Unexpected Blessings

Hello Everyone!

 

I don't have a lot of time to email this week but we had an amazing week!  We found so many solid new people and things are going well.

 

We found a lady named Leah who has a 10 year old daughter named Heavenly.  They used to meet with the missionaries and she loves everything she hears.  She accepted the invitation to be baptized on November 23rd and we are trying to start teaching her daughter as well.

We also got a referral for some really cool people on Saturday named Kisa, Uriah, and Jai.  It is a mom and her two kids and they were really excited to come to church.

 

Unfortunately Emmanuel and Alexandria both dropped us this week.  Emmanuel is too stressed out with not working and so many bad things going on in his life so he put us on hold until some things get worked out. The same situation happened with Alexandria's mom so she doesn't want us coming over anymore.

We also met with RJ & Jessica and they were really excited to come to church.

 

We had 9 people lined up for church this week but not a single one came.  RJ was in the hospital sick so they weren't able to come.  Kisa, Uriah, and Jai had some family troubles and weren't able to get ready on time.  We're not sure what happened to Leah and Heavenly but we had a miracle even though so much DIDN'T happen:   We were only able to see Mark once this week.  On Monday we got a call from him and he told us that his "wife" that he's lived with for 8 years is actually still married from a previous relationship so they can't get married right now anyway.  He was really sad and said it looked like he wasn't going to be able to be baptized for about a year.  We said so many prayers trying to know how to help him and felt like nothing happened all week.  He was busy with midterms so we didn't get to see him until Saturday and read 1 Nephi 17 with him.  Sunday he didn't show up to church but during Elder's Quorum he texted us and said "I broke up with Kelly this morning and moved out. That's why I didn't come to church".  It was definitely a miracle that made up for the rest of our investigators not coming to church.  We haven't been able to get in touch with him yet to find out where he moved to but we are hoping to get in touch with him today and have a miracle baptism this week! My testimony of faith and prayers coupled with good works was definitely strengthened this week and I know that miracles happen!

 

We were really disappointed this week because we were supposed to have 5 baptisms in the zone and not a single one happened.  One of the investigators is having trouble believing in modern prophets and went back to her old church.  Another is getting deported to Mexico this Saturday because his work just ended. Two we found are involved with relationships where either them or their spouse is married to someone else and living with a person who is already married, and the last one didn't get permission from her mom to get baptized.  It was a really great week for Elder Ross and I but it's been a sad month for the zone.  Luckily I've learned to roll with the punches and can share my experiences and I don't get down when bad things happen in the work.

We are looking forward to more success in the coming weeks.

 

I forgot to mention that we have another investigator named Johny with a baptismal date for November 23 as well.

 

I love being a missionary!

 

Les Quiero,

Elder Gaskill

Everything is Great!

Hello Everyone,

Another great week is in the books!

 

We're still continuing to work with Mark. We're trying to help him get baptized this Saturday and help our zone/missions reach the goals we have.  He still has the issue of not being married. Right now he doesn't have the money to buy a ring and he can't move out and leave his girlfriend alone because her health is really bad. So we're hoping that some money comes out of the sky this week.

Other things went really well this week.  We found a few new people to teach that sound really promising. After we left a lesson with Mark we had an appointment for dinner 15 minutes later and it was about 10 minutes away. We decided to go visit one more person first even though we didn't have much  time.  We stopped at the house of an old referral from almost a year ago.  The lady who opened the door wasn't the name we were looking for.  We continued to talk to her anyway and tried to share the gospel with her.  It turns out that this lady's mom got baptized when she was a little girl but she wasn't involved in the church very much since her parents were split up.  She only spent about 3 months of the year with her mom and the rest of the year she spent with her dad and step-mom who are Jehovah's Witnesses.  She got really confused between the two churches and now as an adult has distanced herself from any specific church.  She said her LDS mom is great and the church might be something missing in her life.  She told us that recently she has been praying for change.  We said a quick prayer with her and then she told us she felt that we were definitely an answer to her prayers and were sent from God.  It was an awesome contact that most missionaries only dream about.  We are teaching her for the first time tomorrow and are very excited! Her name is Lauren.

