January 4, 2016 Just Do It

well this week was one of the better weeks i have had in these past few months.

we started out in a meeting with the assistants, who came to talk to all of san luis. the whole state of san luis has been kinda low in baptisms, and has been kinda desanimado (you’ll have to put that one into google translate, not sure what it is in english.) so they came to reanimate them.

they talked about a lot of stuff, but what really affected me were a couple of questions they asked. the first was, "who wants to be an assistant?" (for those who don’t know, an assistant is the highest leadership position in the mission.) a couple missionaries raised their hands, and then he asked them, "what are you doing to make it happen?" i thought that question was interesting because the people who raised their hands were mostly the same people who had raised their hands to a different question, "who has been sleeping in later than they should?" i realized that what we do shows our real desires, in the moment, sleeping in is a bigger desire that being a leader.  we need to make our desires happen.

so i decided a few things. 1 i don’t necessarily care if i am called as assistant or not, but i want to be the kind of missionary that could be called as an assistant. (for those of you wondering, i had not raised my hand to the question, because i didn’t want it then.  my companion actually asked me afterwards why i hadn’t raised my hand, which i thought was kind of funny.) and 2. we haven’t had people at church for a couple months, we have a bunch of investigators, but none have come to church, so my desire this week was to have people at church. so the whole week i worked hard to make it happen, i studied all thirty of them and studied why they haven’t come and how to help them, and when i had other desires, i decided what i wanted more and went right along. we had four people there this week. and a fifth arrived out of the blue who had investigated online and showed up by himself.

today we had transfers, and after 6 months, i left españita. i was sent as district leader to fresnillo zacatecas, with elder S. as my companion. he only has three weeks here, so he doesn’t know the area super well, but he is a good elder.  there is a lot of work to be done, so it’s time to put in practice a lot of what i have learned this week, but I’m excited.

but anyways, quick challenge for you all. 1 what do you really want? 2. what are you doing to make it happen? now go make it happen.

elder gandola

ps. I’m going to try to include a picture in all of my emails now, this resolve will probably last like 3 weeks