December 26, 2011: la llamada 3

Hola Familia,

Wow, ¡Que rapido pasó el tiempo! Estoy seguro que todos tuvieron una Navidad tan especial y que todos lo van a recordar, porqúe ¡yo sí tuve una Navidad Maravillosa! It was awesome to hear from all of you and all of your experiences and stuff. It was best of all to hear your voices. Today I don´t have very much to write, cause we talked yesterday and Not much has happened in that little time. I thought most of all I would send you all  of my pictures I was able to take this week. We have been working very hard and it has been a lot of fun. I hope that I can keep being better and doing better.

It is crazy that this week we will be starting 2012. It blows my mind, but I am super excited that I still have a lot of time and that we will be starting the year that the world will end haha, jk. 2011 has gone by so so fast and I can´t even believe it. It makes me scared to think about how fast 2012 will go by. I really have to enjoy every minute here and every pupusas now.

It was really fun this last week (Just to go over) seeing Rolando and his new wife Sandra getting married and getting baptized. They are such a wonderful couple and they are so willing to work. It was also such an amazing experience being able to go back to Ahuachapan. I was able to go back and see the baptism and marriage of an old investigator and I was able to see all of my Recent Converts and Friends. I had so much fun, but it was so hard to leave them again. I can´t imagine how hard it will be to come home from the mission. It will be rough. A very bitter sweet I imagine.

But I loved the photos of the kids for christmas. They are so cute and old. I can´t even get over it. But I love you all and hope that you have a great new year. I am definitely going to be over here eating a ton of chicken. For christmas eve we ate SO MUCH CHICKEN and RICE. It was crazy.

I love you all though and think about you all a ton. I pray for you and have a good week and a good new year. Hasta Pronto.

Elder Gillette

December 19, 2011: Cena Navideña

Hola Familia!

Wow, what a crazy week. I feel like I had practically no time to work in my own area. It really sucked, but the good part is that we got to do a lot of really fun things. This week we had our cena Navideña with the mission and I am not going to lie it was a ton ton better than last year. We had a talent show and a whole bunch of food. It was a lot of fun. I also got to see a bunch of friends from the mission which was super awesome. I took some pictures, but I will have to send them next week, because my computer really sucks right now.  We also played a bunch of games. The second half  was a part much more spiritual. I got to sing in this awesome choir and it was a lot of fun.

In my area everything is doing super good. We didn´t have nearly as much success as last week, but the people we are teaching are really awesome. This family that we found last week are doing really well and are so super excited to get married and baptized this next weekend. We have already gotten all of the paperwork and we are just going to try and get some stuff ready to have a sweet wedding.
  We also have 3 other people who are getting ready to get baptized this next weekend. One of them is the wife of a guy we reactived. They are really awesome people too. The wife is a teacher and her name is Marleni. She is an aweome lady and she has been reading the Book of Mormon like crazy. Last night she read 11 chapters and said she loved it.

Well I think the most important thing coming up is the CALL. Wow, it will already be my third call. That is crazy. It has been 7 months since we have last talked. I have been thinking about what would make this call better and I was thinking that last year the call was a little crazy cause there was so many people. So I was thinking of doing a call with mom or dad whichever year it is where the kids start and calling over there. Then after calling the first I would call the other. What I will probably do is make a first call on saturday night so that we can be ready. last years christmas was really hard cause of the time difference.

I decided this time I am going to think of the stories that I want to share before hand so that I don´t forget anything. If any of you have questions or anything you should think of them before too so that we can not waste time right.

Well I figure most of the other stuff we will talk about on Christmas. I figure I will be doing the first call at about 1 and the second at like 2. But in Utah that is about an hour before so that would be 12 and 1 over there.

I love you all and am super excited to talk to you all. Feliz Navidad!

Elder Gillette

December 12, 2011: Familia Hasbún

HOLA FAMILIA,

Wowowowowow, I cannot even believe how AMAZING this week has been. So like I told you all last week that I had a break through about the faith. It was amazing and it has been driving me. This week we had a meeting with all the zone and I told them about what I have been thinking a lot about. About how here in our mission the average is to baptized like 20 people per zone a month. Every zone is like 14-18 missionaries and in my zone we have 18. I told my zone that we should put the goal of baptizing 60 people in one month? They all said we should put a more realistic goal of like 25. I am loving the story right now of Peter in Acts where he is talking to a multitude of people and he ends up baptizing more than 3000 people that day. I asked them that, Why can Peter and John baptize 3,000 in one day and 18 missionaries have a hard time baptizing 25 in one month? It was a good moment of pondering for all. I think I woke up some others with that.