 

We also found a couple that is really cool and loves learning.  They aren't very good at keeping commitments or appointments.  The guy's best friend growing up was a member of the church so we are going to see if we can track him down and have him help us.  The names of these two are RJ & Jessica.

 

Our investigator from Ghana named Emmanuel also came to church for the first time and loved it.  He wore his clothes from his home country and he looked really good all dressed up in gold.  He definitely stood out because he was also wearing khaki shorts and sandals but it was good because the ward members actually noticed him and then were able to come up and introduce themselves to him so he has more friends in the church.

 

We are also working with a few more people that have been coming to church and things are going really well with them right now.  Everything is going great. My health is good, my schedule is busy, and I don't have time to think about anything but missionary work.  As a zone we are struggling to meet our goal of baptisms for the month of October so any free time I have is spent finding ways to help the zone achieve our goals.  My companions continue to remind me that my mission clock is running down so it's a good thing I don't have any time to notice how fast the time really is going by.  The holidays are coming up soon so hopefully we can continue to get more people to teach as moods begin to lift and members invite their friends to the ward activities.

 

Les Quiero Mucho,

Elder Gaskill

October 14, 2013

Hello Everyone!

 

This week was an interesting week and not a whole lot happened but I'll share the most important parts.

We worked a lot with Mark this week trying to get him married so he could be baptized this week.  Things didn't end up going through.  When he talked to his "wife" about getting married she told him that she wasn't going to marry him until he got her a ring.  He was a little disappointed that he couldn't be baptized but was excited for one day down the road when he could.  However, missionaries aren't nearly that patient, especially when they have such a little time to make a difference in people's lives.  We asked him to pray about if he still needed to get baptized.  This first time he got a weird answer that he wasn't comfortable about because he felt like it wasn't an answer that came from God (which he was right about because it was really negative).  We tried to get him to pray with us again the next night but he felt like a lot of bad spirits were keeping him from being able to do it so we helped calm him down and he committed to do it again that night.  The answer he got the next night was better and we were able to help him recognize the spirit and the promptings it was giving.  The big thing that we are working on now is to be able to talk to his wife so we can help her understand why they need to get married.  They're "anniversary" was this past weekend so they were going out and Mark was going to sit her down and have her watch the Restoration DVD and then try to talk to her.  We were letting him get up for church and over there completely on his own, but he didn't show up so we'll have to figure out what happened and get him married and baptized by the end of this month.  More to come on Mark.  He's awesome but he needs lots of support to make it sooner rather than later to this step.

 

This week Elder Gurr came down from the mission office to do exchanges with us and other Elders in the zone.  What we do on these exchanges is we do quick "team ups" with most of the companionships in the zone.  We meet up with the companionship, the AP goes with new missionary/younger companion and we go with the other missionary.  They are supposed to set up as many appointments as they can and we go with them and make the time we have with them as spiritual and motivating as possible to help the missionaries learn and get to know them better.  We went on 6 exchanges throughout the day and it was amazing to see the work that was done in just an hour or two.  At the very beginning of the day we found a girl name Sabryna who was supposed to get baptized that weekend but the missionaries hadn't been able to get in touch with her for about 2 weeks.  We found her, recommitted her for baptism in October, and put the fire back in her that had been lost for a little while.  Later in the day we found a few new investigators, invited them to baptism, and taught some really good lessons.  My favorite part of the day was when we were able to split with the Spanish missionaries and I got to speak Spanish again! We taught a  few people, and committed an investigator named Maria to be baptized on November 16th.  It was a lot of fun that day.  

 

Those days are the most draining physically because you have to be on your A+ game for every minute of the day to lift and inspire the missionaries you're with. Normally on a typical day of missionary work you will teach 2-3 lessons and maybe find a new person to teach and then have lots of other contacts and missionary activities during the day.  When we totaled up all that we had done, we taught 9 lessons, got a few referrals, added 3 new investigators, visited 4 less actives, and committed 2 people to baptism on specific dates.  It was an amazing day and filled with miracles.  It was a great opportunity to be able to help so many missionaries.

 

This Sunday was probably one of my favorite Sundays of my mission.  The talks that were given in Sacrament meeting were by a new couple in the ward that have young kids and are both returned missionaries.  They talked about receiving revelation and it was really inspiring.  Our gospel principles class talked a lot about modern day prophets and that was great as well.  In Elder's Quorum we talked about missionary work to top it all off.  Sundays are always the best and so refreshing!

