Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello Everyone!

This last week went really well.

 

Zone Conference went great! Elder Baxter inspired us all and taught us a lot of great things.  The coolest part was afterwards we had a special meeting with the 6 of us zone leaders, President & Sister Lewis, and Elder & Sister Baxter. They gave us some instruction on how to be better leaders. The coolest part was at the end we all knelt down and he said one of the best prayers I have ever heard and left countless blessings with us.  After, we tried to remember what all was said and we couldn't. We decided it was like 3 Nephi 17 where the words of the Savior couldn't be written. We have very strongly impressed upon our hearts how we felt though.

 

We got to have dinner with 2 of my favorite families this week: the Rodriguez family and the Barajas family.  It was great to go visit with them. I felt right at home.  We have dinner again tonight with the Rodriguez family for Thanksgiving.  We also got to see a lot of the families from the Lodi branch on Sunday while we were waiting for the Barajas to pick us up.  We got to see the Cortez, Cazares, Cardonas, Sheldons, Lopez, etc and it was great.  I got ambushed and didn't even make it to the building, we just ended up talking to everyone in the parking lot.

 

I got to go to Sacramento for Mark's baptism on Saturday and perform the ordinance. That was great because he had overcome so much to be baptized. It was a very sweet moment. There weren't many  people at the baptism but the Spirit was there and that's the most important part.

 

Last night we got to play in the Turkey Bowl that the institute put on and people came from all over Sacramento, Lodi, Stockton, and Manteca to play so it was a fun event.  My team ended up winning it all so that was an added bonus. We hardly ever get to play sports so that was a rare delicacy.  I got sick from all the other elders in my apartments so my lungs were really congested and not doing so well but I ran through it anyway and pretended like it was normal and had a lot of fun.

 

We have been doing lots of teaching.  We have taught a lot of people that don't seem like they're going to progress too much. Josh however is doing great and progressing towards his baptismal date of December 14th very well.  It was hard for him to hear the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity being a 20 year old who's never had religion in his life. However, he's so humble that he readily accepted it and is trying his very best to do it! I gave him a pair of pants, a white shirt, and a tie so he would have church clothes to wear and he looked great at church; fit right in.  He has changed so much over the past few weeks since we first met him and he is very excited to be baptized.  He learned how to tie this really cool knot on a tie and taught it to us yesterday. In exchange we taught him how to tie a normal knot on a tie.

 

It's nice to have a break today to relax and eat some good food!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Elder Gaskill

Missionary Work Keeps Getting Better and Better!

Hello Everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well! This was another great week in the mission.

 

Our investigator Josh has been progressing a lot! We introduced him to a recent convert named Carlos and they get along really well. Carlos can give him rides too since he has a car. We took Josh on a tour of the church and he loved it and was excited to come to church with us.  He is very willing to change and as soon as we taught him about the word of wisdom he made changes to  start living that commandment.  He came to church yesterday and loved it! Carlos brought him and he stayed  4 hours (Carlos had an interview after church to get his limited use recommend & get a calling).  He is doing great.

 

We also had Daniel, Tommy, and Lyn come to church yesterday.  Tommy is ready and has learned everything but has to get over one last thing first before he can accept a baptismal date. Daniel keeps moving around so we can't find him but we are working with him as well.

 

On Thursday we were with Elder Morley all day (one of the APs). It was good to be around him again and reminisce about good times we had together in El Dorado for 3 transfers.  We had a really productive day as well.

 

Earlier in the week we were at Hermano Ku's house (the Lodi Spanish Branch Ward Mission Leader) to get a referral. While we were there his nephew Diego walked in.  Hermano Ku's sister-in-law and family live 3 houses down the street and their family is very catholic.  Diego said he came home, no one was home, saw a missionary car and felt like he should come over and talk to us.  We talked to him about the Plan of Salvation and answered some of his questions for a while.  His family has had a lot of experience with the church and so he was interested in listening. We knew it was definitely a prompting of the spirit that got us and him there at the same time.  He didn't see it that way though. The next day, 3 more missionaries found an old referral for his mother and decided to stop by and they found Diego as well. We went back down with Elder Morley the next day.  It seems that the missionaries are all on the same wavelength (the Spirit) so we're hoping that Diego listens to the spirit as well.

 

On Thursday we stopped by the Barajas family and it was great to see them again.  Only Hermana was there with Andres so we had dinner with them and talked for a little while.  Andres had bought me a shirt and told me not to look at it until I got home. When we came back I looked at it and it's an awesome tank top that says "Most Dope"  haha.  We're having dinner with the whole family this Sunday and I'm excited to see them again!

 

We also found an old investigator up in Galt that we were teaching named Valerie and she has a lot more time now so we are going to start teaching her again!

 

I am excited for this coming Saturday because Mark is getting baptized! I will get to go back to North Sacramento and perform Mark's baptism. I'm excited for this weekend.

 

Also this week is Zone Conference. Once a year a general authority comes and tours the mission and so Elder Baxter from the Seventy is coming to all the conferences and to tour the mission.  Instead of the AP's conducting Conference they are asking the Senior Zone Leader to conduct so I will have to introduce Elder Baxter and that is kind of intimidating but it will be a cool experience!

 

This week will be awesome! Missionary work keeps getting better and better!

 

Les Quiero Mucho,

Elder Gaskill

Getting Reaquainted with Stockton

Hello Everyone!

 

I hope all is well.

