It feels like I just sent an email home and I guess that's because it's
only been a few days since our last P-day. I sent pictures home last week so I hope those made it home. If they
haven't yet they should be there either today or tomorrow.
This past week I went on exchanges with the zone leaders and that was fun.
Usually the zone leaders are the missionaries who cover the young single adult
wards. Our zone leaders also cover a family ward in Elk Grove so I got to
do missionary work in two different spectrums and that was fun. It was a really
easy day but I learned a lot about how the work correlates with the stakes and
wards. We did a lot of "paperwork" that the zone leaders have to do every week. They send them to the mission and also to the stake president when they have
their meetings with them. I got to go to that meeting to see how it all
works and we talked about all the missionaries and all the wards in the Elk
Grove Stake with President Williams. That was really cool.
Later in the day we went to dinner with a member and what we had was
probably one of the most unhealthy things I have eaten so far as a missionary.
It was called Boston Cream Toast and what you do is make a lot of toast, hard
boil lots of eggs, make a lot of white gravy, and cook lots of those frozen
sausage patties. Then you separate the hard boiled egg whites from the yoke,
and cut up the toast. Then you put the sausage, diced hard boiled egg whites,
and toast on the plate, cover it all with lots of white gravy, and put the egg
yokes to a cheese shredder and cover the whole thing with egg yoke so you can't
even see anything else. It tasted alright but I felt like I was going to suffer
a heart attack in the middle of the night and never wake up again. Luckily I
didn't and hopefully I won't have to eat anything that bad for me ever again.
We went to a Young Single Adult activity where they were playing water
balloon volleyball. Elder Stephenson told me they are asked to go to all the
activities for the Young Single Adult ward because that's how they find most of their
investigators, through friends that the members bring to the activity. The
water balloon volleyball activity wasn't too much of a success because nobody
brought friends so we just ended up sitting there for about an hour waiting for
more people to show up and bring friends. It never happened.
We found a new family yesterday that we started teaching who are really
cool. We were there for a long time because we were teaching the husband about
the Restoration and then right as we were getting to the end his wife came home
and she wanted to hear it so we started over. It was a really good lesson
though and they seem pretty interested. The used to go to the catholic church
but stopped going because of all the hypocrites there and the awful things that some Catholic Priests do. Now they just do a Bible study during the week
with a couple other families that are in the same boat as them. We'll see how
things go with them but they are really nice and we get along with them really
well. All of their sons are soccer players so I could relate with them and a
lot of things that they went through growing up. We'll see how it goes with
them as we teach them more.
I met one of our investigators named Jesus for the first time and he
was really interesting. He has his own TV show that is on every Saturday on the
local channel. He does random religious shows on random topics that he picks.
He is a really funny guy because he's pretty crazy but he loves talking to us.
He loves reading the Book of Mormon and every time we go over he wants us to
tell him about a new prophet and then read a chapter with him so he can learn
about some of the Book of Mormon prophets and what they said. He also wants us
to be on his TV show. We would have to get special permission from the
mission President and the Stake PR guy and it's too much work so we just stick
to teaching him.
I think I mentioned a little bit about Francisco last week. We taught him again this week. He has so many questions about why there is so much
suffering in the world if God loves us so much but won't accept anything we tell
him. Part of the problem is that because he is like 80 years old and we're only
about 20 he thinks we can't relate to him and offer anything to help him because
we haven't gone through what he has. However, he tells us that it's our
responsibility to make him believe again and help him have faith. It's hard
because he thinks he's a weak person and that's why he's lost his faith. He
refuses to believe that all of our trials are for our benefit and learning. I
came up with the idea to share with him a talk by Elder Hales that he gave in
General Conference in October of 2011 that fits perfectly with his doubt. Elder
Hales talks about how there are millions of hard things in this life but the key
is "waiting on the Lord". It's an awesome talk and I would recommend reading it
again but that's what we ended up sharing with Francisco. He really liked it
but didn't understand the main point behind it. So we still have some work to
do. Today I am going to go buy some seeds from the store and give him a little
cup with dirt and a seed and tell him "this seed is represents your faith. In
order for our faith to grow we have to learn from the scriptures, pray, and be
enlightened by the spirit. Every time you do one of these things your faith
will grow and you can water your seed of faith so it grows." I think it will be
kind of a cool demonstration for him so that even when he thinks he has no
faith, he can see that the seed is growing and that he really does have faith.
We'll see how it works out.
That's about all I've got this week. I just got the letter yesterday about
what's been happening with all the fires. I'm glad I didn't hear about any of
it until it was mostly over because I would have been really worried about all
you guys for the past few weeks. Every time I meet new people and tell them I'm
from Colorado they ask me if I live anywhere near the fires and until last week
I didn't even know there were fires and I didn't know until yesterday that they
were getting pretty bad and dangerous. I would always tell people my family was
fine and it was nothing to worry about but it sounds like it was a much bigger
deal than I thought.
Well I hope everyone is well!
Los Quiero!
-Elder Gaskill
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