 

It was a great week and as always I'm looking forward to this next one!

 

Les Quiero Mucho,

Elder Gaskill

Believing, Bold, Baptizing California Sacramento Missionaries

Hello Everyone

Hope the last week went well.

This past week we had lots of exciting things happen in the mission. On Tuesday we had our Zone Leader Round Table meeting and talked about how the mission was doing.  We were disappointed at some of the recent outcomes of baptisms in the mission so we decided to make a training for all the leadership positions in the mission that Thursday.  It turned out to be a great meeting and was really inspiring.  We heard lots of great ideas on being "Believing, Bold, Baptizing California Sacramento Missionaries".  The thoughts that were presented were really cool. We took the same training to do it in our own way for our zone.  One of the interesting things we did had to do with believing.  We talked about the word "believe" meaning "to allow" because you can't exceed the limit of what you believe you can do.  We gave an example of having everyone write down how many cups of water they thought they could drink in 30 seconds and then we did the challenge.  It was a lot of fun and really instructional as well.  Some of the missionaries were able to drink as much as they could and had extra after 30 seconds while some weren't able to reach their full potential because they were only given the number of cups full of water that they thought they could drink.  One elder managed to chug 5 cups of water (about 80 fluid ounces) in 30 seconds which was really impressive.  He almost threw up after but he didn't so everything turned out OK.  We're excited to see a lot of success in our zone in the months to come.

One thing I forgot to mention about my companion.  The first time I met him was his first couple months in the mission.  We were both in the Lodi zone.  My companion was Elder Martinez and Elder Ross was in the Lodi Hills with Elder Gurr. After a zone training we were driving back to our areas. While my companion was driving we were side by side to Elder Ross and his companion.  I motioned for him to roll down the window.  After he did I pulled out a little nerf gun I had in the car and shot him in the ear.  They continued down the road and we turned away to where we were going.  We were never really around each other so we never talked about it but the first day we were companions (a year later) he brought it up to me and we had a good laugh about it.  It seems like we're always laughing and we get along great which is awesome.

We've been working a lot with Mark and he has been progressing nicely.  We have one last kink that we have to work out though.  We found out that he's not married, he's just been living with his "wife" for 8 years.  We told him he needs to be married and so he decided to ask his wife to get married.  However, she said no because she wants a ring and he doesn't have one or money to get one because of his financial situation with school and everything.  Mark's baptismal date is this Saturday so we're working with him a lot to either figure out how he can get married or how he can move out so that he's not breaking the law of chastity.  It will be a lot of work but I have the faith that the Lord will help us so that we can meet our goals and Mark can receive these blessings.

General Conference was great and I was very inspired by it! I can't wait to apply the messages I've heard.  I hope a lot of members get the hint about what so many church leaders talked about (member missionary work)! It's an exciting time to be a missionary and I love every minute of it!

Les Quiero Mucho!

Elder Gaskill

Elder Russell, Elder Gaskill, Elder Guzman: Three Generations

Elder Gaskill dying his companion's hair brown from red

Finished Product: Brunettes!

Martin Camillo's baptism

Elders got "heart attacked"

Barajas Family

Saying Goodbye to Hermano Ku, ward mission leader and Hermana Ku

Saying goodbye to Nara and Lopez families

Haydee Barajas baptism

Still Busy!

Hello Everyone!

Hope this last week went well. We had a great week here!

I guess I forgot to talk about my companion so I'll tell about him.  His name is Elder Ross and he is from Grand Junction, Colorado (and his family has since moved to Montrose, Colorado).  He is 24 years old and has been out about 13 months in the mission.  He actually just got an email right now and his parents are moving to Texas very soon. Anyway he's a good missionary.

