September 28, 2015 Working overtime (and undertime)

hello all,

im gunna start out with a general thank you for all the letters  i got, i would love to respond to each individually, but 1 hour is a lot less time that it would seem. but it seems my christmas list of letters passed on to my birthday.  i wasn’t really expecting much because i forgot that you guys actually know when my birthday is. no i haven’t told my companions, they think it’s in january. but don’t worry we will celebrate it. i sneakily mentioned that lunch would be complicated saturday because of general conference, then i told them that we could talk to the relief society secretary, or we could just order two pan pizzas from dominoes (they are having a special and our money comes this week) so we will celebrate without them realizing. also we´ll probably buy churros or something  thursday for my 1 year mark.

and well other than that i can’t stake my usual claim on the, "this will be short because this week was normal." so i guess the question is, where to start?

how about tuesday, so there we were, in an average district meeting.. side note, i now have the smallest district in the mission... 3 elders,(i´ll explain, don’t worry.) when we got a phone call that a few elders in the mission got sent home, and so there was some filling in to be done until we get more missionaries, and one of the elders in my district was given special transfers to go fill in. so we sent our companions to go work and i went back with the elder to go pack and get ready to leave.

they were working out the travel plans and everything, and so we didn’t know exactly when he would travel, so they just had us waiting in the house for 2 days so that we would be ready at any moment, waiting in the house is kinda poopy.

but anyways he got transferred and the three of us were kinda just standing around wondering, "well, what now?" so we talk to the zone leaders about how we manage everything, and they let us know that the three of us will stay in a trio for now, and that we now have both of the areas to work in. the only thing is that elder matos (our new companion) doesn’t really know his area very well. for like a week and a half they were in the house because his companion had an infected toenail and then we had exchanges and stuff like that, so basically he only has like a week in his area. so basically we are opening an area, but we have another area as well, fun stuff.

so then thursday we went and worked. to complicate things even more,  lots of stuff is changing in our area which was progressing a lot in these last few weeks.  thursday we had to drop 2 investigators, one of which had come with us to church twice, and then friday in the morning during our study 2 more (some of my favorite investigators) dropped us out of the blue.

needless to say (but i will anyways) i was feeling pretty stressed. i had no idea how to keep up with all this stuff being piled on me. but then i studied that morning a lot about faith, and i realized something. i have no idea what i am doing, but the lord does. the lord has charged me with this right now, and it’s his work, i don’t need to be stressed out, i just need to work, and it will all work out.

i also found much comfort in a scripture in mathew 25:23 which tells us, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" now I’m not claiming that i have two areas because I’m better or anything like that, but it doesn’t matter what the lord gives me, i want to prove to him that i will be faithful in any situation.

so friday i worked feeling a lot better.  saturday i felt a lot worse. we started working and i felt kinda not so good, so we went back to the house so i could puke. i did, and then i felt a little better, but i slept to recuperate my strength, afterwards i tried eating a yogurt in the night, the result was more puking. so that night i prayed pretty hard. i understood i needed to work and i wanted to work, so i prayed that i could get better to be able to work. i got the impression, "why are you asking me, you have two priesthood holders there and you haven’t asked them for a blessing yet." so i did.  the next morning i felt normal, went to church gave a talk, worked all day, and didn’t puke.

so if there is any advice i can give to all of you from this very hectic week, trust in the lord. you may not know what you are doing, but he does, and that’s enough.

anyways, that’s it for now, be good, love you guys, peace out

Elder Gándola

sept 21, 2015

September 21, 2015

so this week was pretty normal, so i don’t really have too much to write about. but i guess there’s a couple things i could comment on.

elder M, not my companion but from the other elders in my district had an in-gown toenail that got infected and so he couldn’t walk or anything, so they stayed home, but we passed by to give him a blessing, and he he can work now.

well actually this week was a bit different because in these past two weeks we have started having more progress. this past transfer has been hard at times because, even though we are working well, we have hardly had anything. but these past two weeks we have seen progress in everything. first of all we have found some super ready new investigators, which is something we have really needed recently, we also had some people in church, only one investigator, but a lot of less actives too. we always have the occasional less active that shows up, but some of the people we have really been working with in these last weeks came for the first time, so it was great to see them refocusing themselves on what is important. so it just goes to show that when we do our part, the lord will do his. it’s not us that gets to determine how or when, but it is our efforts that determines whether or not we will permit that the lord can do his part (at least right now.  we can’t stop the lords work, we can only postpone it and decide if we are the ones to do it. i say it’s better that we do our part so that it’s us and not somebody else.

