August Photos

September Already!

Hello Everyone,

This week was great! Like they all are.

On Monday Elder Sarmiento and I found a less active family just walking down the street.  We ran into an elder that was in our area a year ago and he sent us to this house that had a really awesome family.  We went to the house but no one was there, so we decided to walk down the street to an investigator's house and on the way we saw a 3 people that looked Latino so we decided to talk to them.  As it turned out the mom and daughter had been baptized three years ago.  less active  They had become less active when the mom had gotten in a fight with another lady at mutual, involving lots of bad words and hair pulling.  They live outside of our area so we had to pass the address on to other missionaries but hopefully they can help the family out and remember that they went to church to come closer to Heavenly Father and not for the other people there.

Elder Torres and I went on exchanges the other day and it was an awesome day like it always with him.  Elder Torres is a great missionary and we always get a lot of work done.  We found 3 new investigators that were really nice and really interested.  We also started teaching the niece of a less active lady in our ward that just moved up to Sacramento from Mexico to learn English. We went to a member's house for dinner and had a really good discussion with her.  She is very very active and faithful, although her husband is less active as well as her 17 year old son.  She was telling me how she was really worried about her son and fortunately (but not for my parents) I was in the same situation as her son at one point in time and I was able to give her some advice looking back that will hopefully help them out.  We found lots of people and did lots of teaching.  It was really good day.

Last week we found a person named Gustavo at the 99 cent store and this week we went to go see him.  It turns out he was baptized about 12 years ago but afterwards because of a drinking problem got his license suspended and started going to the church down the street and has been doing that since then.  He is probably one of the coolest guys I have ever met.  He is paralyzed from the waist down but he doesn't let that stop him.  He just competed in the national sit water-skiing competition in Elk Grove last week, he goes all over the country to compete in hand-pedal bike races, he skis, is building a cage to go sky diving, he pretty much does everything.  He has really strong faith and although he's challenged physically he doesn't let that stop him.  He is an awesome example and I love being around him. Hopefully we can get him back to church.

This past week Elder Sarmiento was kind of off and on sick and on Saturday he had to stay in.  Elder Walker, one of the APs was on exchanges with Elder Jensen, one of the zone leaders, and he really wanted to come with us to go back into Spanish work so we switched up so Elder Walker and I could go on exchanges together. I was really stoked because Elder Walker is pretty much my grandpa in the mission and I have heard a lot of great things about him and I finally got to go work with him.  We went to visit a return we had gotten from some other missionaries but unfortunately he wasn't home.  There were a lot of Latinos outside across the street and so we went and talked to them and they were really interested in learning about how they could live together forever as a family, and they're a family of 10 people! We were stoked to find them and I learned a lot from Elder Walker while we were together.

Yesterday wasn't that great because no one came to church that told us they would.  It was really sad but gave me a new determination to refocus and work even harder this next week.  We did have a really good lesson later in the evening with our bishop's neighbor that lives out in the middle of nowhere.  At first we were just talking to the wife and she told us she doesn't know really anything about God or Jesus or the Bible, but she was born Catholic and thinks all religions are the same so she isn't open to learning or the concept that there could be something more out there to bless her life.  Eventually her husband and another guy that lives there came home and we finally got to talk some sense with people.  The other guy that lives there asked us what was different about our church and theirs and we got to explain to them the Restoration.  How the authority and fullness of the gospel was lost with the death of Jesus Christ and His apostles but was restored through the prophet Joseph Smith in its entirety.  It ended well and hopefully they will be open to listening to the spirit in their lives.

Today we went down to Galt and play football against the Lodi zone.  It was a lot of fun to play something besides basketball and I got to see Elder Guzman again so I was excited about that.  It was a lot of fun and we won so it turned out alright.  At the end the zone leaders they told us they could tell that elder Mata and I were soccer players because we were the really quick guys on the field and although we're not very tall we were a big influence on the field.  It was a lot of the fun; I wish we could do it more often.
Well that's all I've got for this week. I hope everyone else is doing well.  I'd love to hear how everyone's doing!

Les Quiero,
Elder Gaskill

Email from last week that we didn't receive until this week.

Hello Everyone!

This week was another good week!