This past week was awesome!  Wednesday morning I dropped Elder Baryshnikov off at the mission office and picked up my new companion.  It was really interesting seeing good missionaries that I am close to in their final moments as a missionary. I've had good friends leave throughout my whole mission but I was at the office for a few hours and it was interesting to see how everyone was.  A lot of them seemed excited but at the same time really nervous and sad to be ending a great time in their life.  I was grateful that I was dropping one of them off instead of being the one dropped off.  It was also really cool to see the two ends of the spectrum. At the same time one group of missionaries prepares to leave, another one is just arriving in the mission. We stayed and watched the trainers get their new trainees and that is always an emotional experience. 6 new Spanish speaking missionaries came to the mission and I am so excited for each one of them! I hope I can share my testimony of the Spanish work with as many as them as possible. 2 of them are in our zone and I look forward to being with them a lot.

Since Elder Ross and Elder Thompson are the new elders in our apartment, we had to put them through the initiation process. There is a snowboard mounted on our wall with all the Elder's names that have ever lived there. We get dressed up in hoodies/blankets, use a fog machine to fog up the room, turn all the lights out and our flashlights on, turn on the Halo song (a creepy Monk sounding song) and then have them come in and give them a speech and then have them sign the board.  It's a fun tradition.

We have some cool investigators we are working with:

Mark is progressing greatly towards his baptism on October 12th. He has learned about almost everything (from the missionary lessons), has come to church 3 times, and is really excited to get baptized. He always has really good questions and is willing to make the necessary sacrifices. The biggest things for him have been quitting coffee and coming to church since he works in the evenings. He got a cool blessing that he got a job interview for the same type of job at a different place that will let him off 2 hours earlier so he can get more sleep before church! He's really excited about that. I love Mark a lot and am excited to continue working with him.

We are still working with Alexandria but her dad doesn't want her to get baptized (according to the mom) so we are trying to work with both of her parents on that. She will keep coming every week with a friend (to a different ward) but can't be taught the lessons or get baptized right now.

Our biggest disappointment is with a lady named Theresa.  She has an uncle that is a member and referred herself to the missionaries.  She loved hearing about the restoration and was very excited to be baptized.  However, her husband told her she has to choose between him and the church.  That's one of the most shallow things anyone could do and it really hinders her progress. She told us that she has to think really hard about it before she makes her decision and has no idea how long it will take.  I've been doing a lot of praying and fasting and will continue to have people try to encourage her but we definitely don't want her family to split up.

We are working with a few other people and I'll share more about them as they start to progress. We are teaching a guy from Ghana named Emmanuel that really has the desire to learn and study. There is a guy named James who went to a Bible school and used to be a minister at a Baptist church but is really open to learning more. A couple other people too!

Yesterday we got to participate in a missionary training academy that the Stake puts on.  It was really cool to help youth preparing to serve missions develop missionary skills.  It was funny to try to think about where I was 2 years ago and I'm glad I couldn't remember very well because I probably wouldn't have been a very good teacher to people that depend on me to learn about the restored gospel.  As my companion and I talked about it after, and discussed the little to no preparation we did before being missionaries, we realized how much the setting apart changes a person and how much the Lord really blesses us and molds us amidst our imperfections. I'm grateful for everything the Lord has done to change me, especially at the latter end of my mission to help me become the person I want to continue towards becoming throughout my life.

Well the work is going great. We've been very busy and I don't have time to do anything but think about my investigators all day and then all night I have to figure out the things I forgot about or did wrong so I can do them better the next day. The weather is starting to get a little bit cooler, it's getting a little bit closer to the end of my mission, but I am excited for each new day that I wake up a missionary.

Les Quiero,

Elder Gaskill

Lots of Great Missionary Work Happening!

Hello Everyone!

 

I hope everyone is well! I haven't had a chance to send anything for the past two weeks so there may be a lot of information here.

 

2 weeks ago we were playing basketball and I popped my companion's shoulder out of socket.  He had done it before so we tried to put it back in but it wasn't working so we had to give him a blessing and then take him to the ER. We drove pretty quickly since he was in a lot of pain and almost blacking out but we eventually got him there and they fixed him up. Unfortunately hospitals are really slow so it took a huge chunk out of our P-day but he was OK which is the important thing.

 

Last week we did a couple service projects and one of them was cleaning the church.  It just so happens that the people in charge of organizing it own a professional cleaning business so they are very on top of things.  The church got very deep cleaned and air fresheners were even put up in the rafters as a finishing touch.  The next day the church was extra clean and even smelled better than normal and I felt like it made a difference in the day that was very noticeable.  We did another service project that involved taking a lot of yard waste to the dump.  I have never been to a dump before and I never want to go back! It was hard to breathe it smelled so bad.  It was very dusty and we had to breathe anyway so I spent a while when we got home cleaning out my nostrils an mouth of all the crap that I had to breathe in.

