Baptism!!

We had a baptism! What? Haha it was kind of a surprise baptism and I don`t remember if I said anything about it last week... But a member had lost his church records about two years ago and so we had the chance to reteach the lessons to him and get him baptized! Haha it was actually really funny because I had never taught all the principles that we as missionaries have to teach all in one lesson. It was fun! We had a lesson with him on Wednesday, the interview on Thursday and the baptism on Saturday! Him and his girlfriend even went out and bought us ties for doing it. What sweethearts.

We had our interviews with the Mission President this week (we do them every other transfer). Like always it was wonderful. He is such a sincere guy and I like him a lot. Also! I ended up having to teach our whole zone for a little bit while the other two district leaders were in their interviews with the Pres and his wife. Which was kinda fun! I made a story and turned it into a madlib kinda deal where we replaced words and verbs with things they said and then read the story! 

This Wednesday we have a multi-zone conference (nice, I don`t have to teach!). Because it is the week of the 18th we are going to do everything together as a mission so that we can celebrate the 18th with our wards and the members there. Speaking of the 18th I am sooooo excited!!!! Our ward is doing a party from 11 in the morning until who knows when. Until everyone leaves! We are gonna have so much food and so many games! Man I´m pumped. It will basically be like the fouth of July in the States but without fireworks. I´m a little sad this will be the last 18th that I´ll be able to celebrate but I guess that means I`ll just have to come back sometime in the future!

I had did an interchange(is that a word in english) with one of the missionaries in my distrit. He is Chilean and a very cool kid! He came to my area and my comp went to his. It was a good time! But we stayed up way too late talking.

I feel like there was a lot more to say but I´ve forgotten everything.... Sorry! Haha

Also I forgot to mention a happy birthday shoutout to Kui! And Grandma Rinderknecht!

We`ll see you next week! Nos vemos la próxima semana!

Elder Gunnell

Time flies when you´re busy!‏

It was a VERY fast week! We had things to do everyday! Also I´ve never done so many family home evenings in my mission. It´s like every other day we have something planned. We have projects in the house to help the owners make it look better and we have service projects all over the place! I love doing service so I´ve been seeking out every opportunity that I have had!

This week we did a wonderful family home evening in the church. We invited Veronica and her family to come to the church with us. Before had we had set up the church so that we could be able to teach about the principles of the Gospel like faith, repentance, baptism, the sacrament, holy ghost and persevere to the end but we also did it in the form of a tour because she had never been inside the church before. So for example to talk about baptism we went to the baptismal font and we had a picture of Christ when he was baptised right there and talked about it. In the primary we talked about faith and how important children are and how they are taught faith from a very young age. We went to the sacrament table to talk about the sacrament and the atonement that Christ did to make it posible for us to return to him no matter how many times we mess up and fall.

It went soo well, way better than I thought it would! She also loved it and now all her little kids want to do is come so that they can go to primary haha! They didn´t come last week but they had some problems over the weekend. This week for sure. I hope. At least that is going to be our focus. 

We are also helping reactivate a family who have a daughter of eight years old (Juan, Flor, and Anto). They are progressing a lot and invited us to eat lunch with them this last Sunday! They also were going to come to church but got home really late from their nephew´s birthday so..... We´ll see if they come this next week!

It was a bummer because we had invited nearly 20 people to church but in the end only a few arrived... It was a bummer but nothing to get down on! It happens a lot and it won´t get better by complaining about it so we´ll just keep inviting them for next week!:)

My class went well! We have an awesome district(the best in the zone I say). The only sister missionaries in the zone are in my district which is a bonus because they are dang good missionaries. We are also designing a t-shirt for our district which will hopefully be getting finished up here soon!

We are also in the process of painting our house and we are hoping to finish that today so that it won´t be so ugly. Oh! I finally got a new mattress and a new bed frame!! My bed fram use to be bent, it looked like a smiley face. I started waking up really sore so then I took it off the frame and stuck it upside down on the ground and jumped on it for a bit hoping that it would straighten out a little, which it did... Kinda, it turned into a frowny face. I slept like that for about a week to no avail. So I just took away the whole bed frame and put the mattress on the floor. It was a little better but I had an awful mattress. But I now have a new mattress and bed frame:) hallelluya!!

Think that´s it for now.... Have a marvelous week!

Elder Gunnell

SOCCER!!!

