Thanksgiving - November 25, 2013

Hey Everyone!

This week has been full of some spiritual highs and lows but also full of food. It seems like whenever we catch a break here, another stumbling block arises. It is exactly what the Savior must have experienced during his mortal ministry; we cannot physically experience joy beyond words without also experiencing the grief and struggle that Christ felt all throughout the process of the Atonement.

Tuesday, November 19th, 2013:

I created a Mormon.org profile in Spanish today! It's a good milestone; I have finally come to realize that I can communicate with almost anyone in Spanish now. I haven't really stressed about the language too much, but I didn't realize how much progress I have made in the three-and-a-half months since I left home. I'm by no means fluent, however. As usual, at 5 PM, we had our weekly lesson with Enrique Olvera, our eternigator. It was an awesome lesson, but it is hard to tell if Enrique is really progressing how he should. Elder Knight and I really pounded the importance of baptism into him and how baptism should be his ultimate goal. His problem is the one of God's fundamental commandments from the Old Testament, and he is just too afraid to actually repent. He won't receive any answer, however, until he lives that fundamental principle. Elder Knight and I also visited the Morans to help Hermana Moran set up her own Mormon.org profile, too. I think we can help the members share the Gospel through Facebook and Mormon.org now. Most Latinos use the internet way more than they should, so maybe we can help them see how they can use that internet time effectively.

Wednesday, November 20th, 2013:

I'm not quite sure why I enjoy English class so much, but it is seriously so much fun! We taught a lot about Thanksgiving today. I taught the very beginning class about the pilgrims coming over from Europe and how they gave thanks for the blessings that they have. It was a very subtle reminder for myself and for them to be thankful for the tender mercies of the Lord in our lives. After English class, Elder Knight and I stopped by this place called "Huarache Veloz" and the lady gave us some free huarache because she is a member in the Ontario Spanish ward! Her son is also getting ready to serve a mission and will likely leave around June or July. It was so awesome to see how well people treat us! Unfortunately, good food must come with a price. We were unable to find anyone home after eating before going to the Church to assist the ward on visiting less-actives in the ward. My group was only able to find Hermana Verom home, but it is good to see the High Priests group more active with doing their home teaching. Prior to these past couple of weeks, I think the home teaching percentage was down somewhere around 15%. After these couple of weeks, I think we are up in the neighborhood of 65% among active members. It is progress!

Thursday, November 21st, 2013:

Due to Zone Conference tomorrow, all of the missionaries began to fast in order to receive revelation at the meeting. Elder Knight and I decided to do our weekly planning today, instead of on Saturday, in order to maximize the time for proselyting on Saturday - more people are home then. I also helped Elder Knight really clean out and organize his stuff; it was fun to really help him be more organized. As much as I hated how strict my parents were about keeping my stuff organized as a kid, I have really come to appreciate how cleanliness leads to greater revelation. Elder Knight and I were able to contact quite a few people after weekly planning, and Hermana Dos Santos even met us at the home of one of our investigators to invite them to the ward Thanksgiving party on Saturday for lunch. It's so exciting to see some of the ward leadership taking the initiative to reach out to us about how they can help us with the missionary work. During the evening, Elder Knight and I taught Camilo Gomez. It was funny when he showed us his paper that is like eight years old saying that he needs to go back to Nicaragua. We don't ask for proof of citizenship, but I honestly wonder how many people we teach do, in fact, have their green card or citizenship. Regardless, the message of the Gospel should be available to all people.

Friday, November 22nd, 2013:

Zone Conference focused entirely on the faith that all of us, as missionaries, need to have to set high expectations here in the California Arcadia Mission. Since implementing about five new rules, the mission has experienced about double the number of new investigators per week, on average. It's good to see the mission doing well; it remains difficult, however, to not see the same results in my own numbers. After finishing Zone Conference, I went with the Pomona district (due to lack of space in the Hermana's car) for a while while the Hermanas and the other members of our district swapped out the car for a new one - the Church sells any cars over 50,000 miles. I went with Hermana Minchin, Hermana Quezada, Elder Perez and Elder McIlwain. It was a great car ride; I got to know all of them very well, and they are all great missionaries. While waiting for everyone at the mission office, I went with Elder Perez and Elder McIlwain to teach a lesson to an investigator in Pomona. It was supposed to be about the Plan of Salvation, but it wasn't the best lesson that has ever been taught. It really made me appreciate how well Elder Knight and I teach together. Companionship unity in teaching is vital to teach with the spirit as much as possible. We all ended up going to the Pomona ward Thanksgiving dinner to finish off the evening. I was apalled at just how many more people they have that come to their activities. It was more than double the number of our ward. We have got to get some people reactivated and some others baptized to help Chino grow.

