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
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