The Beginning of the Lasts

It`s official. I am in my very last transfer in the mission. The whole thing feels like a dream!!! I can`t believe it`s already coming to a close... I am veryyy excited to have six more weeks and see what other fantastic experiences I have. I`m positive that this will be my all time best transfer.

Speaking of transfers!! You will NOT believe that Elder Catlett and I are staying together in our same sector for our last six weeks!! Haha I couldn`t believe it at least. Everyone was so sure that he would be leaving. To our great surprise we get to finish our missions together! Haha these are going to be some fuuuuunny weeks. To say the least, I`m happy and if this transfer goes as fast as the last two with him, I`ll be home in a bling of an eye. Can`t complain.

Today we went to the temple and after the session they invited us to be witnesses in some sealings so we did and as we left the sealing room we bumped into the people that were headed into a session. I took a quick glance and thought I saw a familiar face, did a double take and realized it was Casey Lowe! (For those of you who don`t know we went to school together) We didn`t really have much time to talk but it was real neat seeing him! He had come to Santiago to go to the temple for the last time because he is finishing his mission. Shout out to him and congrats! He seemed very happy and like he didn`t have any regrets, I hope to feel the same!:)

We had quite a monumental moment with Juana`s (the girl who may or may not be getting baptized this week... Her date might be changed if she wants!) mom went to church with her!! They both told us that they would never ever be baptized or go to church or anything like that and now Juana is going to be baptized and her mother went to church!! Haha it was incredible and fantastic and her mommed loved it! The reason we might change her baptism is simply because her mom might be out of town and we really want to her to be able to see it and participate in it!

Our good friend Omar paid us with a huge BBQ for all the service we have been doing in his house. I haven`t eaten that much meat since my last Thanksgiving in the states. It wasn`t quite as big as the BBQs that Kui does and the meat and chicken weren`t quite as good as Kui`s BUT I can`t complain cause it was still delicious.

We had the BEST family home evening night last night in the bishops house. We invited the two new Elders that are in our ward to come and we took Juana AND her cousin Veronica for the first time. We had BLAST! It was very successful! 

I have some high hopes for this last transfer and I think we will see some magnificent things here!:)

Please make this week the best week ever! I want to end with a wonderful quote from our wonderful Prophet, ¨This is our one and only chance at mortal life—here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by as you plan for that illusive and nonexistent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do. Instead, find joy in the journey—now.¨ 

So be HAPPY! And be happy NOW! Not tomorrow. Don`t waste even a single day being unhappy:)

With love,

Elder Gunnell

7 Weeks

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHOUTOUT TO LANDO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

This is the LAST week of this transfer.... That means next week starts a new one... Which means it will be that LAST transfer of my mission... Can you believe it?! I can and I can`t at the same time. Either way I am excited!! I`m excited to start my last transfer and do my best and I am terribly excited to be home too sooo yeah!

So.. Wesly was confirmed by the bishop, Wesly`s best friend! That was good news. He has definitely been seeing some serious blessings from the man upstairs. He had quite a few little jobs here and there this last week! He will for sure keep seeing the blessings because after sacrament meeting he went and asked the bishop to help him a little with the whole tithing thing. So that was a real testimony builder. Here is a young man who literally, truly has almost nothing then God blesses him, and the first thing he does is pay his tithing. He is a great guy. 

We had a really neat experience with an investigator named Juana. I can`t remember if I have talked about her and her family before but she is 23 years old, has a little daughter, Sofia, lives with her parents and a cousin. Her cousin Veronica is such a HIPPIE!! And she is soo funny. Juan has now come to church three times and even went to Wesly`s baptism with Veronica. Anyways, last week we went to visit the whole family which a returned missionary who was our ward mission leader for like a month or so and now has a new callinb but with him and the family we talked about baptism and why it is so necessary and what promises we make to God and the promises he makes to us. None of them really wanted to set a baptismal date so we left them with the invitation that they pray and find out if it really was something they needed to do. Later in the week we passed by and Juana told us that she had done it... AND that she had recieved her answer. And since she recieved that first answer she had only recieved more! She herself decided to be baptized the 26 of June. The only bad news is that one of us may or may not be here for her baptism. She has been progressing really well since then! Pray for her!! She needs this change in her life!

I`m a little bummed about having transfers this week because Elder Catlett and I are best of friends and I would love to end with him. We will see how it goes! Whatever God needs. 

Hope my family is safe camping and that they had a good `ol time!