This week was another great one!  It's been full of memories.  It's good to be back in Stockton. The last time I was here was July of 2012 so it's been a while.  It's weird to drive around some of the same streets. We mostly work on the northern side of the city, a different part than where I served the first time.  I know the main streets but am getting to know everything a lot better.  It was really weird to drive down to the southern area to visit some people.  We stopped by a few of the Spanish members homes because they have kids that are YSA (Young Single Adult) age and we wanted to invite them to some activities.  It was great to see everyone again.  Elder Fulks and I both served in Delta South near the beginning of our missions so the members remember both of us.

 

The work is very different here.  We work almost purely by referrals.  Ideally we want the whole family to be interested so we only get to teach them once the parents have expressed their disinterest and then we take over teaching the YSA age young adults.  It's a lot harder to fill our time so we have to find ways to find new people.  There are two colleges here: Delta college and University of the Pacific, however it's not very effective to walk around on campus contacting people so we're trying some other ways.

 

We are working with a few cool people.  My first appointment in the area was with a young guy named Josh.  He doesn't really know anything about God or Jesus Christ so we have been teaching him a lot.  He loves everything we share with him and after saying it a couple times it sticks with him.  He accepted the invitation to be baptized on December 7th so we are excited to help him work towards that date.  There is another investigator named Tommy who was supposed to be baptized a few weeks ago but had some problems come up so we are continuing to work with him and help him get baptized the end of this month. 

 

We also met a really cool guy named Steve who is dating a girl in Modesto who is a member of the church.  He used to be a Jehovah's Witness growing up but distanced himself from the church a few years back because of "the politics".  He loves everything and had trouble accepting that Joseph Smith saw God because of the scriptures in Exodus 33 that says "no man can see God and live".  We hear that a lot so it's easy to help people understand what the scriptures mean and explain the First Vision a little better. There is also another guy named Daniel who the missionaries were teaching but he disappeared for a while.  He showed up to church by himself yesterday and was really excited to be back.  He has figured a lot of things out and we are happy to start working with him again.

 

I also got to see a few members of the Lodi branch recently.  Last night we went up and visited with Juan, Jovita, and JJ Rodriguez (luckily JJ is in the YSA ward so it gives us good reason to go visit the family).  It was a very sweet experience because yesterday was November 10th, exactly a year after the day Juan and Jovita were baptized.  I love that family so much and I am so happy to see the progress they are making and the strength of their testimonies.  JJ's year anniversary is coming up on December 29th so I will also be here for that.  I think the plan is for the whole family to go to the temple in January to get sealed.  I hope the plan sticks so I can still be here to accompany them to the temple!

 

Yesterday I also got to confer the Aaronic Priesthood on a new member of the YSA ward named Carlos.  He was baptized about 2 weeks ago and I was surprised that he picked me to perform the ordinance since I had only known him for 4 days.  It was a really cool experience.

 

Things are going great and I am very happy to be a missionary!

 

Les Quiero Mucho!

Elder Gaskill

Going back to Stockton

Hello Everyone!

This past week was another great one!

The big news this week are transfers. My transfer call came and I am getting transferred to the South Stockton Zone in the Pacific Young Single Adult ward.  My new companion is Elder Fulks (another Spanish speaking missionary). He goes home at the end of this transfer so I will be his last companion.  Our zone is pretty small (there are 2 in Stockton).  In Our zone we have 3 English companionships, 1 Hmong, 1 Lao, and 1 Cambodian.  All the other Spanish companionships are in the North Stockton zone. I am sad to be leaving such a great zone and companion in North Sacramento but I'm excited to go back to the valley.  One of the things I'm excited for is our YSA ward also covers Lodi and Galt.  That means I can go visit the Rodriguez and other families in Lodi (and JJ will be in the YSA) and also the Barajas and other families in Galt! It will be fun. I feel like I get to go home for the holidays (:

 

This week was a lot of fun! It was a little bit slow because of some meetings we had to do and other trainings but it was a lot of fun. On Halloween we got together as a zone and watched a new movie that came out from Deseret Book called "Ephraim's Rescue".  It was pretty good and about a man who was prepared his whole life to help rescue some of the pioneers in a handcart company that wouldn't have made it to Salt Lake otherwise.  Afterwards Elder Ross and I did our zone training.  We made it a lot of fun.  We started out by bringing everyone into a room with the lights out filled with fog (from a fog machine). Elder Ross and I had blankets on so we looked like something creepy.  We had flashlights shining up at our faces and creepy music on in the background. We welcomed them to zone training and then moved into another room to actually do it.  We were training on commitments so at the end we practiced by trick or treating.  Except we had the missionaries dress up in costumes (mummies with toilet paper, ghosts with sheets, crazy hair wigs, etc) and go "trick-or-treating" by teaching the people behind the doors and giving them a pre-decided commitment.  They were rewarded with candy if they did a good job. It was a lot of fun.

 

The most exciting thing that happened this week was with Mark. We didn't hear from him all week so we used our secret agent skills and found out where his parents live (which is where we moved).  We were waiting for him to contact us and just listened to the Spirit in the meantime.  On Saturday we felt prompted to go to his old place of residence where Kelly was.  She was there crying and in a lot of pain because she was really sick.  We offered to give her a priesthood blessing but needed a guy to come over.  She told us Mark was on his way over so we waited for him.  When he got there he told us he was sorry but his phone was out of minutes so he wasn't able to get in touch with us all week.  We gave Kelly a blessing and it went really well.  She told us all day she had been praying that someone would come over to help her out and we told her we were prompted to go over there.  Mark also told us he was prompted to pick up the phone and call her that morning and that's why he had come over.  It looks like we were all on the same page and things worked out!

 

Mark came to church yesterday and now he is 100% ready for baptism! We set a new baptismal date for November 23rd with him! We are all very excited!

 

That's about it for this week. New adventures to come in Stockton!

 

Love you all! Les Quiero!

Elder Gaskill

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