So our mission president decided to let us play soccer again! We can only play for two P-days out of the six in the transfer BUT we can play. Today was the first time we have been able to play in nearly a year!!! Wow my touch is bad but it was fun to play it again! I still love it but I think I`ll just stick to playing it just for fun. It did bring back all those soccer tournaments and highschool soccer memories and they were good times. But I feel like it`s had it`s time now.

This week we were able to find a lot of less active members in their houses which wasn`t exactly what we were trying to do but it went really well!! Actually it went so well that FIVE of them came to church!! What?! That was a huge shocker but something wonderful.

The weeks just go by so fast I don`t really know what happened when haha. Everytime I go to church I feel like it gets better and better. I don`t know why and I don`t know how to explain it but it makes me want to bring everyone in the whole world there to feel that spirit. It´s always a bummer to see how many people reject that opportunity everyday... Sometimes it gets tiring to be rejected so often but you just gotta keep looking ya know? I mean the getting rejected isn`t really the hard part, the hard part is knowing what they are saying no to. I don´t care if they say no to me but to say no to all the blessing God has to offer? I don`t get it but I guess they don`t always understand either. It´s sad. 

It`s starting to get nice and hot! I can`t beleive we are already going into spring! The 18th is coming up soon and it should be a blasssst! It`s like the 4th of July in the states.

That`s it for now! Have a great week!

Also happy birthday Grandpa Mark this week! Acutally tomorrow if I´m not mistaken!

Elder Gunnell

Transfers, stake conference, a new calling

So transfers were today! I feel like I was just writing this same thing a couple weeks ago but six weeks have already gone on by. By the end of this transfer we will already be in October. My family will be heading off to Hawaii, Addason will be turning 15 (holy cow she can get her permit... Maybe wait on that one for a little bit mom and dad.) and I will have celebrated my last birthday here. How time flies. We didn´t have any transfers! I´m still in the ward Gambino with Elder Martinez (from San Diego, California) we have another six weeks here! In this transfer I am certain we will have at least one baptisms here.

We had stake conference this weekend and once again it was wonderful! One of the seventy, Elder Urra, spoke to us in the adult and general session and he spoke very well. We sang in the choir which went alright I think! I´m still not an amazing singer but I think I have made a little bit of progress.... I didn´t feel especially inclined to share anything from the conference so I´ll just leave it at that! Haha

As for a new calling I am now a district leader which I guess is good? All of my companions have been district leader so I have a pretty good idea about what to do. The thing I´m not too pumped about is that I have to teach my district every week which in reality isn´t too bad since that´s the life of a missionary, teaching! Sometimes I just don´t know what to teach to missionaries that have been here for longer than I have. I guess I have to realize that I have been here for awhile though. I always think that I´ve been here for like six or seven months but it has already been more than a year! I´ll have to be starting college a year from now... Gross. Haha

We have been recieving good comments about the activity including two families have called and set up appointments to talk to the bishop to be able to fix a couple things and be able to be worthy to recieve a temple recomend to be able to participate in family history!!! Woooohooo!! I was pretty excited when I heard about that. That really was the whole goal, help people get excited about it.

Oh!! Last night we had a family home evening with a family... Well actually it fell through. I even made brownies. But we had extra brownies and we didn´t know what to do so we went and visited a less active family to share brownies with them. It turned out to be one of the best lessons that I´ve had in the mission. They have been inactive for eight or nine years and we have been visiting them for awhile but they haven´t shown much enthusiasm about going to church or anything like that but last night they basically taught themselves and convinced themselves to come to church so that he can baptize their daughter. We decided to do it in a family home evening way. We are going to do family home evenings BUT we gave the little pamphlet of the Restoration to the dad and HE is in charge of teaching us and his family. The next family home evening will be taught by the mom and so on and so forth. We also are going to go do service for them this Saturday!! It´s gonna be good!

That was the week! There are still people to find that need the light of the members of the church in a world that every day gets ever darker. We have the chance to be able to find them! 

Elder Gunnell

Activity=Success!‏

The activity that we had been planning for like a month and a half finally happened!! I would go to say that it was a huge success. No, it didn´t go perfectly which isn´t a shocker. After being Exec we got to learn things don´t usually go exactly how we planned them but you just have to enjoy it anyways! And I think that was how this activity went. I will be sending a lot of photos that will be on my blog. 

