Hey Everyone!
There have been some very exciting events taking place during the past few days since Thanksgiving here in the Chino Spanish Ward! I'm finally beginning to see some results from our continual efforts of working with the ward leadership to help get this ward on its feet.
Tuesday, November 26th, 2013:
Elder Knight finally got the right amount of money put onto his card after like two weeks of nagging, so we were finally able to go buy groceries. Once again, we got held up later in the day doing service for the Sazos for much longer than we would have anticipated (or wanted). Upon finishing service, it was time to go visit Enrique Olvera and teach him about the Plan of Salvation. It was a great lesson. To our dismay, however, Enrique did tell us that he is waiting for a major event to happen before he is ever going to get baptized. He doesn't live one of the basic Ten Commandments, and he will never receive an answer unless he truly chooses to repent. Sadly, we will likely be required to drop him soon. After teaching him, we went up to the church to meet with President Gutierrez, the first counselor in the mission presidency. He lives in the area that Elder Knight and I cover, which is really awesome. He is one inspiring man. He is also extremely intelligent; he sells implants for the human spine as a living. His practical and charasmatic approach to things make him an excellent asset to have in our mission presidency. During our meeting with him and our district, President Gutierrez told us that the ward will not become inspired or be as inspired as it needs to be unless we are able to baptize by our own accord. It was funny to hear him describe our ward as a foreign country because of the numerous problems that we are trying to patch up at the moment. He was also very encouraging by telling us that, unless we are having fun, we need to repent. I think I was getting too caught up in the stresses of the mission and how to fix all of the problems that I wasn't as happy as I could have been. He also instructed us to do more service people during this time of year, and that also means doing service as a priority over contacting people on the street. Basically, we need to change our image from being "finders" of people ready to hear the Gospel to "servants" of our fellow man. To finish off the day, I grabbed my stuff and went over to Chino Central to spend the night with my buddy, Elder Low! I will be going on exchanges on Wednesday!
Wednesday, November 27th, 2013:
Elder Low and I made a concerted effort to work really hard in his area for the day. We put A LOT of miles on the bikes. To begin the day, our district met up with Obispo Arriaga at his house for breakfast and to talk about how we can help make his job easier. We found out that he has been very stressed out lately with all of the problems in the ward, so we began throwing out ideas of things that he can assign us to do in order to help him make his job easier. A bishop has numerous responsibilities and doesn't have enough time to fulfill all of them all of the time. Bishop Kimzey, I would like to personally thank you for being such a great example of a bishop to me. I have learned from your example of leadership how to help the leadership here in Chino. We are all finally beginning to be on the same page with missionary work. Upon finishing the meeting, Elder Low and I went to Miguel's house to help him do more of his family history work. I'm not going to lie, it was really boring. Elder Low and I later went out contacting potentials and less-active members. We didn't have much success during the middle of the day, but during the night we were able to talk to the Montes de Oca family, a less-active family in the ward. I talked to them the last time I was on exchanges with Elder Low, and it was wonderful seeing them again! Hermana Montes de Oca even remembered me by name and all about me! It made me happy that I had at least made an impact like that on someone. We convinced them to try coming back to church this Sunday, so it was a good visit, too.
Thursday, November 28th, 2013:
Holidays feel so weird on the mission. We can't really go "bother" families that aren't members, so we have to focus all of our attention on the members of the ward who are around. We had district meeting in the morning, which was very productive. Our district is full of some rock-solid missionaries with even firmer testimonies. At the end of the meeting, Hermana Bardsley brought up the problem that we haven't been talking to enough people. I hadn't realized it was as big of a problem that we, as missionaries, needed to fix -- it stemmed all the way back to the ward Halloween party. We will do better in the future. After finishing district meeting, we went to go play soccer at the park against the Pomona ward. It was so much fun! I'm so bad at soccer, but I love sports, as I'm sure you are all very well aware. Upon getting back, Elder Knight and I decided to bake some brownies to help the members trust us again. If there is ever a conflict of interests, the best way to resolve the conflict is through service. Therefore, we decided to serve our members. The Montanez family, especially, was very grateful for our small act of service. For Thanksgiving dinner, or should I say for the TWO Thanksgiving dinners, we went to the Sazos and to the Morenos. I missed the traditional American Thanksgiving with turkey and potatoes. We had a few dishes from El Salvador and from Guatemala which were good, but they weren't turkey and potatoes. I don't mean to be picky, but that's what Thanksgiving consists of! It was probably the first time in the mission field where I would have rather had American food than Latino food. It was funny to see how much I missed turkey and potatoes. While at the Morenos, we were able to talk to a few non-members about missionary work. We never have a day off from being a missionary, and the joy that comes from sharing the Gospel is greater than anything else.