Til next week,

Elder Gunnell

So....I got pooped on by a bird....the good news is that it ONLY hit my backpack!!! Haha so much luck.

te batize yè Wesly (that´s Creole)‏

Wesly was baptized yesterday!! Was that a miracle or what? It was a difficult goal to reach but it was absolutely wonderful when it happened. I love this guy. He´s great. So darn sincere and genuine. Like I mentioned before he was going to get baptized last week but didn´t because he was so worried about helping a few friends and finding a job. He told us that this week was the week for sure. We kept in contact with him throughout the week and we always taught him in the house of a member, Cristian, who lives nearby and that was a massive help and I´ll explain why here in a minute. Everything started going really well and it was basically a fairytale ending because nothing went wrong! Other than the fact that he forgot a towell, we were able to get ahold of a member who brought him one so all went well! Haha

The best part of the baptism was afterwards when he stood up to say a couple things about how he felt and his experience with the Church this far. What he said was sweeeet! He explained his story a little bit and basically testified to his two friends that were there that they should make the same decision of being baptized because it is the right decision and the way to follow Christ and all sorts of just great things. His spanish was fantastic too. He´s been here for like two months and already speaks fluently. I don´t know how he does it! It´s a gift. We´ve been learning a little bit of Creole with him and our other Haitian friends. We can now do successful contacts en Creole! haha it´s fun stuff. Anyways Wesly is great and was able to get baptized and we´re pretty happy about it.

Another big thing happened which was that a new bishop was called! It is wonderful for us because we do family home evenings with him every week and all of our converts, less actives, and investigators are best friends with him!! In fact he is the member that would always let us go to his house to teach Wesly. So Wesly´s best friend in the church is the new bishop. We are excited about that because he is going to do a wonderful job and I think that we will see some good stuff in the next couple of months! At least until I come home:) if I stay in this area!

We´ve been doing some serious service in our area which I absolutely love. We are helping an almost active member´s house move along quite quickly. He didn´t even have a roof when I got here and now we are finishing the walls on the inside! It takes us forever because we don´t EVER know what we are doing but after we learn we become somewhat efficient. We almost always learn when we are about to finish though. Oh well! He is an awesome guy.

We got some serious rain last week which meant a few things, 1. My feet got wayy wet since my shoes are getting older. They are still holding up really well though!! 2. the mountains got pounded with snow=Homesickness because anytime I see snow in the mountains I think of skiing and being in the mountains. Can´t wait for that! and 3. clean air for a couple of hours. I love the rain. It´s not the funnest to work in because we have to walk around in it all day and it´s cold but I still love it. It´s a good change. It´s now sunny but still very very cold in the morning. Our house gets sooo cold at night and in the morning and our electrical circuit only allows us to plug in one little air heater or else the whole house gets the power cut so we just warm up one room and the rest of the house is freeeeezing. Only two more months thought so I think I´ll be able to make it:)

Have a magnificent week!

One Miracle and One Bummer‏

Like I was talking about in my last letter we were in the process to help two of our converts get to the temple, one of them being Rosa. Well after quite a lot of preparation and organizing we were able to print out four names of hers (her four children that have passed away) and she was able to take them to the temple!! She was baptized for her daughter and the Bishop was baptized for her three sons!! That was a huge miracle especially because I didn`t know how things were going to go with her when she first got baptized. Now things are going great. She is understanding more and more, is participating, and went to the temple for the first time! I am pretty happy about her progress.

The bummer part of the week was that we met up with one of our Haitian investigators, Wesly, and he told us that he was finally ready to be baptized and wanted it to happen this Sunday! That got us all excited but then on Saturday he said that it wasn`t going to be possible for a couple of reasons. We talked to him for awhile over the phone. Like 40 minutes because he wasn`t home and in the end decided that it wouldn`t be able to happen this week. He said it would be best if it was next week. We hope that this isn`t a reoccurrying thing. We have an appointment with him tomorrow so we will see what he has to say!

Last week was our ward conference week! It went decent! We had been assigned to do a ward activity on Friday night. We sat down with our ward mission leader once to be able to plan it all out like a month ago and then ever since then we never really talked about it and when we asked about it and asked what we needed to do to help plan it out he said don`t worry and that everything was ready! It started at 8 on Friday. Nobody showed up. At around 8:20 a couple people showed up.... Then a few more and a few more. That`s how it went until 9 when we finally started. In the end it was really fun and turned out decent. It obviously could have gone better but hey there were plenty of positive things that happened!

I made the BEST pumpkin chocolate chip bread ever yesterday for a family home evening. Mom, thank you so much for that recipe. That is the best thing in the world. I forgot how delicious it was.

All in all it was a good week! I feel like I am always missing something but I`ll just end it here!

Elder Gunnell

10...Ten...Diez...‏

That´s how many more weeks left. According to my comp because I, obviously, am 100% focused and not counting the hours.. I mean days!...