Saturday, November 23rd, 2013:

Elder Knight and I had to get to the ward Thanksgiving party at 11 AM to help set up and ended up staying until 7 PM to help clean up, too. It was a marginal turnout - better than most of our ward Family Home Evenings, but it could have been better. It was just a really long activity without any actual activities, other than eating. Hermana Bardsley taught the Plan of Salvation to one person. There was one family that was ready to be baptized, but we couldn't baptize them because they don't live within the boundaries of our mission. I just wish they understood the Law of Obedience better. As a result of the party, Elder Knight and I missed out on the chance to teach an investigator that evening. I was so upset. To finish off the evening, we talked to the bishop and really saw his change of heart. He has been really stressed because there are so few active members, and the active members don't even do the things they should be doing. As a result, our Priesthood in the ward is almost nonexistant. We worked with him to see how we can help him do his job and get the Priesthood to be more active. It was a great end to a rather disappointing day.

Sunday, November 24th, 2013:

Bishop Arriaga has been trying to get the ward to pay its tithing, so he decided to give a two-part talk during Sacrament Meeting about the importance of the Law of Obedience. It was a great talk; I just worry that the people who needed to hear it weren't listening or weren't present. During the third hour, Elder Knight and I began teaching a Preach My Gospel missionary preparation class to a couple of future missionaries. One of the Guzman girls is getting ready to turn in her papers any week. It was a great lesson as we talked about the missionary purpose and how our missionary purpose is central to everything that we do. During the day, we were unable to find anyone home to teach, but we were able to visit the Mercado family at night. We have tried to visit them about five times, and they are less-active; however, we were able to get in with them tonight and have a really good visit. Through less-active members, we are able to find more people to teach and work on reactivation efforts in the ward.

I'm hoping that by establishing the better relationship with the bishop that we can really come to have the ward love him, even if that means hating us as missionaries. I often feel that people rejected Christ because they didn't understand how much his efforts were blessing their own lives. I have had that very same feeling during this entire week because I feel like the ward doesn't understand how much we try our very hardest to serve them. It is easy to see the faults, but we must always push forward in life by clinging to the successes. On a brighter note, we do have Thanksgiving coming up in which we have the opportunity to look at all of the successes and blessings we have in this life. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to thank God for all that He has done for us, despite the fact that life isn't always easy. I love all you and am thankful to have met each and every single one of you in my life. I appreciate your love and support in my behalf!

Love,

Elder Gabriel Valley

Foam Scriptures Oct 2013

Redlands CA Temple Oct 2013

Apartment Living in Chino Sept 2013

Life in the Chino CA Area Sept 2013

Halloween 2013

Halloween Trunk or Treat 2013

November 18, 2013 - Increased Motivation in the Ward

Hey Everyone!

 

This week has been very exciting and informative for me here in sunny Chino, CA! I had the opportunity to find out a lot of information about my particular area from the first counselor in our mission presidency here in the California Arcadia Mission; I'm guessing that I wasn't supposed to know about most of the stuff, but it was still really neat to hear about how the mission presidency is really working to clean up the struggles in our area.

 

Tuesday, November 12th, 2013:

 

We made the ward mission plan today, which was comprised of goals for each individual auxiliary organization, as well as ward goals for baptisms, attendance in church and percentage of visits for home teaching / visiting teaching. It was very productive and was needed. Elder Knight and I also began updating our Facebook pages! I don't really like it very much because I feel apostate by using Facebook, but I guess it is the finding method of the future. So, if you know anyone that would like to hear about the Gospel, I can now talk to them, via Facebook! Elder Knight later went to teach Enrique Olvera about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was a solid lesson; the major problem is just getting him to act on what we are teaching. I feel like so many people feel a witness from the Spirit of the veracity of our message and are too lazy to act on it! At night, we had another lesson with Camilo Gomez. We taught him about the principles of "good, better and best." I love working with Camilo because I can see his progression with his Gospel knowledge, and he continually tells us that our visits with him are the highlight of his week. He likes talking to us as much as talking to his family in Nicaragua!

 

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013:

 

As usual, teaching English class was a lot of fun. It was also nice to have the regular teacher back; I feel like the people are able to learn more with her as the instructor. English class is a great culture-enriching experience because people there come from China, Syria, many different parts of Europe, and almost every Latin American country. After English class, we all went down to the library to do some more work with Facebook and Mormon.org, before beginning another planning session for the Noche de Hogar on Sunday evening. We all work in a room in the library, and it is much more conducive to a productive meeting than the church - we aren't really sure why that is, but if it's "on purpose," it's worth the time. We planned to do an introduction about all of our tools as missionaries, followed by a series of role plays to help the members learn how to share the Gospel. At night, the Elder's Quorum was able to do a big ward visit night in which we visited the homes of sixty less-active members. I was with Hermano Bautista and Elder Carvajal (one of the zone leaders who was on splits with Elder Porter) for the visits, and we were able to visit three different families. It's great to see this ward motivated to do some work!

