It's Already Easter!!

So I´d like to ask forgiveness for not writing an email last week (sorry mom)! 

Things went well the week before but there just wasn´t much to say! At least I didn´t feel like there was much to say so I wrote some more personal emails!

Anyways a couple big things have happened this week! My comp headed home yesterday! He is now relaxing in Brazil with his family so a big congrats to him for finishing his mission! This week is a little weird because the new missionaries won´t get here until next week so we haven´t had transfers yet! All the companions who had comps that went home got paired up with eachother so currently I am with one of the zone leaders from Colina, Elder Clarine from Arizona. We are spending the first part of the week in my area and the other half in his.

Today we had the most wonderful opportunity to go to the temple!!!!! I think the last time I went to actually go do temple work was last year in May or June... So it´s been awhile. It was great. I had forgotten how pretty the Santiago temple is inside. It´s beautiful. Who wouldn´t want to be able to spend time in it?! We set up another appointment to go next week, the week before GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! I´m so excited!

It´s still hot as ever here. Fall started already but everyone has been telling us that summer is going to last a long time this year so we will be sweating for a little bit longer. We have been able to find some new people to teach. Sadly we find a few people and then we never find them again or they decide that they are done with us. Just gotta pick the wheat from the tares. I´m hoping that next week I get a comp that is ready to work so that we can turn this area around!

If you haven´t seen the new video from the church ¨Hallelujah¨ I would recommend that you watch it and share it! It has a really powerful message and we have had really good results by showing it to people here. Actually I love showing it!!

Love you all! Have a good week! We´ll talk to you later!

Elder G

Happy Birthday Momma Gunnell!!‏

It´s my marvelous mother´s birthday this week so everyone love her to death like she deserves!

So this week I will just share two things! One is from what I learned with Elder Bednar and the other is an experience I had this week!

To start off I´ll share something that Elder Bednar taught us. He gave us an example that really stuck with me. He started talking about objects. Just any kind of object. A glass, his scriptures, the flowers. They all need an outward force to be moved or to do anything. He then explained that our scriptures are the same thing! They are an inanimate object. They need an outward force to make something happen. And what is the common mistake that we all make? We all go to the scriptures TO BE ACTED UPON. Or, in another words, we go to the scriptures and tell them, ¨Hey, we are all unanimated objects and we want YOU to act upon us, okay? We are just gonna sit here and read and whenever you are ready give us something that we need to know or something we should do just give us a heads up. Por favor.¨ We´ll to be waiting a real long time if we do that. We are children of God. The power to act is WITHIN us. Thankfully we don´t need any outward for to make us act or move. We can decide and do for ourselves. What we need to be better at is us ACTING UPON THE SCRIPTURES not the scriptures acting upon us. We need to take something with us to the scriptures. We need to be the outward force that makes them move. For example: someone makes a quick comment that was rude and made me feel bad. Now I go to the scriptures and say, ¨Listen up scriptures, so and so said something that hurt my feelings and I want to know how I can forgive them and forget. What do I do? How do I do it?¨

The other thing I want to share is just to never give up! If we are doing our part things will work out! I was in an interchange with a different Elder and we were doing contacts on our way to a Family Home Evening. I kept getting these little promptings that I needed to go knock on the door of a house here or there or talk to a person over there. It happened about 7 or 8 times and every time it was a complete and total shut down. Not one of them wanted anything to do with me or the Church or God and frankly a few were quite rude. I was not enjoying myself. We decided that no one on this street was going to want to talk to us and the family home evening was going to start in about 15 minutes so we decided to just head straight there. As we were walking I looked to the other side of the street and saw a pretty looking house with the door open, once again I got a little feeling that we should go knock on the door. I told myselft, ¨you´ve felt this same little feeling with the last 7 or 8 people you´ve talked to. Why is it going to be any different this time?¨ I decided we were going to give it a shot anyways. We cross the street and start talking with a woman. At first she is very timid and hesitant. And before you know it she is inviting us into the house really wanting to know what our message is! We had a wonderful lesson and at the end she told us all the things that she is struggling with and all the things she needs and wants in her life (that never happens)! The Elders in that sector went by her house two more times that week and she and her daughter came to church this last Sunday (we are in the same ward but different area)!! A little side note: when she saw me the very first thing she said was, ¨Why did God send you to my house?¨ 

