Happy Turkey Day!!!

So I wish I could just send you all my mom´s email because it was wonderful but I guess they wouldn´t really be my words so I´ll share a couple of my own things which I hope will suffice. I read an article from President Uchtdorf and I have been thinking about it all week. I would like to share a part of it.

¨Have you ever heard the old saying that people who get lost tend to walk in circles?

Jan L. Souman, a German psychologist, wanted to determine scientifically if this was true. He took participants of an experiment to a large forest area and to the Sahara desert and used a global positioning system to track where they went. They had no compass or any other device. Instructions to them were simple: walk in a straight line in the direction indicated.

Dr. Souman later described what happened. “[Some] of them walked on a cloudy day, with the sun the clouds [and with no reference points in view].… [They] all walked in circles, with [several] of them repeatedly crossing their own path without noticing it.” Other participants walked while the sun was shining, with faraway reference points in view. “These …followed an almost perfectly straight course.”

This study has been repeated by others with different methodologies. All returned similar results.

Without visible landmarks, human beings tend to walk in circles.¨

 

He goes on to give to us two examples of what we can use as ¨landmarks¨ which are the Book of Mormon and General Conference. But what I would like to focus on is this line: Without visible landmarks, human beings tend to walk in circles. This I think can be used in many ways but what I like is that if we don´t have any sort of goal or purpose or something we are striving for we WILL walk in circles. We WILL NOT progress. We will be lost and many times cross over our very same trail. Without some sort of guide we are very lost. My invitation I guess you could say is that if any of you do not know what your goal is then you should find a time and talk to your so very loving Father in Heaven. He loves you and wants the best for you. He will give you a direction and help you along the way. He will help you discover a goal and has given us reference points or ¨landmarks¨ to help us get there. I know that God exists and that He isn´t just an idea. I know he has a body and is our Father. He is God but also a Father. He only wants us to be happy. 

Have a very Happy Thanksgiving! We are all so very blessed and I hope we look for the little blessing God places in our lifes every day. Every day has God´s fingerprint marked on it in one way or another.

Elder Gunnell

Transfers=New companion!‏

So Elder Bof´s and my time has ended. They will just be the glory days to look back on now. But there is still much to do and much more to learn! Elder Bof headed out the wonderful fields of San Felipe. How I would love to go back to the country/rural parts of Chile. But I´ll keep strong in the battle here in the City. I am now with Elder Soriano who was born in Venezuela but when he was 15 he and his family moved to Italy. As impossible as it may seem I am going to try to learn a couple things in Italian... I don´t think it will go well but it´s worth a shot!

I realized in my letters that I always write the things that have happened and not so much the things that I have learned. Maybe I just haven´t learned anything yet.... haha no I have learned so much. I just feel like I don´t know how to express myself very well in words so it is always hard for me to try to communicate what I have learned to all of you through email. I´ve decided to change my way of writing and focus more on the things I have learned than the things I have done. I´ve gotten to the point where I feel like I just do the same things all the time or that an investigator came to church or that an investigator didn´t come to church and what not kind of things like that. In reality I don´t think that really intereses a lot of people (me being included) haha.

To start this new concept I´ll start with something very little but very important I learned this week and next week I will try to have something a little bit more prepared!

This week I learned to trust our church leaders. Not just the higher leaders but down to the very smallest leader in the church/mission. Any leader who seeks the Spirit and follows it can give perfect counsel and advice. Just as good as any other leader in the whole church. I know what our leaders (including but not specifically: zone leaders, mission president, Apostles and Prophet) do and choose are things that we should always support and follow with faith. When we need a little assurance we can always look to our loving Heavenly Father and ask to make sure that everything is okay. He´ll tell us that all is well. Maybe he won´t tell us in one big answer but he will give us enough light to see ahead of us for the next few steps as we follow our leaders.

I also learned that we can have peace in our lives and souls by always studying our scriptures, going to church, and praying fervently. By doing those three things there is nothing in the world that can keep us from feeling the love and peace that God gives to us (Romans 8: 35, 37-39).

Love and miss all. Have a fantastic week!

Elder Gunnell

Cut short on time‏

It´s always been hard to get everything written in an hour and I have even less time today cause I´ve gotta look up a few things for my class tomorrow so please forgive me!

A quick run down on the week:

Monday we spent our p-day in the Santiago just visiting a few shops and watching some shows in the main plaza. Ate some yummy food and that was about it!

Tuesday was a very good day we found a couple new people and we had a lot of lessons and people to teach.

Miercoles we had our District class. I think I taught a decent lesson and another Elder had a very good lesson!

