Hey Everyone!
I hope everyone has been having a fantastic week! This past week has been an immense change, but I would say an immense change for the better. I arrived in California on Tuesday morning after having to sprint through customs, security and baggage check in Dallas on my way from Mexico. I had to stop the lady at a gate, have her call to hold the plane for myself and nine other missionaries, continue sprinting to the gate and sit down in my seat five minutes after the plane was supposed to depart! It was chaotic, but we all made it safely! My address now is:
Elder Gabriel Valley
170 West Duarte Road
Arcadia, California 91007
Today has been quite the P-Day because of how much stuff I've had to do. I still need to get some mail and get a permanent library card, but I'm currently using a temporary one. The computers log you off after one hour of use because the library is so busy. I'm serving in the Chino - East area, which is a tougher area and is on the very border of the mission, which touches the Racho Kuckamonga (I have no idea how that is spelled) mission. I'm once again in a trio with Elder Knight from Idaho (my trainer) who has been out for a little over a year, and Elder Smith from Beaver, UT, who has been out 6 weeks longer than me and is waiting on a visa to Aguas Calientes, Mexico. I love them. They are both fantastic missionaries and are very easy going. They have both been extremely helpful, and I feel bad for Elder Knight basically needing to train two missionaries at the same time. I'm trying to do my best to make his job as easy as possible.
Tuesday, September 17th, 2013:
We left at 2 AM in the morning from the MTC to head out to the airport. It was surreal knowing that I would be leaving so soon. Fortunately, I had ten other elders coming to Arcadia with me! That's right, we had 11 Spanish-speaking elders heading to Arcadia today. We almost missed the flight and had to have a lady hold the plane for us as we sprinted in our suits about 1 mile worth through the airport (no joke). We made it to the Ontario, CA airport, where we met President and Sister Becerra. I already love them to death. They are AMAZING. I got to eat lunch by them in the mission home and talk to them about my background and family. Sister Becerra is really friendly, and President has a great sense of humor. I met my companions after having a relatively brief training meeting. Elder Low and I are in the same district together again! I'm super excited. In our district, we have Elder Low, Elder Porter, Elder Knight, Elder Smith, Hermana Connelly, Hermana Villenga and myself. It's a good group, and us elders get along fantastic. It's supposed to be a tough area, but we are going to change that. Tonight, we had dinner with the Moran family, and Hermano Moran is the Stake Patriarch. I got the opportunity from Elder Knight to give the spiritual thought, and it was a great opportunity to teach my very first night. I'm really excited to serve here.
Wednesday, September 18th, 2013:
I'm loving the daily schedule here much better than the MTC because everything is so much more practical, and we're able to get out of the apartment a lot to go do work. Today, my companions and I had a lesson with an "eternal investigator" named Enrique. He hasn't been progressing because he has problems with the Law of Chastity; however, he reads the Book of Mormon often and even highlights different passages. If he could just change that one (really) bad habit, he would be on his way to baptism! We challenged him to come to church and focus on his marriage more. He said he would do both, so we will see how it goes. We went to Sofia's house for dinner, and she is a less-active. She struggles with her testimony but loves feeding the missionaries. I love this job. We get free food and get to teach people about a message that will save their eternal well-being. What could be better? We finished off the night by going to the church, which is a brand new building and is awesome! Our district had a planning meeting to determine which members in the ward and which investigators belong to each area. My companionship is in charge of Chino East, Elder Low and Elder Porter have Chino Central, and the Hermanas have Chino West.
Thursday, September 19th, 2013:
Once again, our district met up at the church in the morning. However, today was for our weekly district meeting. We had a discussion about finding people and how to better improve our skills. We also have "accountability," where we report on our investigators and find ways as a district to help each individual person progress. I found out today that my bike got messed up on the way here. The front disk brake got messed up and was rubbing the entire time I have been riding. By the way, as a side note, our mission got picked as a test mission to get rid of cars altogether. So, basically, nobody in the entire mission even has a car anymore. It sucks. We have to get to Arcadia and back, which is an hour away, by the help of members, or figure out how to take a two-hour bus trip there. But anyways, I took my bike into the bike shop to get tweaked and all was good. We ate lunch with a somewhat crazy lady named Hermana Herrera. She has been struggling with her relationship with her family. She gave us a referral to a guy that the sisters have already been teaching, and we have come to find that there are few referrals in this ward. Referrals from members and investigators are the best tools that missionaries have to be able to find people to teach. At night, we went to the Moreno family's house for dinner. I am loving the food here so much more than the MTC; it's actually real food. Elder Knight shared an object lesson with small, plastic bowling pins that have three different colors on bottom. He set them up and told each person to try and find a particular color. It was very similar to Christ looking for the individual lost sheep; He would give anything to find us. Elder Knight related that back to our purpose as missionaries to help search for the lost sheep, and he challenged the family to look for people that they can share the message of the restored gospel with. We also then ran into a man named Mario Sanchez on the street from a referral from an English member. He has recently had a kidney transplant and wants to talk to us! We set up a return appointment for next Thursday after sharing a little about the Restoration.