The moral of the story is that sometimes we don´t understand all things. Sometimes we ask ourselves why do I have to try again if I have already failed? Why do I have to go through this trial after going through so many others? It´s because God loves you and he wants to teach you something and help you be an answer to someone else´s prayer! But if we don´t keep moving forward in faith maybe that someone won´t be able to be blessed by us. Don´t ever give up and suffer with joy!

I love the Gospel and the happiness it brings. Have a splendid week!

Elder Gunnell

 Under our sink. Gross!!

It was a very successful week!‏

We had THE BEST meeting of my mission, no I take that back, of my life this week. Elder Bednar and his wife were in Argentina last week and called a meeting for all of the missionaries in the South America South area of the world. Which consists of Argentina, Chlie, Paraguay and Uraguay. Thanks to the miracle of technology we were able to see it live via transmission. It was sooooo uplifting, fun, spiritual, funny and just incredible. I could not believe the way Elder Bednar taught... Or better said the way he interacted with us! It wasn`t just him up their talking like in General Conference, it was like if we were in a circle and just chatting and learning from one another which was soo cool. One of the things I really liked that he told us at the very beginnning was this, ¨Don`t write down anything I say.¨ So what does everyone do? Start writing it down then he goes, ¨Hey! What did I just tell you guys?! Haha stop doing that!¨ And he is up there laughing a little bit then he goes on to explain. He explained how Nephi wrote two plates. The small plates and the large plates. The small plates were consisted up of revelations, prophecies, and spiritual things. The large plates were made up of the secular things. Wars, problems, who was upset with who and things like that. He told us how he wanted us to write on small plates. He was like if you write everything down that I say and write everything that happens here that would be wonderful! You can go home and show your family that you were in a meeting with Elder Bednar and you`ll be able to tell them exactly what happened but when they ask what you learned what are you going to say? So he taught us to only wirte down the whisperings of the Holy Ghost. The little impressions. And write on small plates.

I could write two pages on the spiritual whisperings and thoughts I had but I won`t share it all. I think that is why I loved the meeting so much. He was the one who had prepared to be able to prepare us to be able to recieve the Holy Ghost and feel the promptings and he just helped us guide the conversation and keep the thoughts flowing.

We had time to ask questions (well the missionaries in Argentina had time) and someone asked a realllll good question. He asked, ¨Elder Bednar, how do you prepare for a meeting like this? How do you know what you need to teach?¨ His answer was simple yet inspiring. He told us that when he walks into a meeting like this that he truly has no idea what is going to happen during the meeting. But he said that doesn`t mean he is unprepared. He told us that he had been preparing for that specific meeting 40 years ago when he was studying the scriptures. He had been preparing for that exact moment for years. Line upon line, precept upon precept. He explained to us that he was not born with all the knowledge of the Gospel nor with good teaching abilities. That he had been and is working and studying constantly to be able to be prepared so that when he is moments like that or in meetings he can call upon the Spirit and the Spirit bring all things unto his rememberance and his mouth will be filled with the precise words in the precise moment.

I just wish you could have all been there to see it. He was soo good with us. He was also soo dang good at making us laugh! And feel the spirit and realize that we feel the spirit so much more than we think! And that things are okay. That this is not our work nor his, it`s the Lord`s. He was the greatest example that living a live centered life is a life of pure, true happiness.

He is, without doubt, a true servant of the Lord. I was not in his presence but I could feel it just as strongly. He is one of my all time heroes. I love this Gospel and the joy it brings! Let`s share it with everyone:)

Love,
Elder Gumball