 

Thursday, November 14th, 2013:

 

For district meeting in the morning, Elder Porter and Elder Carvajal had us all practice different situations of contacting people to share the Gospel with, such as on a bus or at the store. It made me realize how bad I am at it in Spanish. I feel like I can talk to almost anyone in English about almost anything, but learning another language and having to teach in that language is another challenge altogether. I also learned that President Becerra recently talked to Boyd K. Packer (yes, he talks to General Authorities all the time!) and Elder Packer told him that, as of right now, over thirty percent of the world is ready to hear the Gospel. That was really inspiring and motivating. That also means the challenge is on us to become even better missionaries. The Sazo family had Elder Knight and I over to do service later. We expected to only have to work for about an hour, but it ended up taking three. It was kind of annoying how much time out of our day it ate up, but I do enjoy doing service. To conclude the day, we went to Sofia Castro's house to visit her and her son, Eduardo. We really stressed the need to read the Book of Mormon. Every single time we have visited her, she has told us that she hasn't read. There is no way to progress in the Gospel if we don't use our agency to learn more about the Gospel for ourselves. One major way to do that is to read the scriptures.

 

Friday, November 15th, 2013:

 

Hermano Dos Santos needed our help during the morning with cutting up a few trees, so we went and did some pretty intensive labor with him. I absolutely love doing yard work on the mission; it's honestly like my favorite thing (besides teachings lessons, of course). Hermano Dos Santos is the uncle of world-famous Giovanni Dos Santos, who is a soccer player for the Mexican National team. He even told us that he can get us an autograph in the future! Hermano Dos Santos is also a former professional himself, which has led him into a coaching career for many nationally-ranked youth soccer players (such as Shaquille O'Neal's son, for instance). As a result, he always has to work on Sundays and has become "less-active" by the Church's definition, even though he still has a solid testimony. He told us that he can help with the role play segment of our Noche de Hogar on Sunday, too. During the afternoon, we went by the Montanez family's home for a lunch, and we are going to recommend that Hermano Montanez be called as the new ward mission leader. Our old one just suddenly decided to switch to the English ward without ever telling us, so now we have no ward mission leader. At night, we went to teach the Ramirez family a lesson, and Elder Knight and I were not on the same page. He kind of exploded at me after the lesson. We ultimately resolved the situation, and it was more out of miscommunication. Fortunately, we were able to resolve the conflict, which was the result of not talking. It reminded me a lot of when a similar event happened in the MTC in Mexico City.

 

Saturday, November 16th, 2013:

 

Due to service on Friday, we had to postpone weekly planning to Saturday morning. We planned up until a birthday party that Hermana Moreno invited us to, in which there would be a few non-member friends all meeting up at the party at Shakey's Pizza (and yes, the flavor of the pizza was definitely shakey - I would not go back to eat it again). We talked with Hermana Moreno's non-member father for a while before going with Hermano Sazo to a lesson at a former investigator's home. With Hermano Sazo there, we taught the Restoration and showed the Restoration video. The Martinez family was able to really feel the Spirit and were left with a lot of questions. We left them with a Book of Mormon to read and set up a return appointment for next Saturday. It's exciting to have four new investigators in one week! We only had two new investigators in the first eight weeks, but we had four new investigators this week. After the lesson, we went to the church to play volleyball. It was a poor turn out; we need to figure out how to get more people to our activities.

 

Sunday, November 17th, 2013:

 

The ward decided to have ward council today, and it was amazing! I hate to say this, but Bishop Arriaga wasn't there which was a large reason why the meeting was so good. Normally I'm not the person to criticize, but talking to President Gutierrez made me aware that the leadership at the stake level and the bishop of Chino Ward are a large reason why Chino is hurting. However, Bishop was away on vacation, and the ward council was very enthusiastic and motivated to help us out with the missionary work! I was so excited to get help from them; they now want to accompany us on lessons, meet less-actives and also get to know all of our investigators by personally going to greet them at their houses! Church was really cool. The primary program was all in Spanish, which helped me feel better that I'm not the only one in the ward who doesn't understand everything. It's really funny to see the older kids who are really "Pocho" - they come from Latino families but don't know Spanish. Their accents are really "Gringo," too, which makes it even funnier. At night, we had our Noche de Hogar. It was a good turnout! We first shared all of the tools we use as missionaries to share the Gospel, such as pamphlets, Facebook, etc. Afterwards, we did a series of role plays to help the members learn how to talk about the Gospel with their friends in normal situations. Finally, we had President Gutierrez speak about the job the members play in finding people for us to teach. As missionaries, we teach, and the members are supposed to find. It was a little sad to see how the ward wants to find so badly, but many feel that the Bishop's leadership discourages that. President Gutierrez later told all of our district that he feels so bad that all of his friends are suffering in the Spanish wards. He said, before too long, all of the recent converts, in addition to active members, will begin moving towards English wards because the wards have more to offer them. I loved hearing his input on everything, but it also made me a little sad that things have gotten to be that bad. He told us that the mission presidency loves us dearly and wants us to have the privilege of baptizing, so Chino will begin losing missionaries until the local leadership starts acting in accordance with the mission presidency. The funny thing is that all of our district talked after talking to President Gutierrez, and none of us want to leave. We are finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and want to see this progression out. I know this work can pick back up in Chino, and I would love to see the fruits of my labors.

