February 2, 2015 super short on time, some quick experiences,

1. i dont know if you remember the guy with cancer, but if not, there’s a guy with cancer that we are teaching. he cant really move, is in a lot of pain, and was recently admitted to the hospital, though at this point they cant do anything. to add to that he has like 70 years, is the only living member of his family, and has a guilty conscience due to his past. however, with this disease he has been compelled to humble himself (it me think of the poorer zoramites) and has accepted the gospel and repentance. we talked with the mission president this week, and we have permission to baptize him without church attendance, as he cant attend. so we are currently teaching him in the hospital and preparing him for a baptism that should be held within the next week or so.

2. we have been working with an investigator that has a problem with smoking, his family is all members (menos actives, but still members) and he is the only one who is not right now. we have been working with him and setting plans of action for him, but he hasn’t been receiving the help he needs, mostly because he hasn’t been doing his part. so this week we went over and were really direct with him (with love of course) at some point during the lesson i had the though (i do not claim the inception of said thought, but it ended up in my head) that we should list out all the pros and cons of smoking and of repentance (yes there are pros to smoking and cons to repentance, otherwise it wouldn’t be a choice would it?) and by the end it obviously seemed pretty clear the logical choice, and he for once seemed committed to it, he was even the one to push for setting a baptismal date. we saw him at church that sunday and he has been doing better, so that was a cool experience with revelation.

3. we had cambios this week, i honestly felt prepared for any possible outcome of cambios, so i was excited to hear what would go down... nothing changed, both elder velazco and i are both still here. i assume we didn’t get many new elders, because the same thing happened with elder w and his comp.

4. got to use my awesome parkour skills again. we forgot our keys in the house, so i climbed a tree, jumped the broken glass in the top of the wall, shimmied down a wall inside our courtyard thing, and saved the day.

elder z

January 26, 2015 Man vs. Wild: Mexico

well hello once again.

this week was super normal, and I’m short on time, so I will tell 2 things.

1. we had intercambios again this week, it was pretty normal, we did get lost but it wasn’t in my area so it wasn’t my fault. but we got to discussing nacho libre. it’s actually pretty popular here, i thought it might be offensive because its making fun of them, but they just think it’s making fun of priests. all the mexicans think that us americans think that mexico is like nacho libre before coming here. well, i didn’t, but now i do. The more time i spend here the more i am convinced that it is not a comedy, but a documentary. I’ll just leave it at that.

2. we had our first service project this week. we went to help a lady clean out her field by her house. we thought it was gunna be small stuff, so we just brought two ho´s and a shovel. nope. Apparently nature knew we were coming and prepared. There were a bunch of what elder velazco called montes. basically bushes made up of small trees and covered in death spikes. we were very inadequately equipped for the job. (and i mean we used one small machete and pickaxes) yeah it was hard work, yeah there were some casualties (primarily all of my limbs) but nature was unaware that it was about to face a hardened veteran of nature’s death squad commonly known as the Rocklin Creek Crew. sure i didnt have my usual equipment, but compared to clearing out the jungles of Rocklin, hip deep in water, while battling super beavers and the remnant of the vietkong... this was kid stuff. after all, rambo without a weapon is still rambo...or rocky...or ... i dunno, im not well verssed in sylvester stalone movies, but you get the metaphor. but no, in all reality it was good to get out and work again.

thats all for this week, i have no more to say. the work is still progressing and we have a lot of potential... the potential just isn’t attending church right now.

well ok, now that’s it, do good, live the gospel, share the gospel (no really, share it) love you guys,

elder gandola