Friday, November 29th, 2013:
Weekly planning took a little longer than normal just because of how focused Elder Knight and I were on changing things about the area to promote greater success. Upon finishing weekly planning, we went to go do laundry (yes, it had been 11 days since I had done laundry - due to the money situation with Elder Knight's card - and I was almost out of clothes!). We were able to contact a guy in the laundromat and talk to him about our beliefs. He talked with missionaries for a long time, but eventually decided not to be baptized. It was sad to hear that he never wanted to, but it was a good contact. On our way to contact a referral, we stopped at some other people who invited us to eat some chicken with them. They were in town for Thanksgiving visiting their family and invited us to come back next week to share a message with them! To conclude the evening, we went to go eat dinner with the Ramirez family. To our surprise, we found a former Elder from our mission there! His name was Elder Parry, but he finished his mission in August of this year. Elder Knight knew him, and we were able to hear all about his mission experiences in the Arcadia mission. It was also cool to learn that he, like me, was trained in Chino and covered many of the same areas. When we got back to the apartment, Elder Knight and I called President Gutierrez to tell him about our meeting with Obispo that we had on Wednesday. President was really excited to hear how well it went, and he told us he will be coming to the ward on Sundayand also attending ward council. Things are really falling into place!
Saturday, November 30th, 2013:
In the morning, all of the Elders in our district went to go help Hermana Herrera (no relation to the other Herrera family in the ward) go move to another apartment that is still located in our area. Overall, today consisted of visiting many different members of the ward to check up on them and see how they are doing with the basic things, such as reading scriptures and doing their callings. Elder Knight and I decided to ditch the bikes and walk everywhere today, in hopes of finding people on the streets to talk to. Unfortunately, as is usually the case in Chino, there was NO ONE at all on the streets walking around during the day. It is difficult to find new people here. We are trying to do everything we can to find some new people that are ready to listen to us, but it is just tough. On our way to ward volleyball at night, we went to a taco stand and contacted a very nice gentleman who is Catholic (like most Latino people). Our major problem is that the initial contact is awesome, but people are just too skeptical to give us their address or phone number to contact them later. They love talking to us, but then they always say that they are too busy to talk to us. That taco place had some of the best tacos I have ever had, though, so that was the positive part of that stop. To finish off the evening, we played volleyball at the church with the ward.
Sunday, December 1st, 2013:
President Gutierrez joined us in ward council in the morning, in addition to coming to Sacrament Meeting. It was so awesome having him in ward council because he was able to help us help the leaders keep everything focused and on track. He has a tremendous spirit about him. We did a ton of work with Obispo Arriaga after church, especially with helping him update the almost five year-old records that are very out-dated. One other exciting thing that happened at church was that we had three less-active families all return to church! During the afternoon, we met with Hermano Montanez because he finally received the "special assignment" from Obispo to act as our ward mission leader, indefinitely. The problem is that our active Priesthood all have stake callings because they are all so good, and then they can't have ward callings as a result. Our Priesthood in the ward isn't big enough to fill the basic callings, and the stake president won't release any of the stake leaders. Hermano Montanez is now serving as a high councilor, in addition to serving as our ward mission leader by special assignment. We had a great meeting with him, and I can tell he has the drive and fire to get this ward baptizing. Our numbers for key indicators for the week were very low, but our efforts have been focused on different things during the past few days. Our progress at the moment is coming in the form of ward progress, not baptisms in the ward. It's not our true calling, but it's what we have to do to help this ward stay afloat. President Gutierrez basically described the situation as trying to use buckets to keep the titanic afloat. It will take time; however, our buckets seem to be getting bigger.
All in all, this week has been very exciting and eye-opening. I have learned so much about the workings of the Church from the view of leadership. It's really neat to see how the different Priesthood keys work together to fulfill all of the various responsibilities that have to be fulfilled. We have transfers next Monday, so I will know if I'm staying in Chino on Saturday night. No one in our district wants to leave here because we are really beginning to understand how to tackle all of the complex problems in the area that have arisen over time -- it would be a step backwards to replace any of us. I definitely feel like I was placed here to utilize my problem-solving skills.
I want to thank all of you for your wonderful support and love! I miss you all and appreciate all that you all do for me!
Love,
Elder Gabriel Valley
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