 

Overall, this week has been very exciting and very enlightening. President Gutierrez also told me that knocking doors actually hurts the Church more than it helps it, statistically. I would love to be able to learn more from him. He is an incredible man and is very intelligent. I hope everyone is doing well at home and getting ready for the holiday season. Thank you for all of your support and love on my behalf!

 

Love,

Elder Gabriel Valley

November 12, 2013 - Signs of Life

Hey Everyone!

 

So first off, some exciting news is that I will now be using Facebook to internet proselyte as a missionary! I will begin in less than about two hours, and it's really weird to think that I will be using any sites other than email and lds.org. I'm emailing on a Tuesday because all of the libraries in the area were closed in the spirit of Veteran's Day yesterday. This week has been much better and probably the best week since I have gotten into the field, as far as success is concerned.

 

Tuesday, November 5th, 2013:

 

Elder Knight and I devoted some extra time during companionship study to really clean out our area book. There are a lot of old records that previous missionaries probably should have thrown away, due to investigators moving or people having absolutely zero interest and sitting in their car without talking to you when you knock on their window after the daughter tells you "sorry" (true story). We didn't actually end up teaching any lessons today, but our really old list of potential investigators is now updated with some new potentials that we can visit. When you visit the same people eight or nine times and you can't ever find them home or they really don't show any desire to listen, it's in your best interest to visit someone else. The real highlight of the day, however, was our lesson with Enrique Olvera, our ONLY investigator to date. We planned on dropping him during the lesson to show him that he needs to act on what we teach in order to make it worth our time every week. The Spirit had a different idea. The entire lesson was absolutely amazing as we taught him about the Plan of Salvation; he has learned it before, but we wanted to revisit it again to really emphasize how repentance in this life affects where we end up in the eternal scheme of things. The Spirit specifically told me during that lesson that we should not drop him and that he will convert in due time. When we do our part to plan, the Spirit will make up the rest - even if our initial plan isn't always exactly aligned with what God's plan is.

 

Wednesday, November 6th, 2013:

 

As always, we went to go teach English class in the morning. It was a bit different because the normal teacher wasn't there and had a substitute. The substitute wasn't as good because she tried to go way too in-depth with all of the beginning people. She even wanted them to learn about MRIs and CT scans. It made me realize that as preachers of the Gospel, we have to remember that the people we teach are just like those English students: they don't know a whole lot about the things we have grown up learning. What seems easy to us is extremely complex and hard to grasp for them. During the day, we were very unsuccessful in finding people to teach. It seems like we have really been struggling with having success, despite our efforts to find and teach. At correlation meeting during the evening, we met up as a district to discuss ideas for our Family Home Evening lesson on the 17th of November and about how to go about doing the ward mission plan. I feel like everyone is almost on the same page, but there are a few things we can do better to have even better district unity. At night, Elder Knight was really helping me cheer up about making sure that I don't get discouraged when success doesn't always come. He has been in tough areas for his entire mission, and it was really helpful to hear his input.

 

Thursday, November 7th, 2013:

 

In the morning, we took the bus over to zone meeting, per Hermana Bardsley's idea. I was very unenthusiastic about the idea of being required to get up a half-hour early, miss all of our study time, and then have to travel over two hours on the bus to make it in time for a two-hour meeting. We went along with it and tried our best to talk to people; it's just something that is extremely difficult to do in Spanish. I feel like I can talk to almost anyone in English without many problems, but talking to people in a foreign language about life in general is tough. I don't know enough vocabularly to do it. I can talk about the Gospel for hours on end, but talking about snowboarding as a kid or about someone's job as a janitor in Chino Hills is hard for me. At zone meeting, the Assistants to the President came to observe our meeting. It was one powerful meeting. It was much more like a counsel than like a lecture, which is how it is supposed to be. We talked a lot abotu the importance of keeping a prayer continually with you, so Elder Knight and I really put it into practice. At the end of the meeting, Elder Blanchard, one of the Spanish APs, told us that President Becerra baptized between 10 and 15 people per month, which is much higher than the average 2.2 people per year in the Arcadia Mission. He said to each one of us: "You deserve more. Now, go act like you deserve more." As we put things into practice during the day, we found success at night when we went to the Morenos for dinner. While there, we received a referral from Hermana Moreno, in addition to two more via text message on the phone! It was three referrals in one day! That's more than we have had in the last month-and-a-half!

 

Friday, November 8th, 2013:

 

After being trained for six weeks, every new missionary goes to a training meeting to analyze how things are going. President Becerra spoke, and I cannot even describe how much I love him. Every time he opens his mouth, I feel inspired to give every ounce of energy remaining in my body to the Lord. He talked about how we can fix the problems in our wards about motivating the members, but not only that; he also talked about how we must baptize without the help of the members so that they are able to see success and find motivation to do their own missionary work. The hastening of the work is designed to be where the members help us fill our agendas, but in Latino work, that is not likely to happen. We went back to the apartment for weekly planning and really tried our best to put into practice what President Becerra taught us during the meeting. During weekly planning, we made a map with push pins where all of our members, active and less-active, live. It will prove to be a huge help in planning in the future. We went to the Castaneda family's home for dinner; they have been inactive for about three months. Their family is so kind, but it was really disheartening when the father fell asleep during the Restoration video. They didn't seem too engaged during our lesson, either. I'm really hoping we can come back next Monday and have them be a little more engaged. We did, however, really push them to attend church this Sunday. We told the daughter that if she comes to church with a friend, we will wash her car for her. I don't think we're supposed to bribe people, but anything we can do to get them back to church will bless their lives, especially coming back to church and having service!

