I hope all is well.
This week has been
interesting. We had to drive up to the office twice this week to get
supplies and get our car fixed. We have taken time to do transfer reports, done a
lot of service, and done weekly planning (like every week). Because of
all these things we haven't had nearly as much time for missionary work
but we somehow managed to keep all our numbers up in lessons, etc and
had a really successful week.
One of the biggest blessings was that we had 7 nonmembers come to
church from our area this week. Luz and Gustavo came, as well as
Frederico (who's going to be baptized this week), his 12 year old aunt
Brandi, a boyfriend/grandpa/dad, an aunt, and then a girl we had never
met before that the family had brought named Marta. We were really
blessed and had a lot of success getting people to church yesterday.
This week I had was lucky and got to go back to Stockton to be part
of Jacqueline's baptism. It was really hard to get there though. I
had set up a ride with a member about a week before and then the day
before he called me and said an appointment had come up that he had to
take his wife to that was at the same time and about an hour in the
other direction. I started calling everyone in the ward and I either
couldn't get a hold of people or they were busy and couldn't take me.
We went to visit Nelson, our less active friend from Costa Rica and he
offered to take me and I was really happy about that. I was almost as
excited to spend 2 hours in a car with Nelson and get to know him as I
was to get to the baptism. However, the next day Nelson called me and
told me he wasn't going to be able to take me because when he woke up in
the morning his daughter told him he needed to drop her off with his ex-wife a few hours later than he had originally thought and it was the
same time hewas planning on taking me to the baptism. So a couple hours
before the baptism I was calling members all over the Elk Grove stake
that I had never met trying to find a last minute ride. Eventually I
found a member who was willing to take me. His name is Brother Bruljan
and he was a really fun guy to talk to. He reminds me of JD because
he's about the same age and a retired military guy. Brother Bruljan
grew up in the same house he lives in now so he told me all about how
Sacramento has changed over the past 50 years. He told me about his
experiences in the Vietnam War and lots of really interesting things.
The baptism and my talk on the Holy Ghost went
really well. It wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be because
none of my old investigators came to the baptism and all my favorite
members weren't there. It was great though. Brother Bruljan
even took me to Golden Corral on the way home and I had steak for the first
time as a missionary. I don't think I ever really liked steak before
my mission but after eating Mexican/Guatemalan food for so long it
tasted really good.
Today one of our members who works at a golf course
took us golfing for P-day! It was a lot of fun. There were 6 of us that
went and one of the other elders was a golfer so he was pretty good and
the rest of the elders were very interesting to watch. Elder Webster
and I spent a lot of time teaching the other missionaries how to swing a
golf club and they got a little bit better throughout the 9 holes. It
was a ton of fun though, even though they were all short par 3 holes. I
got really good at using a pitching wedge because that's what we would
tee-off with since each hole was pretty small. It was all good fun.
We've been helping a member out a lot renovating a house. What he
does for a living is buy houses that are in bad condition and redo the
whole thing while he and his family live there and then once he's
finished it they move out and sell the place. They are working on a
house right now that is really run down and my first impression when I
saw it was a haunted house I had visited in Utah. Elder Austin and I
helped cut down trees that were overrunning the yard, tearing out the
carpet in the house, and demolishing the shelves, etc in the kitchen so
that all new carpeting and appliances can be put in. It's looking a lot
better and soon the member's family will actually be able to move in to
it.
The coolest teaching experience that we had this week was with Luz
and Gustavo. Luz has been waiting on her divorce papers so that she and
Gustavo can get married and baptized the same day. Originally she
thought the were coming on August 4th because that's when her 6 months
of waiting is over but she went to the court this week and because the
city is running our of money the law/police/court system doesn't have
very much money and are laying off people. For this reason, they told
her a judge might not be able to get to her case and she will have to
wait longer. She told us she had been reading in the scriptures about
signs of the second coming and was watching the news at the same time
and realized a lot of those things were happening right now. She became
really upset because she was thinking about what would happen if she
died before she could ever get baptized. It was a very humbling
experience for me to see how badly she wanted to be baptized and how
much she's gone through but has endured it patiently. We were able to
share the story of Alvin Smith with her, who died before Joseph Smith
had finished translating the Book of Mormon, established the church, and
received the priesthood and revelation in order to baptize. In section
137 of Doctrine and Covenants it talks about how Joseph saw many people
in heaven, among them being his brother Alvin who had died without
being baptized. We told her about temples and baptisms for the dead and
promised her that she would see the day where she could be baptized on
this earth, but even if she died she would have that ordinance done for
her. It was a great lesson but it made me so happy to see how badly she
wants to be baptized and how much faith she has in our Heavenly Father
and her desires to choose the right.
That's about all that's happened this past week. We get transfer
calls this next Monday and Elder Austin may be leaving since he's been
here 4 transfers (6 months) so I may be getting a new companion. [I
think I might be getting a brand new elder named Elder Mata but that's
just my guess, we'll see if I'm right (:]
Los Quiero Mucho!
-Elder Gaskill
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