Thursday we did an interchange for a day! I went to a different area and spent a day there with an Elder from Arizona. We had a veeery fun day doing service and chatting. Found a new couple while we were there.

Friday just a normal day but we were both very tired becuase we both stayed up way too late in the interchange... haha bad chioces always have bad consequences.

Saturday was quite the day! We went and visited a less active family who was going to a baby shower (fun fact: in chile they use the frase ¨baby shower¨ in english) for a woman in our ward and they were going to make cupcakes. My comp volunteered me to help so I made some lemon cupcakes! I think they turned out okay! Afterwards I had to go do a baptismal interview and then we had a Family Home Evening with some converts and their friends. All in all a very good day!

Sunday was great because of Church and then had some visits after! 

Today is our p-day because they decided to change it so that´s why we didn´t write yesterday. We decided to go check out a park that we had never been to. GUESS WHAT WE FOUND?! Two cement silos that they have turned in to rock climbing walls (pictures on blog)! They are just in the middle of these gigantic park! There are a bunch of routes for top roping and lead climing and on one side they have a boulding wall with a bunch of routes.. Oh I just about died when I saw it all. It was so beautiful to my eyes!! Will I get permission to climb? Probably not... But it was still nice to feel the holds again and remember my glory days haha. One day I´ll go back to the mountains and climb.

Have a great week! Or not, the choice is yours.

Elder Gunnell

 ROCK CLIMBING!!!! BOULDERING!!!!! AHHHH!

 Enjoying the spoils of a pkg he received. 

Halloween!!

So like sometimes I start my emails off with some experiences or some spiritual insight but today I´ve gotta start my letter off with two very unimportant and realitively short little stories that made my week.

Number 1: We were visiting a family and they have a son named Felipe (he is six). The kid is insane haha but soo funny. He just has a lot of energy, well like any little kid, but is contained in a tiny little apartment. Anyways we had recently gotten to the house and his mom had made us jell-o to eat. He was really excited and wanted to serve us to he excitedly and rapidly went and got the jell-o from the fridge and put it on the table then grabbed two bolls and two spoons. He served the first bowl to my companion and when he went to put jell-o in my bowl he realized that no one was really paying attention to him because we were talking to his mom and dad and I think his little brain realized that he had a gigantic bowl of jell-o in front of him and no one watching him so what does any kid do? The kid drops the spoon he was using to serve with and digs both his hands in the jell-o and just starts shoveling handfulls and handfulls into his mouth. Honestly it was impressive how fast he downed them. He had the BIGGEST grin on his face in the world. It was like he was feeling complete and total joy and nothing else was important. He then heard us laughing because it was so funny and turns around, face so full of Jell-o haha just thinking about it makes me laugh. His parents were laughing and didn´t react so fast and he noticed that they still hadn´t stopped him so he turned back around and kept going. Hahah funniest thing I´ve seen in awhile. His face radiated joy! Haha

Number 2: Halloween night. It was the first Halloween for my companion cause they don´t really celebrate or do anything in Argentina I guess. Anywas we were walking around to see how the apartments were decorated and everything and all the sudden we here some kid yelling, ¨Give me candy! Give me candy! I need more candy!¨ we look around to find out where the voice is coming from and on the second floor we see a little kid jumping on his bed then all the sudden he is banging on the bars on his window (window is open but he has bars on his window like in the first harry potter movie... #nerd) and still screaming the same thing. Then he starts climbing all over the bars in his window sticking is head out and yelling the same things and oh my gosh the little child had so much sugar running through his veins. It was hilarious. He was crazy for candy.

Those were the two best moments of this week I´m convinced. Although we had a very good week and the we were able to confirm all three of those that were baptized since they couldn´t be confirmed last week for the stake conference!

Thanks for everything! Hope everyone is doing well!

Over and out 

 Cow blood wrapped in intestines! It was... Actually not as gross as I thought it`d be! Haha in reality it wasn`t too bad at all.

 Haciendo sushi de nuevo! Pero esta vez con una familia! Sushi again!:) And me getting some sewing done;) haha #live

Bad Week for Elder Bof

So now that I have like a whole seven minutes to write this general email I´ll try to do a quick summary of what happened this week.

We are working very hard with two families, a single mom, and a new family that we just recently found. Talk about families!! With two of the three families we have got to wait until they get married. One of the families will be getting married in December!!!:) They were the only ones we could bring to Stake conference because just about everyone we invited happened to get sick Saturday night or Sunday and ALL of them went to the hospital... Nice. I hope it wasn`t something I cooked... Haha no but the good news is that they are all better now:) Nothing too serious happened to any of them!