 

That night we had dinner with a family that has a son serving in Hermosillo, Mexico.  It was really fun to talk to them since Daniel Woolley is in that mission.  Their son reported to the MTC on February 8, 2011 (one week after I did) so I probably saw him at the MTC as well. They were a really nice family.

 

The past 2 weeks have been interesting working with a man named David Gaines (known as Dave the Philosopher).  Dave has been taught by missionaries for over a year and hasn't been baptized because he is an analytical, fact-based thinker and isn't very well acquainted with the faith and spiritual side of things.  My first week in the area we challenged him to be baptized on September 21st.  We have been working with him a lot and it is amazing to see the change he has made.  We've helped him out a lot and even did his laundry (full of cat hair) to help him come to church.  Last week he was interviewed by a member of the mission presidency and was approved for baptism.  He was baptized Sunday the 22nd and is going to be confirmed next Sunday.  It has been a miracle and I'm amazed at the changes that he's made in his life.

 

We've had a couple miracles the past few weeks. About a week ago we got a call from our bishop and he told us of a less active family he just heard about through a bishop in San Francisco and said we needed to go see them.  We met them and they were awesome! They have a 13 year old unbaptized daughter that we are going to baptize in October.

 

We met another lady named Theresa through the referral system.  We knocked on her door, she came out, we told her who we are and asked if she would be interested.  She surprised us both by saying "yes, I've been waiting for you".  We came back and taught her on Friday and the lesson went really well! She accepted the invitation to be baptized on October 19th! She loved everything and even cried. We got an interesting message from her on Sunday that may slow things down a little bit but she was definitely a miracle.

 

We have still been working with Mark Duanez. He is getting baptized on October 4th and is really excited. He came to church for the 2nd time on Sunday and is a great person. I love teaching him!

 

The last cool spiritual thing that happened to me was I got a letter from the Barajas family this past week. Haydee told me things were going really well and that her husband is starting to come to church and listening to the discussions! Andres and Grace have backed off a little bit which was sad to hear but I know sooner or later they will come around.  At the end of the letter Haydee bore her testimony to me very powerfully.  She followed up with me and told me that at her baptism she felt exactly the same as she had dreamed about.  She said she felt completely clean and wished she could go straight to heaven right then but knew it wasn't her time.  It was an awesome letter to get! I can't wait to see more good things happen with that family!

 

The end of the week was also the BYU v Utah game! Last year I didn't know about it since I was in Spanish work but this year being in English work everyone talked about it. We wore our red ties, and patiently awaited the ending results of the game and then screamed and yelled when we found out we won. It was a great week overall.

 

That's about it, hope everyone is well back home!

 

Les Quiero Mucho!

Elder Gaskill

Short Note = Busy Week!

Hello Everyone!

 

This week will be another short email because I have very little time and not too much to tell.

 

The exciting events of this week were zone leader round and the following zone training. The mission is going through lots of changes as we get more missionaries and the standards/rules for the missionaries are changing.  For our zone training this week we created a game show and made up a character called "Bold(o) the Baptizer" which was me.  The game show involved either me or the contestants  doing exercises depending on if they answered the question correctly or incorrectly.  It was a lot of fun and (I think) really well received by the zone. If nothing else, now they know the standards of excellence really well.

 

Apart from that we have a new investigator named Mark who is really cool.  He is really excited to be baptized, we just have to get him to church more and teach him more.  He goes to school 5 days a week (college) and then works evenings from 6pm-2am.  He came to church yesterday and loved it! He is going to get baptized on October 4th and is really excited for that day.

 

I'm doing great, loving the mission and every part of it.  Everything I'm doing right now is really different but I love the opportunities to learn and grow.  The hardest part is keeping my companion focused since he's almost going home and engaged already but that doesn't keep us from doing the work! I'm excited for this next week and all the opportunities I have to serve the Lord.

 

Hope all is well!

Les Quiero,

Elder Gaskill