This last Friday we had a wonderful visit from the Area President of South America South presidency, Walter F. Gonzales. You could say it was pretty neat! He is a real live wizard with the scriptures and basically a genious because he would quote a scripture in spanish (from memory) then in english (from memory) and sometimes even in Portugese. He talked a lot about how to be a good missionary and great things like that and then also blessed us with some things that can really bless our lives and the lives of others. He shared how we need to lead lives like Christ. He taught that to be able to do that we need to learn about his life, study it then ¨copy¨ and ¨paste¨ it into our lives. He also explained that sometimes there are glitches or viruses that cause the ¨paste¨ part to be changed or pasted a little off and that is why it is necessary to constantly be learning and studying the life of Christ and to ¨copy¨ and ¨paste¨ constantly. Not just doing it once and believing that we are good for life.

He talked a lot about faith and how necessary it really is in everything we do! And when we set goals we need to look through the ¨eye of faith¨ he talked a lot that and read a bunch of scriptures about it but I don´t have them with me. They were great though!

What I really am excited about for this week though is that two of our converts are getting ready to go to the temple this Thursday to do baptisms!!!!!! One; Melsince, will be doing baptisms of names that are already in the temple but the other, Rosa, will be getting baptized for her daughter who passed away in 1995 and is going to be bringing the names of her three sons with her! I am soo excited!! It will fantastic for them both!!

That´s it for this week! Thanks for the emails! Have a splendid week!

Elder Gunnell

We climbed up that same hill that we climbed a couple of weeks ago but we took some other friends of ours and we left at 5:30 in the morning to be able to see the sunrise!

So I just want everyone to laugh at me for a minute because... Out of the 3 treats I made, two of them flopped on me. So that´s no big deal. I made a chocolate zucchini bread which turned out incredibly good. Delicious. Then I tried to make my mother´s famous eclairs and I guess I took them out too early so that was a bummer and they just were flat. Then I found out last night that an Elder who got to our mission a week ago had his birthday last week and since we were going to meet up with our zone today I quickly decided to make him a cake for today. I tried to make a chocolate angel food cake and when I took it out and turned it upside down half of it fell out so I flipped it back over causing it to fall in on itself. Out of spite and a little frustration I threw it back in the oven and put the flame on full blast so it would finish cooking. It never finished so I just left it there and went to bed. Pretty lame haha but oh well!! It´s the thought that counts! In the end I made a little truffle thing with the cake, pudding and cream. Turned out really sugary but not too bad.

I would like to share a quick little thing that I read recently! It´s found in Helman 7

Nephi wishes he could live in the days of the first Nephi when all the people kept the commandments (see verse 7) but in verse 9 he says,¨But behold, I am consigned that these are my days...¨ I like it a lot in spanish because it says ¨commisioned¨ instead of ¨consigned¨ but I know that all of us were commissioned or consigned to be here at this time and that there are things God wants and expects us to do! We just need to ask for his help to know the things he wants from us.

Sorry it´s so short today!

Elder Gunnell

Rootbeer floats

Mother's Day Week

Happy belated Mother´s day to my sweetest momma gunnell! Also Happy Birthday to my little Sister AVERY!!!!!! Everyone wish her a happy birthday and make it wonderful for her!!

So this little will be a cute, short one.

Last week was a little rough for me and great for my comp! I don´t know what is was maybe the spirit or maybe just good luck but man did he have some awesome contacts! He found some incredible people with whom we set up appointments with and some we already started teaching. I, on the other hand, did not have that luck or spirit haha or God wanted me to learn some sort of lesson because about 95% of contacts that I did rejected me with a whole bunch of swear words (like a whooooole bunch) and a slammed door. Goodnight was it rough. It was funny, but rough. My comp got a good laugh out of it and I so did I later on. It was a fun week in the end but haha wow I was doing something wrong I guess! Oh well this next week will be great:)

We had an incredible lesson with a guy named Pablo. He is a friend of the less active family that we are helping to reactivate. He watches their house while they are working and does little jobs here and there in the house. He is a very sincere guy who is just kind of lost in the world right now. The Gospel is helping him find direction. He is a smart guy who just needs someone to help him find the right path! We are in that process!

God exists. I know it because he pulled a prank on us yesterday. I think He thought it would be funny if our water pipe broke and turned into a geyser. So with His help, a little soccer ball, and two missionaries it happened. We broke our water pipe (the pipe that gives water to our whole house). You might ask yourself, ¨Why did you not just shut off the water to the house?¨ Well it was because we managed to break the pipe before that little knob that shuts off the water so we were stuck with a geyser for awhile. We took turns trying to put enough pressure on it so that it would slow down or stop with our hands, feet, towels, putty, boards and others. All the while just soaking ourselves. We eventually slowed it down to a stop with a towel and my comps foot. Someone was supposed to come this morning and fix it, we went to the temple bright and early so I´m not actually sure if it is fixed or not yet. We´ll see.

Keep your heads up! Be happy! Good things are on their way.

Elder Gunnell

A preeetty sunset (not as good as CV) and awesome path that we started laying (should have seen it before... it was nasty).