Like I said in the subject line, my comp had a rough week. He broke his camera, payed 55 dollars to fix it, got his wallet robbed by a taxi driver (luckily he only robbed us of Elder Bof`s wallet. It was an interesting experience.) and they haven`t been able to find the guy and we are in the biggest city in Chile so the odds of it turning up are one in a million. Also I am convinced that just about all missionaries will be robbed of something in two years. Later that day he realized that he lost his SD card and then remembered that it was also in his wallet. Then he heard some sad news from home. He is doing well but prayers would be appreciated. To help out a little bit we decided we would make sushi since we are both fanatics! We made it last Thursday then again today! Sooo good!

That will wrap it up for now! Over and out.

Elder Gunnell

Baptism and WOW I´m tired after this week!‏

It was one heck of a week. We worked like crazy. Not a joke. It was such a good week and I loved it. Every day we came home and were just exhausted. Which was kinda bad because the house was a disaster since we had no desires to clean or organize anything. It`s a little better now!

I don`t really know what to say in this email because the week was so full of things!

First of all we had a baptism! Her name is Luisa. She and her family lived in another part of Santiago and moved into our ward two or three months ago. She was already meeting with missionaries in her old house and we she came here she found the missionaries here so that they would go to her house. The original plan was to baptize her and her husband (they got married just so they could get baptized) but he isn`t sure yet. He knows it is right but hasn`t made the decision. She was kinda getting unpatient haha and basically said, ¨well why do I have to wait for him if I know it`s right and I know it is what I need to do? I want to get baptized the 18th of October.¨ How were we going to say no to that?!? Haha so she was able to be baptized yesterday. It was a very gorgeous day. In the morning before church we went to their house to make breakfast for the family and went to church with her! I think that her husband will get baptized too, I don`t know when but I believe he will do it.

The two that got baptized last week weren´t able to be confirmed this week because of an emergency that happened. We call about 10 minutes before the meeting started and it turns out they were in the car on their way to the hospital... They had gotten ready for church even but right before something happened! It was a little bit of a bummer and sad but all is well now. We went to visit with them after church and they were doing okay. We helped clean their house, make dinner and wash the dishes. They will get confirmed in two weeks since this upcoming week is Stake Conference! I´m pretty lucky because I was here in this stake the last time they had stake conference! haha

My companion Elder Bof is awesome. He is such a punk but man we laugh a lot. It has been so fun with him and he has helped me work harder than I ever have in my mission. We have been seeing progress and are looking for one or two more baptisms this transfer! Hopefully we can reach them!

I am doing very good and getting excited for Halloween then CHRISTMAS!!!!! Haha I´ve already put on the Christmas music a little bit. Mom, you`d be a little annoyed but dad would be on my side I think. Haha I just love that holiday so much. There is a whole different vibe around Christmas time and it is such a good, fun time to share the gospel.

That´s all for now folks. Have a fabulous week!

Simón Bolivar and TWO baptisms!!!!!!!!‏

I can honestly say we started this transfer with flying colors. I don`t know how we did but man we had an awesome week. We taught and taught and contacted and taught and contacted. And we were able to end it with two baptisms! TWO! Thanks to Elder Bof and Elder Terry who were working so hard in this area before I got here.

 I am soo extremely tired. I´ve never been so tired before in my mission but I feel like we don`t ever have time to rest. It was one heck of a week to say the least. 

We are working with a young couple that have two little girls. The wife will be baptized this upcoming Sunday or the next for sure. Without doubt. We are working with the husband because he knows it is right and good and supports his wife 100 percent in her baptism but he is just lacking a firm answer. I think if he doesn`t get baptized with her he will get baptized soon after. 

Funny story! Last night after finishing up everything we decided to make some food but we burnt it (small fire on the stove... haha) so we opened up all the windows and the door and went outside (I now live on the 10th floor of an apartment building) to get some fresh air. We both had the grand idea of walking over to the railing to watch all the little kids playing soccer below. As we walked away from the open door it slammed shut from the wind..... We then realized how dumb we were because neither one of us had the keys and we weren`t really dressed well. Like we had our white shirts on but without ties and we just had our sandals on and it was chilly out! But lucky we got into the house about two hours later. No big deal. Also something funny, we lost the keys today:) haha so good work Elder Bof and Elder Gunnell! I think it is funny but I don`t think my comp thinks it is as funny. But oh well it already happened, what are we gonna do now? We think we just left the keys at the stake center which is like 20-30 minutes away so we just need to go back with someone who has the keys!

I´m excited for what other things we are going to see in this sector! It has been awesome with a latin comp, I love it.

Over and out,

Elder Gunnell