 

Saturday, November 9th, 2013:

 

We were finally actually able to see some increased results! Elder Knight and I returned to the Sazos for service in the morning, which consisted of chopping up a lot of really thick bamboo. I love doing service for people, especially yard work. It's something different than that usual "swing of things." The Lord blessed us in the afternoon with people on the street to contact, and we gave out two copies of the Book of Mormon in the course of about an hour. We also got Camilo Gomez to invite a friend to church! I love Camilo; he is so humble. During the evening, the ward was having a Homecoming party for a missionary who just returned from the Sacramento Mission on Thursday. His name is Elder Garcia, and he finally got released as a missionary during that party. Our district slipped out for the last hour to work on planning our Family Home Evening lesson for the upcoming week. It was fairly productive, but I can still tell our district unity isn't quite to the point where it needs to be.

 

Sunday, November 10th, 2013:

 

With Elder Garcia's talk, I would have expected more people to be there. It was quite the opposite. There was hardly anyone there at all, and we even got Enrique to come to church! I was really hoping for some fellowship for him, but it was kind of a let-down. However, during Elder's Quorum, Hermana Dos Santos came in and basically told off the Elder's Quorum for not doing their job in assisting the Relief Society. It was funny because the Spirit was present, despite the anger in her voice. It really whipped the Elder's Quorum into shape, though. It even got them to set up home teaching for this week! After church, Elder Knight and I tried contacting the Martinez family and ended up setting up a return appointment. We then visited the Sazos again, not expecting them to feed us; however, we ate dinner with them and had a wonderful lesson about how they can do missionary work with all of their friends. The daughter asked for a Book of Mormon to give to one of her friends, so it has already made an impact on them! Afterwards, we tried contacting a few referrals but to no avail. Pomona South then called us, asking us to visit the hospital in Chino to go give a blessing to one of the ladies from their ward who has been having heart problems. We went and gave her a blessing, and she told us that she wants to return to the Chino ward soon. To finish off the evening, we visited the Montanez family's home, where we ended up finding both the Montanez family and the Moreno family. It was great to see so many leaders from the ward all in one place, and we were able to really discuss with them the responsibilities we have as missionaries and the responsibilities they have as members and leaders.

 

Monday, November 11th, 2013:

 

It was Veteran's Day today, and I couldn't stop thinking about my own father; he served as a nuclear engineer in the Navy for six years. I couldn't email today because all of the libraries were closed, but I did have the chance to actually do something for P-Day, due to the extra time. Our district met up at the church to play some games, such as Banana-Grams and Pictionary Man. It was really fun, and Elder Low and I played quite a bit of basketball while we were there. Elder Knight and I went to visit the Alfaro family during the evening. They are some potentials that we have been unable to teach at all because they have been so busy, but we were able to get in with them and have a lesson about the Plan of Salvation. They just had a baby six weeks ago, and their oldest son has been getting into drugs. They were so anxious to hear our message and committed to reading the Book of Mormon after we were all done teaching. We got two new investigators from that one lesson, which is as many new investigators as we have had in eight weeks since being here! That one lesson made the entire rest of the evening of not finding anyone home totally worth it.

 

Today, I am at the library with the whole district to email, then to make our ward mission plan and then to get going on Facebook! I'm really excited to see how this is going to work, but it's going to be really strange. It's funny how foreign everything is to missionaries, even when I just used Facebook barely more than three months ago. I also found out last night that our ward mission leader is switching wards, so we are back to square one, where we started on that. I hope everyone has had a fantastic week and that everyone is prepping to eat a whole lot of turkey soon! I miss you and and appreciate all of your support and prayers!

 

Love,

Elder Gabriel Valley

November 4, 2013 - First Week of November

Hey Everyone!

 

I hope everyone has had a fantastic week with Halloween and Day of the Dead celebrations! This week here in California has been pretty average by mission standards. We're just always trying to look for people to teach.

 

Tuesday, October 29th, 2013:

 

Elder Knight and I went to the library for an hour to use our one hour of lds.org time to do some research on family history and how it can help us with contacting people, in addition to finishing up some in-field training that I have to do as a "greenie." A lot of the in-field training stuff is all review from the MTC or common sense, but this training actually proved to be quite helpful and useful. The Spirit of Elijah is definitely prompting people to do their family history today, so we should be able to use family history as a more effective means of contacting new people to teach. During the evening, we went to go talk to Camilo. He insisted on buying us dinner, despite his humble living conditions. We went to Rio Ranch for their "Taco Tuesday" special. A lady in line was nice enough to pay for all of us right after we began talking to her about the Church. She wasn't interested, but it was so nice of her to buy dinner for us without us even knowing until after the fact! We talked with Camilo about the Plan of Salvation again because we need to go through all of the initial lessons another time after baptism. It was a good visit, and I just love how humble Camilo Gomez is.