Friday, September 20th, 2013:
Today was a lot like the in-field orientation at the MTC. We went to the mission home at 9 AM and stayed there until about 5 PM. I had my interview with President Becerra in the morning, and I cannot express my love for him enough. He is an amazing man and has a fabulous spirit about him. During my interview, he promised that my family would be blessed more than I could possibly know, too. Talking with him for a little while inspired him to bless me with the very same blessings that are promised in D&C 31:1-2; the scripture talks about the blessings that an individual family will receive as the result of one person serving an honorable full-time mission for the Lord. I love President Becerra so much. He truly is inspired of the Lord in this calling, and I can feel his love for this mission - and that love extends beyond the love he has here just because he served his mission in Arcadia, too. He even remembered me throughout the day and made a reference back to something I quoted to him from Elder Holland during our interview about missionaries being "apostles with a lower-case 'a'." I can tell that President and I will be very close, and I'm so excited to learn from him. The training was very long and ended around 5 PM. After that, we headed back from Arcadia to Chino for our Chino Ward Mexican Independence Day party! Many of the members came, made food, and enjoyed some dancing (of which we can't do as missionaries) during the night. All of our district was there to enjoy the festivities. It was fun! Also, our entire district serves solely the Chino Spanish Ward, which means we have 7 missionaries for a ward of about 125 people.
Saturday, September 21st, 2013:
Because yesterday was so busy and ate into our weekly planning day, we had weekly planning as a companionship today. We had to revamp a few things from when the previous elders were in this area, so we ended up working on weekly planning for about four hours today! We didn't even finish either. As a result, we ended up using most of the time during the middle of the day for planning, instead of proselyting - but hey, what else were we supposed to do? We took a break to go reserve time in the library for time on the computers for P-Day, and we ran into this drunk guy who was crazy! He stopped us (because we spoke Spanish) and began cursing at us, according to Elder Knight. His words were really slurred together so that we couldn't understand anything. He then began praying or something and looked possessed. It was kind of freaky, but thank goodness nothing bad happened as a result. After we finished planning back at the apartment, we went to our weekly volleyball night at the church! The members get together and play volleyball together. They're good too, which is unfortunate for me; I'm awful at volleyball. However, I did have Elder Smith on my team, who is about 6'4" and played football in high school. Our team dominated the other two teams because Elder Smith was able to spike everything haha. The Hispanic people here are so nice, and I'm so excited to serve them. Elder Porter told me, however, that the only reason the work isn't more successful in this area is because the Hispanic people are often lazy and don't follow through with their commitments. I was rather surprised when he told me that there have been less than about 7 baptisms here in the last 8 months, despite the number of amazing missionaries he listed off to me. He told me that we really don't have any flakes in the Spanish-speaking areas. He said there are occasionally problems with English-speakers, but we are fortunate to have an excellent group of Spanish-speakers. It was humbling to then realize that I have been called here for a reason and put in a tough area as my first area to help me grow.
Sunday, September 22nd, 2013:
It was my first Sabbath day back in a regular ward in seven weeks! It was so great to actually experience church in its usual form - not the weird setup they have at the MTC. I decided that I'm going to make a collection of every Sacrament program from throughout my mission to keep for when I get home in twenty-two months. We had correlation meeting at 9:30 AM as missionaries meeting with the bishop to analyze our progress as a ward with missionary work. The bishop is really funny, but I can tell that he is a little rule-oriented. According to the other five missionaries here besides Elder Low and I, he has been setting up some questionable rules because of some apparent conflicts among ward members. However, I'm optimistic that this ward can grow in the gospel. Our meeting started at 11 AM, and Elder Low, Elder Knight and I all got to bear our testimonies because we were all new to the ward. It's tough speaking in Spanish, but speaking with Spanish-speaking members everyday has definitely helped me. There are people here from all over the place; I have met people from Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina and Peru so far. It's quite the eclectic mix. After church, we had a couple of other meetings and didn't end up leaving until about 3:45 PM. Since we were starving, all of the elders in the district decided that we would go to Elder Low and Elder Porter's "pad" (the nickname for their apartment) to eat lunch. Elder Porter fixed up some turkey and pasta, which was to die for. He's quite the chef. It's funny how much I have grown fond of good food out on the mission. I have eaten so many nasty meals and just learned to love them, that good food actually makes quite the imprint on my memory haha. We chatted during our lunch/dinner time before heading back out to go do work. Our main lesson tonight was with a recent convert named Camilo Gomez. He was baptized on July 28th and is the most humble guy you will ever meet. He sleeps on one of those beach chairs in someone's basement because he is so poor. However, he was waiting outside for us to come teach him when we got there. He LOVES talking with us, and I could feel the Spirit so strong as we were teaching him. He is the kind of investigator I want to find. He is willing to do whatever is asked of him, regardless of the sacrifice, and loves the Lord with all of his heart, might, mind and strength. He is getting ready to receive the Priesthood, so we talked with him a little about that, in addition to answering some questions he had about the concept of grace, as it relates to the gospel. Teaching people like him are the reason why I want to be here. If I could find even one person like him through my labors in doing the Lord's work, this mission would be MORE than worth it. I know that I'm here for a reason and that someone like him is waiting for me, too.
Well, that's my first week in review, everyone! I hope everyone at home is having as great of a time as I am! Just remember that when times are hard, that is when we need to turn to the Lord. Elder Porter told me when we were at his pad on Sunday that in tough areas like this one, I need to learn "how to be me." Finding people will be tough, and teaching people may even be tougher at times, but these are the times when the best habits are set and I will learn more about myself than I would have ever thought. I know for a fact that this is where I am meant to be. I love the people, and I love the work. I love all of you and all of the support and love you have given me over the years. I want to give these next two years everything I have.
Love,
Elder Gabriel Valley
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