It's Cooooooold!!!

 Last pic I took from Santiago

 Fire hazard? Probably not.

This is what happens when you give missionaries a house... They don´t clean. I took all this just off the stairs. It was gross. Yes mom, I got all the stuff under the stairs too! I went crazy cleaning! It was even prettier in person!   I made a resolve to never complain about doing chores again. Mom I´m sorry I ever complained.

This our zone, really small compared to the other ones I have been in!

It´s not that it is colder here than Utah, because it´s not! It´s that our house is the same temperature inside as the temperature is outside! That´s our problem. This morning it was soo cold! I was wearing a pair of shorts and sweatpants with some wool socks on my bottom half and up top I had a t-shirt, thick sweatshirt, and my fleece jacket! But now the temp isn´t too bad outside. The house just kinda stays cold always... And we are just starting winter! Should be an adventure!

This week was a little bit of a bummer, or I guess it was just a little slower than what I was hoping. This Thursday was a holiday which means everyone headed somewhere because they just took Friday off too so then it was just a super long weekend for them! Also in this area there is something called La Persa. Which is basically where they close off a street every Saturday and Sunday and there are just a million little shops they all set up. It´s like that place we went In Hawaii in the parking lot of the Hawaii stadium and they were just selling all sorts of stuff. Well that´s the same thing they do here! Every single weekend!! So EVERYONE goes there to buy things or to sell. It´s also hard because there are some investigators that sell there and they say they can´t keep the sabbath day because if they don´t sell on Sunday they won´t have enough money. That is going to be a challenge here for sure.

I was able to go to the temple!!! Every year we as missionaries get to go do a session and I got to go Friday!! It was the first time that I did a session in Spanish, I didn´t think I was gonna understand anything but to my surprise it wasn´t too bad at all! It was such a wonderful time. I made a promise to never let so much time pass without going to the temple again.

I´m really sorry but this is all I´m going to write because this keyboard is a pain and takes me forever to write! Have a wonderful week! I´ll try to be a little bit more informative next week! Haha:)

Love,

Elder Gunnell

 Look, I'm on the street of United States

Also check it out! I sat in some gum! Haha

New Sector, New Companion!!

Woohooo!! So I finally got moved which was fantastic because I was getting sick and tired of packing up my stuff and waiting for them to come get me and then getting the call that told me that I would be leaving the next day then unpacking everything and doing it the next day! That happened from Friday to Wednesday but that´s not important because I am here!!!!:) I am completely lost once again but I love it. I love new things, people, and places. My companion is Elder Ibarra, when I heard his name I was so pumped I was thinking I was going to have my first Latin companion and I was so excited!! Turns out... He´s from Washington... But he is one of the coolest kids I´ve met on the mission. We are going to have some good times together I´m sure! His parents are from Mexico so he actually already knew Spanish which will help me a lot. I am so happy and excited to be here! So we got here Wednesday night and by Saturday morning we already had an activity planned for the ward and for their friends. Saturday morning we went and talked to the bishop and said yes! It was announced in church on Sunday and so now the date is set and we just have to finish up the details! We are going to do a movie night and watch ¨Meet the Mormons¨ (thanks again to Miguel for buying it and bringing it to me, you´re the best) but we are trying to get the members motivated to help us out, we are going to make invitations(super cool and pretty haha) and give them to every family with the goal that they invite one of there non member friends to come and watch a movie, converse, and eat sandwiches and treats! We will do it the 5th of June so hopefully neither of us gets changed before that.

I am so excited!! Just for it all! Haha

It was really weird in church because there was only 80 of us... Compared to my last ward it is super small! In Elders Quorum there was six of us(including us). Wayy different but it´s all good! Hopefully we can get some baptisms here and bump up membership.

I would tell you about our investigators and what not but I don´t remember all the names of all the people we have visited up til now so sorry.. But we are working with a family! The mom doesn´t really want to be baptized but she really likes that her daughter, Fernanda, goes to mutual every week and she likes the good things the church teaches her! Fernanda is actually inviting one of her amigas to come to mutual too so that is awesome!! The biggest challenge with them is that the dad, Ruben, is a semi driver and is always out of town on the weekends. But I know God can work miracles, I´m hoping the best for this family!

Another huge difference is the house... Oh man oh man oh man our house... HUGE difference from my last house... Or in better words in my 5 star apartment. But whatever it´s awesome I don´t even care that it´s a stinky house, that´s not why we are here as missionaries and it just gives me more motivation to leave as early as possible! Haha but no it really isn´t terrible just not nearly as fancy but that is to be expected. We live in the same lot as some members because there is a second house behind their house so we have to pass on the side of theirs.

When we got there, their dog tried to eat me. That was fun. We don´t have water pressure... It literaly drops out of the shower head and the water heater always turns off on me, I have bad luck. It is always so cold in the house!! Even it is hot outside I still have to put on a jacket inside! I don´t know what´s up with that. And once again it has a bad smell but whatever! It´s all good!!:)

Gigantic shout out for TYSON and his MISSION CALL to the Ecuador Quito North Mission and for his birthday last week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhh!!!

Over and out family and friends. Til next week. 

Love always,

Elder Gunnell

P.S. I´ll work on snapping some pics this week!

Week after Mother's Day

So I´m keeping this one short!

