August 27, 2012: EARTHQUAKE!

¡Oì!
 
I thought I would have the title of EARTHQUAKE to make a bit of drama. The real story is that I am super far away from where the earthquake hit and to be quite honest I didn't even know one hit til you all wrote me about it. I bet it was pretty crazy over there.
 
This week was a really great week, but also very up and down. Just so you all know here they don't use the word "trunkie", here they say "baggy". I don't know why but that is the word. Either way I am not baggy nor trunkie. Just working as hard as I can.
  
I wrote you all last week telling about the convert that we have (Jaqueline) and how her mom (Dalila) was super against the church, but through the members she totally changed. Well it is so true. She used to go to another church and believed that we worshiped Joseph Smith and that we sacrificed little babies in sacrament meeting and stuff like that. The whole family has now gotten baptized except for her. This past week she really super changed and she was baptized. I couldn't even believe it cause when I first got here she wouldn't even listen to us. It was awesome and the whole ward was super excited for the family.
 
We are also teaching another family (the family Bonilla) and they are a guy (Emerson, 25 years old) and his girlfriend/wife (Tania, 19). We found them about 2 and a half weeks ago and they were so excited right from the beginning to receive us. They have been living together for about a year and she is pregnant. They are awesome and she has always wanted to be baptized in the church.  They are great people and Emerson used to smoke, but when we taught him The Word of Wisdom he just stopped. He now has 2 weeks without smoking. He is awesome. They will be getting married today at 4 pm and they will both be getting baptized.
 
We have seen so many miracles lately and I love the mission so much. We have another family (the Family Peraza) which is a family of 6 that is deciding if they will be getting married and baptized this Friday. They told us they were going to do it last week, but the devil is strong and got in the way. They will be going to the wedding today and will decide there.
 
I am really happy that I stayed this last month. God is showing me why I had to stay and it makes me feel that I made the right choice. I am trying to work as hard as I can now so I have no regrets after. I know that God has a couple more surprises for these last two weeks. I love you all and I am excited to see you. It will be fun to catch up. All these families that I have been teaching me lately has really made me feel the importance of the family. The key is the family prayer. It is cool to see the changes that come from one simple prayer at night together. I invite you all to be praying in your families. I pray every night here for each of you and I love you all. Prayer really does change the night to day. Love you all and talk to you next week.

Elder Gillette

August 20, 2012

Querido Familia,

   

Well how are everyone. Sounds like the fires over there in Utah are a blast. Here everyone takes all of there junk into there front yard and burns it. It scared me at first in my mission to see a giant fire right next to someones house, but the grass and everything is so green that it doesn't catch fire. The house are made of cement so they don`t catch fire either. It is very opposite here haha. 

   

Everything here in good ol Atiqui is good. We are seeing a lot of miracles and I feel like God is really showing my why I needed to stay this last month of my mission. I thought about that a lot this week and how I am really glad that I stayed, cause I know that I should be here.

   

We were teaching this family I think I told you all about; Ana and her 2 kids, Fernando and Alejandra. They are awesome and with the help of some members that are really great they ended up getting baptized yesterday. It was awesome. We had a lot of support from the ward and the mom like ran into the baptismal font to be baptized. she was so excited. It was a great day.

  

We have a lot of great investigators. It really surprises me how many people we keep on finding that are so positive. I feel like I finally can see who to teach and who will be a waste of time. We had 6 new investigators in church and they are all really great people. This Sunday we will be baptizing the mom of the girl we baptized last week, Jaqueline. The whole family are members and she didn't want anything to do with us. Thanks to the members she has changed her mind and went to church and loved it.

  

I really am working the hardest I have worked in my life and I feel super confident in what I am doing. I really have a true belief that whoever reads The Book of Mormon and prays will get an answer. I have seen it to many times now.

  

Well I have a little over 3 weeks left here so I thought I would ask you all if there is anything you all might want here? something I should take a picture of before I leave so you all can see it or something like that? if you have ideas then send it to me. 

  

I love you all and I am excited for these next couple weeks. I know they will be great. I will be getting home at midnight on Sept 13  or I don't know if that would be considered the 14th of September. So lets all get prepared. I love you all and take care. 

 

Elder Gillette

August 13, 2012

Hola Familia,

 

So crazy stuff. The secretary just sent me my flight plans. I will send them to you all, but it looks like I will be getting home at like midnight.  SO that should be pretty fun. I felt super weird seeing an actual time that I will be back in the states. I will passing through Atlanta which I thought was super funny. I will see chases mission for about 3 hours. I hope that airport has McDonalds. I miss Big Macs.

