The Surprise Baptism - February 3, 2014

Hey Everyone!

I am really coming to terms with the blessings of being exactly obedient! Elder Knapp and I are absolutely tearing it up in Chino right now, and it is so exciting to see the contrast between my low points over the past few transfers and these high points over the past two weeks. Elder Knapp is one excellent leader through his example, and I have really set a personal goal to be as exactly obedient as possible; we make one good team. We have been blessed to have one of the most "golden" investigators you could possibly find: a baptism six days after finding the investigator!

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014:

The morning started off a little slow, seeing that almost everyone was canceling on us. I have been trying to talk to as many people as possible recently to try to get a member with us at every single lesson, but Murphy's Law seems to come into play. Whenever we have a member with us, the people cancel, and whenever we don't have a member with us, we are able to have a lesson. Elder Knapp and I went with the Hermanas down to Chino Hills to do Facebook. It seems like Facebook at this point in time isn't really an effective use of our time, but we have to check it every couple of days per mission rules. I'm thinking that the iPads coming on February 11th will really help our efficiency. Elder Knapp and I got back to work later and found four new investigators today! To put that in perspective, Elder Porter and I only found two investigators during the entire six weeks of last transfer. Chino has had more success in these past two weeks than at any point over the past two years or more. At night, we brought Javier Nunez with us. He is looking to go on a mission in the coming months, and he has one awesome testimony. We taught the Restoration lesson using our pamphlet teaching method to the Nunez family (no relation to Javier). The Hermana told us that she already knew it was true and didn't want to pray about it. I thought that was kind of strange, but we did get her to end up praying in the end. To conclude the evening, we taught the Mantilla family who live with the Santos family. Their son just turned eight and wants to get baptized this Sunday!  We are having a baptism this week! I guess my faith was too low in setting the goal of zero baptisms and zero confirmations for the week!

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014:

In the afternoon, Elder Knapp and I taught English class, and there was a rather large turnout. They were celebrating Chinese New Year, and the teacher had them celebrate it by learning how to communicate at a party in English! She basically told us that it was a good excuse for us to get food. I love the way she thinks! After English class, Elder Knapp and I went to go clean the old apartment for a little while. Apparently, they are closing down the apartment where I lived for three months. It does not appear that there will be two additional missionaries in Chino for quite some time (although, who knows what President will do!). After cleaning, we all met up at Hermano Montanez's house for correlation. I can see the progress that our whole district is making. The Hermanas have some baptisms lined up for the end of February and beginning of March, and Elder Knapp and I definitely have some potential baptisms lined up for the beginning of March. We will see what happens over time. As for the remainder of the day, Elder Knapp and I were able to teach a lesson to Martin Ramirez and to Salomon, who both live in the same apartment complex. Martin has a baptismal date for the 16th of February, but he has quite the drinking problem. We will see if that baptism needs to be postponed or not. Teaching about the Book of Mormon with the same power that Brother Donaldson did at our mission training meeting is quite difficult. Just like an investigator must actually exercise their agency to work on developing their testimony, I must also exercise my own agency to improve my teaching skills. Missionaries aren't just automatically prepared to teach. We have to WORK to be able to grow. It is when we work that we are able to see the Lord's hand guiding us and blessing us to be able to accomplish more than we could have ever done on our own.

Thursday, January 30th, 2014:

For district meeting, Elder Knapp taught about the importance of using the Area Book to its fullest potential. It's interesting to see how much of an impact the Area Book has on our life. For the role play with the Area Book, we traded our Area Book with the Hermanas and began analyzing how we can all improve. It was kind of hard to take some of the stuff seriously when we know that everything will get moved to the iPads in about two weeks. After district meeting, we taught a potential investigator about the Restoration. Lorena is Catholic, but she seems very open to listening and could very well progress to baptism in the course of time! During the afternoon, we stopped by Mario Sanchez to see how he has been doing. It has been over four months since I have talked to him, but we managed to get in and have a lesson with him. He was very open to listening, but we will see if he ends up acting on what we share. That seems to be a thing with Latino people in general. They are too nice and polite to say no, so their way of saying no is by saying yes without actually doing what they agreed to do. It's definitely a cultural difference. Sofia Castro had us over for dinner in the evening, and we found out that she has been reading the Book of Mormon! She is a member, but it is still so exciting to see her "progressing" in the Gospel. Ruben was going to come pick us up for a lesson after eating with Sofia. Elder Knapp and I ended up waiting in the bucketing rain for over an hour for him (which didn't help my progressively-worsening cold). It was exciting to hear him say that he has a really good job lined up with a chemical engineering company, though! It's interesting that his line of work happens to be the same one I hope to pursue in the future... We ended up being an hour late for our appointment, which meant that the family wasn't home. Unfortunately, it was another failed appointment. To end the evening, we ended up teaching Frederic the remainder of the stuff so that he can get baptized on Sunday! I was amazed at how quickly we were covering so much doctrine with an eight year-old kid, but he was handling it very well!

