Hey Everyone!
I hope everyone has had a wonderful Easter! My weekend here was quite
eventful: I was part of a wedding, a special planning meeting with my
mission president, as well as three baptisms yesterday -- I was able
to perform one of those three, too.
Tuesday, April 15th, 2014:
I had spent the evening with Elder Knight and Elder Turner, seeing
that Elder Steffen left last week to go to Covina. It was really fun
and nice to be in a trio once again; the nice part about trios is that
it is much easier to get along in a group of three than in a group of
three and have more fun, too. We spent a lot of time trying to find a
couple of former investigators during the day, but no one was home
before the time that I had to leave to go to the mission office. When
I got to the mission office in the afternoon, I got to meet my new
trainee, Elder Barnes. He is from South Jordan, Utah and is actually
one month younger than me. That makes me the third-youngest missionary
in the whole mission! Elder Barnes has a great desire to work hard and
serve The Lord. I feel incredibly overwhelmed and intimidated to be
training, and the scarier part is that I am the only Spanish Elder
training an incoming missionary this transfer; it is a lot of
responsibility on my part. When we got back to the apartment, Elder
Barnes set down his stuff, and we then left to go eat dinner at the
Perez family's house. It was Elder Turner's birthday, so they had
everyone over to eat gazpacho. I was really nervous, considering that
gazpacho is a cold soup made with shrimp and other sea food. Anyone
who knows my dad knows that his allergy to shellfish is quite
apparent, so I was worried that I may have developed the same allergy.
It was my first time ever eating shrimp in my life; I haven't died
yet, so I guess that means I haven't gotten the allergy? For dessert,
the Perez family made a nice big cake. The best part is the Latino
tradition for birthdays: when Elder Turner went to blow out the
candles, everyone grabbed his head and shoved it into the cake. It had
to be one of the funniest experiences on my mission so far. Elder
Barnes had a fun first day in the mission field.
Wednesday, April 16th, 2014:
During the morning, Elder Knight, Elder Turner, Elder Barnes and I all
went up to a food bank to do service. They are giving out a ton of
food for low-income families, and they have been getting ready for the
Easter season by preparing baskets to give out with all of the food.
It was a fun service opportunity where we got to move giant crates of
food and stock all of the shelves for people coming in to pick up food
to eat for the Easter holiday. I love doing service because of how
great I feel helping people. When we got back to the apartment, I only
had a few minutes to help Elder Barnes get ready to teach Santiago. I
role played a little bit with him to get him used to how we teach
lessons. Teaching in the mission field is drastically different than
teaching in the MTC. He is doing really well, but the Spanish is
definitely a barrier for him right now. It reminded me of how
overwhelmed I felt when I got into the mission field, and it is quite
the task of helping him adjust to missionary life. We went to
Santiago's house to teach him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
focusing on the ordinance of baptism. We taught him the lesson and
invited him to be baptized. He declined and said that he wants to
continue learning before he accepts the invitation to be baptized. He
seems to be progressing, but he will need time before he eventually
comes to accept the invitation to be baptized. During the evening, we
went down to the church for mutual. It was nice to see how warm of a
welcome the ward gave Elder Barnes in his first interaction with them.
Thursday, April 17th, 2014:
At district meeting, we talked about conversion and the importance of
being personally converted to be able to help others see the path of
conversion. It was a nice discussion, and I feel like our district is
doing really well together; we have that unity that comes over time
because only one person changed from last transfer to this transfer.
After district meeting ended, we started preparing everything for the
wedding of two of the investigators that the Hermanas are teaching,
Julia and Hector. They are going to be baptized this Sunday, so they
need to be married and live the Law of Chastity before they enter the
waters of baptism. Our whole district joined in on the preparations to
help make the wedding special for them. President Muriel will perform
the ceremony. Elder Barnes and I went to go visit Alex Varela after we
finished helping with the preparations. We talked to Alex about the
concept of enduring to the end. He is now all finished with all of the
lessons that are supposed to be finished after baptism. The only
things that he still needs is the Priesthood and a calling. Alex is a
solid member who will be able to contribute a lot to the branch and
help others come into the Church, too. We returned to the church to
help with the last-minute preparations for the wedding. One of the
recent converts, Liz Carbajal, made a wedding cake that looked very
elegant and tasted even better than it looked. The wedding ceremony
was really special. It was quite the honor to be a part of the wedding
pronouncement.
Friday, April 18th, 2014:
President Becerra had a planning meeting with our entire zone about
three weeks ago, but our whole district somehow got forgotten. He made
the time to come meet with our district in the morning. It was so nice
to be able to spend two hours with President Becerra and learn so much
from him. President Becerra gave us a two-hour lesson (more of a group
discussion) that helped us realize the importance of planning with our
end vision in mind. President Becerra is a wonderful teacher and helps
us learn without giving us the answer; he helps us work out the
solution for ourselves and then teaches us the doctrine after we have
worked out the problem. After the meeting, Elder Barnes and I returned
to the apartment to do weekly planning. It was a good experience for
Elder Barnes to do his first weekly planning session right after we
had just talked to President Becerra about planning. It was a little
long, but it was to be expected for his first weekly planning session.
After weekly planning, we went to talk to Chris Varela about the Word
of Wisdom and Easter. He seems to be more and more excited to get
baptized; he only needs to wait for his mother to give him permission
to be baptized, and I think the approval will come very soon. To
finish off the evening, Elder Barnes and I went down to the church for
correlation meeting. We found out that the Hermanas got an
investigator approved by the First Presidency of the Church to be
baptized this Sunday, meaning that a total of three baptisms will take
place on Sunday!
Saturday, April 19th, 2014:
Today was the first "normal" day this whole week. We were able to do
our whole study session and begin on "The First Twelve Weeks," which
is the training program for new missionaries. The day consisted of a
lot of work with little success to show for it. I felt bad that Elder
Barnes didn't have a whole lot of teaching today, but it gives a good
indicator for what missionary work is like on a daily basis. We found
a new family named the Merlos family, and I couldn't quite tell if
they are members or not; they didn't really answer me very clearly
when I asked them. The Varelas also invited us over for dinner
tomorrow on Easter. It was a rather uneventful day, but we are still
working hard each and every day.
Sunday, April 20th, 2014:
This may have been one of the most exciting days on the mission to
date because the Hermanas had three baptisms today! It was also
Easter, meaning that the talks and program were all really good and
interesting. Elder Barnes and I helped teach Primary today, and they
were really crazy. We did, however, help Silvia get the money for
obtaining an ID card from the El Salvador consulate in L.A. She is
going to go down there on Thursday, and then she will be able to get
married and baptized right away! After church ended, we had the
baptismal service for Hector and Julia. The really exciting part for
me was that I was able to perform the baptism for Julia; it was the
first time on my mission that I was able to perform the actual
ordinance. Hermano Monzon performed the ordinance for Hector, and it
was a very spiritual experience for everyone present. The third
baptism was for Genaro, who was approved by the First Presidency. We
were able to Skype some Hermanas from the Temple Square Mission who
talked to Genaro when he went down to Salt Lake for General
Conference. Our district sang "I Like to Look for Rainbows" in
Spanish. The remainder of the day was fairly slow, but it was really
exciting to see all of the progress in this branch today. There have
already been five baptisms in this branch this year.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and has a wonderful week. I
love you all and appreciate all of your support!
Love,
Elder Gabriel Valley
Sent from my iPad
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