  

This week was a crazy, but really great week. We saw some really great miracles and I got to meet a lot of great people. I did a tour of the whole zone to get to know everyone. It was pretty awesome and I got to teach with a lot of people and it was awesome. IT is so cool to go to other areas and help them with there investigators.

  

In my area we are doing great. We had a baptism of a girl named Jaqueline.who is 17 and it was cool. Her whole family is just about all members. Now we are working on the mom and she is the last one who is not a member. We have 3 people who are getting prepared to be baptized this week and they are great. WE taught about tithing and she started to cry and say that she has no money, but she is great and said she will use her faith and will pay her tithing. She is awesome. We also had another family come to church and they are awesome. They will be getting married and baptized the 20th. God has been blessing us so much lately. I just hope I can work enough in this last bit to show that I am worthy of it.

  

We had a great activity this week with the whole stake where they did a festival of corn. Here there are SO MANY things that they make with corn. We had so many investigators that came and it was awesome cause we were able to eat a ton. They also did a couple presentations of cultural dances and stuff. IT was a great experience.

  

Well I decided I am not going to send anymore pictures for my last month. It takes a while and it will be cool to show all of you these pictures when I get home. 

  

I love you all and have a great week. Hasta Pronto.

 

Elder Gillette

August 7, 2012: Turìn, Atiquizaya

Hola Familia!

Wow, This week was very weird week. I feel like I completely changed lives. It was super hard to leave Sonsonate. I loved the people there. They are all really great people. I will definitely have to visit there again after my mission. I tell everyone that I will come back one day. I have to make sure I fulfill that.

Sounds like summer is going very well for everyone over there.CONGRATS Kelsy on being the choir president. That is super cool and I imagine it will be a lot of fun. It sounds like St. George went really well also. I do miss swimming sometimes. Everyone here has big tanks of water in the backs of there houses where they take out water and I always want to just jump inside of them. Sorry that the water was so gross though. That really sucks.

So after having such a hard time leaving the area in Sonsonate I finally left and I found out that my new area is this place called Turìn in Atiquizaya. It is relatively close to one of my areas when I was in Ahuachapan. We come to Ahuachapan though to write so it is really weird to come back to the city that I served in a year ago. It is really cool to be here again and the best part is that it is a lot cooler here. It is not nearly as hot cause it is much more mountainous. That is also the bad is that we are walking up and down hills all day.

It was weird coming here and especially coming and telling people that I only have one month left. Everyone gets so surprised, but I have found that it has been an awesome experience. I am still a Zone leader which really surprised me cause I was hoping to end training a new, but I didn't get that wish. The zone has been having a lot of troubles lately and when I came here president told me that the state of the zone was critical. It is the biggest zone in the mission, but had nobody with a date preparing for baptism. So I have got 6 weeks to do a lot of work. I am EXCITED.

My area is really cool and is pretty big. It has been a lot of fun. My companions name is Elder Staheli. He is from Payson, Utah and has 21 months in the mission. I was hoping to be with a Latin my last transfer to try to get my Spanish better, but he is a good guy too. It does surprise me though how many American companions I will end with and also how few. I am happy with all my comps though. All good guys.

We had a good week though. We were able to see some sweet miracles in my area in the zone. We are teaching this lady and her 2 kids. The 2 kids have gone to church twice, but the mom hasn't wanted to go. This week we brought a lot of members and had some great help from of recent convert and she ended up going to church with her two kids. We went after church with the recent convert, the bishops wife and also President Cordon (ya he called us up and came and worked with us for 2 hours and it was great) and in the end she and her 2 kids decided they will be getting baptized the 18th of this month. We also were able to talk to another girl who has a couple attendances and she will be getting baptized this Friday. It was an awesome lesson.

The zone is slowly getting better too, but we hope we can give good examples and the others will follow. That is what Christ did.

Other than that not much. Tomorrow I complete 23 months. crazy right? I got a lot of work to do.

Oh dad just so you know these were my areas and in what part I lived in and maybe that guy will know.

- San Muguelito and in the San Rafeal in Santa Ana
- In El Ivu by El Arco Duran in Ahuachapan
- Sensunapan in Sonsonate
- and now in Turìn.

Love these places.

Well the secretary just called me asking where I would like to land and I told him the Hawaii airport if that is alright? JK I told him the Salt Lake Airport. You should be receiving a call from him this week.

Well love you all and take care!

Elder Gillette