October 31, 2011: Happy Halloween

Wow I am now onto my first last holiday in the mission. Me and my comp have been joking around that we are going to dress up today like business men with name plaques and all and knocking on the doors here.... Oh wait... We do that everyday haha. It sounds like your party went super well for Halloween. I always love the Halloween party. You all should send some pictures. I still carry around a picture of basil as a pumpkin from last year. i love that picture.

This week was super crazy. Probably one of the hardest physically and mentally of my mission. I am now with Elder Hobbs and he is a great missionary, but he doesn't have a ton of time in the mission and so he doesn't really know how to run a zone. I have been having to do everything. All the complaining and problems by myself when I really don't know what I am doing at all either. But it is all alright. I am happy cause I feel that I  am doing as good as I can. I have gotten better already at doing a lot of things.

This week I went to 3 different areas to do splits. It was crazy. I went to a whole bunch of different places and got to meet a whole bunch of new people and work with new missionaries. It was a lot of fun actually, but super tiring. In one of the houses we were woken up by all these birds chirping. It was terrible. They were so loud. So when we went to leave and we were waiting for the bus stop I was looking at the tree and decided to throw a rock at the tree to try and quiet the birds (bad idea). I chucked the rock and it was way early in the morning and it went way lower than I had wanted and went inside a house. I looked over and saw that there was a person inside that house. I ran over and this old lady just stared at me holding her right shoulder. I asked what happened and she just whispered while turning around entering into her house and with a small voice said, "you hit me". I felt so bad, but my comp couldn't help but laugh.

That was just one of the many things that happened. I really had a great time, but I hope I can stay in my area a bit more this next week.

This week though was the baptism of this kid named Ricardo. He is 20 and is such an awesome kid. He went to church as a little kid but never got baptized. His whole family are members, but him. We had put the baptism for 12, but it got moved to 2 cause of a meeting we had at 11 with all of the bishops and stake presidency. Then we had to move it again that day to 5 because water wasn't falling. It was so hard, but he just wanted to get baptized and brought a whole bunch of his friends. It was such an awesome baptism and he is so powerful. He bore his testimony after and it was amazing.

 Then this morning me and my comp went to get pupusas for breakfast and we started talking to this family that owns the pupuseria. Then this lady ran how and she ran to me and hugged me. I saw who it was and it was a lady that I had taught in Independencia. She told me she had gotten baptized like a month after I had left, and that she had asked for my to come to the baptism, but I was in ahuchapan. It was so awesome to see her and how good she is doing.

It was a good month and I am excited for November. Crazy I will be completing one year of being here. Well I love you all and I am sorry, but President Cordon cut on our time to write so we have a lot less time. But I love you all and hope this next week is great. And don't worry mom I got your e-mail this time haha.

 Elder Gillette

October 17, 2011: The Hurricane

HOLA FAMILIA

I am going to start out by saying the computer that I am on doesn't really work. The part of the keyboard where the numbers are and most of the punctuations are don't work. So if I put one of these ] today that means it is a question mark and if I put one of these * it is an exclamation. Cool] It may be hard at first, but you'll get the just of our new code thing cause this week will involve a lot of them.

First off, huh. WWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWW

WWWWWWWWWWWWW***************************************************** This has been a crazy week. Craziest of my whole mission. Let's start from the beginning.

 

Monday- I was doing super good. I was pretty excited about the six more week in my area and about the three baptisms we had for this past weekend. Everything was going pretty good. We got out to work and it was a normal day.

 

Tuesday- I don't know why Tuesday, but I woke up a little bit bummed that I was going to be in my area again. Such a long time and it has been fun, but I was getting a little bored or something. So we went out and it was going good. We visited this family that is super awesome. I baptized one of the kids , Diego, about five months ago and he is an awesome kid and we are teaching his dad. We had an awesome lesson with the dad. The grandma has just barely gone to the temple and she is awesome. We invited him to be baptized and he accepted and it was such a spiritual moment. The grandma then looked at me with tears in her eyes and told me that the very first time I came to help Diego get baptized that she could see the authority that I held and knew I was suppose to help the dad, David, get baptized too. It was inspiring. I then realized why I was suppose to be in my area for more time. 

 

The whole rest of the day went well after that. We ended up buying pupusas and going to the house super happy with all that had happened and with the dates that we had. We entered in the house and the phone rang. I went and picked it up and it was my Zone Leader. He then told me that President had just called. I was super confused and asked why. He then told me that we were going to have Emergency Changes. I was like WHHHHHAATTTTT]]]]]]*****. He then told me that I would be leaving my area the next day. I asked where and he told me to a place called Molino. It is in Santa Ana north. I was so confused. I didn't know what to think, than he told me that I was going to be a Zone Leader. I thought he was joking. Sounds like a joke, but it wasn't.

 

I hung up the phone and started calling everyone. All my recent converts, the members, my bishop. It was so sad. I wasn't going to have any time to say goodbye to anyone cause the next day I was to leave at eight in the morning. I got all packed up too. That was super difficult. I finally got to bed at one thirty.

 

Wednesday- We got up at five so that I could go and say bye to some recent converts. I knocked on the door of Mama Iris and she was confused why were there so early. I told her I was leaving and she started to ball. It was so difficult. 

 

I finally got on the bus though at eight and got to my area. My new comps name is Elder Palma. He is from here in Apopa, El Salvador. He is a super great missionary and knows a lot. We went around my area. It looks like a super sweet area. The ward usually has an attendence of one hundred and forty, which is amazing, and the best part is is that the members have a schedule of when they feed the missionaries. Every night we get fed dinner. I was super excited about that. 

 

The rest of the week has been just like the other days. Being a zone leader is a lot different than I thought. Everyone is always calling and needing something. ON Friday I went on interchanges to this one area named Rio Zarco. I did my first bapismal interview. It was a crazy experience. I had a lot of fun though. I am not gonna lie though it has been a lot of fun getting to know my zone.

 

Here in El Salvador it has been crazy though. All of this week it has been raining like crazy. When I was in Ahuachapan it was flooding like crazy and got up to like my knees. Here it hasn't been flooding, but it hasn't stopped raining since I got here. A lot of people have suffered a lot of damages. It has been crazy. They say it from a hurricane and that it will keep going til like Wednesday.  We went on Saturday and did service for a family that two of the walls in the house crashed in from the flooding. We got the whole zone together to do it. I can tell it will be a lot of fun, but super hard, to learn how to work well with other missionaries and how to lead. I have been reading in Doctrine and Covenants section one hundred and twenty one a lot this week. I really hope I can be a good leader.

 

I am not gonna lie though..... I am super tired though. it has been such a crazy week. This next week should be more chill... I hope haha.

 

Sounds like all is well at home. Wow the World Series is already here again. This is already my second world series. Time flies by. Also I can't believe you asked dad about Christmas. IT is already only two months away. That is crazy. I will think about what I will need for Christmas.

 

I love you all and hope everything goes well for you all this week. I am always praying for you. I am going to go home and take a nap now I believe :]

 

Love you and talk to you all next week,

Elder Gillette