My favorite part of the week is that we finally found Zaida again on Tuesday and scheduled to have a lesson with her on Saturday.  We were super happy.  She told us she had been really sad recently because of the loss of her foster child son but that she had still been reading the Book of Mormon which made us really happy.  She told us that her brother who is really anti-mormon had been trying to take away all the things she was reading but stood up to her brother and told her "even if you take the pamphlets and book  I can still get more, there is an unlimited supply".  He stopped and backed off but she still only likes to meet with us on Saturdays since her brother doesn't leave the house on Saturdays because he's a 7th Day Adventist, so she feels safe meeting with us then.  She also told us that she had had a dream the night before we came that she had to take some things to the bank and on the way to the bank she looked out her car window and saw us, the missionaries, knocking on doors and it made her feel really bad that she hadn't called us back and tried to get in touch with us recently.  So it was a good thing we showed up when we did. 

 We were going to have a lesson with the Lucero family again in their home but Hermano Lucero told us last minute he forgot he had to work so we ended up going to a park.  We had a really good lesson though.  We were there about 3 hours teaching and talking and we taught Hermana Lucero a lot of things and answered all her questions which she was happy about.  We learned a lot more about her too and she has come from probably the worst background I can imagine, I started crying as she was telling us about it.  She is still really interested and everything which is really good.  I gave my favorite baptismal invitation of my mission so far; and she didn't say yes but she said she would think about it.  I'm confident she's going to be baptized and I know the restored gospel is something that's going to bless her life a lot.

This week we got to play soccer so I was really happy about that.  The Elders quorum organized an activity and we got a few investigators there so we got to play too! It had been about 8 weeks since I had played last and so I was really happy to play.  I was happy that in that 8 weeks I hadn't really missed soccer that much but it was good to play again.

We helped one of  our investigators change a transmission of a car he was working on.  We went over on Thursday and helped him take it out of the car.  Then he took it apart and showed us what was wrong with it.  There are a million pieces on the inside of it and I have no idea how he knows what it all is and where everything goes but he does.  On Friday he went and bought the part and then on Saturday we came back and helped him clean every individual piece which took a while but it was fun.  We spray painted the outside of all the parts so it looked brand new again too.  We also met his cousin and his family, who the missionaries have been looking for for a long time and so we had a really good lesson with all of them too.

Yesterday we went to the city of Wilton again which is fun.  It reminds me a lot of Black Forest (in Colorado) just because it is "country area" outside of the city.  I love going there.  We had  a referral and we stopped by for about 4 minutes but in that 4 minutes we got the lady to go from "sorry I'm catholic" to crying because she was touched by the spirit we brought when we said a prayer.  So we'll go back this next week and see if we can start teaching the family.

That's about all I've got for this week.  I heard USA beat Mexico in a soccer international friendly this past week and so I've been bringing it up with all our investigators who are soccer fans from Mexico.  Sad I missed the game but happy we won!

Hope everything is well with everyone!

Les Quiero,

Elder Gaskill

New Investigators and zone conference

Hello Everyone!

This week has been great.

I don't remember if I wrote about this last week but we received a reference from Bolivia to visit this girl named Erika.  We went to the address last week and ended up talking to the mom but didn't know it wasn't the right person until we were saying bye.  This week I felt prompted to go by her house at a very specific time on a specific day.  The referral was very specific and said come at 5:30 because that's when she gets home from work and school but we went at about 4:20.  Erika was the only one home at the time and we asked for a glass of water and ended up staying about an hour and teaching her.  She told us we got lucky that she was home because normally she has cross country practice and doesn't get home until 5:30 when her mom picks her up and drives her home.  She decided that day though to skip practice and come home to get caught up on her summer reading that she hadn't finished.  So we learned a lot about her and she'll be a good investigator.  The problem is we have to figure out how to teach her either by making her mom like us more or somehow finding her when her mom isn't around.

Wednesday we had zone conference and that was awesome like they always are.  We learned a lot and the talks/classes were really inspired.  Every zone conference all the missionaries have to write a 5 minute talk on a topic that they give us and then we "turn them in" when we arrive and then President reads them all and picks two people to give their talks at the end of zone conference.  My first zone conference I was about 80% sure for some reason that I was going to get picked and then I was really surprised when I didn't get picked.  This conference I had the exact same feeling that I was going to talk except I was about 95% sure this time and I got picked to talk this time.  So I got to speak in zone conference and that was fun.  It was about a talk that Elder Oaks gave in 2000 called "The Challenge to Become".  It was a really good talk and I suggest all of you go look it up and read it.  We learned so much at zone conference.  Although we were exhausted when we left at 4:30 we were so spiritually pumped the rest of the day.  I felt like a native speaking Spanish and everything just went really well the rest of the day.