Me and my comp though have been making sure we show acts with our faith though. We worked our butts off, but more than anything we are trying to follow the Spirit. One of these days we were doing interchanges and one of the district leaders who is going to end his mission soon came to my area. We went to an investigators house on Friday and invited them to an activity and left. When we were walking away I heard a "chhh.. chhh." I looked around and saw nothing. We continued walking and I heard it again. Then I saw a lady in window calling us over. We went over and we asked what church we are from. I told her and she said that she wants to go to church. We were super stunned. She then told us to wait a sec. She came back and introduced us to her husband and that he wanted to go too. His Name is Orlando Hasbún and his wife is Sandra. They are both about 60 and he has never really attended any church before. They let us in and we taught an amazing lesson and the dad said that from here on out will always go to church even without ever going once he said that. They went to church Sunday and they LOVED IT. They are now planning on getting married and baptized the 24th!

We also were walking Saturday and we felt an impression to go and try and find this guy in a colony nearby. We went but couldn't find his house. We decided we had gone there for a reason and we knocked on a door. This dad answered and he told us he had a church, but we could talk for a sec if he wanted. We talked and he brought his family, a family of 5. We found out that this year has been rough and that the mom's brother died. We started sharing scriptures from the Book of Mormon without explaining it. The mom then asked what book it was that we were reading and that it was so clear in the doctrine. We explained it and we asked if we were to leave it if they would read it. She said that just after reading that little bit, that she was left wanting to read more.

Sunday was an amazing day and we were chilling in sacrament meeting and we heard a car pull up like in the middle of the meeting. We turned around and it was this family of 5. It was awesome and such a surprise. They ended up loving church too.

This week was awesome and we ended up having 14 investigators in church. That is AMAZING. They are all such special people to me also. 2 of them are preparing to be baptized the 17th of this month and 4 for the 24th. We are going to talk to the others in these up coming days.

All our zone did super good this week and the are all super motivated. I am learning so much right now and I now that all the work I am doing right now will pay off so much in the life after the mission (which is like impossible to think about) I can't believe that Christmas is already here. It blows my mind. We already have like the whole week before and after Christmas filled with breakfast, dinners and lunches. I will be smarter than last year and not plan a whole bunch of dinners for the same night haha. That was an experience.

Well it has been fun and It is good to hear about the sweet stories I guess Ozzy has been making up lately. Next week hopefully I will get to hear one or two. This week I recieved the package from Hilz. If for any reason I should need to open it now. You should let me know haha. If not I am waiting til Christmas.

Love you all and I will talk to you next week.

Elder Gillette

December 5, 2011: Diciembre ya vino!!!!

HOLA FAMILIA!

Wow! I cannot even believe that it is already December. That just blows my mind. Sounds like there is still not snow up there, but just a whole lot of winds. That sounds like a lot of fun? The weather here has been a little bit chilly too. I almost feel like I might need a sweater. I believe that my belief of "cold" has changed a lot here in the mission. Before at home it was shorts all the time. Here I am used to the weather always being nice and warm. During the day here though is absolutely perfect though. It is just at night when it gets cold and the cold showers just kill me in the morning. That is one thing I will not miss after the mission.

This week was a great week. I learned a lot about myself. We had a meeting with President Cordon and all the Zone Leaders and it was sweet. It took like all day, but I learned something about myself. I started thinking about life and about the future and all the things that I would like to do in the mission. I was thinking about all this stuff and I realized that I have a faith barrier. I was thinking about how I really want to do a lot, but am not sure if I could do it. I have seen a lot of great miracles through faith and believing that you could do that and it hit me in that moment that that is what I needed to do. Believe better and more haha. There is a sweet saying here which is "Quierer es Poder" which translating is "Wanting is Power" or "to want is to be able". I like the both translations of it and the both are sweet. Really if we want to do something. We can! I really believe that now. So I decided to put that in practice with my area. We have so much potential, but it seemed like not a ton was working. So we started to study better and plan and we worked some sweet miracles.

Right now we are working with a guy Hernesto and his is inactive, but we have gotten him to go to church like 3 times. He finally introduced us to his wife (Marlene) and she was not very interested, but we taught her. Like 3 days later we went back and it was Saturday. We asked if she was going to go to church and she said that her mom asked her to go to church with her this week, but Marlene said ."No I am going to go to church with my husband to the Mormon church". I thought it was hilarious but she really had the desire to come and she ended up loving church. I am so thankful for the help we got from the members.

We also had another family of 3 come to church and they loved it too. We had a lot of great things happen and the ward was super excited about it.

I saw one of the old bishops this week from my first zone when I started the missions. He wasn't my bishop, but I saw him a lot when I was on interchanges. It was great to see him and he said he was shocked to see how much I have changed in this year. Like talking Spanish and more outgoing and stuff. I was a weird flashback and weird to think about how long I have been here.

So I thought I would tell you I got two packages this week. One from Krick and the other from Joff. I am going to do what I did last year, I already put these two in my suitcase and I am going to wait til christmas. It will be fun to be with a Gringo this christmas cause we get along so well. Elder Hobbs is a great comp.

Well I do love you all and thanks for all of your letter. I love hearing how everyone is doing. I can't believe Story already has 7 months. Time sure does fly by. Ozzy will be turning 4 also soon. SO crazy!

I love you all  and hope that you have great weeks and that you enjoy the snow, the christmas songs, and all the great movies for me. Talk to you next week.

Elder Gillette