Hey Everybody!
I hope everyone has had a great week! It's so crazy to think that I have been here for almost an entire transfer in the field already! This week has been a little slow, but it has been filled with great experiences, too.
Tuesday, October 15th, 2013:
Due to some unforseen circumstances, we had to postpone weekly planning from last Friday to today. I don't ever want to wait that long again. During the evening, we went to go teach Camilo Gomez, our only recent convert in the ward, but he had already left for the store. Elder Knight and I decided to use our skills to see if we could track him down at the Rio Ranch Market across the street. Sure enough, we found him and had a lesson with him inside of the Mexican grocery store. He is so humble and so much fun to teach. The highlight of his entire life is talking to the missionaries, and he constantly prays for our well-being and success. I love him so much. We taught him about baptisms for the dead, and the importance of doing temple work for our ancestors. He is also getting ready to receive the Priesthood on October 27th! We are really excited for him. At night, we helped the Hernandez family move. It was sad to see them go because they are an awesome family with two sons who just returned from missions about four months ago (they are twin brothers and left at the same time). They even gave us a giant Book of Mormon and Bible made out of styrofoam that we screwed into the wall in our apartment! It looks pretty sweet.
Wednesday, October 16th, 2013:
Once again, we got to go teach English class! I love teaching it because of how much fun it is to help other people. Elder Knight and I have been trying to focus on reactivating some less-active families, and we decided to try to talk to the Barragan family. They weren't really interested in coming back to church after talking to us, and we later discovered from the Sister Missionaries in our ward that the family has had some ongoing problems that we can't really help them with. There wasn't a whole lot else during the day because of how many people are unavailable during the middle of the day. We went to correlation meeting tonight, only to find out that Hermano Simmons (our ward mission leader) was out of town! He never told us, and it has been like three weeks since we have had a correlation meeting with him there. I also found out from Elder Porter that we will need to really focus on the needs of the members and the needs of less-actives because President Becerra told him that the work won't pick up in Chino until we can first address those two things. It just means that we need to refocus our efforts in a different aspect of missionary work.
Thursday, October 17th, 2013:
We had district meeting in the morning, and Elder Porter prepared an awesome lesson about using our study time effectively. I have really come to cherish the hour I get during the morning for personal study. Elder Knight and I received a working oven today! We have been here for a month with only a toaster, microwave and semi-working stovetop to make food haha. With the new oven, we decided that our apartment needs cleaning. We also decided to try and come up with clever ideas to help out the work here. The Lord is perfectly organized, and revelation flows better when everything is clean and pure. As a result, we decided that our apartment needed to also be clean and organized. There was this black mold growing in the bathroom that Elder Knight was pretty sure could kill us if we were exposed to it for long enough in extreme circumstances. Missionaries are supposed to do a really thorough cleaning once per transfer (every six weeks), but we were sure it had been over a year since our apartment had been cleaned. We got some bleach and went to town. Our apartment looks amazing now, and we can even feel the difference of how nice it is during our studies. We can focus so much easier; hopefully, that will transition over to the work itself. The only major event of the day besides cleaning was eating dinner with Sofia Castro and sharing a message about the importance of the hastening of the work of the Lord. She was really inspired to do member missionary work afterwards, and those are the kind of lessons we need.
Friday, October 18th, 2013:
Elder Knight and I continued cleaning today before engaging in weekly planning. Weekly planning ended up taking longer than usual, but it was VERY EFFECTIVE. I feel like I know exactly what we need to do to best help out our investigators and less-actives. We were both commenting on how much easier it was to focus and feel comfortable in our clean apartment. I can't live in a junkyard, like our apartment was before we cleaned it. When I was going through old potential records, I felt like I was able to select certain names that we need to visit; I attribute the revelation to the fact that we had spent so much time cleaning. It is so easy to draw parallels between our clean apartment and the flow of revelation. I really felt more in-tune with the Spirit through such a simple act. Elder Knight and I ate dinner with Hermana Ramirez, who is a less-active, and she is reading the Book of Mormon every day! She is even on track to finish by the end of the year! I'm really beginning to feel that the small and simple things that we are doing to are leading to greater things in the work! I also found out that I will be going on exchanges with Elder Low in Chino Central tomorrow. It's awesome that we served together in the MTC in the same district, and now we get to be companions for a day!
Saturday, October 19th, 2013:
Elder Low and I were working very hard today together. It's funny how "greenies" have so much more energy and enthusiasm to use every waking second and not take a break. I think we ended up visiting almost every single person on his list of potential investigators and less-actives. We kept striking out; we would find the people home, but they were unavailable or leaving. We did, however, catch one lady named Hermana Montes de Oca home and got her to commit to coming to Church tomorrow! After that, it was back to striking out. It was a productive day, but it was just one of those unlucky times where no one had time to talk. Eventually, Elder Low and I decided to say a prayer to know who to visit before exchanging companions again; we immediately knew who we needed to talk to. Elder Low checked his phone, and the name of the person was on the background of the phone. We went to go visit Jose and his wife, who were both less-active, and we committed them to coming to Church tomorrow, too! We shared a lengthy message about the importance of going to the temple, and Jose even committed to preparing himself to enter into the temple. It was really awesome to have the hand of the Lord helping find those people who are prepared to hear the message. At night, we went back to having our normal companions, and it sounded like Elder Porter and Elder Knight also had a successful time during the day in Chino East.
Sunday, October 20th, 2013:
I always love Church on Sundays, and it was great to see so many less-actives at Church today. It was weird, though, because many of the active families weren't there, and many less-actives were. After Church, Elder Knight and I continued in our efforts to contact people who are less-active. In missionary work, if the investigator doesn't have fellowship and support after their conversion, the conversion won't last. That is where the ward comes into play. As missionaries, our job is to teach the lessons and then "hand off" the member to the ward for an enduring conversion. However, without a whole lot of support, many converts will gradually fall away - this is what has happened here in Chino. As a district, therefore, we have really made a group goal to focus on strengthening the members' desire to do missionary work, stay active and strengthen the ward. This is what we must do before great success will occur. During the evening, we ate dinner with the Zavala family. They speak English and Spanish, and Hermano Zavala is the stake president. They live within our ward boundaries, but they attend the English ward because their youngest son is really "pocho" (he is Latino, but he doesn't understand any Spanish). I loved visiting with them. We focused on helping them have the desire to share the Gospel with their neighbors and friends whenever opportunities present themself. I also think that Hermano Zavala will take a bigger initiative to emphasize missionary work at the stake level, which is much-needed. I'm really excited to see some progress get made here in Chino in the coming weeks and months.
Today, for P-day, our district is planning to do something fun, but we aren't really sure what yet. It is Hermana Vellinga's 25th birthday (she is serving in Chino West), and we are thinking of doing something together to celebrate. A couple people recommended going to a Hindu Temple for fun, but I'm not sure exactly what we will do yet. I will try to remember to report next week on what we decide.
I'm loving every minute of being here, and I continue to grow and learn daily. We constantly share lessons about the work of salvation (the updates to missionary work from the broadcast in June about the hastening of the Lord's work), and it is important to remember that the success of missionary work doesn't come from people necessarily choosing to accept the Gospel; rather, the success comes from the invitation that we extend to people to hear the Gospel. They have their free agency, and we can only invite.
Also, this picture is of Elder Knight and I "Bible Bashing" with the giant styrofoam scriptures we got this week, prior to putting them up on the wall.
Love,
Elder Gabriel Valley
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