 

Wednesday, October 30th, 2013:

 

I love teaching English class every Wednesday afternoon! Elder Low and I teach a group of beginner-level adult English students. It's really neat to see their progress over time, too. Our district ate lunch at the church after the class; Hermana Valencia bought us Pizza Hut! The members are great about making sure that we are fed when we aren't expecting to be fed, but I want them to turn that desire for feeding us food into a desire for feeding others with the Bread of Life. We had a lesson this evening with Enrique (instead of on Tuesday, like normal) in which Hermano Moran, the stake Patriarch, accompanied us. Hermano Moran was set apart by the late Bruce R. McConkie, and he is so incredibly smart. We taught Enrique about what he can do to improve his studies of the Book of Mormon through the use of a study journal. It was a good lesson, and the Spirit was there, but Enrique told us he never felt anything. We know that this was due to his continued sin of breaking the Law of Chastity. If he doesn't have the desire to live that commandment, Elder Knight and I will probably have to drop him. It's interesting that dropping an investigator can actually be a help for the investigator to gain the desire to want to make the changes in their life that are necessary. We talked with Bishop Arriaga during the evening about what to do with Enrique, and he recommended dropping Enrique. Apparently, he tells the exact same story to every set of missionaries that teach him - he wants to change his life but is unwilling to commit to living the Law of Chastity until his wife dies. It's not how the repentance process works. If he wants to know for himself through the Holy Spirit about our message, he will need to live the commandments of God in order to actually be able to feel the Holy Spirit and receive the answer.

 

Thursday, October 31st, 2013:

 

Happy Halloween! It was weird being a missionary on Halloween. We had district meeting in the morning, and I absolutely love Elder Porter's lessons during district meetings. We had a great discussion about the importance of the missionary purpose in the lessons that we teach. Every person that we teach should know how the Doctrine of Christ and the missionary purpose are really one and the same. Through Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End, we are able to live the Doctrine of Christ and live the way that Christ would have us live. After district meeting, we began brainstorming problems and solutions to each particular problem about the work in the Chino Ward. Hermana Bardsley (she's from Renton, Washington, by the way!) suggested that we ride the bus, even if it means riding the bus not to go anywhere. We can ride the bus to see if we can contact more people. It's a possibility, and we are going to put it into practice. At night, we had the ward Halloween party. Hermana Connelly and Hermana Bardsley decorated the trunk of the mission car so that it was pretty spooky! The Hermanas have to have a car after 6 PM for safety reasons, so all of the missionaries in our district handed out candy and Jesus Christ pass-along cards to people during the "trunk-or-treat" segment of the party. It was just a really fun evening and a much-needed break from the toll of riding a bike around all day.

 

Friday, November 1st, 2013:

 

Elder Knight and I didn't do a whole lot of different activities today, but it was a rather busy day overall. In the morning, we did service for Hermana Sazo. She need help cutting up a bunch of branches and really thick bamboo. I love doing yard work; I never though I would hear myself say that, either. It was really fun, and it was a great workout trying to cut up everything and fit it all into her two yard waste bins. We are going to return on Tuesday to finish up the job. After returning to the apartment after service, we began weekly planning. I can tell that Elder Knight and I have a much better focus during our planning sessions now that our apartment is in a liveable state (no more deathly mold or trash around everywhere from previous lazy missionaries). We decided that we are going to make the effort to set aside more time during the day to find people to teach, instead of focusing so much time on going by potential investigators that probably aren't available because they don't want to talk to us. During the evening, we went to the Morenos for dinner to have pizza night with them, and it was so much fun! They are one of the nicest families I have ever met. We found out that they have been having problems with their twelve year-old son, Randy, and wanted our help with what to do. We testified to them about the power of the Book of Mormon in changing behavior and uniting families; they committed to reading it together. It was an awesome member lesson.

 

Saturday, November 2nd, 2013:

 

In the morning, Elder Knight and I taught a lesson to a less-active nineteen year-old named Henry Montanez. He is Hermano Montanez's oldest son and is preparing to serve a mission once he becomes more active in the church again. We shared a little bit about how he needs to gain his own, personal testimony in order to be a powerful missionary and what he needs to do in preparation to leave on his mission (Preach My Gospel, missionary work now, etc.). It was also an awesome lesson; he felt the Spirit. After finishing the lesson, Hermano Montanez took all of us to Ontario, CA to play soccer against some of the Ontario Spanish-speaking Elders from the Rancho Cuckamonga Mission, as well as against some non-members. It was a lot of fun, but we were so wiped after playing in the hot sun for three hours straight. It was a good turnout of people. We later went to dinner at the Menoza family's house to celebrate Hermana Menoza's birthday with a bunch of other people from the ward. It seems like this ward has ward unity between a certain group of people, and everyone that isn't really in that group is either inactive or doesn't really do anything related to the church at home. After eating with them, we went to ward volleyball. It is just getting too competitive. Latinos in general know how to give sarcastic insults, but they can't take anything without getting offended. When they all get competitive, it just turns into a vocal argument about pointless rules in volleyball. I want to help them learn how to play to have fun.

