special with people we love! :) Keep up the great work everybody. Love you all. And enjoy your first week back in school!

Saludos, Hermana Jonesie

This is what my companion brought home for dinner in the evening. I am not really sure what health benefits come from eating solidified cow blood but I feel fine!

It was fun seeing my old companion, Hermana Martinez, on Friday during a meeting. She goes home in two weeks, along with my trainer Hermana Llaguarima! The bottom pic is Elder Labra who was an assistant to the president and one of my zone leaders for a little bit. Such an incredible person. He goes home to Chile next week. I really hate goodbyes. That is one of the worst parts of the mission and I will never be good at them!

My companion, Hermana Torres, really is a little doe and I love her to death! The plan is for her to finish out the mission with me and when she gets her visa in December to go to her mission in Utah.