First of all I really was thinking about how blessed I am to have the family I have. Each one of them is incredible and I love them to death. I don´t know why I got so lucky to be in a family of such good people but I really truly am so grateful. I loved seeing you all yesterday. I felt like we could just pick it right up from where we left it! It was a blast and I love you all. 

I also got thinking a lot about the temple Saturday night because we took some investigators and did a little tour with them. The sister missionaries that are in that mission do the tours and part of the tour is when we actually get to enter into the first doors of the temple. After being in between the first and second doors and when everyone is all quiet they let a couple people at a time enter in the second set of doors to be able to feel what the temple brings. I don´t know if it was a better experience for our investigator, Viviana, or for me. It was pretty good for her because she began to cry and felt the spirit very strong. She didn´t want to leave. Later she asked us when she could be baptized. And we decided together that the 24th of this month would be the day. It was really neat because we had set baptism dates for her before but she never felt ready but this time she ASKED us when we could do it. The problem is that when she went home that night she got home to a party that her sisters had started with some friends. This made her decided that she might return to Boliva this week instead of at the end of this month. So in the end, she may not get baptized here but I am sure she will in Boliva and that is the important thing. Being in the temple was a really cool experience for me because it´s been awhile since I´ve been in and because here in Santiago there are millions of people, hundreds of buses and cars, and they are all going in a million directions. There is always so much noise and it never seems to stop. Night or day. Going in to the temple and being in such a peaceful place really helped me to appreciate the blessing of having a temple and gave me a second to relax and take a breather. I felt the spirit so strong. I felt that I was doing the right things. I felt like I never want to be unworthy to enter such a special place. I´m pumped for when we, as a mission, have our trip to the temple to go do a session!

 This is Viviana and us! The temple was soo very pretty at night, all lit up and white.

Supposedly I am supposed to be changing areas today but they still aren´t sure. If I got today it will be around 6 or 7 but we will see. I´m pretty sure that sometime this week I will be moved but I don´t know when! Haha. I am excited! And a little bummed, the members in this ward are wonderful and it has been so sweet to be in the heart of Santiago. I love being in the city with all the buildings, even if it makes the work a little bit harder, so I don´t know if I´m ready to go back to an area with small houses and without tons of buildings but I am stoked to have my first latin companion!! I´ve been waiting for this for eight months!!

We decided to have a more relaxed P-day today and we made homemade pizzas!!!

We bought all sorts of stuff and just loaded it with ingredients. I also made some yummy sauteed mushrooms and onions! Put some oregano and other spices in the sauce and man was it the best pizza that I´ve eaten in Chile!!

 Mmmmmm sooo tasty

 We made two huge pizzas... The two of us finised half of one of them... Good thing we have dinner tonight with a couple investigators! Guess what we´re having? Pizza!!

Thank you to all of those who sent me a little something in my package that Miguel brought to me. I loved them all! Thanks for the letters too! I still can´t believe that Miguel came and met you guys without even telling me but it was a fantastic surprise!

Love,

Elder Gunnell

The Week Before Mother's Day

Alrighty so it´s been an interesting week! But to start off with the best news that I´ve heard in awhile, Adela went to the temple to do baptisms for the dead for the first time!! I was so excited when I heard that! I was told that she loved it and that she is going to try to go more constantly from now on. She also sent me the sweetest letter that I got in our last district class (we have like a mail system kind a deal in the mission so that we can send letters to converts or families and what not). I was so excited when I got it! It was honestly so nice. So that was the best thing that happened this week I´d say!

This week was slow. Really really slow. Friday was a vacation day and nobody went to work or was in the streets. I thought that it would be a super slow day for us but it turned out to be the best day that we had this week! We had a new high in lessons! We had 11 lessons in just one day! And that has never happened in this area for us. But other than Friday we had some really bad luck.

Saturday we had four appointments and they all fell through. Yipppeee! Haha but we had our stake conference this weekend so Saturday night we were able to go to the adult session and it was sooo good!! Both adult sessions of Stake Conference that I´ve been to have been so spiritual and strong! It was really good because we were able to bring one of our investigators, Oscar, with us! The members have helped us so much with him and are always calling him and inviting him to do things and come to church and everything, if it wasn´t for the members I think we would have lost him by now. I believe that he will join the Church but I don´t know when yet. He had a baptism date in March but it´s okay, I have faith he will take the step!

Then Sunday we had the general session which also was wonderful! Thanks to Miguel being in the US we didn´t have lunch (Because we were supposed to eat with him) but since he is such a pal he asked a friend, Sebastian and his wife, to make us lunch. We had a very good time with them and laughed a lot which was nice since the week was so slow and I hadn´t really been in the laughing mood, but they brightened the day quite a bit! It was a needed break! Later we had eight appointments and I was really thinking that we were going to end the week strong but it didn´t turn out how I wasn´t hoping. Only one of the eight appointments actually worked out... Huge bummer.

Anways it´s okay that we had a slow week! Now I want to work harder to be able to have a better week this week! Hopefully we can get a lot done because in the following week we have a lot of stuff going on so it will be a little bit more difficult!

Happy birthday shout out to Grandma Debbie! I hope it is wonderful! And I hope that all the mother´s out there have a fantastic mother´s day, especially my dear Momma Gunnell.

Love always,

Elder Gunnell