On Thursday I had a flashback to Stockton.  There is a helicopter that flies around all the time and shines a spotlight to make sure nothing bad happens because there are a lot of bad neighborhoods around here.  Right behind our apartments is one of those areas and we live on the back side and all that separates us is a 6 foot wall.  When we came home Thursday night the "ghetto bird" (as the helicopter's known around here) was flying in circles and shining it's light in the corner of the apartments where we live and on the complexes right behind us.  There were about 4 police officers out with flashlights looking for something but we never figured it what was going on.

Friday we went to go see our recent convert Ruben at about 8 at night and he was just leaving to walk to the 99 cent store to buy milk so we decided to walk with him.  The conversation was normal but we had some interesting experiences.  On the way there a homeless guy was telling us his story about he almost killed somebody with his knife because he thought the guy wanted to hurt him.  When we got to the 99 cent store we waited outside while Ruben was shopping/buying.  A guy in a power chair approached us and looked at me and said "let me guess, you're from Utah". I said I wasn't and we got to talking and he turned out to be a really friendly guy and said he used to give the missionaries rides places.  We never found out if he was a member but we got all his information so we will go and try to visit him this week.  He may be a really good investigator if he's not a member already.  After he left another lady approached us and started talking to us and we got her information to go see her later this week.  Finally Ruben came back out and it was about 9 o'clock so we started walking back.  In Sacramento, 9:00 is when the "zorras" come at and  there were lots of females roaming the streets so we let Ruben lead the way and fend all the ladies off so we wouldn't have any problems with them. Eventually we made it back to Ruben's house and taught him and then went home for the night.

This week my companion has been kind of sick and it was pretty bad on Saturday.  We were in the apartment until about 3:00 when one of our investigators called us and asked us what we were doing and told us to come up to his place and eat.  So we went up there and ate and taught them and spent some time with them.  After that we had a dinner appointment with the Lucero family and they were throwing a party for their son turning 1 so we went out of our area to a really nice white neighborhood that reminded me of Stonebridge in Illinois and had dinner at the park with them.  They invited a lot of their friends who work with them at Univision (a really big Spanish channel) and so we met a lot of nonmembers and got a lot of their information to meet them at their houses this week to teach them.  It was a lot of fun.  It was also really weird because almost all the people in Sacramento are Mexican or Guatemalan but the Lucero family is Argentinian and Venezuelan, and all their friends that were there with them were from south America: Argentinian, Columbian, Venezuelan, Peruvian, etc. so the people were a lot different.  They were all really nice though but it was a little different experience.

We didn't get to see Zaida this week but she called us on Saturday and I talked to her on the phone about an hour and a half and taught her that way.  She had been having car problems and so she was at the mechanic but she talked to me for about 90 mins until the mechanics told her they wanted to go for a ride with her in the car to see if they could figure out what was wrong by driving it around (because they couldn't find anything through their tests).  She told me a lot about her past and a lot about when she used to work at a homeless shelter, things going on with her and her family, etc.  She was doing 97% of the talking and all of a sudden she stopped and asked me "I've been talking this whole time and you've been listening and giving me advice that is perfect for my situation, how do you do it? Do you missionaries get some sort of training for this?".  I decided to tell her that missionaries are called to specific missions to serve in specific areas at very specific times, and that I knew I had been called to serve here so that we would meet her the day that we did, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with her through the 2 elders that would be the best fit for her.  Then I bore her my testimony and it was really cool.  I know that Zaida is one of the people I was called to Sacramento to meet and I love teaching her and I know that in the coming months she will be baptized and will have great responsibility in the church someday.

Well that's about all this week.  Sorry my email from last week didn't work.  I hope everything is well at home.  I know this work is the very best thing I could be doing and I know that what we share is true and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's church here on the Earth today.  Our Heavenly Father loves us and is just waiting for us to either accept His gospel and enter into the gate by baptism or share the gospel with those who have not yet found the path.

Les Quiero,

Elder Gaskill

Short but Great Week!

Hey Everyone!

 

There's not a lot to report on in this last short week but here I go.

 

Elder Sarmiento and I have been getting along great.  He is an awesome missionary.  Sometimes I just feel like sitting back and watching him go because he just always knows the perfect thing to say.  He's been out 20 months and it definitely shows.  He's also a really funny guy, I love him as a companion.  He helps me a lot with my Spanish too because he's from Peru and didn't start learning English until he got here.  We speak in Spanish all the time to each other except when we're talking to people that don't speak Spanish so that helps me a lot.  Sometimes it's funny because he talks to me in Spanish but i talk to him in English since he understands English but doesn't speak it very well.  I'm sure we sound funny talking to each other because we're talking two different languages to each other but understand perfectly what the other person is saying.