President Videla and his wife were both able to come and give us a little presentation on the importance of temple work and how temple work and Family History work together. It was fantastic. They are such good teachers and speakers. We had a little capacitation on how to use familysearch.org which went a little long which left us with too little time to do an activity we had planned but it´s okay! We had a couple laptops there and ready so that those who didn´t have an account could make one and get to know familyseach a little bit. We had asked a couple people to write out experiences with family history and bring pictures of their ancestors. We even asked people to bring some treats that have been traditions in their families for a long time! It was great. 

All the leaders in the ward were very pleased which made me feel good and I felt like everyone left feeling uplifted! It was a good experience for all of us.

That´s it for now! Til next week!

Elder Gunnell

Something my companion made

Invitations

 Mission president and his wife

 The Bishop and his wife are really neat people

Me

Some snow.  Oh how I miss the snow. 

A Bunch of Thanks

Just a quick thank you to all those who have written (wrote? wrotten? I don´t remember. Lo siento.) me. I feel so much love and support from you all and I need to express my thanks. Especially to my family. I think and pray about you all everyday and ask that God protects you. Thank you for your prayers!

This last week has been full of planning, as will this next week, for our Family History activity that we have planned for this Sunday the 16th! We are excited and really hoping that it goes well and that those who come feel the spirit and the spirit of Elijah. In the Liahona last month (July) there was an article by Kent F. Richards and this is a little quote from it, ¨At a recent temple open house, an Apostle gathered his family around the holy altar in a sealing room. He taught them that everything we do in the Church—classes, activities, programs, and meetings—prepares us to come to the temple altar to receive the sealing ordinance. The temple represents the very essence of your Heavenly Father’s plan for your eternal happiness and progression.¨ So that little quote is basically the idea that we have and want to get across to the people that come. Everything we do in the church is to some day to be in that place and after we´ve done it for ourselves we have to start doing it for the rest of our family that never had the opportunity to do it for themselves.

We´ve been visiting a man from Haiti. He is so humble, positive, kind, loving, and everything else. He has a personality that I love. He hasn´t been coming to church or really progressing yet but we are hoping we can help him take those steps. He is very inteligent and has good questions. Everytime we go by we all leave better than we were when we came.

We are still working with a family but the two times that we have talked to them about coming to Church the morning of or the night of they haven´t come... It might be due to the fact that she is a single mom with three kids but we will be persistent because this Gospel is what her family needs and I´m sure of it.

I also recomend that everyone reads this article online that was written by E. Jeffrey Hill, ¨Five Ways to Celebrate the Sabbath as a Family¨ Haha I did a lot of reading (kinda) this last week and I just love the articles that prophets and other servants of the Lord write for our benefit. God really does want to bless us! We just need to do things right and we can recieve those blessings!

Have a fantastic week! 

Love always,

Elder Gunnell

Dogs, service, temple, flea market

So a really quick letter to wrap up this week! 

On tuesday we couldn´t leave in the morning because our neighbors two HUGE dogs got out and they are not very nice dogs and wanted to eat us so we couldn´t really leave until they got put back in their yard. Haha! That had never happened to me before!

We did a lot of service this week! That including a lot of painting as well. We also decided to paint our own house because it was really ugly! We picked out an olive green color for the walls, a beige for the trim, and a nice brown for the cabinets. When they dried we ended up with a teal blue, a bright yellow and a nice brown! Yay haha at least we won´t be living here forever. (picture will come when I take one so you can see that i´m not lying)  

This is the green they told us we were buying......

Blue walls and yellow trim! Hooray!

 I`m thinking about asking for a new bed... No wonder I haven`t been sleeping well! Haha

We had a very successful trip to the temple! It is such a powerful place and I love taking investigators there.

Trip to the temple! We invited the two families of the girls but on Friday night (we went Saturday) things came up and weren´t able to go. The elderly lady was also going to bring her family but they had to go work in the flea market so we ended up just going with these three and us. It was actually a very good little tour! It was beautiful with all the newly planted flowers. I love to see the temple.

We are still setting up a stand in the flea market with a sign that says everything is free! My comp wanted to make our sign better and center it around the family, Christ and our activity and it turned out really really good! 

Next week I´ll have something a little better for the letter! Thank you for your support and prayers. Miss you all and I pray daily for you.

Love,

Elder Gunnell