anyways, person of the week goes to R (sr) and R (jr) and E.  elder M and elder C contacted R (sr) during exchanges, and we visited them sunday.  when we got there they were working, they make uniforms, but they said that we could come in for a couple minutes while they iron the stuff. they never got to ironing because we started teaching them. I’ve gotten very good at sneakily slipping lessons in with people. (i did the same with another woman, we visited her and her husband in their shop, he started telling us that it’s too hard to find time between customers to be able to talk, and he was so busy saying that to my companion and a member, that he didn’t even notice that i got a full lesson in with his wife before he knew what happened) but anyways, they are Catholics, but for tradition and have never really heard anything else, but they just ate everything we gave to them (not literally) and accepted baptism. you know it always kinda surprises me when people accept so easily, but when we have the spirit it happens again and again. but we will see what happens with them, we both think they will progress rapidly

anyways, that’s it for this week. love you, be good.

elder Gándola

September 14, 2015 Mate

September 14, 2015  Better than Drugs

so this week we started out interestingly. Remember L the investigator of the week a couple weeks ago. well her son turned 3 years old on monday. we didn’t know but we passed by, and they were a bit busy so we just kinda said hi and left. she had had to work, so they hadn’t really done anything for him. so later elder M had the idea that we buy him a pinguino (like a hostess cupcake) and some candles and go throw him a little makeshift party, so we did. he was super happy. we didn’t get to teach them, but it just goes to show you that it’s always good to do service, even when you don’t get anything immediately in return. but hopefully this will help them organize their priorities so that they can progress a little bit more. she has tried reading the book of mormon with her son, but he hasn’t really listened, but we also gave them one of those book of mormon stories books with pictures to help them.

after that we had exchanges with the other elders in our district. i was with elder MA, who just arrived here and has has like a year in the mission. he is from brazil, but lives on the border of argentina, which means he drinks, and has all the equipment for... mate! so we may have drank a lot of mate in  the exchanges, including, dad, mate dulce. which is drunk with juice or something else sweet, we drank it with sprite. (but if you do that dad do it in the metal cup or a normal cup because it will ruin the other one. i forgot my camera today, but for those of you who don’t know what mate is, you can look up pictures but i swear it’s not drugs. but when we got back elder M asked me, "elder... why do we have drugs sitting on our counter?" but it’s not. its better

you know what else is better than drugs? temples. we had the rededication of the mexico city temple this week. saturday we watched an awesome cultural celebration, and sunday the dedication. it was nice because i have really been wanting to go to the temple recently, and we didn’t, but the stake center was considered an extension of the temple, we needed a recommend to enter, and the spirit was very very close.

 elder eyering and elder holland came, and gave some awesome talks. one thing that really struck me is that elder holland said, "i thank all of you for your dedication to this gospel, or in this instance, your rededication." and it’s true. we are also temples of God. we have dedicated ourselves through covenants (well, the majority of those reading this) but we all must find times to rededicate ourselves. we can all look for what else we can do, and like the temples before their rededication, what we can change. the sacrament is something that is for our rededication every week. we learned that may times we don’t appreciate temples until they are closed, and i would add that many times we don’t appreciate the magnitude of this rededication that we all partake of every week. just something to think about.

well. that’s all for now. be good, love you guys

elder gandola

August 31, 2015 Churros are Kosher

hey guys,

so this week was a little different, we worked normally until wednesday, when we had a 3-zone wide health conference. basically we all got together and they taught us the, "10 commandments of health." it was pretty basic stuff like drink safe water and take baths and stuff like that, but the guy was a good speaker and made it fun, and it’s always nice to do something a little bit different. also none of the commandments said anything directly against 1 peso churros, so i won’t complain.

guess the stake and the doctor must have been on the same wavelength, because we had stake conference this week too, so saturday and sunday we got to go listen to stuff that was really more directed at the members than at us, but it was still good, especially to see how we as missionaries can help the area progress in their specific needs right now. its super cool to be here right now, because (the church in) mexico is really starting to make progress and is on the verge on becoming completely self-sufficient as a country, which means that it will be providing all of the funds necessary to cover its own needs, and the church will be able to use the excess to help other countries where the church is not quite as well established.

the work this week was a bit tough, didn’t find a whole bunch of people, but we could definitely see that the lord is guiding the work. we didn’t really plan on having anybody at church, because they were all busy and such, but at 11:30 saturday night, we received a text from unknown number asking us what time church started. we didn’t see it till the morning, and explained the stake conference and all that, but still didn’t know who it was or if they were coming. so we stuck around after the first session hoping and waiting to see if anybody showed up, they didn’t. well we didn’t have money for a taxi, so we started walking home, and about half an hour later we got a text from another compañonship telling us that an investigator we hadn’t been able to visit that week showed up with her boyfriend. so that was pretty cool.

the person of the week this week is actually not an investigator, or at least not a current investigator. so in the health conference we got to talk with the elders in matehuala about my old area. i don’t know if you guys remember, but i had a convert there, A, a young man who was baptized and wants to serve a mission. well he is currently living in monterrey. he lives like 3 blocks from the temple. he goes there almost every day. but he is not the person of the week. we also started teaching his dad, also A, who is one of my favorite investigators, but who stopped progressing for a situation he was in. we he has since managed to change that situation and has accepted a baptismal date, I’m so happy for him.

anyways, that’s it for now, love you guys, be good.

Elder Gándola