 

Sunday, November 3rd, 2013:

 

Fast and Testimony Meeting today was quite powerful and very enjoyable to listen to. It made me ponder about fasting over the past day and how my fasting could help Elder Knight and I find at least one new investigator to teach. Despite the minor struggles, I'm really growing to love the people in the ward. We just need to motivate them to do their job: be a member-missionary. After church, Elder Knight and I got to go visit Camilo Gomez again and talk to him about the process of receving his Patriarchal Blessing. He seemed so excited! We are going to meet with him on Wednesday night, as well as meet with Hermano Moran (the stake Patriarch) there to teach Camilo a little bit more about this great privilege he has ahead of him. After visiting Camilo, it was back to trying to contact more potentials without much luck. However, we did stop by the Herrera family. They are really nice, and Hermana Herrera is the Seminary teacher for all of the Spanish-speaking kids that attend high schools in Chino. We offered to come by to Seminary one morning if she needs us, and she seemed pretty excited about that idea. I think they felt even more inspired to look for missionary opportunities after talking with us. Our member visits are continuing to improve; I just hope that it will lead to some more referrals. We need people to teach pronto.

 

For P-Day today, all of our district took the bus down to Chino Hills area, which is in Chino West's area. We want to get a few days of riding the bus in to see if it is actually worth our time. In the west side of the mission, there are many people who utilize the public transportation system, but we haven't seen as many people use it here on the east side of the mission. It's harder to find people here in Chino because many of the ideas that missionaries use to find people in East Los Angeles and Pasadena just don't work at all here. I think Elder Knight and I are going to ride the bus for about three hours on Thursday to get a better idea about the bus system as well. I'm guessing we won't have time to do anything again today for P-Day, but that's just becoming the norm, I guess. It's hard when we absolutely need a break, or at least a lesson, but we just aren't getting lucky. I keep looking in the mirror to see what I can change in myself to help the work, but it really just seems like I need to keep plugging along. I'm trying my very best to study hard, study effectively, plan effectively, plan useful and meaningful visits, as well as talk to everyone and ask them for referrals. I don't know what else I can do there.

 

I hope everyone had a great Halloween and is looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas as much as I am! The holiday season will soon be upon us, and that means more people will be ready to hear about the true story of Christmas - that means there will be more people ready to receive the Restored Gospel. I miss you all and appreciate the support you show me!

 

Love,

Elder Gabriel Valley

Octiber 28, 2013 - Transfer 1 in the Field

Hey Everyone!

 

This week has flown by, and it's so crazy to think that I have already completed an entire transfer in the mission field! The work is tough, but Elder Knight and I are determined to get this area up and running.

 

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013:

 

Today was a very productive day, even if our numbers didn't exactly show it. We were able to contact every single person that we stopped by today, and Elder Knight and I set up some return appointments with a few different people. However, the real surprise of the day was visiting Enrique Olvera, who is our "Eternigator," because of how great the lesson was. He basically admitted to us that he needs to change his life in order to receive an answer to his prayers, which is exactly the message that we have been trying to convey to him for the entire last transfer. We offered his wife a Priesthood blessing to help her ongoing ear problem (she is 94 years young), and they both started crying after the blessing. I cannot wait to have a lesson with him this week to see how he is doing. At night, we had a lesson with a potential named Jose. The lesson was awful. It was as bad as the lesson with Enrique was good. A thing about Latinos is that they don't like to let other people talk. As missionaries, our job is to teach, not to be taught to about things in the Bible that we already know or are false personal beliefs of other people. We basically dropped him on the spot, before heading over to correlation. The meeting was very productive, and Hermano Simmons was there, too. He seems a lot more motivated than we all had initially thought, and I'm very excited to work with him.

 

Wednesday, October 23rd, 2013:

 

Elder Knight and I have now gone an entire month without a single member referral. We should be getting at least one or two per day, if not more. It is so difficult; we try to talk to everyone and ask if they know anyone that we can talk to; we always get the same response: "I'm too busy, and I don't know anyone or any of my neighbors, either." We taught English class in the morning again, which is always a fun service opportunity. However, like I previously mentioned, we haven't really been able to get a hold of anyone to be able to teach. This area is currently very slow, and we are doing our best to try to get it moving. We ate dinner with the Les Ama family, who live all the way out in Pomona - we had to ask them for a ride because it would be way too far on bicycle. It was a nice visit and we talked a lot about missionary work, but I didn't really feel like I connected to them very much. At night, Elder Porter came over to my apartment to do exchanges with me, and we stayed up really late talking about the Gospel and how to help people here realize why they need it in their life.