Friday, January 31st, 2014:

Weekly planning today consisted mostly of cleaning out our lists of old potentials, in addition to reorganizing all of our whiteboards and lists. I love that Elder Knapp is like myself in that he is extremely organized and neat. We are both very peticular about the things that we do, and it translates into more success in the mission field. God is a god of order, so we must be organized as well. During the day, the mission office requested that our district clean the Foothill Building in Arcadia. They were all surprised to see that it was only four of us, in addition to the fact that we are the farthest area from the mission office, geographically, in the entire mission. As a result, we spent almost five hours of our day between cleaning and driving down there. It hurt our numbers for the day, but the office was really grateful for our service. Elder Knapp and I were also able to pop in and see a couple of Elders in the Family History Center that have their iPads already (there are eight missionaries test-piloting them for the rest of the mission). They told us how great they are and how much they will help with organization and planning. We will be removing the Area Book and making everything digital! We also saw the iPad boxes hidden away in a locked case in the cleaning closet... I can't get the word iPad out of my head now! At night, we went to go teach the Nunez family with Hermano Kirk, but only Jesus ended up being home. We taught him about the importance of the Book of Mormon, and he committed to begin reading it! To end the night, we stopped by Camilo Gomez to check up on him. The family that he lives with is really nice and know me by name (and by first name). They aren't interested in the Church, but they always invite us in when they are having a barbeque and let us eat carne asada with them. It's so comforting to see people take care of us, especially when they aren't even members of the Church.

Saturday, February 1st, 2014:

It's already February! Where does the time go? In the morning, we were able to go teach a new investigator named Bertha about the Restoration. Apparently, she has talked to missionaries in the past, but she seems to have forgotten some important pieces about what we teach. After teaching her, Elder Knapp and I met up with the zone leaders to do the baptismal interview for Frederic Mantilla. Elder Chandler did the interview; he also interviewed Ruben when Ruben was baptized. Frederic did well and is all ready to go for tomorrow! After finishing the interview, the zone leaders worked with Elder Knapp and I to clean out the old apartment even further. It is amazing to see how dirty missionaries can let a place get over the course of a number of years. That old apartment that I lived in was even more disgusting than I ever thought! All four of us worked for over two hours to clean it out. We will move everything out and finish cleaning on Wednesday of the coming week. Elder Knapp and I worked with Hermano Castro to get Martin Ramirez to a tour of the Church at night. It was good to help him see what happens in the Church, and Hermano Castro helped answer a lot of his questions. Martin is definitely progressing, but that alcohol problem is lingering in the back of our minds.

Sunday, February 2nd, 2014:

Hermano Sazo went with Elder Knapp and I to go pick up Martin and bring him to Sacrament Meeting. It was Fast and Testimony Meeting, and Martin ended up falling asleep in the middle of it. It was kind of frustrating that he wasn't awake for all of it, but at least he got to experience the ordinance of the Sacrament. He had to leave after Sacrament Meeting concluded. After Church ended, we had our first Ward Council meeting in about two months. Bishop Arriaga addressed a lot of issues that need to be resolved, in addition to commenting on a lot of the progress that has taken place over the past few months, namely cleaning out the ward list. Elder Porter and I helped him clean out about sixty names off the ward list, which will help everyone know who to focus their efforts on visiting and teaching. Hermano Cardoza came out with Elder Knapp and I to visit about six different people in the afternoon. To our dismay, not a single person was available for a mere fifteen minutes. It seems like that has just been our luck recently. At night, Ruben came to pick us up for the baptism in Covina. We took the directions that the Hermanas gave us and ended up being twenty minutes late to the baptism because we got lost! Elder Knapp and I were positive that we were going to miss the ordinance for our own convert. Thank goodness, however, the Lord blessed us with the ability to arrive just in time to see Frederic enter the water. It was so exciting to see him get baptized! The Mantilla family and Santos family invited us over to their house to eat pozole (one of my absolute favorite things) after the baptismal service. We spent the night with them and with a few of their family members.

Overall, this week has been absolutely amazing and filled with blessings and success! I hope to help Chino keep this momentum moving, and I am very grateful to be a key part in the changes taking place here. I hope everyone else has had a fantastic week, and I appreciate all of your love and support! Take care, and I look forward to hearing from you in the future!

Love,

Elder Gabriel Valley

P.S. I attached a picture of Elder Knapp and I with our eight year-old convert, Frederic Mantilla! Because we arrived late, we were not able to get a photo with him while he was in his white baptismal clothing.