 

I had to give a talk yesterday at church and it went really well.  Saturday night they gave us a call and told us they needed two of us missionaries to speak tomorrow in church and the other missionaries in our ward called us and said one of us had to give a talk for about 5 minutes.  So I wrote down a few notes to give a talk and then when I got to church I found out we were the only two speakers and we needed to talk for about 15-20 minutes.  It went well though and the time went by really fast and I didn't even get to say all I wanted before sacrament meeting was over and I had to wrap everything up.  It was a ton of fun.  I remember being really nervous to give a talk when I was 12 in Sacrament Meeting but nowadays I love it, even in Spanish!

 

We had a really good lesson with a family called Familia Toscanos last week.  Other missionaries had been teaching them for a long time but once Elder Austin left I decided I wanted to start from the beginning and it was perfect for them.  We spent about an hour and a half with them talking about the Restoration.  They were really interested and had a lot of questions and we had to go because it was already 9:30 at night.  They wanted us to come back as soon as possible so we are going back tonight to finish with them.  I hope it goes well because this family is awesome and loves the missionaries but as of now are just really catholic. So we'll see.

 

That's about all that happened this week. I'll talk to everyone next week! Hope all is well

 

Los Quiero,

-Elder Gaskill

Busy Week

Hello Everybody!

 

I don't have a lot of time to write emails this week but I will include a couple things before I get going.

So we got our transfer calls last night and Elder Austin is leaving to go right next door on the other side of the freeway to a branch called Sacramento 7 (which used to be a part of the ward I'm serving in now until it split about a year ago).  My new companion is going to be an Elder named Elder Sarmiento, who only has a few months left in his mission and goes home in December.  He is from Peru so he speaks Spanish perfectly.  I'm really excited to be with an elder that is fluent in Spanish because that helps a lot and also someone who has a lot of time in the mission.

 

This week was great.  We had my first baptism of Federico Pimentel, the 9 year old kid who is part of a part member less active family.  The baptism went really well and I got to baptize him so it was awesome.  It was a day of miracles because as soon as his baptism was over we talked to his 12 year old aunt that we've been teaching named Brandi and she told us she wants to get baptized so we're going to baptize her on the 18th! Then we went over to visit Luz and Gustavo who are getting their divorce papers and we are going to get them married and baptized on the 18th as well! So we have 3 baptisms coming up in about 2 weeks.

 

We tried something really cool this week.  I was reading a letter from Elder Mitch Daniels about a month ago where he said his mission president asked them during weekly planning to plan for family X and family Y, two families that they weren't teaching right now that they had faith that they would find in the next week.  The next day they had 2 families they didn't know show up to church and they were blessed with two new families, family X and family Y to start teaching.  I decided I wanted to do that here so during weekly planning on Saturday Elder Austin and I planned for family X.  We planned what we would teach them this week and we planned to see them on Wednesday and Friday night.  As it turns out, we were blessed the same day to find TWO families to take family X's place.  We went to visit a potential we had and ended up finding his cousin named Misael.  Misael told us he used to go to church with the missionaries when he lived in Idaho about two years ago but lost contact with the church when he moved to Los Angeles.  He is a really nice guy and didn't come to church on Sunday but he will be a solid investigator.  Later in the night we were looking for another potential and we ended up talking to her daughter who's about 23 and son who's about 16.  We knocked on the door at about 8 at night when it was getting dark and they opened up the door and the first thing they said was "wow, you guys look really happy!".  I immediately said "That's because we are! And we're here to tell you how you can be as happy as we are".  We talked to them for a while and they were really interested and told us they had friends who were Mormon and wanted to know more.  They told us they were going to come to church but had a couple things they needed to do so they weren't sure.  They ended up not coming and we have a return to go see them Friday night so we'll find out then what happened.  The coolest part about the whole thing was that the returns we got with Misael, and Maria and Andres happened to be the exact same times we had planned to go see "family X".  We were extremely blessed and it was cool to see that miracle.  I hope everything turns out well with these people we added!

 

I don't have too much more time and I still need to write to the mission president, sooo until next week!

 

Los Quiero,

Elder Gaskill

Lots of investigators at church!

Hey Everybody,

 

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