 

Thursday, October 24th, 2013:

 

As I mentioned, Elder Porter was with me for exchanges. I love having Elder Porter around just because of how easy-going he is and just how intelligent he is. We mesh pretty well. I took the opportunity to ask him a lot of questions, and he gave me some useful advice about staying positive when the area is tough. In the morning, the whole district met up to continue planning for our Family Home Evening lesson this Sunday for the ward that we are in charge of. We are going to do a sort of theatrical skit where four members will dress up as their ancestors and tell a family story before going towards the temple to have their work done. I felt bad that I didn't really have any pre-arranged appointments set up, so Elder Porter and I spent the day trying to contact people from the list of potentials, which was rather unsuccessful. We did, however, contact a large number of people on the street; it was great practice for street-contacting, which I need to be better at doing. It's a little awkward to slam on your brakes on a bike to stop and talk to someone. At night, we had dinner with Sofia Castro again. It was a great lesson with her fourth-grade son, Eduardo, about how he can be a missionary right now. At the end of the night, I got some positive feedback from Elder Porter. It was really encouraging to hear that I'm going about trying to do things the right way.

 

Friday, October 25th, 2013:

 

Today was one of the slowest days yet since I have gotten into the mission field. Every Friday is weekly planning, and today we rearranged the investigator and potential list on the whiteboard, which took a little extra time. Elder Knight and I are now trying to start keeping track of where the most effective areas are to visit so that we can really focus our efforts more effectively, but the initial planning always takes a while to complete. Elder Knight and I are also hoping to redo the map in our apartment so that it can actually be read now. We basically rely on the phone's "Tell Me" directions to take us everywhere because the map in the apartment is enlarged from a tiny map and cannot be read. As far as activity today, there is really nothing to report. It was a lot of searching with no one home or interested in talking to us.

 

Saturday, October 26th, 2013:

 

Every year, the mission has a "mission tour" in which a General Authority comes to talk to all of the missionaries. All of the Spanish and Chinese missionaries met today in Arcadia to listen to him speak in English, of course (we have four official languages in the mission - English, Spanish, Armenian and Tagalog - but there are seven languages total). Elder Sitati is a Quroum of the Seventy member originally from Kenya and is extremely intelligent. President Becerra asked him to prepare a message for all of us about how we can better apply our missionary purpose into everything that we do. It was really interesting to hear his take on how we need to focus more on the "Why?" and the "How?" to all of the lessons that we teach. It was also really cool to hear him give a statistic about how big the Church could eventually reach: he said that there are approximately 320 members of the different Quorums of the Seventy to serve about 15 million members. In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord stated that there can be as many as seventy times seven Quorums of the Seventy; if each of those Seventy served the same number of members as the current Quorum of Seventy members, the Church could grow to be as big as 1.5 BILLION people. That means that there are people out in the world ready to hear the message of the Restored Gospel. We have work to do. After the mission tour, we went to eat dinner with the Morans. It was super cool to find out that Hermano Moran was set apart as a stake patriarch about 45 years ago by the late Bruce R. McConkie, one of the best authors of books relating to the Gospel - not to mention the fact that he was also an apostle. After eating with them, we finished off the night with ward volleyball. I just wish the ward could be as unified in doing missionary work as they are in playing volleyball.

 

Sunday, October 27th, 2013:

 

Hermana Vellinga, one of the two sister missionaries in Chino West, found out she is getting transferred to Pomona and is getting replaced by Hermana Bardsley from East Los Angeles. The transfer itself happens on Monday mornings. As usual, we went to Church, but the exciting thing was that President Becerra came after church to join us for ward council! It was the first ward council meeting since I have been in the field, and he kind of called them out (although in a tactful way) about that. Ward Council is supposed to meet every week. President talked a lot about focusing on the 60% of the ward that is inactive and why each auxiliary organization has an obligation to help us as missionaries find people to teach so that we can continue bringing the Gospel to all those who are ready to receive it. The only true way to unify a ward is through missionary work. I never understood it before my mission, and I don't think there is really a better testimony-builder of that principle than to be a full-time missionary. I love President so much, and he is so inspiring. He spoke the most perfect Spanish I have heard my entire mission, and every one of those Latino leaders left that room feeling as though they have a new responsibility. At night, Elder Knight and I ate with the Sanchez family before going to the Family Home Evening lesson at the Church. We had all of the family history people from the ward educate people on how they can do their family history. We, as missionaries, then did our little skit with a couple of people dressing up as ancestors and telling the stories of their ancestors in front of a fake fire. We closed by singing "Families Can Be Together Forever" and opening up the curtains to a picture of the Los Angeles Temple. It turned out very well, but it was very stressful!

 

It's been a rather chaotic and interesting week looking back at it. There have definitely been some highs and lows, which is to be expected. It's rather odd how I struggle each day with having the enthusiasm to want to go out and contact people because that is uncharacteristic of me. It's just so tough to find lessons, but I know I need to work harder. The Gospel is true, and it is each of our responsibilities to share the truth with those "who are kept from the truth only because they know not where to find it." I love each of you and appreciate your constant support!

 

Love,

Elder Gabriel Valley